History Main / Bridezilla

* ''Creator/DudePerfect'': In their "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etV_nxVU6l8 Wedding Stereotypes]]" video, the bride (played by Wrestling/AlexaBliss) goes ballistic on the guests after she notices the wedding planner upstaging her, to the point where she is able to subdue the ''Rage Monster''.

* ''WebVideo/SwordArtOnlineAbridged'': in addition to Sugou torturing and imprisoning hundreds of innocent people and planning to take over the world and MindControl Asuna, he's also a horribly obnoxious groomzilla. In the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9IsKnVpb8 SAOA 17 Post-Mortem Stream]]'', the creators explain they wanted to make Sugou hateable without overusing on his creeper aspect.

(No relation to Franchise/{{Godzilla}}, NotZilla, or any other {{Kaiju}} tropes. We hope.)

* There have been a few news stories reporting the phenomenon of [[http://abcnews.go.com/US/single-bridezillas-wedding-planning-groom/story?id=15405082#.T9rq3VJKWSo "Single Bridezillas"]], which are women who have done a lot of their wedding arrangements -- buying the dress, selecting the flowers, making up invitations, hiring caterers, etc. -- before their boyfriend even proposes to them. In extreme cases, all of this is done before the Single Bridezilla ''even has a boyfriend''. While it's not unusual for women to fantasize about their dream wedding and maybe window-shop once in awhile, these ladies already have the entire play-by-play of their wedding day planned out. This is typically seen in the Western world as a huge red flag that the single bride-to-be wouldn't value her boyfriend's opinion.

Uses of this trope tend to split between the 'nice woman showing her worst side under stress' and 'raging {{narcissist}} whose greedy nature is now plain for everyone to see.' The former type of Bridezilla can recover once the wedding is over and the marriage begins; the second will [[AwfulWeddedLife only get worse]]. Also, ''any'' wedding participant can merit the '-zilla' title if they hijack the day to gratify their own egos. The bride is simply assumed to be the most likely candidate to get ScaledUp because she is the centerpiece of the ceremony, which she may have been dreaming of long before she ever met the groom.

Related to ThePrimaDonna, DrunkWithPower, and WhatYouAreInTheDark. Often occurs because ItsAllAboutMe.

* ''Fanfic/ThisBites'': A weird case. The Straw Hats get roped into planning a wedding for an ArrangedMarriage between members of the Accino and Hiruno Bounty Hunter families. The bride is not the 'zilla, because she and her prospective groom are ten and have no desire to marry each other. No, the 'zilla is head wedding planner ''Vivi'', who takes this opportunity to live her dream wedding vicariously through the bride's. To be fair to Vivi, this is because [[spoiler:her forced exile from Alabasta and said country's subsequent secession from the World Government means her prospective groom (heavily implied to be ChildhoodFriend Kohza) can't even ''court her'', let alone marry her, for the foreseeable future]].

* On ''Series/GilmoreGirls'', Lorelai's [[MeddlingParents Meddling Mother]] Emily helps Sookie plan her wedding with some rather extravagant suggestions, but Sookie gets too caught up with it to realize how expensive and bizarre the plans are becoming. Her fiancé begins to feel alienated and Sookie eventually goes into Bridezilla mode over the details on her invitations (or something), and Lorelai helps her to calm down.

* WebAnimation/EtraChanSawIt: Has a few examples. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUqT_rcQRA This one]] has the bride kicking out her brother out of the wedding and saying he was dead because he was too ugly to be there. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4SfuP7WNA This one]] has the bride wanting a super lavish wedding and forcing her fiancé to go into debt.

* WebAnimation/EtraChanSawIt: Has a few examples. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUqT_rcQRA This one]] has the bride kicking out her brother out of the wedding and saying he was dead because he was too ugly to be there. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4SfuP7WNA This one]] has the bride wanting a super lavish wedding and forcing her fiancé to go into debt.

Upward mobility after World War II created the wedding industry as we know it today, with bridal magazines advertising their wares to middle- and working-class couples who could now afford at least ''some'' of the trappings of a big fancy wedding. But unlike upper-class families, for whom large-scale event planning was old hat (or who could afford to hire a wedding coordinator to handle the details), such couples were often unprepared for the sheer amount of work (and money) that goes into a big wedding. The dream of the "perfect day" meeting the rock of cold reality can stress anyone out, and so the legend of the fire-breathing, rampaging bride was born.

