When the D.J. called all couples to the dance floor at a wedding this summer, Denise Nuzzo, 37, brought an unusual date: her dinner roll.
A TikTok post shows Ms. Nuzzo, who lives in Brooklyn and works in education, surrounded by couples and swaying with her carbs. The video’s text reads: “POV you’re the only single at the wedding.”
From “My Best Friend’s Wedding” in 1997, to 2023’s “Anyone but You” (which is loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”), the trope of bringing a fake date to a wedding has a long history in pop culture. It’s hard to be single at a wedding: Often, it’s more appealing to feign being partnered. A micro-genre of videos on TikTok follows women dispensing advice for how to navigate weddings that are not designed with them in mind.
Some wedding guests enjoy being single at weddings; some couples have even met at weddings they attended as singles. But other singles — especially women in their 20s and 30s — I interviewed described being relegated to the couch when sharing Airbnbs with their married friends; feeling trapped at dining tables where the conversation revolves around in-laws and home-hunting; and removing themselves from the dance floor when a slow song comes on. They talked about turning down out-of-town invitations because they cannot afford to travel solo.
Some of these challenges have to do with how norms around marriage have shifted. “Back in the day, when you were getting married in your early 20s, it was probably all your college or high school friends who were attending the wedding,” said Gabriella Rello Duffy, senior editorial director at Brides magazine.
Now, people are marrying older: According to a Census Bureau survey, the estimated median age of first marriage in 2022 was 28.2 years old for women and 30.1 years old for men, up from 1947’s 20.5 and 23.7 — which can mean fewer single people in attendance.
As a result, “you might just know the bride or groom or the couple,” Ms. Duffy said, “and that can be challenging.”
But does the onus have to fall on singles to make themselves at ease, or are there ways hosts can make their weddings more inclusive? Changes that single people said could make the experience more comfortable — splitting couples at dinner, limiting slow songs and saving plus-ones for guests who don’t know anyone rather than automatically giving them to couples — inspire strong reactions.
Ban the Plus-One
Abbey Caldwell, 36, a screenwriter in Los Angeles who wrote an essay for Airmail in June about abandoning plus-ones, said, “Nobody seems to really care about the wedding experience of single people.” Married couples “already get every privilege in the world — now you can’t be at a wedding for two hours by yourself?”
She added, “Everybody’s reasons for why they shouldn’t be at a wedding without their partners are the same things I have to deal with as a single person at the wedding.”
Judith Martin, who is also known as Miss Manners, strongly disagrees. “That is rude,” she said in an interview. “Married people and people in stable relationships are invited as a social unit unless it is a specifically one-gender event. Excluding them is a terrible idea.”
Different stances on the plus-one issue are probably generational. For Maddie Guy, 34, a tech worker from Chicago, weddings can be so excruciating that, she said, for invitations in her home city, she goes to the ceremony “to show face and show support” and skips the reception, even though she describes herself as extremely friendly.
A plus-one would change the situation for her: She described one occasion where she was allowed to bring a platonic male friend “and it was the most fun I’ve ever had,” she said. “I was really appreciative of them doing that.” Plus-ones also might help defray the singles tax, or the cost when you can’t split a hotel room, Ubers, a wedding gift or any other wedding-associated expenses.
Splitting Up Couples
A middle path could be inviting couples but doing away with traditional seating arrangements. “In some weddings — and this is controversial — couples are actually at different tables,” said Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” Splitting couples is a way to level the field between marrieds and singles: Neither kind of person has a social crutch.
Ms. Caldwell said that this would make the experience better. “Even if you’re at a wedding with all your friends from college, then you’re dealing with the catch-up conversation, which, for other people, revolves around their partners and their children, and they’re buying a house together — all of those things.”
There are other ways that hosts can facilitate dinner-table conversations that aren’t just focused on couples discussing how they met each other and if they want to have kids. Ms. Parker spoke about a couple who articulated a few values that were extremely important to them — adventure and trust, for instance — and asked their guests to share a story and give a toast about what that value meant to them.
No Slow Dances
The dance floor, especially during slow songs, can also be fraught. Dayton Modderman, 25, a single man and social media manager from Nashville, said, “It’s very easy to shut down and whatnot when everyone’s like, ‘Grab your loved ones, this one’s for y’all.’”
“At best,” said Samantha Gross, 32, a travel blogger from Philadelphia, “you get a friend who takes pity on you, and asks you to join, and you don’t really want to do that, either.” Some opt to skip the dancing altogether. “I typically stay off the dance floor because I’m a party of one,” said Marquis Bent, 28, a single man and project engineer from Atlanta.
Ms. Parker, who wrote “The Art of Gathering,” said dances like “Y.M.C.A.,” the hora and the Cupid Shuffle were good alternatives to slow songs. “These are deeply intelligent social designs that are meant for the collective,” she said.
Ms. Duffy, the editorial director at Brides, recommended playing group anthems. For her high school crew, “Night Moves” by Bob Seger is one — all of her friends have played the so-bad-it’s-fun song at their weddings. “It’s a big moment when the group of girls all comes out together,” Ms. Duffy said.
While some may dismiss singles’ grievances as trivial, experts say that weddings can reveal where our values lie. “We are fighting about weddings because they are one of the last forms of modern ritual that we have,” Ms. Parker said. “Weddings are one of the most important places where the fights that we need to have and often avoid — within families, within communities — are had. Which is: Who are we now? How do we do this? Who belongs?”
She continued: “There are a lot of philosophies where if you center the edge — if you center those who least belong — it’s better for everybody. I’m not saying there’s a wrong and a right. What I’m saying is that these are all trade-offs.”
For Ms. Nuzzo, though, one thing is clear: She doesn’t want to dance with her bread in 2024. “Stop saying, as an M.C. in 2024, ‘I’d like to invite all the couples on the dance floor,’” she said. “Just say, ‘I’d like to invite everybody.’”
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