WHEN LUXURY WEDDINGS GO VIRAL: WEALTH, BEAUTY, CRUELTY, AND THE COMMENTS NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

You Can Have an Opinion. You Don’t Have to Be Cruel.

I manage my own social media, and when I say that, I mean I manage my own social media. I select every photograph that gets posted. I review and approve every video. I write every caption. I read every message and comment, and I personally respond to as many of them as I possibly can.

There isn't a social media manager sitting somewhere filtering out the cruel, uncomfortable things before they reach me. When you comment on my page, you are talking to me. And since my social channels are public, you are also speaking to them.

When a negative comment is postede about one of my clients, it is not going out into the void of no man’s land. These comments are being made about people I know, care about, and am fiercely protective of.

I love the community that has grown around my work. People celebrate the weddings, appreciate the artistry, ask thoughtful questions, and enjoy watching as my partners and I make the world a more beautiful place. I have met clients, colleagues, and friends through social media whom I otherwise might never have known.

But there are two types of comments that genuinely enrage me, and I will address them every single time I can.

Do Not Attack My Brides (Or Grooms)

Nothing infuriates me more than seeing someone make a cruel comment about one of my brides based on her appearance. Interestingly, it seems to happen most often when a woman is exceptionally beautiful, glamorous, confident, or sexy. Suddenly, complete strangers feel entitled to dissect her.

They call her names. They decide she must be a gold digger. They make assumptions about her relationship based entirely on how she looks. They speculate about her body, her face, her makeup, her clothing, or plastic surgery she may or may not have had. I genuinely struggle to understand why someone would do this. What possesses a person to look at a photograph of a woman they have never met, on one of the happiest days of her life, and decide that their contribution to the conversation should be to publicly humiliate her?

These are not fictional characters. They are real women. They are daughters, sisters, friends, professionals, entrepreneurs, mothers, wives, and human beings. And they can see your comments.

My brides follow my accounts. Their husbands follow me. Their families and friends follow me. Imagine spending months if not years creating one of the most personal celebrations of your life, seeing your wedding beautifully documented and shared, and then scrolling down to discover that a complete stranger has decided to make a cruel observation about your face, your body, your marriage, or your character. Heartbreaking. Why do people do this? What exactly did they think they will accomplish?

There is also an irony here that I cannot ignore. We live in a culture that talks endlessly about body positivity, acceptance, women supporting women, mental health, kindness, and safe spaces. Yet some of the very people championing those ideas seem perfectly comfortable tearing apart a woman they have decided is too beautiful, too sexy, too glamorous, too thin, too enhanced, or simply too much for their personal taste.

Body positivity doesn't only apply to bodies that make you comfortable. Acceptance doesn't mean accepting women only when they present themselves in ways you approve of. And women supporting women cannot possibly mean supporting only the women who look, dress, spend, and live the way you think they should.

So yes, I respond. Viciously. Others will tell me, “Don't feed the trolls.” I understand the philosophy; I simply don't always agree with it. Silence feels too much like permission. I would never allow someone to speak to a client, a friend, or a family member like this in real life. And so I promise, if you walk into my digital space and insult one of my brides, there is a very good chance I am going to snap back and tell you that your comment is inappropriate.

My clients trusted me with an incredibly intimate chapter of their lives. I am not going to enthusiastically share their love story and photographs and only to then sit quietly while someone uses my platform to humiliate them.

I am protective of my brides and grooms, and that protection does not suddenly disappear because the wedding is over.

Stop Counting Other People's Money

The second category is different, but equally frustrating: the comments about money.

Let me be perfectly clear about what I do. I work in the ultra-luxury wedding space. My weddings are not affordable. I don't pretend they are, I don't market them that way, and I don't apologize for it.

I work for and with a very specific type of client. Yes, they have the financial means to create extraordinary, over-the-top experiences, but just as importantly, they have a certain personality. They are open to risk. They want to push the envelope. They want to experience something they haven't experienced before.

These are people who travel extensively, stay at extraordinary hotels, dine at incredible restaurants, collect art, experience world-class entertainment, and have access to some of the best hospitality in the world. They live extraordinary lives, and my job is to create an experience extraordinary enough to surprise them.

For 12, 14, sometimes 16 hours a day, for multiple days, we create an entire world around my clients and the people they love. The design and décor, food and fashion, entertainment, lighting, music, and production all need to come together in a way that surpasses the incredible experiences they and their guests have already had.

