139. The Wedding Industrial Complex: Where Is the Love in the Love Industry with Shannon Collins
An Industry Built on Love
Weddings are an industry that is supposed to be built on love, joy, happiness, and connection. But the actions being taken within the Wedding Industrial Complex are often anything but.
And this isn’t about overzealous brides or missed music cues. This is vendors not being able to eat for eight or more hours, members of the wedding party being misgendered because they had to be groomsmen or bridesmaids.
These actions do not affirm the love and connection that are the reason the event is happening.
Photographer Shannon Collins joins Erica and India to discuss the Wedding Industrial Complex and how the industry needs to change to be more inclusive and accessible so it truly celebrates love in all its forms.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How industry norms dehumanize service providers and take the love out of the love industry
Whose stories get centered by the Wedding Industrial Complex
How COVID changed weddings and how Shannon works
Joy and Connection
Shannon Collins has been aiming to capture joy as resistance for 12 years as the owner of Shannon Collins Photography. They connect clients with affirming vendors and advocate for safer, more diverse, inclusive, and accessible industry standards.
In the past year, Shannon came out publicly as nonbinary, queer, and disabled. They recently founded Youthphoria, a project dedicated to celebrating and photographing trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming youth in the Philadelphia area at no cost. Shannon also volunteers for The Trevor Project every week as a crisis counselor.
Shannon currently lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with their partner, two children, chinchilla, dachshund, and 38 patient houseplants.
The Love Industry
On the Pause on the Play® Podcast, Shannon starts by providing some context and history for what Erica calls the Wedding Industrial Complex.
Prior to COVID-19, weddings were a $72 billion industry.
The modern wedding world as we know it got its start in the 1930s as brides’ magazines were introduced to the market and weddings became a way to display wealth and class status.
Large, lavish weddings fell out of fashion for a few decades following World War II, but the fairytale wedding came back in style in the 80s with the televised spectacle of the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles.
COVID caused an estimated half of all weddings in 2020 to be rescheduled, and brought about a rise in the popularity of micro-weddings. Shannon defines micro-weddings as celebrations with fewer than 12 or so guests. Many people opted for these instead of postponing their weddings.
Shannon says the wedding industry tends to favor an image that is “pretty, privileged, thin, cisgender, straight and non-disabled and that can make the rest of us feel unlovable,” and those industry norms get reflected into the culture on shows like the Bachelor, that only just recently had its first Black bachelor and has largely had heternormative relationships.
Whose Love Story Gets Centered
Shannon says that even in their city, which is 44% Black, when they check their peers’ feeds–and even their own–the feed doesn’t reflect the actual diversity of the communities they live in.
“It takes a long time to scroll through most of the popular wedding publications to see fat people represented or queer people...it can be super discouraging.”
Erica says that when she was in the industry as a hair stylist, “it was still a challenge to get people that look like me to feel safe, to even inquire about services because they wereregularly not considered when business were created.”
And she says, for people trying to change that, it can be hard to push through on the standard vendor advertising platforms where the listings are super homogenous.
India adds that the wedding industry touches everyone, even if you don’t work in the industry. It’s rare that someone has never had anyone in their family or immediate circle get married, and an industry that generates that much money has a major impact. And there is next to no representation, inclusivity or belonging.
A Different Way of Working
Shannon says their work, and the industry, have changed since they first started 12 years ago.
They’ve personally made major transitions and they’ve gone from photographing commitment ceremonies for queer couples to same-sex marriage being legalized.
The pandemic has also impacted the way they work.”The pandemic also gave me this chance to focus on capturing more intimate celebrations and doing like, maybe two or four hours of coverage versus like an eight hour day...And it really allowed me to slow down.”
They say when people are planning these smaller celebrations, it can also free them up to direct their money more intentionally and thoughtfully to elevate the experience for everyone.
Shannon adds that taking the From Implicit to Explicit masterclass with Erica and India was a game changer in their work, “because as soon as I put my values out there and showed people how I was presenting myself, they just kind of ended up linking up with me in this natural way.”
The Removal of Love
Of the industry at large, Erica says that love has actually been removed from the industry by the way it’s marketed and by the transactional nature of vendor agreements that ends up dehumanizing the service providers.
She recalls instances of working four or five hours straight without so much as a drink of water, and the wedding party thinking nothing of it.
