weddings

You May Now Venmo the Bride

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Two young women toasting at a Hen night
Photo: Dan Dalton/Getty Images

Last week, someone I follow on Instagram posted a story asking her followers to “buy the bride a drink,” accompanied by a QR code and a Venmo account over a light-pink background. She appeared to be on her way to Nashville or another cowboy-boot-adjacent city where she would celebrate her friend’s bachelorette party. It wasn’t my first time seeing groups of women panhandling online, asking their friends, family members, and strangers to donate money to their noble cause of getting the bride trashed for free. I clicked on the Venmo account out of curiosity, and there were 21 new transactions, each with a similar description: “Happy bach,” “Drinks on me,” “Pour it up,” and even a “Giddyup,” accompanied by a range of celebratory emoji and exclamation points.

Once the bride, 27-year-old Staten Island resident Victoria Tanzi, landed in Nashville, she had already made $1,000. Her group’s social-media callouts pooled donations from around 50 people — each sending a range of gifts from $10 to a couple hundred bucks — and ended up with $2,000 to cover two dinners and a brunch for the nine women celebrating Tanzi’s nuptials. “I don’t think anyone paid for a single meal,” she says. “I felt a little bit guilty in the beginning because I felt like, Who am I to request money from people? But it was so much easier to be there without spending so much.”

While I have found these IG callouts mortifying, I played with the idea of posting one myself last weekend. One of my college best friends decided against having a bachelorette party, but we planned on celebrating after her bridal shower. “Should we post my Venmo when we’re bar-hopping after my shower and see if we can get any money? We did it for my friend’s and got $470,” my friend had texted our group chat a week prior. “Or is that tacky?” We thought about it for a few text exchanges but ultimately decided it would be too embarrassing.

My friend Amanda has posted a “buy the bride a drink” Story for every single one of the eight bachelorette trips she has attended (including her own) across the United States, and she’s not that embarrassed. “It typically comes from the maid of honor and then they’ll send the group a QR code or a premade Instagram Story you can just post,” she explains. At minimum, Amanda and her friends have raked in $600; at best, they’ve made $1,400. “It’s like crowdsourcing for alcohol, which feels bizarre, but you can’t complain when you don’t have to then spend any money on going out and partying because it’s literally paid for by everyone in the bride’s life,” she says.

Even though I wouldn’t share one myself, I realized that while I was being judgmental of “buy the bride a drink” callouts, I was ignoring how the women who post them are doing something rather smart — tacky, sure, but perhaps more savvy than scammy. Some of these bridesmaids are getting nearly all-expenses-paid vacations out of these IG requests, including accommodations and transportation. Noelle Santiago, a 24-year-old living in New Jersey, recently posted a TikTok describing how she went on her cousin’s bachelorette trip “basically for free” thanks to the “buy the bride a drink” posts. Over four days in Tampa, the maid of honor asked everyone in the group of 11 girls not only to post the bride’s Venmo on their Instagram Stories, but to wear bracelets she’d ordered from Etsy that had Venmo QR codes on them in case strangers at the bar were feeling generous.

@noelle.christina

We were too stunned to speak when we added up the total…#bachellorette #bridesmaid #bachellorettetrip

♬ original sound - Noelle Santiago

In just one weekend, the group collectively made at least $2,300 from about 34 donors. “We did this with no intention of getting this much money,” she says. “We thought it would cover maybe, like, one night of drinks.” The cash ended up covering two group dinners and their bar tabs for the entire trip. “The Venmos definitely took the financial burden off the trip,” Santiago said. “I was fully prepared to have to contribute for every meal and activity. I wasn’t putting money aside for the trip, but I was definitely being careful about my spending before going.”

Several former brides and bachelorette attendees have commented on Santiago’s TikTok video by sharing their own experiences. One person wrote that they made $3,000 and spent it on bottle service, while another commenter said she made $1,000 and used it for the group’s Airbnb. There was even a bride who said she “made $1,300 on mine and was able to pay for all meals and groceries for myself and my girls for the weekend.”

Ever since Amanda’s $700 bachelorette-party bar tabs were covered by siblings, significant others, and even the occasional random college acquaintance coming out of the woodwork, she has begun to send money to “buy the bride a drink” solicitors too. “If they’re friends on the periphery of your friend group and I’m not on the bachelorette, if I see it, I’ll send $10 or $20,” she says. “I feel like it doesn’t hurt.”

She’s right: sending some cash to a friend who needs to cover all the drinks, dinners, and activities in a single bachelorette weekend can’t hurt. At the same time, I still find wedding culture to be all-around absurd. I don’t want to take the generosity of friends, families, and strangers for granted, but the fact that these callouts are often necessary to take financial pressure off bachelorette-party attendees reveals how ridiculous the wedding industry can be. “Once you realize how insanely expensive these are to go on, you need the Venmos,” Amanda says. “At this point, it’s like a GoFundMe.”

Still, there are some brides, like Brianna Vasquez, a 31-year-old content creator in New Jersey, who say the “buy the bride a drink” hack has gotten “out of control.” Vasquez went to Miami for her own bachelorette party in 2018 and describes the Instagram callouts as one of her biggest icks. “It’s so tacky. You’re kind of begging,” she tells me, comparing the trend to a virtual tip jar and adding that she gets secondhand embarrassment when she sees them come across her own Instagram feed. “That’s not the purpose of a bachelorette. You want to go, you want to create memories, you want to have fun, but you’re just asking for a handout,” she says. “I would never do it.”

Vasquez is far from the only hater. Several others have posted across TikTok, calling the trend annoying and the “weirdest thing to exist on social media,” with some begging them to stop. Some have even said the bride should buy them a drink because they’re the ones who are single.

But could someone like Vasquez get past the cringe if it meant $2,000 and a few free dinners? “God bless them, maybe they need it, but me personally, I would never do that,” she says. The “buy the bride a drink” posters I’ve spoken to all told me that while it’s awkward to ask for cash, that initial uneasiness is worth it if you’re saving money in the long run. “Why not? Embrace the cringe,” Amanda says. “If it means you’re not going broke to go on a bachelorette, you might as well.”

You May Now Venmo the Bride