Competitive Brides

I had lunch with my friend, Ms. Lovely, yesterday.  Lovely is also engaged, and her wedding is quickly approaching in May.  Luckily, she has most of the planning done and is very relaxed and is generally enjoying the planning process.  Ms. Lovely and l'Homme (her French fiance) are paying for their wedding themselves, and are not going into massive debt.  Their whole attitude is exactly how I want to be - relaxed.  From what she is telling me their wedding will be chill, classy, and above all fun (there will be a polka band - does it get any better than that?!).  L'Homme, is still a graduate student and didn't have the means to buy Lovely a ring with a huge diamond.  Happily, they found a ring that Lovely just loves.  It has a small center stone with surrounding accent stones and is absolutely stunning and sparkly - well at least Lovely and I think so.  The WIC, diamond cartel and mainstream society probably wouldn't appreciate the more subtle beauty of Lovely's e-ring.

Now, that I've given you a bit of background on Lovely, I 'll get to the point of this post.  

Lovely has a close friend (with whom I am also aquatinted) who is also recently engaged.  This friend, WIC Bride, has started a little "competition" of sorts with Lovely.  As you may have guessed, WIC Bride has taken up the mantle of the WIC without thought, and is slowly morphing into a Bridezilla.  I don't want to get into the details of how WIC Bride is behaving, but I will say that whenever WIC Bride and Lovely discuss wedding related topics, WIC Bride makes little jabs at Lovely about her smaller ring, or her smaller budget, or her dress...  Ms. Lovely, as you might expect, doesn't care one bit, she is content and thinks that WIC Bride is just acting kind of strange.  

I tend to agree with Lovely, but it also makes me sad.  I just don't understand why WIC Bride would be consciously (or unconsciously) trying to put down her friend just because she doesn't have a lot of money to spend on a wedding.  The ironic part to me is that it sounds like WIC Bride is going to have a cookie-cutter wedding in big ornate ballroom, in an ornate dress with no bit of imagination or personality, while Lovely is going to have much more memorable affair in a unique location with a great band and lots of personal touches - I would much rather go to Lovely's wedding than WIC Bride's wedding!

What do you think?  Have you experienced any subtle or not so subtle "competition" from other brides (or others in general) about your budget, or unconventional wedding choices?  Any thoughts on why one bride might act like WIC Bride?  Personally, (without really knowing WIC Bride) I think that she is probably acting in this manner as a way to make herself feel better about some sort of insecurity in her relationship with her fiance, or with Lovely or just a general feeling of low self-worth.  What makes a friend put down another friend for a wedding?

*Image from the movie "Bride Wars" via IMDB.com