Sounds like someone is always a bridesmaid…never a bride.
We spent about a year between when we got engaged to when we actually had the wedding. But most of that was finding a church, priest, reception hall, DJ and whatnot, not to mention invitations, rehearsal dinner. And a lot of it was in the last seven months. This was for a medium-sized wedding of 100 people.
My cousin had something like 400 people at their wedding. But her dad owns an insurance business so a lot of the guests were likely clients and business contacts.
Our wedding was as big as we could afford, which wasn’t much. We spent way too much time getting our picture taken and not nearly enough with our guests.
A couple of weeks ago we came back from my niece’s wedding, which was very large, lots of fun, and nothing I would dream of paying for if I could afford it, which I can’t. My daughter is making threatening gestures towards getting engaged, and wants a long engagement to plan the wedding. Which is fine, but we will have to do what I have done before - set a budget and let her know that she can’t go over it. Yes, I want her to have a nice wedding. Yes, I want her to be happy. No, I am not dipping into my 401(K) to try to outdo the neighbors.
Hell, my cousins and I STILL talk about a family wedding we attended when we were kids. One of our most hated cousins got his head caught in the elevator at the hotel afterwards. Good times. (Weddings are always fun in my family)
I think a big part of it is having everybody able to be flexible. You can’t plan for everything, so the ability to make lemonade out of lemons really goes a long way.
Our wedding was planned over 13 months. My wife handled a ton of details, which some people associate with control freak bridezilla behavior. But here’s the thing: She had total control over the details to ensure that the wedding would be fun for everyone. So the reason it was enjoyable was because she made our guests a priority in the wedding. Services were in both English and Spanish, and we had a great band that sang in both languages too. There was a wide variety of food for people of different pickiness, 3 types of beer and wine but also juice and soda. The reception hall gave us access to a nice patio area that people could relax at if they found the music too loud or the dance floor too crowded.
When weddings are big huge drama fests it’s often because people act extremely selfishly- putting the needs of themselves at the expense of others.
If you mean me, don’t worry! My Elkton do was a blast - short, cheap, and next to no planning other than rummaging through my closet for my outfit.
It was a terrific day; afterwards we took Mr Magnet around to a lot of places where I had grown up since he’d never been there and since I was shortly to move to his country. We also stopped at Cooch’s Bridge which is the only site in Delaware associated with a Revolutionary War battle – the Americans were ordered to meet with the British troops who were on their way from Elkton farther north, and they were ordered NOT to fight to a victory, but rather to harrass the British troops and ‘to make as much trouble for them as possible.’ Trust me, in my case, it’s been an appropriate wedding vow, and I’ve done my duty to my country.
We handed a digital camera each to my colleague and his wife, and I put together an album from a selection of the photos they took. They also made for an excellent PowerPoint. My cake came from the bakery I liked as a child. The wedding band I used for the service came from my non-asshole brother, whose wife died within months of their own wedding back in 1985.
The best part of the day was going back to my mother’s house (up until that point I’d been staying with her, but my brother took over when I left a few weeks later) and casually mentioning that she had another asterisked son-in-law. It was a billion times better than had I told her when and where we were planning to get married as she had all kinds of ideas for this hootenanny, all of which made me twitch like Herbert Lom in that Pink Panther movie (the date was in fact set when she mentioned the night before that she was going out the next morning.)
The only real disappointment was when the cop explained to us that he couldn’t loan out his handcuffs for a photo (Elkton is a working courthouse; Mr Magnet didn’t realise that, and thought the folks in the orange jumpsuits were just doing some sort of whacky theme wedding of their own).
Mr Magnet was an absolute bargain – with his engineering skills set, he’s even better than being married to a plumber who can fix a major leak on New Year’s Eve (which he done). Also, when he gets a headcold, he sounds like Ringo Starr. Peace and love, folks.
Eh, I think this is one of those cases where “large” is not quite the same as “big”.
Compare, for two couples where two of the people involved were cousins:
Vito: 200 guests, bride in a confection that required rolling up the whole skirt in order to pee, groom in a rented ill-fitting tux, meal at the most expensive of local restaurants followed by a one-hour dance followed by the closest friends and family removing to the family’s “indoors meeting place” for barbecue.
Feli: 200 guests, bride in a white summer dress, groom in a brand-new suit with flowers on his buttonhole (he wore suits to work), barbecue at the family’s vegetable garden followed by dancing until the sun came back up and it was time for those who were still awake to go get some chocolate con churros.
Both as large, but the biggest part of the second one was going to buy all that meat.
The second one sounds nice, and if Spanish barbeques are like American ones, you won’t lack cooks. Where are all the older male relatives? Cooking, and maybe even bonding, even if the father of the bride is so stupid he couldn’t cook hot dogs, and you call that a fire?
Oh, we totally would have considered a backyard wedding, if anyone we knew actually had a real backyard! Nobody did, and we really wanted there to be space for dancing, so community hall it was. (Just about the only one around here that will let you bring in food and booze from anywhere rather than having to use one of their preapproved caterers.) Music was my iPod plugged into the hall’s sound system, programs were created by us and copied at Kinko’s, table centerpieces were shallow glass bowls with floating candles in them (much cheaper and less perishable than flowers).
