sighs Why the hell does this even matter? Yes, we’re already married for legal purposes.
I dunno, if my theoretical sister couldn’t make it to my own wedding, I’d start wondering if we were actually related. Both my SILs aren’t making it, one for reasons that can be attributed to lack of planning (and MIL almost didn’t make it for similar reasons). I know that’s not going over well with Owls, because it says something about how much he means to them. To quote him when we thought his own mother wouldn’t get to come, it would take him a long time to forgive her for that.
(And if I seem touchy on this subject, the above is why)
I think if you are close to the bride and groom and you don’t make an appropriate excuse - hard feelings are going to result. Of course, if you are close to the bride and groom, they should know your excuse.
If you look at the wedding invitation and your first reaction is “who?” you don’t owe anything except the RSVP card returned. (I’m always shocked when we get these.)
I think you aren’t married just for legal purposes, you have been living as husband and wife, yes?
I’m not quite sure why this matters, but it does matter. I think it is because a wedding symbolizes the beginning of your life together. You’ve already started your life together, legally and actually. At this point, people feel like they have missed the real moment and are just going to a reenactment. In old etiquette books, when someone had eloped or otherwise had a quick marriage (say, someone was leaving for army training) they might have a big reception bash at a later date, but not call it a wedding.
I think on an emotional level, some people are going to see a wedding such as yours as more dinner theater than celebration. It may not be a fair comparison, but I think that is how some people feel.
I will admit to feeling disappointed that none of my interstate relations chose to come to my wedding (we’re talking one hour’s plane ride away, all well-paid professionals, no kids involved, so I doubt if it would have been a huge burden)
However, that’s my issue, not theirs. It does say something about our relationship (or lack) but - shrug - that’s what you get when you live in a different country from your extended family most of your life, I guess.
I do think it’s a bit much for siblings and parents not to show, unless there’s significant financial stress or family drama involved. I’ve made a resolution myself that I’m not getting on a plane for more than an hour until my youngest kid is at least four, but if my brother decided that he was going to get himself hitched in the next three years … well, I guess that one would just have to go out the window.
[ Aside to Jayn_Newell,
For what it’s worth, I think the amount of importance some people are placing on the “it’s not your real wedding bit” is getting to be ridiculous. Especially when you are commenting/complaining about the groom’s sister or mother not planning on being there and not your 4th cousin twice removed who lives in a tiny shack in Alaska and hasn’t even been seen at a family event in twenty years.]
Half the people who got invited to Middlebro’s weddings were listed as “not expected to attend.” In theory, the list was going to end up being about 100 people.
Then people like parents’ cousins who live in other provinces or even other countries responded they’d be coming. The list ended up being over 250 people.
I’ve gone to distant relatives’ weddings only when I was playing cabbie to Mom. Even if it’s in the same town where I happen to be, if it’s someone I haven’t seen or talked to in geological ages, why would I treat their invitation as anything other than an announcement?
Cub Mistress, most of the weddings I’ve been to were treated as “an announcement to the community of something which already exists and has existed for some time, your compromise to each other, and an occasion to celebrate that compromise with the community.” Would you like it better if they called it “a repeat of the vows,” as some people do in their nth anniversary?
I agree with this - when we got married six years ago, one of my sisters almost didn’t make it, and it felt pretty lousy to me - she did have a fairly good reason, but the bottom line to me was, my own sister wouldn’t re-arrange her life a bit for one weekend to come to my (hopefully) one and only wedding. We gave people plenty of notice, too - as far as I could see, the only thing missing for her to make my wedding was the will.
I think this is subcultural. Your (generic you) opinions on this are, and probably should be, something you absorb from your parents, schoolmates, and neighbors.
There’s really nothing wrong with a group of people choosing to devote most of their travel during their 20s and 30s to going to cool places to witness their friends’ marriages, and in return hosting a big party at the location of their choice for their own wedding, and expecting that people will come. Other people will be more comfortable with small weddings near the couple’s home with only a few family members in attendance and announcements/ unaccepted initations sent far and wide. For still others, most people in their circle don’t move far from home and everyone can show up at a local wedding.
I think this whole mess relates to some interesting sociological ideas about whether and how we maintain close relationships over time and how much geographical relocation we and our friends and family do. Those two factors shape what kind of wedding celebration “makes sense.”
I think the wedding industry has not only encouraged outrageous self-indulgence and entitlement in brides, but also cowed invited guests into believing that they have no right to refuse any request or expense.
