Another wedding poll- subtle regional and cultural differences...

In My Humble Opinion
41

As to people getting drunk at weddings, it varies. I know I was certainly over my limit at mine, and most people had quite a few.

The few christenings (two) and wakes (seven) I’ve been to, there was a bar at the reception, several of the people had flasks, etc. Usually after the christening/funeral. It’s supposed to be bad luck if you don’t “wet the baby’s head”, i.e., have a snort or two.
And a wake is a thinly-disguised excuse to get sobbing drunk, then magically change into a celebration of the person’s life. Sometimes they’re not even disguised.
Now, to California weddings. Outside if possible, because what’s the point of having the weather if you don’t use it? Quite possibly non-traditional services with interesting people presiding. At ours, we had my wife’s boss, who was a Mthodist minister, administer a Buddhist/Daoist/celebration of life ceremony. My MIL made him a surplice with the yin-yang and an eternal knot on it. Way cool.

One of the best weddings I’ve ever been to was at the Ahwanee Lodge in Yosemite. Ceremony outside with a view of Half Dome, accompaniament by the couple’s friends on flute, guitar and voice (Beatles, man), then a buffet reception in the Lodge itself. Full bar. That’s pretty much the model for the majority I’ve been to:

Outside if possible, casual dress, short ceremony, dinner and full bar. Catering can be extremely casual, like barbecues, and I was actually at one where they got an In-N-Out bruger wagon to do burgers and fries.

Money dance only if you’re Hispanic or Filipino, and electric slide is more common in the north than the south. I told our DJ if he played it he wouldn’t get paid, and the fucker did it anyway. We wound up getting half the fee back after we complained to the company.

42

Here’s how my “wedding” went, if you want to call it a wedding:

Me: Brown skirt and blouse.
Him: Suit.

Guests: Mom, grandmother, mom’s best friend, her twin sons, and two of their friends who showed up at their house about 5 minutes before we left for the church and I invited them.

No music. No cake. No flowers. No money for anything My “best friend” decided that she had better things to do and thus didn’t show up.

Methodist church, Methodist preacher although we are not Methodist. My home church (Baptist) was doing directory pictures that day.

5 minute ceremony. Go home, change into sweats, load up the truck and drive to West Virginia.

Cry every time I talk about my “wedding” that went to hell in a handbasket for the first year of marriage.

I’m over it now.

43

I’ve only been to a couple of weddings; both were Southern Baptist, and the receptions were held in the church fellowship hall. No alcohol or dancing at all (yes, it makes for a rather boring reception.) The most recent one, though, had an interesting feature. The groom’s a fireman, so in place of the usual decorated car they had a firetruck, and after the reception he got sprayed down with the fire hose in a big, messy water fight. Apparently the soaking of the groom is traditional at firemen’s weddings.

44

St. Louis Catholic here

The wedding isn’t legal unless you serve mostaciolli at the reception. No alcohol is a good way to get your guests complaining, and likely leaving early.

So is forbidding your DJ to play the Duck Dance (I didn’t hear it called the Chicken Dance until I was nearly 30). Guests will expect that, the Hokey Pokey, the YMCA, and the Electric Slide, and will be ticked if the DJ tells them the bride forbade it. Usually the bride gives in after enough complaints and authorizes it.

The Dollar Dance has become more common, though no one in my family does it. As has the (IMO tasteless) custom of having the bride remove the garter to the strains of “The Stripper.” Let’s not go into the Ball and Chain thing, something else I didn’t see until I was nearly 30.

Grooms cakes are not common, but you do see them occasionally. Cheese straws aren’t traditional wedding food, but they are yummy.

Traditionally, the bridal party vandalizes the happy couple’s car. Shaving cream is often involved.

