I just got married last month, and I must have been a very odd groom. I actually cared about the details, such as the food and music (especially the food). I even helped pick out the invitations. It was my idea to wear a morning coat with handtied cravat, not hers. The only thing I didn’t care about were the colors. Light green and blue or slightly darker green and aqua? Leave me alone and get back to me when we’re picking cake filling. And I wanted to dance. We had a small venue and there was a possibility that if everybody came there’d be no dance floor. I told my then fiancee that I’d be annoyed if I didn’t get to dance at my own wedding. I might also have been the only groom to hate dance lessons not because he had to do them, but because he didn’t think he was learning quickly enough.
So what did I get? A wedding that many of our guests said was the best, and most fun, they’d ever been to.
[Old guy from The Milagro Beanfield War] Nobody would do *anything *if they knew what they were getting into. [/OgfTMBW]
I think part of the trouble with a lot of modern weddings is most young people have never hosted a dinner party or budgeted a project, let alone a ceremony & buffet for 200. When your only experience of party-giving is a kegger, it’s quite possible not to realize that little bits of money spent on this and that add up really quick.
I’m sorry you didn’t get to register for tools & hardware. I’ve always thought that was a good idea.
Well, true though that may be we won’t be announcing ourselves as such until he has picked out a ring and asked for my father’s blessing (which I think is ridiculous but my boyfriend is a bit of a traditionalist so I’m willing to let it go) and done the whole proposal thing.
I’m a guy, and I agree with this. I enjoyed my wedding immensely. It was great to get together our familes & friends, put on nice clothes, and enjoy ourselves for a day. However, I wasn’t the member of the happy couple who stressed out when the centerpieces delivered by the florist turned out to be not what was ordered.
I’m a guy and I wanted a wedding. I had recently rediscovered my interest in the church and wanted to have the traditional Catholic ceremony, and was really looking forward to the reception because I wanted to throw a kick ass party. Which we did.
My wife isn’t “girly” and cared as little as I did about linen colors, centerpieces, floral arrangements, and all that crap, but we hired a really good band, rented a cool house, ordered some good booze (none of this watered-down domestic light beer pisswater for us) and everyone had a great time. The only regret was that I had to invite my entire extended family. You invite one and you have to invite them all, which means about 75 people off the bat. Add her family and all of our friends, and it was about 130, but I’d have been happy with about half of that.
Whatever- we both wanted it and in retrospect over a decade later, we’re still both glad we did it that way.
I had a pretty expensive wedding for my first marriage (a little over $30K). I wanted to elope. I wanted anything but a ridiculously expensive wedding for all my ex’s snotty sorority sisters (yes, that’s who it was for, as it turned out, you know, to show them they she had money too – twisted as fuck, yes). Invited were people I’d never met, which I thought was stupid too. So we had 120 people at my wedding, and probably 40 were my ex’s college friends. Because my ex-wife and I spent the wedding night partying, we went to bed at 5 AM, drunk as shit, no sex.
So we spent all this money on the wedding and the marriage lasted 1.5 years. I knew it was doomed.
My current (and final) marriage: we eloped. We both have very irregular families and thought it was best. We got married in some old black dude’s living room. He was awesome; it was awesome. Then we stayed at a really fancy bed and breakfast in the Shenandoah Valley for 4 days; ate like royalty, fucked like rabbits.
See, the first marriage was based on the wedding. The second wedding was based on the marriage. I think oftentimes little princesses want the wedding to be 100% about them “on their special day” (I’m getting stabby here), with no regard to how the husband feels.
One of my cousins is in sales, you bet it was him who wanted the big wedding. Half the guests were business acquaintances of his.
I’m female and if I ever get married it’ll be along the lines of “wedding as part of the regular 11:30 mass, followed by lunch; only guests are parents, siblings and nephews.”
I think my brother enjoyed his wedding, and would do it again. He’s the sort of guy who loves to get dressed up, eat good food, hang out with his family and friends, and be the center of attention.
I’m sure there were many details he could care less about, but I’d be willing to bet the whole thing excited him for the most part.
In the journal of computer scientist Jacques Vallee, I read about how he got married more-or-less spontaneously in an impromptu ceremony at the University of Lille.
It sounded great to me. No family, no expensive food, no photographer, just me and my wife…
We’re getting married in October, and having a shindig because he wanted one.
Granted, I was briefly married when I was young and stupid, so technically I’ve already had a wedding and maybe that’s why I pushed so hard for Vegas or other eloping alternatives. He’d never been married and really wanted a big to-do with all the family and friends and assorted wedding craziness.
We’ve compromised all over the place, keeping the basics intact and trying to throw a good party on a budget we find reasonable. At least once a week as I’m going over yet another stupid choice, I think “coulda gone to Vegas” though.
My husband wanted a wedding and large reception because he thought his parents would be upset if he didn’t. I wanted at most a very small wedding with only family and close friends and then a small dinner party.
He got his way and was fine paying for everything. I had a horrible time and wish I could forget the whole day. It was mostly his family and his parents friends. He treated it like a frat party and ignored me most of the night. I threw away all the wedding photos. What a waste of time money.
When my boyfriend and I first started discussing marriage, I mentioned a civil ceremony at the courthouse. He wants a wedding. We’re both 40, and have been married before, but his was a courthouse ceremony, while I’ve already had a shindig. So, in the interest of making him and both of our families happy, we will have a small, tasteful ceremony (non-religious,) and a party afterwards for our families and closest friends…
(My theory, though, is that the “wedding” is for the mothers. We haven’t even set a date or shopped for rings, and our mothers are both losing their minds! Mine has already hired the photographer and sends me photos of dresses about twice a day. His sends me information on venues, since we already know that the wedding will take place in his hometown, to accommodate his 98-year-old grandmother and 96-year-old granddad. Both keep reminding us about “Aunt L, who would be devastated if you didn’t invite her,” or “Mr. J, your high school trig teacher who wants to be invited.” That’s where I’m drawing the line, though: close family and close friends, only, thanks! Moms, dads, grandparents, siblings, *maybe *first-degree aunts/uncles/cousins, my children, and friends who would bail us out of jail if necessary. That’s it!)
Weddings are not (really) for the bride and groom. I can see a man wanting an involved wedding if that’s what the social expectations are in his family or culture, but I don’t see it being personally meaningful to most men to have all the candy beyond meeting the expectations of family. On the other hand weddings *are *personally meaningful to many (though by no means necessarily all) women and have a different resonance and heightened importance for them vs how men view it.
