None of these are malicious, and that is genuinely the point. Almost every one of them comes from a vendor being friendly, working off a script that was written for a different couple, on autopilot.

However, you hear them constantly, and they add up. Here are five of them, along with the version that costs nobody anything.

1. "So which one of you is the bride?"

This is the all-timer. It is usually cheerful, and it occasionally arrives with a little wink (which does not help at all!).

Say instead: "Tell me about the couple!" It is shorter, it works for every wedding on earth, and it gets the vendor better information than the original question ever would.

2. Forms with a "Bride" field and a "Groom" field

This one isn't even a phrase — it is a database schema, and it is everywhere. Venue inquiries, catering contracts, the little card at the tasting. You will meet it over and over again. You end up typing your fiancée's name into a box labeled GROOM, which is a strange way to begin what is supposed to be a happy planning meeting.

Say instead: "Partner 1" and "Partner 2." Two words. If you are a vendor reading this, that is a 15-minute change to your intake form and it will make you money!

3. "Alternative wedding"

Alternative to what, exactly??

It shows up in vendor marketing constantly, and it is almost always meant warmly ("we specialize in alternative and non-traditional celebrations!"). However, the word does something specific: it makes the default weddings the real ones, and it makes yours the variant. You are not an alternative. You are a Tuesday.

Say instead: just "wedding." If a vendor wants to signal that they are actually good at this, "we work with a lot of same-sex couples" says it far better, and you can check whether it is true.

4. "I now pronounce you man and wife"

This one is sitting right there in officiant scripts that haven't been opened since 1998 (and there are a lot of them still in circulation). It is worth catching early, because the ceremony is the one part of the whole day that you cannot re-do.

Say instead: "I now pronounce you married." Or "wife and wife." Or your names. If you do nothing else on this list, ask your officiant to send you the full script six weeks out and read every line of it, not just the vows. It is the highest-value hour of proofreading in the entire process, and almost nobody does it.

5. "Who's walking down the aisle?"

It gets asked as though there is one correct answer and you have simply forgotten what it is.

There isn't one. Both of you can walk, or neither of you has to. You can walk in together from the back, which is my favorite version and looks incredible in photographs. You can also each come down a different aisle and meet in the middle, which takes 1 conversation with your venue and is worth every minute of it.

Say instead: "How do you two want to enter?" Same question, and there is no trap door in it.

What to do with all of this

Honestly? Most of the time, nothing. You are planning a wedding, not running a workshop, and the emotional labor of correcting every vendor is not a job that you signed up for.

However, 2 of them are worth the energy. Fix the ceremony script, because that one is permanent and it ends up in the video. And use the small stuff as a filter — if a vendor says "partner" unprompted on the first phone call, that tells you something true about how the rest of it is going to go. It isn't a red-flag test. It is a shortcut to the good ones.

Summary

• "Which one of you is the bride?" → "Tell me about the couple!"
• Bride and Groom form fields → Partner 1 and Partner 2
• "Alternative wedding" → "wedding"
• "Man and wife" → "married," or "wife and wife"
• "Who's walking down the aisle?" → "How do you two want to enter?"

Which one do you hear the most? I am collecting them, so tell me on Instagram and I will do a part two.