Would you say the same thing if the hosts were Muslims or Mormons and refused to serve alcohol at the receptions? Or if the chose a venue where smoking was prohibited (even outside)?
Does the rubbery chicken and potatoes swimming in butter that are standard wedding fare appeal to you?
We had a vegan reception (including cake), and had lots of compliments on the food. Were there people there that complained behind my back or hit Arbys on the way home? Maybe. They are free to turn down future dinner invites from the Tavi household.
I don’t always like the music at weddings, or the long ceremonies, or the choice of alcohol, but I assume that they reflect the preferences of the couple and deal. If I don’t have a shit attitude about it, I may even discover that I enjoy something new that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise.
I wasn’t sure which thread to post this in, so I went with both.
I seriously considered the exotic location version of the destination wedding, but ended up eloping to Las Vegas and informing everyone after the fact. I don’t feel the least bit bad about it (and wouldn’t have even if we’d gone with plan #1), as:
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His family was all five or more hours away from where we live.
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My family was all three or more hours away from where we live.
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Neither family could afford the hotels and other travel expenses very easily and were bitching at the concept of traveling, no matter where it would be to.
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Picking one home town over the other would have caused a mess of hurt feelings like you’ve never seen. And the losing family would have had to travel six hours.
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We didn’t have any close friends in our area at the time, only acquaintances.
Quite frankly, the huge family wedding, be it elaborate or the cute little barbecue in the backyard, only makes sense if you assume that your friends and family (preferably for both sides) are all local. It’s not quite as ubiquitis as you might assume.
I don’t think it’s rude to have a small ceremony - one of my cousins got married at the judge, with only parents and siblings present; they sent “wedding notifications” to every other relative in the way between the courthouse and the restaurant.
But I do think it was rude to make me sit in a table where half the people were business associates of my father’s and the other half distant relatives, when I was supposed to sit with the rest of the “RPG group.” My SiL still thought last year that “I wasn’t part of that group of friends” because “oh, you weren’t even sitting with them at the wedding!” RIGHT, because as “sister of the groom,” it was deemed my job to get screwed! The average age in my table was about 25 years older than me… and this is with you younger cousins there. After driving my mother to several weddings and being sat with her, I know specify that unless I get to sit with people my generation, she’ll have to get another taxi - I do find it rude to be treated as “my mother’s partner/extension,” specially when the bride/groom is a cousin of mine and no blood relative of hers. Taking these things into consideration isn’t so damn difficult, really.
If I was having an unusual menu, I’d give warning when I sent the invitation. In the case of, for example, kosher food, I know that wouldn’t be a problem… ok, so you can’t have cheese on your spaghetti bolognese. And? Mac’n’tomato sauce is kosher - and my brothers’ favorite pasta dish! Lots of kosher dishes are also normal Spanish dishes. Vegetarian or vegan would be more complicated, but then, I can quite safely say I’ll never have a vegan menu on “my” wedding 
overlyverbose, your father-in-law inviting an extra 400 people when he wasn’t even paying for it just floors me! Talk about cultural differences!
(bathsheba, the thought of a vegetarian Mennonite is funny. Traditional Mennonites could be said to be the anti-vegetarians - they raise their own animals, and kill, butcher, and eat them themselves.)
Well, that’s true if, as in your case, both sides dislike travelling.
In my own wedding just one year ago, neither side lived locally. However, we were fortunate in that my family loves to travel, and my wife’s side is OK with travelling. So we had the wedding in our area and still had almost the whole family attend.
Ed
overlyverbose, please tell me I am misinterpreting something in Indian culture, because inviting four hundred people to someone else’s wedding without either asking or paying for them sounds beyond the pale. That would cause a serious rift according to me. Did he simply assume everyone was rich and it wouldn’t be a problem?
No - he just refused to listen to us when we said, “Please don’t invite anyone else.” We explained that we were on a limited budget, but he apparently had a vision of our wedding day that we did not share. He didn’t even tell us what had happened until after he had already sent the invitations and random strangers started calling us.