That is the assignment. I bend the world to my will to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my clients: never before, never again. And yes, that costs money. Sometimes a tremendous amount of money. But no, it is not put out there for public commentary.

They Already Own the House

Without fail, someone will see an expensive wedding and comment, “They should have put that money toward a house.”

I can promise you this: anyone hosting a wedding with me has already purchased a house. More often than not, they own more than one property. The idea that these families have somehow sacrificed financial security to pay for their wedding fundamentally misunderstands the people I work with.

Then comes the next round of commentary. “Imagine how many homeless people they could have fed.” “They could have donated it to cancer research.” “Think about how much good they could have done with that money.”

Again, these statements make enormous assumptions about people the commenter does not know. My clients are some of the most charitable people I have ever met. Many donate in the seven and eight figures, annually, to causes they believe in. These causes include but are not limted to education, the arts, medical advancement, community programs, research, foundations, and countless other organizations.

Much of that philanthropy also happens quietly. They don't necessarily post the check on Instagram or issue a press release every time they help someone. They simply do it. The idea that someone who gives generously cannot also spend generously is absurd. Charity and personal joy are not mutually exclusive, just as financial responsibility and extravagance are not mutually exclusive. You can fund research and throw a spectacular party. You can support education and buy opulent flowers. You can help other people and enjoy the life you worked to build.

Wealth does not create a public obligation to justify every dollar you spend.

A $1.5 Million Wedding Doesn't Make $1.5 Million Disappear

There is another part of this conversation that people almost completely overlook. The money spent on a wedding does, in fact, help feed people. It employs them, supports their businesses, pays their salaries, and helps them pay mortgages, buy groceries, raise children, pay tuition, invest in their companies, and employ still more people.

Take one of my recent Las Vegas vow renewals. Normally, I would never publicly discuss a client's specific wedding budget. Their finances are private, and I consider discretion part of my responsibility as their planner. In this particular case, however, the couple themselves publicly discussed their approximately $1.5 million investment in their ceremony and reception, how much they enjoyed the experience, and why spending that money on the celebration mattered to them. Because they chose to make that information public themselves, I feel comfortable using it to illustrate this point.

That $1.5 million didn't disappear. Let’s talk about the people that my clients directly employee. The investment starts with me, and with the team I build to take care of them. Consider the photography team of four people, the videography team of another four. The separate content team, and the team that filmed a 360-degree video team, creating technology that will allow the couple to revisit and relive parts of their experience in the future.

The floral and décor company alone had more three designers and production managers along with more than 50 people working on the wedding. Think about that for a moment: designers, fabricators, florists, warehouse staff, production teams, drivers, installers, and crew. Those people were paid because my clients chose to spend money creating an extraordinary experience.

And we haven't even reached the hotel yet….

Deep Dive into the Economy of Weddings

The wedding took place at ARIA in Las Vegas. Think about what happens inside a major resort when an event of this scale takes place. There are banquet setup teams, servers, bartenders, bussers, culinary teams, maintenance crews, engineers, housekeeping, facilities, security, event managers, convention services, and countless other employees working behind the scenes.

Now pan out even further. The guests need hotel rooms. Someone checks them in. Someone cleans those rooms. Someone delivers their in-suite dining. Someone works VIP services, parks their cars, greets them at the door, and makes their coffee the next morning.

Then consider everything happening outside the resort. Guests flew into Las Vegas. They booked airline tickers, took Ubers, taxis, and private cars. They hired hair and makeup artists. They shopped, ate in restaurants, visited bars, and perhaps went to shows, casinos, spas, nightclubs, pools, and stores. Some extended their trips. Every one of those transactions rippled outward into our local economy.

This is how an economy works. A $1.5 million wedding is not $1.5 million being lit on fire. It is $1.5 million being spent, and spending becomes someone else's income.

At the ultra-luxury level, events support an enormous ecosystem of businesses and working people: florists, photographers, filmmakers, entertainers, musicians, dancers, producers, designers, fabricators, carpenters, electricians, technicians, rental companies, transportation companies, stationers, calligraphers, chefs, servers, bartenders, makeup artists, hairstylists, seamstresses, warehouse teams, drivers, and hundreds of others. Many of them are small business owners. Many are independent creatives. Many are hourly employees. All of them are real people earning real money.