Uses of this trope tend to split between 'normally-decent person showing her ugly side due to stress' and '[[{{Narcissist}} egotistical and selfish]] bitch reveling in her moment of being the center of attention.' The former type of Bridezilla can recover once the wedding is over and the marriage begins; the second will [[AwfulWeddedLife only get worse]]. Also, ''any'' wedding participant can merit the '-zilla' title if they hijack the day to gratify their own egos. The bride is simply assumed to be the most likely candidate to get ScaledUp because she is the centerpiece of the ceremony, which she may have been dreaming of long before she ever met the groom.

* Initially averted in ''FanFic/TheNewRetcons'', in that Elly, the mother-of-the-bride, is the 'zilla, mainly because Elizabeth and Anthony initially refused to set a date. Once one was made though, Elizabeth stepped up to the bridezilla plate, to the point that she delegated writing one of her monthly letters to her bridesmaid.

* ''Film/DirtyGrandpa'': Jason's fiancee is this, which is a large part of his motivation for escaping to go have fun with his grandpa...and for [[spoiler:breaking up with her at the rehearsal brunch.]]

* The protagonist's fiancee in ''Insane City''. She came from a ''very'' wealthy family and could afford a perfect wedding. Among other things, her silver ring was made of slivers of rings from all of her female relatives over the years, and her groom ''[[LostWeddingRing lost it]]'' (along with his tuxedo) and had to find it without her knowing about it. Being a KafkaKomedy, everything that could go wrong did. [[spoiler: The groom dumped her when he realized she was being a hypocrite about her social justice causes.]]

* Clarissa in the comedy novel ''Maneater'' (not to be confused with several other novels sharing the title). "A wedding is no problem for dear Clarissa -- she has been maintaining a wedding binder for years, complete with the best caterers, hotels and florists. She ... has planned the date of the wedding, the bridesmaids and the reception menu. She also has the groom all lined up, but the trouble is, she hasn't met him yet." [[spoiler: the groom is just as manipulative.]]

* ''Series/SayYesToTheDress'' is a reality show (plus {{spin off}}s) about high-class wedding dress stores, so naturally some bridezillas show up among the brides-to-be looking for their {{fairytale wedding dress}}es. i.e., One woman who planned mostly everything for her wedding ahead without an actual boyfriend showed up; her pushyness ultimately scared her boyfriend off, as the ending voiceover told us.

** Elliot. After her first proposal didn't go as perfectly as she had always dreamed (the ring was too small, but otherwise no disaster), she forced him to take it back and repeat it in front of all her friends, according to her specific instructions. The rest of the engagement went similarly by annoying her fiance and maid of honor with her obsessive controlling of the wedding arrangements and her outbursts at minor disasters (like the wrong font on the invitations).

* ''Series/SoAwkward'': In "Never the Bridsemaid, Never the Bride", Jas is asked to be a bridesmaid and is worried about being too clumsy to pull it off. Lily suggests staging a mock wedding so Jas can have a rehearsal - with herself and Rob as the bride and groom! Lily goes all Bridezilla. As she plans the big day she gets so carried away that she actually has no time for Rob and snubs him, just when he's ready to take their relationship to the next level and ask Lily on a romantic meal out.

* In ''VideoGame/Hitman2016'', you can find a woman in the Swedish consulate in a phone call with her friend Lisa, frustrated that her friend is oblivious to the fact she can't attend her wedding because she's stuck in a building under lockdown due to a riot happening outside. Her friend eventually loses her temper after Lisa shames her for having a one-night-stand with her fiancee in college, before stating that she hates her bridesmaid dress.

* ''VideoGame/YesYourGrace'': Queen Aurelea acts like this during her daughter Lorsulia's wedding preperations. It's mostly seen when choosing Lorsulia's wedding dress. She'll insist on the most expensive option, which requires to take out a loan, is hated by Lorsulia and has every other character who gets to comment on it remind the player that the setting is a few centuries early for the PimpedOutDress to be in fashion. On top of this, the PointOfNoReturn in the dress-choosing sequence is enforced by Aurelea telling the PlayerCharacter (her husband who's in chage of the money) he's not leaving before he chooses the dress.

