Pathetic. When did men get so emasculated?
FWIW, Mrs. Garrett says, “Knowing you, it really wouldn’t matter me to if there were strippers at your bachelor party or not.” I guess that about says it.
No, it’s not a sacred night. The marriage is what’s supposed to be sacred here. You know, the commitment to put your spouse before all others, honor them, cherish them…does this ring a bell? How exactly does getting a lap dance from a mostly naked woman you paid money to show that you respect, honor, and cherish someone else?
My, nice ad hominem attack there. It doesn’t take a prude to object to strippers. After all, there are some men in this thread who’ve also said they don’t feel comfortable paying someone to be naked for them.
Also, it has nothing to do with beer or snack food, unless, of course, you equate the most intimate act two people can commit - capable of creating life and sustaining love - with Bud Light and Fritos.
Some women have no problem with strippers. NSenc’s fiance and I are two who do have a problem with it. At least for me, it’s not so much about strippers to begin with. After all, I believe that consenting adults should be able to work at whatever occupation they choose, and spend money on what they like. In the context of a relationship, however, it’s different.
A stripper is there to provide voyeuristic sexual gratification. She interacts directly with her customers and gets more money for providing an authentic performance and titillating behavior. Her customers get off, even if it’s more in a figurative sense than a literal one.
In a marriage, in the common understanding, the partners commit to sexual fidelity. They choose to seek sexual gratification, explore physical pleasure, and provide release for and with one another. The wedding is the symbolic act where this - and much, much more - is announced publicly, and is in turn, publicly supported. So why should any person, let alone any woman, be thought a prude when the partner she is about to publicly commit herself to is actively pursuing sexual gratification with another person? An anonymous person being paid to interact in that manner.
Do you have any idea how publicly demeaning and insulting and hurtful that is to some of us? To pass it off as a ‘boys’ night out’ or ‘one last chance’ only rubs salt into the wound. There was all that time before declaring commitment to get the wild oats sown. Those who didn’t take care of it then really shouldn’t be whining about it now.
Strangely enough, these are not character traits I would be proud of, or ones that I’d be interested in seeing in my mate. I realize you wrote this in a semi-ironic tone, but I don’t think that excuses it. I don’t think bad character is something to be indulged, celebrated, or excused. It taxes the people around one and allows the person with those traits to hurt others and get away with it.
OK, sure… she might SAY she doesn’t care, allowing you to make a choice, but if you make the WRONG choice, she’ll be sure to let you know after the fact. 
I’d say it depends on how important it is to him to have strippers at his bachelor party, and whether he feels forced or manipulated into not having them.
Just because it’s traditional doesn’t mean you have to do it if you don’t want to. Lots of people leave out various wedding traditions because they don’t feel comfortable with them. Here are a few examples that some couples omit these days:
A religious wedding ceremony
Having the bride’s father give her away
A receiving line
Feeding each other cake/smashing cake in each other’s faces
Tossing the bouquet/garter
Throwing rice, birdseed, or what have you at the couple on their way out
(We had a religious, specifically Jewish, ceremony, but we left out all of those other things)
You’re still legally married if your wedding doesn’t include those traditions, or if your bachelor party doesn’t include strippers, or for that matter if you don’t have a bachelor party. (At least the IRS and the health insurance companies seem to think Mr. Neville and I are legally married, despite the lack of those traditions at our wedding…)
In my case, neither Mr. Neville nor I had any particular desire for strippers or anything like that- we agreed to keep our bachelor and bachelorette parties PG-rated, and made it quite clear to the best man and maid of honor that that’s what we wanted. The important thing, though, is that we were both on the same page with that. I do think that coming to an agreement on stuff like this during wedding planning is good practice for the big, important decisions that married couples have to figure out how to make, like whether to have kids, where to live, and how to spend money. I think the most important thing is that both partners be at least reasonably happy with the process by which the decision gets made, though.
Oh, is that what you call it? I call it giving a shit. But to each his own.
I don’t know what you think it says. The introduction "Knowing you . . . " indicates that to your wife the issue is one of trust. The OP specifically says the issue isn’t about trust in his case; his fiancee does not like the idea of having strippers there because she doesn’t like strippers.
Some guys deal with this crap, and I did with my first wife. The new and improved Mrs. Garrett plays no such games. 
No strippers but anything else, huh?
I guess that means prostitutes are back on the table. 
