The day before Remy Maaddi got married, she insisted that her eight bridesmaids get matching spray tans.
And when one, Bethany Adhikari, came out of the booth appearing — at least in Maaddi’s opinion — too pale, she insisted the salon apply a second coat.
“I wanted them to look their very best in the photographs,” the New Jersey mother of twins tells The Post. “I made sure everyone had the same tans in the same color with no runs.
“Some of them whined, but they knew it was really important to me.”
A new survey by WE TV, the network behind the popular reality TV series “Bridezillas,” found that New York-area brides are the country’s most opinionated — and, yes, demanding. More than half give specific instructions on the type of jewelry and shoes their ’maids can wear. One in three micromanage their plans to an absurd degree, such as ordering matching spray tans for the bridal party.
‘It’s unnatural not to be at least a bit of a diva.’
While bridezillas aren’t a new phenomenon, the age of Instagram and Facebook has spawned a particularly aggressive strain. According to the WE TV survey, the majority of brides across the country say that picture-perfect hair and makeup are more important than the vows.
“It’s all about the bride creating a brand for herself on social media,” says New York wedding planner Samantha Goldberg.
She has had clients insist their bridesmaids and mother get Botox together ahead of the big day, or not allow anyone else in the bridal party to wear white in photos as soon as the engagement is announced.
Maaddi, 34, who appeared on the ninth season of “Bridezillas,” isn’t apologetic about her behavior.
“Who can possibly be laid back on their big day?” she says. “It’s unnatural not to be at least a bit of a diva.”
Her own outrageous conduct included having her future husband, Rob, 44, buy her an extra diamond ring for her right hand because it seemed bare once she had an engagement ring on her left hand. She also raised hell at the last minute to get a stage built underneath the couple’s sweetheart table at the reception.
“I didn’t want to sit on the same level as everyone else,” she says. She also hired a bodyguard expressly to shoo kids away from her dress on the dance floor.
“I didn’t want to trip over anyone,” she says. “It was my day and nothing was going to ruin it.”
Her bridesmaid Adhikari, 34, says resistance would have been futile.
“Remy is an ultra-perfectionist and we were better off following her instructions so she didn’t get mad at us.”
And, while local bridezillas might be especially intense, they also thrive outside of the tri-state area. Los Angeles-based Tracy, 35, a social worker who asked that her last name not be published for privacy reasons, has the mental scars to prove it. She was one of three bridesmaids “fired” by a bridezilla after a “mediocre” bachelorette party in Las Vegas.
She was on the receiving end of a 4 a.m. “breakup” email from her former best friend in March. It accused the women of sabotaging the previous weekend’s festivities and not paying enough attention to her needs.
“It was a character assassination, and she clearly wanted us out,” recalls Tracy, who is still struggling to process the incident, although she enjoys listening to other horror stories on the comedy podcast “The Secret Life of Weddings.”
“[The bride] signed off with: ‘I think this marriage is probably a turning point in my life. Thanks for the years’ … She’s dead to me now.”
Janet, 29, also fell out with a friend after being in her wedding party. The pal, whom she’d known since kindergarten, wrongly blamed her for sharing a shameful secret.
‘It’s all about the bride creating a brand for herself on social media.’
“She confided in me that she’d slept with one of the vendors: the DJ,” says Janet, who works in advertising and lives in Manhattan but declined to share her full name for privacy reasons. “Then she got drunk at a party a few weeks before the wedding and forgot she blurted out the same thing to a group of people there.
“When she sobered up, she insisted it must have been me who had somehow spilled the beans.”
The bride admitted the fling to her fiancé, but the marriage still went ahead last fall. She continued to blame Janet, and there was a strained atmosphere within the bridal party.
“She even kept the same DJ at the wedding,” says Janet. “And everyone knew what had happened between them.
“It was awkward from start to finish. Now I keep the bride at arm’s length.”
Still, some bridezillas are proud of the label and view it as empowering.
“I don’t see it as a negative term at all,” says Roxanne Birchfield, an Army reserve chaplain who appeared on Season 10 of the WE TV show, which is now in its 11th season. “Times have changed and women invest a lot of money in making their day beautiful.
“They’re at the top of their game professionally, earn high salaries, and are often paying for their event. They have a lot of power, so being a bridezilla isn’t mere attitude, it’s for economic reasons.”
Birchfield was so caught up in her big day that she haggled relentlessly with a Chelsea Market florist, demanding that she get a sizable discount on some pricey calla lilies just because she was a bride.
The night before the main event, which took place on a yacht on the Hudson River, the 34-year-old became hysterical when her father announced he wasn’t coming because she hadn’t invited his girlfriend. When he did end up showing up the next day, she was furious, and she screamed at him in front of all the guests.
“He put another woman before his daughter,” she says.
She also accused her bridal party of being neglectful and not being as committed to the wedding as she was.
“In the run-up to your wedding, everyone gets on your nerves,” she says. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. The chaos is kind of like an initiation. It helps you to go through what it takes to enter wifehood.”
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