So when someone comments that my clients should have “helped people” instead of spending money on a wedding, I can't help but think: They did. They employed them.

Luxury Has Never Been About Necessity

Could these weddings be done for less? Of course. Everything can be done for less. You can drive a perfectly functional car without buying a Ferrari. You can tell time without owning an extraordinary watch. You can sleep comfortably without staying in a five-star resort. You can eat dinner without experiencing a Michelin-starred restaurant. And you can absolutely get married without spending seven figures on a wedding.

Luxury has never been about necessity. Luxury is personal, and on purpose. It is about craftsmanship, creativity, personalization, access, service, artistry, emotion, and experience. At the very highest level, it is about creating something that did not exist before and will never exist again.

That is what my clients ask me to do. That is what they are paying for, and that is exactly the space in which I choose to work.

You don't have to understand why someone would spend that amount of money on a wedding. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to make the same choice. And I promise, you are certainly free to scroll by without leaving a nasty comment.

You can look at one of my weddings and think, “That isn't for me.” It probably isn't.

And that's okay, because it wasn't created for you.

Access Is Not Permission

I think this is what ultimately bothers me most about these comments. Social media has given us unprecedented access to other people's lives. We see inside homes we have never visited. We watch weddings we weren't invited to. We see vacations we didn't take, clothing we didn't buy, bodies that don't look like ours, and lifestyles that may be completely different from our own.

Somewhere along the way, access began to feel like permission. It. Isn't.

Seeing a woman's wedding photographs does not give you permission to humiliate her. Seeing a sexy bride does not give you permission to make assumptions about her character. Seeing an expensive wedding does not give you intimate knowledge of a family's finances. Seeing wealth does not tell you whether someone is generous, and seeing someone experience tremendous joy does not require you to find a reason why they shouldn't be allowed to have it.

Sometimes the comments feel like jealousy. Sometimes they feel like social signaling—the need to publicly demonstrate that you would never spend money that way and that your priorities are somehow more virtuous. Whatever the motivation, I don't welcome cruelty on my page, and I don't allow it to go unchecked simply because responding might be considered bad social media strategy.

If You Come for My Clients, You Will Find Me Standing There

There is another reason I respond. My couples see these comments. Past clients see them. Current clients see them. Future clients see them.

If strangers are going to publicly attack people who trusted me enough to let me share one of the most intimate and extraordinary days of their lives, then those clients also deserve to see me standing between them and the people attacking them. They deserve to see me defend them, and they deserve to know that I will provide a layer of protection and respect around the work we have done together.

My relationship with my clients doesn't end when the last song plays and the ballroom lights come on. I am proud of these people. I am proud of the experiences we create together, and I am proud of the creative teams who bring them to life.

I will never be embarrassed by extraordinary people choosing to celebrate their lives extraordinarily. And I will not allow the public to attempt to embarress them, either.

Make the Internet a Little Nicer

The negative comments don't dissuade me from doing this work, and they certainly don't change the minds of my couples. The next Andrea Eppolito Bride will still wear the sexy dress if that is what makes her feel incredible. The next family will still commission the most impossible floral installation. We will still build the room, push the creative boundaries, take risks, and spend months obsessing over details that will exist for one amazing, ephemeral night. Then we will take it all down.

Never before. Never again. That is the beauty of what I do.

My hope in responding isn't that I will convince everyone to love ultra-luxury weddings. I won't, nor do I need to. My hope is much simpler. Maybe someone will think twice before typing something cruel about a bride's body. Maybe they will hesitate before calling a woman a gold digger because she happens to be beautiful and married to a successful man. Maybe they will stop before wishing divorce on two strangers because they disapprove of what their wedding cost. Maybe they will remember that the person in the photograph is in fact a real person, and they can read what they are writing.

Perhaps we can relearn something social media occasionally makes us forget: you are allowed to have an opinion, but you are not required to share it. You are allowed to dislike something and simply scroll by it. You are allowed to live differently, spend differently, dress differently, and celebrate differently. But you don't have to be cruel about it.

Virtue signaling is ridiculous. And, ironicaly, being mean on the internet doesn’t make you look like a better person. It makes you look like an asshole.

I have built my career creating extraordinary experiences for people who lead extraordinary lives. I will continue celebrating life, luxury, and, above all else, love. If we are going to spend this much time together online, perhaps we should do our part to not only make the world a more beautiful place, but a nicer one.

With love, always….a