I didn’t expect to invite thousands of strangers into one of my most personal choices. But one evening in September, with a time-sensitive decision to make, I opened my laptop, went to Reddit and posted photos of myself in three potential wedding dresses.
The comments arrived within minutes. “For sure, dress #2. No comparison,” one user wrote. “Dress 2 is the ONE!!,” wrote another. One person called the first option “fugly.” Another wrote that the third dress’s bra cups looked like “Wonder Woman.” Others warned me not to fall for high-pressure sales tactics (I was shopping a sample sale).
The post eventually drew nearly 200,000 views and 1,600 comments. The thread sat at the top of the r/WeddingDressTips forum for days. My private indecision had become a public referendum, which, I realized, was the point.
Reddit’s wedding communities aren’t new. One of the platform’s largest, r/wedding, started in 2008, two years before Pinterest and Instagram came on the scene, and when the reality TV show “Say Yes to the Dress” was only in its second season.
But over the last year, activity there has jumped. Views are now more than six times what they were last year — up to 471 million views so far this year — according to Reddit, and posts and comments have quadrupled.
Furthermore, Reddit reports that r/weddingplanning is up about 20 percent from the previous year, drawing 263 million views in the past year. Budget-focused wedding communities on Reddit are seeing similar momentum: r/Weddingsunder10k has nearly tripled in traffic in the last year, and r/BigBudgetBrides has roughly quadrupled.
And the audience isn’t just women. Across Reddit wedding communities, almost 30 percent of participants are men, according to comScore Media Metrix, an online audience-measurement service.
Mary Chayko, a sociologist and professor of communication and information at Rutgers University, studies how technology shapes relationships. Wedding planning, she said, can quickly become “like a hobby or a pastime for that period of time.” People often feel freer to interact with strangers, she added.
In Salisbury, N.C., Menay Wilde (soon-to-be Farlee), 33, an office administrator, was planning her Oct. 4 wedding to Seth Farlee without much family nearby. So instead, she went to r/Weddingsunder10k and r/DIYweddings, where strangers’ budget advice helped the couple pull together the day.
Reddit users led her to at-home, try-on dress services, a workaround she hadn’t known existed and one that helped her, as a plus-size bride, find an affordable gown.
Ms. Wilde and Mr. Farlee hosted a wedding with 40 guests for under $6,000 (Reddit also led her to Costco, where she spent under $50 on two tasty cakes). Afterward, she posted her own breakdown to help the next couple. “I’m still on wedding Reddit,” she said, “just trying to help others.”
Julia R., a longtime moderator of the r/wedding forum who asked to not share her full last name for privacy, has watched these communities transform since 2013. Early posts were more focused on logistics — “colors, flowers, napkins, that kind of thing,” she said. Now, she added, the majority are emotional, “like people wanting to fire their bridesmaids,” or navigate family conflicts.
Managing these threads can be unpredictable. Julia R. said she often has to shut down posts where people are spending $50,000 or more because the negative comments are getting out of hand. Increasingly, she sees couples asking how to “save or skimp” on specifics while still achieving the wedding they imagine.
For Olesha Karringten, 42, in Calgary, Alberta, Reddit served as an important emotional-support lifeline. After nearly eight years together, she and her partner, Floyd, decided to marry. Ms. Karringten, who works part-time in marketing and events, found her dress, settled on a wedding date and began imagining the day. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Ms. Karringten didn’t want to post about it on personal accounts, but needed advice from people who might have had similar experiences. She posted in r/weddingplanning, asking for tips from others who had planned weddings while undergoing treatment. Hundreds of strangers responded. “I felt a lot safer doing it on Reddit,” she said. “I honestly did not want to feel completely alone.”
She continued planning between doctor’s appointments. When doctors told her she would need a double mastectomy and chemotherapy, she focused on what she could still control — how she wanted to feel at her wedding.
She got that day on Aug. 17 in Calgary, wearing a white lace gown, sunlit against a backdrop of green trees. Hundreds of strangers had offered advice when she needed it most. “Back then, I still had more hope than I do now,” she said. “What I really wanted was to be able to look OK for my wedding.”
Tyler Newhouse, 24, a legal assistant who lives in Newark, turned to the platform while planning his March wedding in Roswell, Ga., to his partner Cole Clapperton. (The two met in Severna Park, Md., and attended the senior prom together.) “I’m the planner between us,” he said. They are budgeting $20,000 to $25,000 for about 100 guests.
Without an actual planner, Reddit became a practical resource for ideas, Mr. Newhouse said. His post asking for help choosing materials and vendors for their suits became his most-engaged thread ever. Several users recommended made-to-measure shops like Indochino and Suitsupply, which they intend to try.
For Hailey Wilson, 31, and Hunter Fees, 30, both from the Chicago area, the pressures eventually became too much. The couple became engaged last December and booked a June 2026 date. The price felt fair at first, said Ms. Wilson, who works in communications, “but when you tack everything on, it quickly ballooned.”
Mr. Fees, who works in ecological restoration, added, “It’s so easy to get sucked into the traditional wedding. That’s what your parents did.”
Eventually, the couple called it off in a Reddit post titled “We’re canceling our wedding!” Ms. Wilson wrote that planning had started to feel like an unpaid chore and that while she still wanted to be married, she no longer wanted to “get married.” Hundreds of commenters said they felt the same way. They are now considering an elopement.
Lore Oxford, Reddit’s head of insights product, said she isn’t surprised to see couples questioning the spectacle. When she married in May 2023, “I found being a bride alienating,” she said. “It’s like a personality parasite, and it gobbles you up, and all you can talk about is confetti.” Reddit, she added, gives people a place to talk about those pressures with others who are also navigating them.
A few months after my own thread quieted, I went back to find all the photos and comments. Near the bottom of the post, someone had written: “All of these dresses look lovely on you, but which one makes your heart sing?”
In my case, it was a wedding dress that a few thousand strangers helped me choose: a dazzling white gown with lace, beads and pearls by Lee Petra Grebenau, a.k.a. Dress No. 2.
Sarah Diamond is a Times audio producer, based in New York. She also writes a biweekly column, Word Through The Times.
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