Our Year in Review: The Weddings That Thrilled, Moved, and Inspired Us in 2023

Raise your hand if you went to five or more weddings in 2023. If we could visualize all of our readers at once, we’re pretty sure the majority of you would have your arms in the air. There’s a reason why this season felt particularly jam-packed: While 2022 might have been the year of the wedding boom, celebrations didn’t entirely let up over the past 12 months. Roughly 2.24 million weddings happened in 2023, according to a Zippia report—and while yes, that’s down from the previous year’s record 2.5 million, that’s still a lot of unions. Take into account that weddings are arguably bigger and better than ever, and it’s easy to understand why this year’s events felt larger than life and monumental in their own right. And the real weddings we featured along the way are proof.

At Brides, we had a front row seat to yet another epic wedding season, complete with everything from far-flung nuptials and stateside estate affairs to tented spring fêtes and cozy winter dinner parties. Now, as 2023 comes to a close, our editors are taking a look back at this transformative year, which saw the reemergence and redefinition of destination celebrations—which now feature a myriad events over the span of several days—and a reinvestment in the guest experience. 

Of the thousands of submissions we reviewed and the 168 weddings we published in 2023, that is arguably the predominant common thread: Couples are increasingly committed to putting their village first, which means the colors are brighter, the entertainment is more electric, the food is more considered (and just doesn’t stop coming!), and the party goes longer (or spills into the following day). In a lot of ways, it’s never been a better time to be a wedding guest—or to be the editors on the other side of the party, culling through all of the magic couples and their vendor teams dream up. 

That’s exactly what our team did as we took our end-of-year walk down memory lane: We carefully scrolled through the 5,000+ images that hit our site in 2023 to identify the most poignant moments, the very best bridal fashion, the lushest and brightest florals, the sweetest cakes, and more from real weddings. You’ll find the photographs we just couldn’t look away from in this retrospective. Full of color, joy, and love, they’re a reminder of why weddings matter and why couples so often leave their nuptials knowing—for a fact—that they’ve just experienced one of the best days of their lives.