When Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce married on July 3, they opted to forgo the traditional wedding party of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Swift’s brother, Austin Swift, served as her man of honor, while Kelce chose his brother, Jason Kelce, to be his best man.
Their decision reflects a change already underway. More marrying couples are skipping the longstanding custom of large wedding parties made up of friends and family members. Like Swift and Kelce, they may ask a sibling to stand by them as they wed or choose just a few of the people closest to them. Some are doing away with wedding parties altogether.
The wedding planning platform Joy automatically generates a wedding party page when couples create a wedding website, which they can keep visible or hide. They can also add in wedding party members. Based on the platform’s data collected in July of more than 10,000 couples, one in four chose to hide the page on their wedding sites, indicating that at least some of them didn’t have a wedding party.
“Taylor and Travis did exactly what we see thousands of couples doing on Joy every month: They chose their siblings, skipped the big lineup and made the ceremony about the two of them,” said Joy’s chief executive, Vishal Joshi. “Couples are realizing they do not need a cast of 12 to have a meaningful day.”
Swift choosing a man of honor rather than a maid of honor, Joshi said, is part of a broader trend toward nontraditional wedding titles. When couples do choose to identify their wedding parties, Joy offers alternatives to conventional titles such as person of honor and man of honor instead of maid of honor, as well as honor attendant and bridesperson instead of bridesmaid. The wedding planning platform Zola also offers alternative titles.
There are several reasons couples are rethinking wedding parties.
Danny Seo, the editorial director of BG: Bridal Guide magazine, said couples are embracing mixed-gender parties because they allow “each person to choose the people they’re genuinely closest to.”
“Couples are prioritizing meaningful relationships over outdated wedding conventions,” he added.
That was the case with Heather Shaw, 38, a comedian and content creator who has 2.8 million followers on TikTok, and her wife, Lily Jean Coiner, 27, an attorney for the State of Kentucky. The couple, who live in Louisville, married on New Year’s Eve last year at 21c Museum Hotel Louisville.
Shaw’s wedding party included her siblings, Nicole Shaw and Kevin Shaw; Coiner’s consisted of her best friend, Will Baird, and a family friend, Clarke Waldrop. Shaw said the idea of bridesmaids or groomsmen “felt antiquated.”
“Having a whole busload of people in a formal group seemed silly and performative,” she said. “I was more interested in having a personalized vibe, with the focus on us as a couple.”
Money is another reason wedding parties aren’t as popular as they once were. Sari Cooper, a certified couples and sex therapist and the founder of Center for Love and Sex, a practice in New York, frequently works with couples who are planning their nuptials and said many don’t want to put financial strain on their friends.
“They want to relieve them from the pressure of paying for their dresses, tuxedos, bachelorette and bachelor party trips and other economic realities on top of the expenses of attending the wedding itself,” she said.
Wedding planners and photographers can also speak to the change. Bianca Hall, an owner of Estera Events in Chicago, said that skipping the wedding party has become a “much more common conversation during the planning process.”
“Even when couples do include a wedding party, they’re often reimagining the roles, responsibilities and traditions surrounding it rather than following a conventional format,” she said.
Kelly Reeves, a wedding photographer based in Tampa, Fla., who owns Matlock and Kelly Photography with her husband, Matlock Reeves, said that three of the 10 weddings they have photographed so far this year either skipped wedding parties or took an unconventional approach. In 2025, five of the 20 weddings they photographed opted out.
“Three or four years ago, not having bridesmaids and groomsmen was unheard-of,” Reeves said. “Couples are still hesitant to break from convention and even ask if we think it’s weird.”
Patricia Pearson, 28, a nurse, and Brian Pearson, 31, a quantum sales executive, who live in Chicago, married May 9 at Walker’s Landing, a park in Amelia Island, Fla., and are among Reeves’ recent clients.
The couple didn’t have a wedding party because they wanted to avoid stress and hurting their friends. “We have so many amazing friends, and I didn’t want to feel like I was picking and choosing between people,” Patricia said. “Not having a formal bridal party took pressure off us, and it also allowed our friends to simply enjoy the celebration without the added responsibilities that often come with being a bridesmaid or groomsman.”
But not having a wedding party doesn’t mean not including some longstanding wedding conventions. Sydney Engel, 35, a publicist in New York with her own firm, and her fiancé, Sean Markert, 36, who works on the AI sales team at Google in New York, live in Hoboken, N.J., and are getting married on Oct. 9 at Current, Pier 59 at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.
The wedding will be a “classic black-tie affair,” Engel said. “We’re also having a welcome party and the traditional first dances,” she said. They’re not having a wedding party, however, because it comes with a “formality” that doesn’t feel authentic.
“We’ve both been in countless weddings over the years, and while we’ve loved being part of these special moments, having the reverse is just not us,” Engel said.
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