45

i’m feeling ever-so-much validated by that statement.

somehow it doesn’t matter to me that i always wear black to everything, i’d feel horribly impolite wearing it to a wedding.

i hadn’t realised before that cheese straws are a distinctly southern foodstuff but i also haven’t gone in search of them since leaving the southland.

rural georgian southern baptist weddings:
–no alcohol.
–no mention of sex or of the bride’s chastity.
–it will be a huge ceremony.
–rice will be tossed as the bride & groom exit (i believe that other regions have shifted to blowing bubbles or throwing flower petals).
–there will be a massive scuffle for the bouquet. those who didn’t catch it will hold a grudge against the catcher for years.
–elderly guests will immediately descend on every single female in attendance, asking “well, will you be next?”
–single females in attendance are also pitied behind their backs.

46

Small town eastern Montana:

I can’t think of anything particularly different about the weddings here. Wearing black would be very uncool. At least half the crowd will be wearing blue jeans and/or cowboy boots.

Everyone hopes for a ceremony at the Luthern church - it has a preacher whose ceremonies take 18 minutes door to door. A full blown Catholic ceremony with a Mass can take up to two hours. Real long for us godless heathens.

Receptions are held at either the Moose or the Elks lodge. The reception dinner will be by invitation only (beef or chicken) and be served by the little old ladies of either the church or the Moose/Elks. People will strike a glass with a spoon which means the bride and groom are supposed to kiss. That will happen about 30 times.

There may be a DJ, but usually it’s the one local band or an imported Polka band. There will be a dance called the “Shottish” (sp?). The Macarena is becoming a standard to which the large single women and little kids get up to dance. The reception is considered open to anyone in town. (There is no free bar - just the bar at the Moose/Elks.)

The money dance will occur by pinning money on the brides gown or putting it in a hat if you’re too drunk to work a pin. No one considers the money dance tacky - only a generation ago the money gained could be enough for a couple to make a down payment on a house. It’s tough country here and the guests were glad to help out.

Lots of booze is consumed. There will be a few drunks, usually the older male relatives and often the father of the groom or bride. Young kids will be caught stealing booze and or cigarettes from their elders. There will be one near fight, which will be quickly squashed by the groomsmen or male members of the bride/grooms family.

The party will go on until breakfast after the bar closes.

One thing no one has mentioned is “kidnapping” the bride. At some point in the reception, the groomsmen and the bride leave the reception and go somewhere else for drinks. While they are gone, a hat is passed to gather “ransom”. This is a lot of fun if you’re the groom and get along with the bride - you basically wander around for 45 minutes, hit a couple of bars and do some shots. And oddly enough, hanging out with a woman in a bridal gown attracts other women.

In my hometown, you can’t be out on a friday night without running into a bride or two.

But I’d like to go to a Polish wedding for the food and a New York wedding just because it would be so different from standing behind the Moose lodge with a cigarette, a beer and a woman in a wedding dress who’s wearing jeans and cowboy boots underneath.

One other thing - sometimes the flower girl is replaced by a dog and the couple travels from wedding to reception in a horse drawn wagon (it’s cowboy country). The dog can be pretty damned entertaining since it’s usually a cow dog that has never had a bath or been in a crowd of people before. Sometimes they’ll balk and refuse to walk down the aisle and sometimes they’ll stop and visit with the first person they know. Usually the bride or groom will whistle to them and they’ll run down the aisle to the happy couple.
And the really fun ones will play with their genitals during the ceremony. But hey, flower girls do all these things too. (grin)

Whistlepig, who now wants to go home and go to a wedding next weekend.

47

Yes! In a church glistening with gold and candlelight, heady with the smell of incense; the priest tying the bride and groom’s hands together, crowns held over their heads as they’re lead around the altar…

And afterwards: polka! Everybody knows how to polka and it’s so much fun! Pierogi, yes, and all sorts of goodies made by the ladies. The older men will do a version of the saber dance using broomsticks 'cause they don’t have any swords. Toast after toast after toast…

Ever been to a Russian Orthodox wake? :eek:

48

In the Republic of Georgia, where half my mother’s family is from, they bury huge jugs of wine in the courtyards and break them open for special events–and a wedding is certainly a special event. Generally, I don’t think you’ll find too many teetotaling Russian-Americans… celebrations generally equal vodka. A good wedding is where everybody goes home stuffed with food, wobbly with drink, and exhausted from dancing. :slight_smile:

My father’s side is German. Which means beer. Kegs and kegs of beer. Of a Sunday morning, you’ll see the men gathered around the church steps passing a flask around, too.

