Why more Irish couples are getting married without bridesmaids

More Irish couples are getting hitched without the entourage, and they tell Rosalind Skillen that planning a wedding without bridesmaids was one of their best decisions

Ellie Berry and her husband Carl, who married on a quiet Tuesday in front of just two witnesses. Picture: Sophia Harding

Some people cannot imagine getting married without a string of bridesmaids clad in pastel-coloured dresses by their side. Others who have never attended a wedding without bridesmaids might also find the concept rather unusual.

But, as more Irish couples strip back the traditional structure of weddings, many are questioning whether they need a bridal party at all.

Wedding consultant and planner Erica Egan (@weddingswitherica) says she is “definitely” observing Irish couples “move away from some of the more traditional expectations around weddings”, which includes “rethinking the traditional bridal party and who they actually want to stand beside them on the day”.

For some brides, selecting their bridesmaids can be a nightmare: fear of offending friends, feeling obligated to ‘return the favour’, and even worries about whether the bridal party will all mesh. It is the kind of stress that some couples “just simply don’t want that for the day”, says Erica.

No doubt, having a bridal party continues to “hold such an emotional value” for some couples, but Erica lists other thoughtful ways that family and friends close to the couple have been integrated into marriages, including giving speeches, being part of the wedding morning, or doing a reading at the ceremony.

“What I find interesting about stripping back the bridesmaids is we’re moving away from the idea of: this is the wedding, this is what it should be,” she continues.

“Couples are making the day about them, and that is what a wedding in 2026 should look like. It should be about that couple and not what everyone’s expectation of their wedding day looks like.”

Wedding consultant and planner Erica Egan has seen Irish couples “move away from some of the more traditional expectations around weddings”

For some brides, the decision to go it alone is both an intuitive and financially minded one. This was the case for Niamh Kenny, who married her husband Ivan just last month in an intimate venue in West Cork.

Cost was the “factor that had the most sway” for the Portlaoise-based couple in planning a smaller wedding. When researching the prices of a venue, food, drink and accommodation, Niamh “could already feel the costs spiralling out of control” before a cent was spent.

Regarding bridesmaids, the self-described introvert says: “There was no point trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole just for the sake of appearances. There is pressure to have bridesmaids because that is what everyone does and has done for decades. You get questions of how many you will have, what the colour scheme would be. But I think once people know it is a very small wedding that only 10 people are invited to, the questions about all the excesses and bridesmaids and groomsmen stop. Because it just wouldn’t be possible to have any of that,” she says.

Telling family and friends about their decision to scale down their wedding and leave behind certain traditions was something the couple “worried about”, and they received “mixed reactions”.

“Most wished us the best of luck and said, ‘I wish I’d done the same’. Some didn’t take it as well and didn’t really understand that this decision was about us and not them.

“But, at the end of the day, it is our wedding. We have to feel comfortable with it and do it the way that makes us happy.”

The shift in traditions is partly tied to the changing profile of weddings, but is reflected in larger weddings too.

Eleanor’s story

Eleanor O’Riordan married her partner Harry in the heart of Dublin in November last year with a guest list just short of 80 people. The couple married in the city’s registry office and rented The Winding Stair restaurant for food afterwards.

Eleanor said one of the reasons the couple decided to forgo a bridal party was because they felt their day involved less organisation compared to friends who got hitched abroad.

In those weddings, “people had jobs that they needed to do for the wedding to make things run smoothly,” Eleanor explained. “Whereas we didn’t really have that, because we didn’t have any kind of extras for our wedding.”

Both working intensive jobs – Eleanor is a trainee doctor – the couple also felt that they “didn’t want our wedding to completely overturn our lives”.

Eleanor O'Riordan and her husband Harry. The couple “didn't want our wedding to completely overturn our lives”. Aideen Anna Photography

“Personally, for me, I never felt that this was a really important day for us… one day defining an entire relationship doesn’t didn’t make a huge amount of sense to us,” Eleanor remarks. “We wanted it to feel more like a celebration day.”

She says that couples now enjoy more freedom to design their wedding in a way that means something to them.

“I remember my mother-in-law talking about it, that she had wanted to have a small wedding in the 1980s, but the pressure from society in general was such that you just couldn’t do it any other way other than what was acceptable.

“I find that chatting to people from outside of Dublin as well, that maybe there is more pressure to have a more traditional wedding, especially from smaller towns where you have a huge guest list,” she continues.

“When you come from a small town… the entire town turns up and there’s a lot more expectation on who you invite, and that might make it trickier.”

The weight of such expectations and “the potential drama” that can come with bridal parties is one of the biggest reasons why couples drop them, according to wedding expert and author, Sara Kennedy (@irishweddingblog).

“Sometimes, a bride has a large friendship group and doesn’t want to choose three or four people and risk leaving others out, so she decides to have nobody rather than create that dynamic.

“Others have been bridesmaids themselves or watched friends go through weddings where the bridal party became a source of stress, and they just don’t want that surrounding their own day,” adds Sara.

“Sometimes, the reason is much more personal. One bride told me very openly that she simply didn’t have someone in her circle who felt like ‘her person’ to ask.

“I think there’s something quite refreshing about feeling that you don’t have to appoint somebody to a role simply because tradition says you should.”

Sara echoes the idea that axing bridal parties is part of a “much wider shift” in weddings as “the next generation of couples are increasingly writing their own rules”.

Ellie’s story

It is a feeling reflected in the wedding of Ellie Berry, founder of hiking and outdoors platform Tough Soles (@tough_soles), who married her partner of 12 years on a quiet Tuesday afternoon in August in front of two witnesses.

Ellie and Carl planned the ceremony in Sligo within three months and without informing their family and friends.

“I have never been a huge party person, and I realised that the stress that I had associated with this idea of getting married was actually about having a big wedding,” says Ellie.

Wedding expert and author Sara Kennedy: “Sometimes, a bride has a large friendship group and doesn’t want to choose three or four people and risk leaving others out"

Even if the couple had been planning something bigger, Ellie says she would not have wanted to inflict any financial burden on potential bridesmaids.

“Life is so expensive these days… I feel like when you ask somebody if they want to be part of it, you don’t want their first internal thought to be like, ‘Oh god, this is going to set me back so much’.

“Weddings can be so expensive, so we were like, why don’t we just get married and then maybe have a couple of parties or go out for dinner with different people afterwards in a much more low-key way?”