The catch is that to plan a wedding that’s anything more elaborate than a Las Vegas drive-through ceremony, there’s no way to avoid being particular.

This event, if not the most important event of a person’s life, is often among the most expensive. Last year, according to a survey by the wedding website The Knot, the final bill now typically hovers around $35,329. Turning that budget into a multipart, multihour experience is a job not unlike being the C.E.O. of a small company: The person in charge has to set the vision, crosscheck the delightful details to ensure they’re not featured on blogs about “wedding trends that are so last year,” find caterers who will leave neither the Whole 30 crowd nor the newly minted vegans starving, and ensure that it’s all executed on time and with panache. A bride whose social circle and income put her at the impossible center of a Venn diagram with “high expectations” on one side and “can’t afford a planner” on the other is especially out of luck.

In her 2007 book “One Perfect Day,” Rebecca Mead argues that the bridezilla taboo is just one component of a profitable industry: Get women as stressed out as possible and they’ll spend any amount of money to get what they want.

Even modern couples who shun tradition or would rather save for a down payment on a house must choreograph their alternative ceremonies. Potluck meals have to be assigned, volunteer photographers have to be coordinated, and the “you” in D.I.Y. isn’t just any old “you.” It’s — you guessed it — the bride. In any heterosexual relationship, no matter how progressive, women are often still expected to lead the wedding-planning charge. One bride told me her male partner was effectively ignored by vendors, his ideas and questions unacknowledged. It’s like payback for sexist office dynamics! Except, well, women lose here, too.

Plenty of people have made light of the familiar conflicting priorities of a woman caught in this sexism-fueled trap: trying desperately to appear cool and casual, all while revealing herself to be exactly the opposite, and overwhelming bridesmaids with requests to provide the kind of help that professionals charge for.

Certainly, pending nuptials shouldn’t give anyone license to be unkind to their loved ones. But “bridezilla” is often used to condemn behavior that falls far short of cruel or selfish. At more than one bridal shower I’ve attended, the term has been thrown out very early in the process as an apparent warning to a bride-to-be who is showing early signs of simply making her needs or preferences known. (You want what? Cake before gifts? O.K., but, wow … don’t be a bridezilla, now!)

How exactly do people think it comes to be that the table runners match the flowers, which were shipped across the country on a bed of ice because they are out of season but the groom had a vision of purple ties and they were the only flowers that would match the color scheme? Is there possibly a fake news story circulating about how women, upon engagement, are assigned a flock of tiny Cinderella birds who flutter around, making sure that no one is seated at a table with any of their ex-boyfriends and that no one is separated from the plus-one they decided to bring three days ago because they assumed that, unless the bride was a bridezilla, it would be no problem?