49

Whistlepig, nothing different about weddings there??? I had never heard of any of those traditions, but they sound like fun.

Weddings where I am from (small town Tennessee) tend to be exactly as WV_Woman described: big poufy white dress, church wedding with 200-400 people in attendance, cake, butter mints, and nuts at the reception, and NO alcohol (and therefore no dancing). Maximum length of the entire affair is 2 hours or so, and it doesn’t cost thousands.

RickQ and I are getting married next Sunday (YIKES!!!). He is British and his family’s wedding traditions are big wedding (lots of cousins) and lots of alcohol.

Our wedding is going to follow neither tradition. We are renting out a small mountain lodge (14 rooms) in TN and everyone will stay the night. The wedding will be on the porch, then the reception–a dinner–will be inside the lodge. We will serve alcohol, but I doubt anyone will dance anyway, as there will only be about 30 people there. Most of all, my dress is long and white, but I defy anyone to call it poufy. :slight_smile:

50

  1. No. After RickQ & Brynda’s, mine and Weirddave’s is next. NO.

  2. The monkey butler will dance for you if you give him $5.

  3. Sugaree, if you’re in Baltimore, why haven’t you and your husband come to any MAD Dopefests? We’re very fun.

51

squish, good grief if the music doesn’t have you wailing at the funeral, the vodka will after. not to mention the incense high.

yes, w v woman, there will be drinking at just about any of lifes major events, baptisms, weddings, funerals, just found 10 dollars in my fresh washed jeans, etc. some will even include vodka in pascal baskets that are brought to church to be blessed.

i believe some people think that being somewhat drunk is the only way to dance the kozak.

52

Ginger

  1. Okay, no monkey dance. Darn.

  2. That could make a killing at a wedding.

  3. You sure are, and we just might. :slight_smile:

53

My bad, sugaree. Although a Monkey Dance sounds super fun. My SO’s sister got married this weekend, and despite my pleas to the groom, the Chicken Dance was not danced. Hmmph. When the SO finally makes an honest woman out of me ;), we’ll invent a Monkey Dance for the reception.

WV_Woman, the way I see it, weddings are a celebration and the reception is basically a big party. Why not have tasty libations? Although it’s very rare for folks here to get teee-rashed at the reception, I’ve seen my share of tipsy aunts and cousins. No harm, no foul.

I’ve actually never been to a christening, and most of the funerals I’ve been to have been Baptist, so there’s been lots of congealed salad and no booze. When my grandmother died, we had a Mass said for her at the local Catholic church and then had a wake afterward, with plenty o’ wine. The wake was for celebrating her life, and as she’d been known to knock back a few, having alcohol there didn’t seem wierd at all.

54

shrug Cultural difference, burundi. I know alcohol has been done at weddings since well, weddings began, but it’s still unthinkable to me – even though morally I see nothing wrong with knocking back a few.

As far as alcohol at baptisms and christenings … yeah, that’s just atrocious imho.

55

Alcohol at baptisms-both my sons’ baptisms were followed by a small get together at our home for friends and family with cold cuts, salads, and white cake. Champagne was served as a celebratory toast and among the other beverages were beer and wine. No one got drunk that I noticed.

Weddings: (I don’t represent any particular subgroup. All the wedding I have attended have been in the Eastern seaboard states from Connecticut to Florida)

Photography: At every wedding I have been to except mine, the wedding party has disappeared for an hour or more for photography purposes. WHY? why is this necessary? If you must have group shots, for pete’s sake take them before the wedding or at the reception. Don’t make everybody linger about–this is not so bad if you give them drinks and canapes and a place to hang out, but occasionally I have seen the wedding ceremony and wedding reception scheduled with 2 hours between with no place for out of town guests to go.

