{"id":15813,"date":"2009-12-02T07:00:01","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T07:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/12\/02\/fake-trend-watch-bridesmaid-pre-nuptial-agreements\/"},"modified":"2021-01-09T09:46:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T17:46:59","slug":"20091202-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20091202-01\/?p=15813","title":{"rendered":"Fake trend watch: Bridesmaid pre-nuptial agreements"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wanderings through the online world of bridesmaid craziness began with the article Brides taking their bridesmaids for Botox treatments or maybe a boob job<\/i><\/a>. I blame the wedding-industrial complex<\/a>, which constantly pushes weddings as the bride’s “perfect day”, “the best day of your life”, a “fairy tale come true” where you can be “a princess for a day.” (Folk tales which end in big lavish weddings are told from the female point of view; there aren’t many folk tales about the young boy who grows up to marry a beautiful princess.)<\/p>\n

And I love Elizabeth A.’s comment called out in the sidebar to the New York Times<\/i> article.<\/p>\n

Back to that article: Is the Botox girl’s night out a real trend or a fake trend<\/a>? In Pre-nups for bridesmaids. Gain weight and you’re out<\/i><\/a>, the author claims that “one in five women actually ask their bridesmaids to sign a pre-nup.” On that, I call fake trend.<\/p>\n

First of all, I could find only one actual documented case of a bride who made her bridesmaids sign contracts agreeing not to gain weight before the wedding. And it was a prank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Okay, so if it happened only once, where did this “one in five” come from? I followed the citation to the source article in The Daily Mail<\/i><\/a>, which merely says that one in five would<\/i> ask their bridesmaids to sign such an agreement, not that one in five actually did it<\/i>.<\/p>\n

But wait, there’s more. I followed the citation from that Daily Mail<\/i> article to the the original survey from You & Your Wedding<\/i> magazine<\/a>, and found that it was even weaker than The Daily Mail<\/i> described it: The actual result was that one in five would consider a bridesmaid contract in general<\/i>. So we’re double-counterfactual now. And the survey was not scientific; it was just an online survey.<\/p>\n

Okay, so let’s tally up the numbers. The claim that one in five brides ask their bridesmaids to sign a pre-nuptial agreement which includes a clause regarding weight would be true if…<\/p>\n