It is amazing how, time after time, one can get trapped with the idea that ‘I have seen it all and cannot be surprised anymore.’ So many times, after thinking so, I was proven wrong for I stumbled upon or witnessed something that surprised the hell out of me. This is one of those occasions and it happened very recently.
The other day I read an article in The Guardian* about a startup that sells tickets, for real money, to attend people’s wedding, as total strangers, not formally part of the wedding invitees. Just people who ‘purchased’ one or two seats at a wedding to attend like you would attend a dinner-dance club, a play, an Opera, or a concert!
The article goes on and cites the first users (as hosts) of the App, who added five strangers (one couple and three lone males) to their guest list, in return for 150€ an invitation, for a total of 750€. There are, of course, many precautions, conditions, and control & vetting phases in the App’s workflow, that you are supposed to expect that things will go smoothly. I guess, at the end of the process, there are the standard ratings for the guest so that future hosts can evaluate requests.
The non-surprising part of the thing is the routinization of the process, which is very similar to Uber, AirBnB, Doordash, and all these ‘new age’ service jobs, pretending to be high tech start-ups. And who know, they may be successful.
But the part that surprised me, was the willingness of the hosts to do such a thing, especially since they did mention that the money they got was a drop in the hat compared to the total wedding cost. So I am still baffled and surprised, not to mention distressed, by the fact that this new world of melding business and private has no more sacred cows. I wonder what would be the purpose for the hosts be evaluated? For the next time they have a wedding, either one alone or their 5-year, 10-year anniversary parties?!
When I was a child, I lived near a private garden that hosted quite a few weddings during the summer, and one of our passtimes, some nights during the long summer holidays, was to sneak into the weddings and in a way ‘crash the wedding party.’ We did not generally succeed, but occasionally we were on the winning side, and our transgression worked. It is amusing how the new age of ‘pretend freedom and creativity through technology’ we have transformed that childhood transgression game into an adult money game and call it entrepreneurship!
* As if we’re real guests: the startup selling strangers invitations to weddings, The Guardian, August 2, 2025
Paris, August 7, 2025
Zeejay