Introduction of wedding party: I almost always see the bride and groom and wedding party members introduced by some sort of MC. The style of this is usually very game show. Once, very memorably, it was done to the spooky theme music of the X-Files. Very weird. That marriage lasted less than a year.

Mothers lighting a candle: the last few weddings I have been to, there has been a new part to the ceremony. At the beginning, invited by the officiant, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom come up and light separate candles and then walk their separate candles to a single candle and join their flames to light the single candle, to symbolize the coming together of the two families I suppose. The single candle is festooned with swoops and curlicues.

Throwing of birdseed: Despite this almost definitive column http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_081.html almost every wedding features the throwing of birdseed in the place of rice

Clinking of glasses: Did no one else mention this? Without fail, a wedding will include people clinking their glasses with silverware to demand that the happy couple kiss.

Bridesmaids’dresses: In order to proclaim her everlasting love for the man she will spend the rest of her life with, every bride must require her very best friends to spend ridiculous amounts of money first acquiring and then altering dresses that can never be worn again without someone sneering “looks like a bridesmaid’s dress!” Please stamp out this unfortunate practice (the bridesmaids dresses–which I did myself. I now know I was wrong. I am sorry.)

56

whistlepig, I’m glad you brought up kidnapping the bride - I thought it was just a MN thing :slight_smile:

Anyone heard of a ‘shivaree’? They don’t really have them around here anymore (they have mild versions that involve banging on the hotel door of the bride and groom at all hours of the night), but once upon a time - back when people stayed at home after the wedding and reception - friends and neighbors would gather in the yard of the newlyweds with pots and pans and make enough noise to wake the dead…and the newlyweds.

57

At one wake, that I was fortunately too young to attend, they poured vodka in the corpse’s mouth, then took him out of the casket and danced with him. :smack:

Ever go to midnight mass first, so you could grab something to eat before you went to Easter mass? Otherwise, between the incense and the smell of the food waiting to be blessed, you’d faint dead from hunger (or thought you would)! :smiley:

58

whistlepig, seeing as I have never met anyone from Montana, it’s odds-on I’ll never be invited to a Montana wedding. Thanks to your post, I was there in jeans and cowboy boots for a couple of minutes. You can tell them all at the Moose that I had a fantastic time.

59

One side of my husband’s family is from West Virginia, W V Woman. I think it’s pretty safe to say that you have never run across any of his kin at a social function. :slight_smile:

60

A shivaree! Now, why didn’t I remember to mention that?

Okay, perhaps I neglected to mention it because it happened on our honeymoon… and okay, perhaps our honeymoon included spending a week with about 300 of our closest friends (at a dance camp). Not exactly usual, but at that camp, the most recently married gets shiveree’d, its the tradition.

Ours included what seemed like the entire camp showing up at our cabin at some ungodly hour of the morning, banging on the door and windows, and singing. When we finally let them in (they threatened dire things if we didn’t), they trooped through and dropped a wide variety of odd items on our bed - everything from a glow-in-the-dark toy lizard to packs of crackers…I think someone dropped condoms, too. Seems that they’d decided that a cheap token gift was in order. From everyone. They sang some more, bugged us some more, then tromped back out, possibly to go skinny dipping or to another party. Who knows. It was pretty funny, only mildly distressing (mostly when the floor began to creak under the strain of supporting the masses of humans tromping through), and kind of sweet. Helps that most of them have good singing voices, too.

And my best friend got kidnapped at her wedding (by men in kilts, at swordpoint) and all they asked for the ransom was best wishes (written on little note cards) for the bride and groom. It was kind of fun, and less tacky (according to local feeling) than money. I certainly understand the money gift thing for more ‘frontier’ and ‘frontier-attitude’ areas, where community resources are shared at events like that.