--- title: Stop Letting Your Mom Plan Your Wedding description: A wedding shouldn’t be a dress rehearsal for unequal labor. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/03/13/stop-letting-mom-plan-your-wedding/ author: Amy Shack Egan article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-13T12:46:47.232Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-13T12:47:01.386Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Stop Letting Your Mom Plan Your Wedding og:description: A wedding shouldn’t be a dress rehearsal for unequal labor. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/03/13/stop-letting-mom-plan-your-wedding/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt86830db23e9e862a/69b4056d08907d807f6e85e2/mom-wedding-planning.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: mom-wedding-planning.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Stop Letting Your Mom Plan Your Wedding twitter:description: A wedding shouldn’t be a dress rehearsal for unequal labor. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt86830db23e9e862a/69b4056d08907d807f6e85e2/mom-wedding-planning.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  IDEASTime ideas # Stop Letting Your Mom Plan Your Wedding by [Amy Shack Egan](https://time.com/author/amy-shack-egan/) ## Amy Shack Egan Amy Shack Egan is the author of The Rebel Wedding Planning Guidebook and the founder of Cheersy. Mar 13, 2026 12:46 PM UTC  sruilk—Getty Images by [Amy Shack Egan](https://time.com/author/amy-shack-egan/) ## Amy Shack Egan Amy Shack Egan is the author of The Rebel Wedding Planning Guidebook and the founder of Cheersy. Mar 13, 2026 12:46 PM UTC After more than a decade as a wedding planner, I’ve watched countless capable, loving couples unravel not because planning a wedding is inherently stressful, but because it’s quietly treated as a mother-child bonding exercise instead of what it actually is: a crash course in partnership. Weddings are one of the first major projects couples tackle together, yet many outsource decisions, conflict resolution, and authority to parents—most often, to moms. In the 10 years I’ve worked as a wedding planner, I can’t count how many times mothers sent the initial inquiry email, hopped on discovery calls, opted into planning meetings, attended floral mock-ups, and showed up unexpectedly to site visits or final walkthroughs. The joke, of course, is that this is all considered normal. After all, women are just better at planning parties. I’m sorry if sorority culture has confused you, but the work of planning a party is not defined by gender roles. It’s a game of decisions, budgets, logistics, and multitasking. As Eve Rodsky, author of [Fair Play](https://www.everodsky.com/fair-play) and an expert on the gendered division of domestic labor, [has pointed out](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/09/fair-play-life-eve-rodsky-jennifer-siebel-newsom/), “We’ve been conditioned to value \[women’s time\] less than men’s time.” The result is a sobering reality: regardless of whether they work outside the home, women still do [significantly more childcare and housework than men](https://thegepi.org/the-free-time-gender-gap/). Weddings simply become the first arena where that imbalance is rehearsed. The problem isn’t overbearing mothers; it’s a cultural script that positions weddings as family legacy events, or even achievements, rather than relationship-defining ones. In my experience, few things get more likes on Instagram than an engagement or a baby announcement, and few things make a mother feel more relevant than when she’s planning her daughter’s big day. Between financial contributions, tradition policing, and “I’m just trying to help,” couples are subtly encouraged to prioritize parental comfort over learning how to function as a team. The result is two people on the brink of spending their lives together without practicing the skills marriage actually requires: shared decision-making, boundary-setting, and conflict navigation. Instead of learning how to disagree and compromise with each other, heterosexual couples often default to the bride working it out with her mother. The wedding industry reinforces this heteronormative, toxic dynamic. Vendors often ask for the bride’s name and email on contact forms. Planners instinctively direct questions toward a woman, even if the couple doesn’t include one. Grooms are left off email chains or treated as passive participants in their own weddings. It’s a small signal that carries a big message: this is a woman’s project to manage, even if there isn’t a woman in the relationship. And the data backs it up. According to a 2020 WeddingWire study, 67% of weddings are [primarily planned by the bride](https://go.weddingwire.com/newlywed-report/2020), compared with just 14% by the groom. That imbalance doesn’t appear out of nowhere; it’s built into the assumptions surrounding weddings themselves. In other words, the wedding planning process quietly becomes a training ground for the division of labor that often defines marriage. One partner becomes the project manager, tracking budgets, coordinating vendors, remembering deadlines, smoothing over family dynamics, while the other floats in and out of decisions when needed or frankly, doesn’t engage with it at all. If that dynamic feels familiar, it’s because it mirrors the way emotional and logistical labor plays out in many households long after the wedding day is over. Many men engage in what I like to call, “show-up” culture. It’s hard to be blamed for any inefficiencies or defects when you excuse yourself from the process altogether. And on the flip side, it’s easy to stay relaxed about everything when it’s all flying way above your head. But it doesn’t have to start that way. Weddings are one of the rare moments when couples are forced to make hundreds of decisions together in a short period of time: where to spend money, whose opinions matter, which traditions to keep, and which to leave behind. It’s exactly the kind of collaborative exercise that can strengthen a relationship if both people are actually participating. As millennials and Gen Z couples delay marriage, [self-fund weddings](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/17/gen-z-millennial-couples-say-marriage-too-expensive-in-this-economy.html), and reject traditional power dynamics, this old model needs to officially be put to bed. If weddings are meant to kick-start marriages, we should demand both partners participate in this group project without the mother-daughter relationship taking precedence. Delegate email sending, budget tracking, and vendor negotiations. Practice making decisions together. Learn how to disagree, compromise, and move forward as a team before the stakes get higher than table linens and seating charts. Because a wedding shouldn’t be a dress rehearsal for unequal labor. It should be the first project of the partnership itself and the first proof that both people are ready to build a life together. [TIME Ideas](https://www.time.com/ideas) hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. 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