My wife doesn’t like whiskey. In fact, she hates, hates, hates whiskey. Does that give her license to say that I can’t associate whiskey with our wedding by having it at my bachelor party?
How exactly do you justify demanding that someone be bound by a vow they haven’t taken yet?
It’s more about being expected to give a crap about the other person’s feelings. it’s ok to start doing that before the ceremony.
Does you drinking whiskey violate an agreement that you have within your relationship? Does it make her feel insecure, disrespected, insignificant, ugly, or otherwise bad? Does she find it morally questionable, misogynisitc, or ethically wrong? Does she feel that you drinking whiskey at your bachelor party dishonors her or the marriage that you’re about to enter into?
If so, then I think she has grounds to ask you not to partake. You can do it anyhow, but I would hope that your partner’s strong feelings on the subject would at least cause you to rethink it. If, after careful consideration, you decide to drink whiskey anyhow, then you’ve made it clear that your enjoyment of whiskey outweighs the pain and uneasiness that you enjoying whiskey causes her.
And it’s kind of a dumb analogy anyways, because drinking whiskey isn’t really the same thing as having a naked woman grind your crotch.
“A buttload of snark”? Dude, don’t get your shorts in a knot. That wasn’t snarky in the least.
As to the rest of it: “License to say”? No; she’s not your mother. “License to ask”? Sure. If your fiancee has Issues with alcohol and asks you not to imbibe, the question is: Are you going to respect her wishes, or not? It’s not necessarily a trust issue; it isn’t one in the OP.
Oh, it’s obligatory, but the terms phouka used weren’t those, they were explicitly those of the vows:
Me too. Who the hell goes to strip clubs during the day? They strip at night, then turn tricks after closing time.
Oh, and SNenc, although I personally wouldn’t want strippers at my party and would strongly discourage my friends from making it happen, and can appreciate your own seeming ambivalence on the matter, I think you might want to go ahead and get fitted for a collar.
To me, Diogenes’s advice equates to handing your wife your testicles, gift-boxed, as a pre-wedding gift, and is one of the most depressing takes on the concept of marriage I’ve ever seen.
phouka–well said.
My husband didn’t have strippers at his bachelor’s party and I didn’t have any sex toys/male dancers/strippers at my “bachelorette” party. To each his own. The important thing is that the matter is decided to the mutual satisfaction of involved parties–what I would do or X woud do or Z did do is irrelevant. IMO, the bit in the OP about my party=my terms is just part of the realization process that two are about to become one and that what one does effects the other.
None of this is about being pussy whipped or needing to get a collar or becoming a yes man for your wife. Talk about a depressing and pathetic perspective on marriage! Why do that to youself, if that is what some of you truly feel? What are women, castrating bitches because they express our distaste for something? How messed up is that thinking? Pretty messed up, IMO.
Why on earth would I be with a person who didn’t agree with me what values our relationship will be based on? Behavior before the wedding is a fairly good indication of what it will be after the wedding. If the other person is belligerent, dismissive, disrespectful, and puerile beforehand, marriage is not going to change them.
I don’t want to let this comment go by unchallenged - I disagree with this sentiment. I didn’t marry my husband because he surrendered all autonomy to me - I married him because he is a good partner for me, and my equal in all things (except lifting couches - that’s all him). I run my decisions by HIM first, because I have a tendency to have an overly optimistic view of things sometimes. He runs things by me, too, because I can see options that he doesn’t. Our partnership benefits both of us - if your marriage consists of one person ruling the other, you aren’t doing it right.
As for the OP - I don’t like strippers, male or female, based on moral grounds (I think taking clothes off for money is degrading to everyone participating in it, not the nakedness of it). I didn’t demand that my husband not have strippers, but I did ask him not to; he knows how I feel about it, and why, and it was never an issue. I think you did just the right thing, SNenc. And don’t buy into that “the wife is always right, even when she’s wrong” crap, either.
Strippers kind of squick me out, and to be honest they kind of squick my husband out, too, but at the end of the day it’s relatively innocuous in the grand scheme of things. We had a men’s night out at our neighborhood swim club and they advertised that Hooters girls would be there. Some women wouldn’t let their husbands attend. :rolleyes: I don’t know what’s more pathetic: 45 year old man hiring Hooters girls or 45 year old wives getting jealous of Hooters girls.
As to the OPer, there’s no recipe for a good marriage because you have a unique blending of personalities. If you decide to let her win this one, do it with no regrets. Don’t bring it up 5 years from now when you’re pissed about something else.