Not everyone is that chipper about a wedding with a side of football—or any other sport, for that matter. Carolina Gonzalez, an associate social media manager at GQ, remembers attending a wedding completely dominated by Villanova bros. This was not during one of Nova’s many late-March runs in the NCAA Tournament, but that didn’t stop the bros from being glued to the scoreboard and their betting apps. “I found it extremely rude of all the guys to watch a (very early) Villanova basketball game during the reception,” Gonzalez said. “We had all sat for dinner and it was extreme iPad kid behavior to see these young men at the wedding—and even some groomsmen—pull out their phones constantly to check the stats. Have some manners.”
Schwartz, a proud Arizona State fan, has admittedly been this guy. He found himself at a wedding in early 2020 riddled with fellow Sun Devils on a night where their men’s basketball team happened to be facing off against the hated Arizona Wildcats. A rivalry game commanded attention. “I think that some people were looking down on us for sure because, like, who cares about ASU sports,” he said. “To that I say, how dare you?”
Still, I wondered: what would it take for you to actually RSVP no to someone’s wedding to instead watch a game? Both Johnson (hopelessly devoted to the Jacksonville Jaguars) and Schwartz (the Seahawks) said their team playing in the Super Bowl would take precedence over matrimony. Rescheduling a wedding is obviously a much more extreme measure, and Bennett knew there was no world where he would have gotten away with that. “The right answer would be no, of course,” he conceded. “But I think, perhaps, this is different in the Sun Belt region or even the Midwest, if you’re a fan of an actual powerhouse.”
Perhaps the best advice we can offer is, if you are attending a wedding on the same day as a game your fandom simply won’t allow you to miss, make sure you know where you stand with the bride and groom. Gonzalez—who hails from Miami, is getting hitched in November 2025, and understands the ferocity with which Floridians watch college football—wants her big day to be football free.
“I will throw hands,” she said, “the second I see someone on their phone watching a game at my wedding.”