I see wedding announcements from remote relatives or friends I haven’t had contact with for years as fishing for gifts. I also think that people grossly overestimate the amount of interest that such peripheral acquaintances really have in that announcement.
I tend to agree. But then, often find myself confused over what other people are interested in. “You didn’t tell me your second cousin’s best friend’s mother-in-law’s sister died!”
You know, I very carefully phrased my answer to Jayn Newell when she asked why it seemed to matter to some people that she and her husband were already married. At no point did I emphatically say “and that’s how I feel, too.” I just pointed out a viewpoint she may not have considered before now. Yes, a wedding is the outward public expression of a private vow that the couple has made to each other. However, even today, the assumption is that their lives together, as a couple, begin at the moment they take their wedding vows. So, no, I don’t particularly care what they call it.
How do you define “attempt” though? If I got an invitation to a cousin’s wedding on the other side of the country, my attempt would consist of a quick calculation of logistics and cost, think out the options of bringing the kids or parking them with their grandparents, and the probable immediate decision that even if we have the money to do it, we’d rather spend it on something else. Probably 5 minutes of effort all told - is that a good enough attempt? Or if I have the cash available, am I expected to attend regardless?
I hate wedding and have made this known to all my friends and family unless I am in the wedding party and they don’t have a replacement I’m not going. I have 2 wedding that I have to go, for my friends who don’t have other friends. If I can get away with it I’m not going to my sister’s wedding and will try to be out of town or have to work. So no I don’t get initiations as a must attend I think of them more as a please send a gift.
So what other purpose is there for getting married? Marriage is the legal union of two people. Nothing else.
I don’t mean to pick on you, Jayn_Newell, but you have gone on and on in various threads about your upcoming “wedding” with all trappings and trimmings of a real wedding. A wedding is:
1. the act or ceremony of becoming married; marriage
2. the marriage ceremony with its attendant festivities
You are already married. For you, that ship has sailed.
I understand that many people get married for expediency, for whatever reason, and then later, sometimes much later, throw a “wedding,” but I believe it’s only because the bride (okay, maybe the groom does sometimes, too :rolleyes: ) wants “her day” to be the center of attention in a floofy white dress and get gifts.
Fine. Do it. But you have no call to criticize anyone (i.e., your “wedding guests”) who does not enthusiastically buy into your fantasy.
I would be happy to attend a post-marriage reception or a re-enactment to celebrate the marriage of family or friends, but if I thought I was being invited to a wedding and found out later the happy couple had already been married for months, I’d be pissed. I would feel like I’d been defrauded.
And that is this guest’s point of view, which is the subject of these threads.
Having a chance to celebrate that union with friends and family.
Would it be too much to ask to drop this hijack? I don’t want to derail the thread further (I’ve done so too much already and I’m sorry for that). Besides, I’m leaving tomorrow so you won’t have to put up with me for at least a week If anyone really feels the need to comment further, you can PM me.
Some of my wife’s old friends from when she lived in the US as a kid got married a couple of years ago, and were more than a bit offended when we declined their invitation to attend on the grounds that they lived in rural Texas and it would have cost us $10,000 that we didn’t (and still don’t!) have to get there from Australia, not to mention the 25 hours or so in various flights/driving and the having to take 2 weeks off work (at least) without pay. We said that if they were having their wedding in somewhere affordable to get to like Los Angeles or Hawaii or Las Vegas then sure, we’d be there. But Small Town Texas just wasn’t doable- they were nowhere near anywhere of note and we worked out it would take two days just to drive there and back from Dallas, which basically meant we’d spend a week of our holiday just flying or driving to/from the destination, and we’d be as jetlagged as hell for the rest of it.
We invited them to our wedding to show there were no hard feelings, and they finally realised what we’d told them a couple of years earlier- but whereas we aren’t quite as far from a major airport as they are, the whole “Having to leave America and go somewhere Foreign” was a bit much for them (They’d never been outside the US except to Mexico). We said we’d come by and see them when we do our Really Big Tour of the US, and regale them with stories of the Big Wide World Outside America.
This is all a very long way of saying that if I’ve been invited to the wedding of someone I know or keep in regular contact with, I would consider it rude not to attend without a very good reason (ie illness, financial inability to go, or having to use most of my annual leave to travel somewhere not particularly interesting.)
If anyone really feels the need to comment further, you can PM me.