:eek: Man, what a way to start off on the wrong foot.
And the guests should be friends of the couple. Who would understand about the couple’s convictions.
But I’m a lifelong omnivore–not a failed vegan.
A wedding act is primarily for a couple, as it’s the formal beginning of their marriage. A wedding ceremony and reception/party should be planned by and for in the same manner as any other party. I like the fact that weddings come in many different styles reflecting different tastes, values, cultural backgrounds, etc. For every choice you make that includes other people, more people are likely to attend.
I don’t think you need to make judgements about it. If the couple want more people to come, and / or want more people to help or lend resources to the event, then they have to take them and their wishes into consideration. If they want a smaller wedding that reflects their own tastes, that’s fine too. There’s no reason for any one involved to be upset, everyone has free will. If you have a wedding outside a church without a priest performing the ceremony, gracefully accept that your bible thumping grandma won’t attend. If you aren’t going to let your mom pick out the flower arrangements, accept gracefully that you are going to have to pay for them out of your own pocket. If you don’t like the style of wedding you are invited to, politely decline without feeling guilty, but also without placing blame or guilt on the wedding party.
Many parents will offer their kids a choice - they can have a large wedding, or a down payment on a house. I think I’d prefer the latter. In any case I agree with the other posters, what’s really tragic is not what happens at the wedding, it’s that there isn’t much more focus on the marriage.
If it’s the responsibility of the hosts to please the guests when it comes to food, then I have to say that every wedding I’ve ever been to except for my own was a flop in that regard. (Mine had a buffet at the Acme Oyster House. 
) Overcooked chicken, underseasoned potatoes, and floppy mixed vegetables, almost without exception. A vegan meal would have been a nice change at some point, if only because it would have been memorable.
If this thread and the other current wedding threads tell us anything, it’s that you can’t have a wedding without pissing somebody off. So you can either plan a wedding that offends as few people as possible–which means it probably won’t please much of anybody–or you can plan the wedding that you want to have and enjoy it with the people who are willing (and able) to enjoy it with you.
I let my parents pay for most of my wedding, and ended up on the receiving end of the Golden Rule - the one with the gold makes the rules. We hired the photographer my dad picked and ended up dancing a total of 4 songs together because we kept getting called to take photos. Also I wanted the father-daughter dance to be “Unforgettable” by Natalie Cole, but my dad insisted he couldn’t dance to that song, so he and I did our father-daughter dance to an instrumental of his choice. My little sis ended up using the song I wanted at her wedding. :mad:
Next time I get married (assuming I ever do again), I’m eloping. Or at least I’m going to split the cost with whoever my next spouse is, even if it means reserving the meeting room at the park and serving veggie platters and KFC straight from the bucket. I want to have a say in the proceedings for once.
At my first wedding, I planned a lovely ceremony and reception, with a variety of dishes to please omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans, drinkers and non-drinkers. Children were welcome, and some friends flew across the country to be there. Everyone had a lovely time, I was told. We were divorced sixteen months later. That plan didn’t work.
At my last (read: final) wedding, we put the 1-year-old in his carseat and went to a little tiny wedding chapel at noon on a Monday. We got married, came home, and I started laundry while my new husband went to get the oldest boy off the school bus. We had cheesesteaks delivered for dinner, and shared our wedding cake with the boys. That was a much nicer wedding, for me, and everyone involved was happy. We’re happily married, and I care more about our marriage than our wedding. If we had wanted to throw some big party to alert our families, we could have, but it just wasn’t important to us. We phoned and let them know that we were getting married, so it wasn’t a surprise.
I have another 20 years or so before I have to be the mother-of-the-groom, and my step-daughters have their own mom, so I’m off the hook for weddings for a couple of decades. Thank goodness. I can just let my sons’ brides and their mothers deal with everything.