“You have this individual that has come in to spend half, or in some cases an entire, day with you..and it never occurred to you, like, ‘Hey, are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Do you need to sit for a minute?’”
Shannon says that when they worked longer weddings, they frequently had to ignore basic bodily functions, to the point of regularly getting UTIs, or trying to find somewhere private to pump when they were nursing.
“Your basic needs should be met. Like, it shouldn't even be a question. And yet it is, we aren't really treated like people.”
India says that was why she refused to do weddings unless she had a close relationship with the couple. Though Erica points out that similar cultures exist in the beauty industry with being expected to stand in heels for long periods and forego food and water so makeup doesn’t get smudged.
“To think of how this type of structure is tied to something that is supposed to be beautiful baffles me.”
Shannon adds that the idea of not being able to take care of themselves as vendors and service providers is, in a way, profoundly ableist as well.
Wedding vendors can’t take sick days, can’t take days off to deal with injuries or chronic pain, “It shouldn't be normalized and it's just expected of us.”
What Needs to Be Disrupted
Shannon goes on to say that in addition to how the industry treats service providers, wedding vendors have their own problems with how they treat their customers.
Photographers are commonly advised not to not take photos of fat guests, or to only frame them in certain ways if they’re a member of the wedding party or family. And dress shops routinely give poor service to fat customers.
Shannon recalls, “there was a time when I was a second shooter really early on in my career, and the main photographer called me up and scolded me until I cried telling me that like, how dare I take a closeup of a fat bride. That shit needs to be disrupted.”
Erica remembers an incident in a dress shop where the salesperson wouldn’t let her pick out dresses to try on, then commented that a dress was “very slimming” when Erica had it on. “Just call me fat. Just say what you’re going to say.”
Shannon frequently notices non-white members of wedding parties or families having to do their own hair and makeup because the vendor didn’t pack an appropriately diverse kit, or didn’t know how to use it. “And if you call them out on it, they’re just like...we’re going to be positive, you’re being toxic.”
Erica says instances like that are why she deliberately strove to make her salon able to support diverse wedding parties when it came to hairstyles and textures and makeup for a wide range of skin tones and ages.
When hair and makeup vendors are unprepared for diverse clients, “There's this money grab of it, but two, there's this assumption of your hair texture and skin type is not valid enough for me to put extra time and effort into learning how to do it, or to simply be honest enough about what I don't know how to do at this particular point in time.”
And then members of those wedding parties have to smile for the camera in hair and makeup that they don’t feel good about.
Shannon says that plays into gender at weddings too, where many people are forced to wear clothing, hair or makeup that doesn’t affirm their identity.
“The ways we make people have to fit in these molds that go against who they are as people really can impact them...It's brutal to watch it go down in person as well. Because you're kind of helpless and I'm just trying to capture it and just be positive.”
Modeling a Different Normal
When it comes to disrupting harmful norms and modeling a different way of being in the industry, Shannon has taken to heart the idea of imperfect action and showing up from her time as part of Pause on the Play® The Community.
“I just try to share my takeaways with my little modest audience on Instagram and get uncomfortable together...I’m trying to approach people with open-ended questions rather than statements.”
Typically this approach will bypass defensiveness and allow people to approach the issue with curiosity. They say it doesn’t always work out that way, but usually people want to learn more.
To show people what they mean when they say the industry isn’t inclusive, Shannon made an affirming language guide to illustrate the concept and provide alternatives. They also have worked to ensure their workflow with clients is affirming both at the initial meetings and closer to the event day, because things change for people.
Many of the changes that Shannon has made in their work have come down to questioning the assumptions behind why those norms exist and what exceptions and challenges to those norms need to be made, whether it’s sensitivity to flash photography or allergies that require a person to bring their own food.
Take Action
Shannon urges everyone to take the Harvard Implicit Associations test to get a baseline for your own hidden biases. They say it’s actually a test they’ve periodically revisited as well. “Once you find out what those things [to work on] are, you can better kind of confront and dismantle them. And then just find subtle ways to challenge your biases and be inclusive.”
As an example, they mention a client who took the initiative to have the venue cover the men’s and women’s bathroom signs and replace them with signs that said gender-neutral restroom.
“We have to take actions to show people that we care, even if they're not in the room. And that could look like showing your pronouns...it could look like not assuming people's gender or avoiding ableist language, which I'm trying and AAVE, if you're not part of those groups. So those are just some ways that I've tried to take small steps.”
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