The reception is at the same hotel that everyone is staying… expecting maybe as many as 200 guests…
the bride-to-be’s mother had an interesting suggestion… to avoid drunk friends and relatives who would think it’s oh-so-funny to barge into our suite at the hotel and razz/prank us, it might be a good idea if we secretly booked a room in a nearby hotel instead, without telling the various partiers, so we can spend the night in peace.
As you can imagine, between having the reception at the hotel and having a block of rooms reserved there, the hotel is including for us a nice suite at no cost.
What do you guys think about the likelihood of getting crap from wedding reception guests? Is it something you’ve seen often? Is it a legitimate concern?
That sounds pretty jerky. Just don’t tell anyone which room you’re in. Although, in my experience, it’s more likely that the guests will sneak it ahead of time and stock the room with romantic items and sexual devices. Once the bride and groom go to their room, everyone else is too tired to go bother them.
I think it really depends where you are and whom you hang out with. I understand that shivarees are considered normal in some parts of the country, but are probably dying out as a tradition. The significant questions, I believe, are who besides your future mother-in-law would think of this, and would the crowd go along with the idea.
Mildy funny story: Years ago some friends got married, had a nice informal reception, but because the groom grew up where shivarees were practiced - and hated them - they would not say where they were staying that night. However, some of the guests deduced which hotel they were in from conversation with the bride. After they left the reception, we gave them a little time to get settled in and then someone called her at their hotel room to say she’d left something at the reception. That’s as far as we went, but we heard later that it had the desired effect. Once the groom realized who had called, he said “they know where we are!” and spent some time worrying about when we would come to visit.
So, uh, does the suite not have locks on its doors? Unless your guest list contains a lot of ninjas, professional burglars, and assassins, I’d think that would be pretty effective.
I don’t think it’s very common. I’ve only heard one story, of some friends of the groom who snuck into the newlyweds’ room beforehand, and hid under the bed. Then when the newlyweds arrived and started doing what newlyweds do, the friends were too embarrassed to do anything. It was one of those FOAF stories, so I don’t even know if it was true.
Snopes only mentions one story like this in its wedding section, and rates it unverifiable.
My wife’s family do things like this. It’s usually pretty harmless, but there have been a few times things have gotten out of hand. When we got married we refused to tell the family which state we were spending our first night in (I told them somewhere between Virginia and Florida).
If the hotel has set you up with a nice suite that you don’t want to lose, you could always try a bit of reverse psychology and mention, causally, that you have booked a hotel room at a neighboring hotel and ask that no one disturbs you. You then have to sneak up to your suite and enjoy your evening (and night, and morning, and mid-morning, and maybe once more before lunch…)
It is extremely common in some cultures (the rule rather than the exception), and unheard of in others. If you think it’s likely based the customs of your friends / family or your bride’s friends / family, it’s probably likely. If your future-mother-in-law is remembering the customs of a generation ago or a different country, it may not be anything to worry about.
You can always enlist the help of the best man and / or hotel staff to prevent it from being YOUR problem.
A “nice” suite, huh? Then all you need to do is brag about your “presidential penthouse” or whatever the actual top of the line room is within earshot of the pranksters.
I’m thinking that’s a mighty good idea. Engage in a little subterfuge… “let slip” that we’re staying at “an undisclosed location” so as to have a little privacy… that’s not even untrue… then just go back to the suite.
Also like the idea of enlisting the aid of best man to throw the dogs off the trail. “I don’t know where they are. I know at one point they mentioned considering the Holiday Inn up the road, but they may or may not have ended up doing that…”
I was best man for my friend’s wedding and during the afternoon he gave me a spare key to his suite! I couldn’t believe it, why would he do such a silly thing? He said it was for if we needed to use the room before the wedding for organization or moving things - very practical, but very foolish. In the end, all I did was hastily prepare the room for his night, providing a manual I made for the occasion explaining just what needed to be done to consummate the marriage properly. Some other props were put in place to make sure the night went off correctly and humorously.
As to actually intruding or disturbing in the night - some of our friends think this is hilarious. I don’t find it quite as funny, so I made sure that after the reception they were left alone.
If it were my wedding night, it would be precisely as common as the perpetrators of such nonsense getting their heads torn off and rolled down the hall.
In my culture, it’s tradition for the couple’s friends to party with the couple through the wedding night and play pranks and jokes until dawn. It’s actually a lot of fun. The couple is not allowed to be alone together until the third night after the wedding. Even then, some degree of pranking is expected. Hey, it’s a celebration; why be humorless about it?
In my culture, it’s tradition for friends of the groom to “steal” the bride. They take her to an undisclosed locaton and send a representative to demand a ransom for the bride’s return. Usually it’s a case of Cognac or somesuch booze, and perhaps a goofy song from the groom. This often gets out of hand and the families get pretty upset.
I’ve worked in a lot of hotels and it will happen once in awhile. The hotel may be able to arrange a trade if they have a sister hotel in the same city. If that hotel isn’t going to be booked for the night.
The real thing is almost always someone tells the wedding party where the bride and groom are staying. Hotel staff are very good at not giving out room numbers 'cause they can get in big trouble. But there are easy ways of getting around that.
For example bring something unique and say “I know you can’t give out the room number but can I give you this gift to place in the bride and groom’s room so they’ll have it when they check in.” Then just camp out and follow the bellman or whoever takes it up. (this could be a bit of a challenge but not really if you have a bunch of people in different locations)
The real problem is, even if you got a room at another hotel, that info will get out somehow. Someone besides the bride and groom will know and a wedding is happy and people aren’t too careful with that info so a determained person will get that information.
The better plan is if you’re sure that’ll happen, have the reception go on till like 2am and everyone will be tired by then and go home. (hopefully)
One thing to remember if someone wants to be a jerk about it, they will avail in that aspiration.
I dunno, coitus interuptus just doesn’t seem to be all that much of a knee-slapper to me. But different cultures have different traditions, and if I was of one of those cultures, I suppose I would play along or whatever was expected.
Do you suppose that they actually try to have sex with everyone in the room with them? I think I mentioned that the couple is not allowed to be alone until the third night.
Well, yeah, but I was referring more to the other examples upthread where they would go harass the bride and groom after they had retired, or at least that’s what it sounded like they were doing. If it’s an understood tradition that you have to wait 3 days before being alone with your spouse, that’s a different story.
