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Before the internet, wedding-centric media was largely restricted to bridal magazines and the final scenes of romantic comedies.

But now, all it takes to plummet down a white-lace-lined wedding rabbit hole is a single hashtag, video, or blog post surfacing on your social media feeds.

Back in pre-internet times, losing yourself in the details of someone else's big day took commitment. You had to go to a store, select a magazine, and pay money for it. You had to get off your butt and head to the movie theatre to get your fix from a rom com. Even "Say Yes to the Dress"-esque TV shows were few and far between.

It took a lot of effort back then to lose an entire afternoon to wedding media.

Now, it's easy! If you're susceptible to the charms of the wedding industrial complex, a single click can get you going. You'll find yourself on a Pinterest board, then click over to a lifestyle blog, then scroll through slideshow after slideshow until you realize you've lost an hour or more passively consuming other people's weddings.

Magazines, movies, and TV shows all end, but online wedding content doesn't.

A lot of wedding content is created with a practical use in mind, serving two audiences: people who are planning their weddings and people who want to reminisce about the weddings they've already participated in. You have the Pinterest boards and the bridal blogs for the soon-to-bes, and the meticulously edited videos and Instagram hashtags for the just-marrieds.

But there's a third demographic that all of this media serves, even though none of it is built with expressly them in mind: The unabashed wedding enthusiasts who get an escapist thrill from all of it.

And I'm a little bit ashamed to say that I'm a member of that third demographic. I help keep the online wedding planning industry afloat not because I'm getting married any time soon, but because I am obsessed with other people's weddings.

I wouldn't be caught dead buying a bridal magazine or bingeing "My Fair Wedding" reruns on Netflix. But I've done enough secret googling of wedding stuff that Facebook seems to think I'm engaged. The site now surfaces ads for engagement rings and wedding dress retailers like Anthropologies' BHLDN next to my news feed.

Most embarrassingly, I've caught myself — more than once — scrolling mindlessly, zombie-like, back to 2010 on the Facebook page of someone I barely know, just so I can watch her perfect wedding video for the 20th time.

It's weird and it's embarrassing and it makes me feel like a stock character in a chick flick. But I know I'm not alone. So I put out a call for other women who are as obsessed as I am and asked them what motivates this online behavior.

Kim Renfro, who also works at Tech Insider, always thought she'd be the "cool aunt" who traveled the world and owned a cat or two. She had no plans to become a fussy, white-wedding-obsessed bride.

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