But we really wanted yummy food that everyone could eat, what with all the various dietary restrictions, vegetarians, gluten-free people, etc. And we really wanted space for people to dance. Our families are scattered to the four winds, and it’s not often that they all get the chance to gather together.
This. Except I was the Indian side, and my parents and husband refused a tiny elopement type deal. Husband’s argument was “this is the only time ever that we are getting married. I want to do this right and celebrate with all our family and friends”. Parents’ argument was “You’re our eldest daughter getting married and you’re the first in the family to marry outside our faith and community. We’re doing it big, we’re doing it right, so that nobody would ever dare insinuate that we don’t approve or are ashamed.” (My parents did then proceed to pay for much of the wedding, so there is that).
We ended up finding an awesome venue that accommodated our 150 or so guests pretty easily for an absolute steal, used a local restaurant to do the Indian food and our families cooked a fair chunk at home. I made both the wedding cake and the groom’s cake myself, and we had swordfighting. So, yeah, big wedding was an epic win.
Apparently, I ruined the wedding. While taking the hundreds of photos, both staged and informal, the photographer caught a snap of me and my nephew goofing off and pulling faces at each other (I was about 14, my nephew maybe 11 or 12). Just kids playing around.
Miss Vicky went ballistic when she saw that photo and accused me of sabotaging the wedding. My brother gave me six shades of holy hell for it, and my parents sided with him. We didn’t even know the photo’d been taken because it was that thing called ‘a candid snap of two kids playing off to one side of the reception.’ She insisted consequently that my parents pay for the entire photography package. (They didn’t).
My BIL was the hero that day, as Miss Vicky wanted me and the pimply-faced junior groomsboy (six inches shorter than me and sweating like a pig in his suit) to do a special spotlight dance at the reception. My BIL was normally a very patient man who hadn’t been expecting to be sat in a church for hours (his remark, 'Why is this taking so long? Is the baptism going to be the grand finale?). He nixed the Very Special Dance idea.
That pretty much sums up the whole aura surrounding that woman and the dog & pony show that was Her Special Day. Such a silly cow.
Like American ones minus the sauce, basically. Lots of discussing what meat to buy, lots of discussing what gets which kind of pepper and whether to salt things before cooking or letting people salt it themselves, lots putting meat on grilles and placing grilles on fires, and since Dealing with Fire is a Manly activity and Meat is a Manly meal, you’re right that it’s the guys who do most of the cooking. Salad gets assigned to the women “so you ladies won’t get bored waiting for the first load to cook”.
There are some food customs which vary widely around the country, but this one is general as far as I can tell.
I proposed in October. We’re getting married next April.
The reason for the long engagement is because our venue is seasonal, and this was the first date that it was available.
It’s making the arrangements incredibly easy, as we just do bits and bobs here and there. The flowers are sourced, the suits for the groomsmen are ordered, the rings have been found (but not bought), the church has been booked, and the venue is taking care of accommodation for guests and the food. If something doesn’t pan out, we have plenty of time to go with another option.
So sometimes long engagements can make things simpler. It’s also giving us time to save up money.
I missed out on the whole weddings thing when I was in my 20s, so I didn’t have to go through any of the huge extravaganzas, and now that I’m older, huge weddings seem silly to me. A lot of them seem to be fueled by a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality where if your one friend does x, then you must do x+1, and the quirkier x is, the more likely it seems to catch on. For example, if your friend wears flip-flops at her wedding, then your bridesmaids must all wear flip-flops with their dresses, and your flip-flops have to have more sparklies and bows and crap on them. If your friend has neon glow necklaces as guest favors, you must do the entire damn Color Run at your wedding. It’s stupid and petty.
I was at a wedding with a cookie table last weekend. Such a great idea, and such great fun.
My wedding was medium-sized (I think we ended up around 95 people) and kind of stupidly expensive, in that manner where something isn’t expensive because it’s gaudy or obviously glamorous, but where something is expensive because it’s elegant and every little detail is classy and perfect. Certainly an amount which would trigger That SDMB Reaction. Not really my idea (or my wife’s, actually; it was more our mothers than anything), but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Our parents split a big chunk of the bill, and what we paid didn’t cause us economic hardship, so I mostly just cherish the memories of a really awesome party with our closest family and friends.
Also, part of spending a bunch of money on the wedding for us is that we didn’t have to spend much time getting it all organized, or making our own placecards, or whatever else. Once we picked the venue, they helped organize most of it, and they had suggestions and reviews on vendors, and we just had to show up for tastings and fittings and such. My wife and I were both working 60 hour weeks at the time, so that had a lot of value for us.
Symbols change. This one appears to be changing again, but there’s no arguing that to American women of the 50-110 age range, white dress means “virgin”.
To argue otherwise is like arguing that the swastika is a sun symbol and therefore appropriate to decorate classrooms with. Well, yes, once it was a sun symbol and someday it may again be a sun symbol, but the symbolism for at least one generation (and probably more) is irreparably something else now.
Have to raise that lower number to at least 60 (or else restrict it to certain cultural/religious groups). I’m fifty , all my similarly- aged friends and family got married in a white dress (the first time) , and I’d be shocked if there was a single virgin in the bunch.