* WebAnimation/EtraChanSawIt: Has a few examples. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUqT_rcQRA This one]] has the bride kicking out her brother out of the wedding and saying he was dead because he was too ugly to be there. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4SfuP7WNA This one]] has the bride wanting a super lavish wedding and forcing her fiance to get into debt.

* [[https://old.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/2t51lo/update_my_57f_daughter_30f_is_getting_married_for/ This]] Website/{{Reddit}} post about a 30-year-old woman who had been [[SerialSpouse married and divorced]] twice already, and was engaged once again ([[FourthDateMarriage after only dating for a short while]]) to a 37-year-old DJ she met while on the rebound. Her well-to-do parents had paid for the first two weddings, the honeymoons, and the divorces (to the tune of about $400K), and they weren't too keen on paying for ''another'' wedding, honeymoon, and likely divorce, especially as they were nearing retirement. Redditors advised them to go with their instincts, and not give their daughter a dime, but they caved, and they gave her a budget of $12K for a dress and another $3K for a cake, hinting that she could do the whole wedding for that much. The daughter wasn't having any of this, and she pitched a fit, stormed out of her parents' house, and eloped with her fiance, returning only to get her things. To add insult to injury, she called up her parents several months later, complaining that her husband was a deadbeat and they were still living with his roommates, and she wanted to file for divorce, and telling her parents that if they had paid for the wedding she wanted and helped them buy a house (which they'd never discussed), that this marriage might have lasted.

* Renesmee in ''Fanfic/TheWeddingCrashers'' is a SpoiledBrat who ends up allowed full creative control over her wedding, do the math. It gets to the point that she orders her werewolf–[[InsistentTerminology sorry, shapeshifter]]–husband to ''attack'' Leah when she and her friends do their best to wreck the whole thing.

* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': Patti Devane. The title of the book she appears in is called ''Killing Bridezilla'', for crying out loud.

This is a relatively recent trope, dating not much further back than TheSeventies and only becoming well-known in TheNineties. Before that, only the wealthy had huge elaborate weddings, which were social occasions planned and paid for by the bride's parents. Everyone else got hitched at the local church or courthouse or even at home, with the main splurge (if any) being a honeymoon tour to visit relatives afterward.

* ''[[ComicBook/{{Viz}} Sid the Sexist]]'' gives us Wendy Haystacks, who [[ItMakesSenseInContext Sid accidentally proposes to when all he wanted was just ask her to give him a blowjob]]. She ends up becoming a particularly nasty version of this trope, veering back and forth between TastesLikeDiabetes and BitchInSheepsClothing, giving poor Sid no small amount of grief even before the wedding.

Uses of this trope tend to split between 'lovely person showing her ugly side due to stress' and '[[{{Narcissist}} egotistical and selfish]] bitch reveling in her moment of being the center of attention.' The former type of Bridezilla can recover once the wedding is over and the marriage begins; the second will [[AwfulWeddedLife only get worse]]. Also, ''any'' wedding participant can merit the '-zilla' title if they hijack the day to gratify their own egos. The bride is simply assumed to be the most likely candidate to get ScaledUp because she is the centerpiece of the ceremony, which she may have been dreaming of long before she ever met the groom.

Uses of this trope tend to split between 'lovely person showing her ugly side due to stress' and '[[{{Narcissist}} egotistical and selfish]] bitch who needs to be the center of attention.' The former type of Bridezilla can recover once the wedding is over and the marriage begins; the second will [[AwfulWeddedLife only get worse]]. Also, ''any'' wedding participant can merit the '-zilla' title if they hijack the day to gratify their own egos. The bride is simply assumed to be the most likely candidate to get ScaledUp because she is the centerpiece of the ceremony, which she may have been dreaming of long before she ever met the groom.

Uses of this trope tend to split between 'lovely person showing her ugly side due to stress' and '[[{{Narcissist}} egotistical and selfish]] bitch reveling in being the center of attention.' The former type of Bridezilla can recover; the second will only get worse. It's also worth noting that ''any'' wedding participant can merit the '-zilla' title if they hijack the day to gratify their own egos. The bride is simply assumed to be the most likely candidate to grow a tail because she is the centerpiece of the ceremony, which she may have been dreaming of long before she ever met the groom.