During Wednesday’s episode of “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg was forced to reveal that she doesn’t attend weddings. When co-host Joy Behar reminded her that she attended hers, Goldberg then revealed that she made an exception for Behar’s wedding. Plus, she had a good reason for doing so.
The episode had Goldberg, Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, and Alyssa Farah Griffin give their answers to the question, “Would you ever turn down being a bridesmaid?” Hostin went on to narrate how she had declined a certain bridesmaid offer for one of her friend’s wedding.
“I had to turn down one,” she said, explaining that the bridesmaid’s dress was pretty unattractive. “The dress was so hideous. I love a wedding – but I’m more of a professional wedding crasher,” she explained. “I love to see the love in the room and eat the food,” she added.
Hostin also complained about how much it cost bridesmaids to participate in a wedding. “The average cost of being in a wedding for a bridesmaid is like $1,800. And you are doing a job. Sometimes you have to give speeches,” she said.
Behar also narrated a similar experience she had shortly after finishing high school. “I was asked to be a bridesmaid when I graduated high school. And I hated the dress just like yours, and I said, ‘Look, I can’t, I can’t afford this,’ that’s what you say, ‘I can’t afford it’,” she said.
At this point, Haines then asked Goldberg to share her bridesmaid experience. “I don’t go to weddings,” Goldberg replied. Behar then cut in to remind her that she was in hers. “Yours is the only one I went to,” was Goldberg’s response.
The wedding in question was between Joy Behar and Steve Janowitz back in 2011. Joy Bahar, now 80, had previously married back in 1965 before the pair split in 1981.
Goldberg went on to explain that she attended Behar’s wedding because she loved the reason she got married. “Not just because you were in love, but because you guys wanted to make sure that, you know, you had somebody in case somebody had to pull the plug,” Goldberg remarked. Goldberg confessed that she was impressed with Behar’s motives because “Love is great, but practicality is everything.”
Goldberg herself has had less than pleasant experiences with marriage. The 67-year-old award-winning actor and TV personality has been in and out of three marriages. The last one, which was with union organizer, Lyle Trachtenberg, ended in a divorce in 1995.
Goldberg, who has been pretty open about her marriages, has accepted the blame for their failures. She admitted that there was no love in any of the marriages, and she wasn’t prepared to be accountable to a partner. “My marriages failed and I was the common denominator. My commitment was never that strong. I can say now that I was never really in love,” she confessed.
She also admitted to getting married to satisfy societal expectations and not because it was what she wanted. “People expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married. So, I kept trying to do that,” she said. From her experiences, it’s easy to see why she was so impressed with Behar’s “practicality” that she broke her no-wedding rule.
