Banquet Bear, with all due respect, you’re not exactly an unbiased opinion because you get paid to photograph non-weddings.
It’s not just “their day” if they invite guests, have a bridal party, etc. - people who need to be treated with respect and etiquette. In this thread alone we have people who would feel hurt and/or have their intelligence insulted by being part of a wedding where the participants are already married.
I’d hope somebody would give her fair warning at some point, to avoid offending her friends and family if she can help it.
LOL. So they lied! And back at you - saying “signing a bit of paper” is a strawman too.
Completely and fundamentally disagree. IMO, the majority of people that I know disagree also. Different things are important to different people. Many view the signing of papers as a mere matter of legality. The solemnization of the marriage is the important part to many people, whether it’s true for you or not.
That’s totally OK. My point, though, is that a diverse motley crew of people will be attending a wedding, pretty much all of whom are semi-important people to maintain relationships with after the wedding. Some people like yourself will not be offended at all at a “secretly previously married” scenario, but others will and their opinions are just as valid. Why step into that minefield if you can avoid it?
I recently attended the wedding of friends that were already married. I only found out in passing that they were, though. I thought they were only just living together.
I doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. They invited me to witness them giving vows, and to party with them afterward. Should they be denied that, simply because they could not afford it when they signed papers?
To the OP, while I have no problem with the ceremony nearly a year later, I feel that Prodigal handled it very poorly and should have been more up front with those closely involved in the planning process.
This thread is in IMHO, a place where we get to express our opinions. It would be a very quiet place if those with biases were not allowed to comment.
Of course I get paid to shoot “non-weddings.” Can you explain how “non-weddings” are different from “non-non weddings?” How exactly am I supposed to tell the difference?
Of course its their day. Nearly every wedding invites guests. Almost every wedding has a bridal party. (although the last one I shot actually didn’t.) Guests were not treated with disrespect at the “non wedding.”
Why would you get upset if you were invited to a wedding when the bride and groom were already married? Can you explain why your intelligence has been insulted?
There was a documentary crew that filmed a group of people in an office over a number of years. Over the course of those years a couple of employees met, they fell in love, and after a wonderful period of courtship eventually got married in a beautiful ceremony. You can watch it here:
I see smiles, laughter and happiness. I fail to see why the smiles, laughter and happiness should evaporate because the happy couple actually signed the papers either earlier in the day, earlier in the week or earlier in the year.
Isn’t that what a wedding day is all about? To celebrate the love of two people? To share that celebration with friends and family?
What a horrible thing to do. Only a catty horrible person would do that.
You don’t appear to know what a strawman is.
And as I said before: I’m not seeing the lie.
The wedding day is something very special to the bride and the groom. If they viewed the signing of the papers as nothing but signing of papers, and the see the wedding day as the real wedding day, it isn’t a lie to tell everyone that this is their wedding day. Because that is how they perceive it. And they are not wrong to do so.
And it would take a bitter, cynical person to spoil their fun by calling it a “an anniversary party with pretensions”. That simply isn’t a nice thing to do.
Slightly off topic, but I am curious - Would people feel differently if the scenario was reversed?
If you attended a wedding with all the pomp and ceremony and then later found out that the couple hadn’t legally married at all (presuming, of course, it was legal for them to do so?)
The situation came up in my social circle recently. Big White Wedding, lots of guest, etc. Several years later, the couple broke up. One party confided everything was much easier since they had never been legally married at all. Many people felt completely taken in…
If you’re expected to keep secrets and tell lies as if you’re in a bad Three’s Company episode, chances are it’s a non-wedding.
It makes me question the couple’s character and motives - is this whole thing just staged for gifts and attention? Why wasn’t I good enough to be told earlier? Did they think guests wouldn’t come otherwise? What else are they lying about?
Why on earth would you post a video from The Office to make that point? Did you really watch that show for years without realizing it’s not a documentary? Hot damn, you just made my day.
It’s not bitter or cynical to care about treating guests respectfully or tamp down bridezilla behavior where the adulation is more important than the commitment (I’m sure the husband feels honored by that). I’m not saying this to anyone I know, but I think people can handle a bit of truth from internet strangers.
I don’t get what is so difficult to understand about the fact that the kid lied to his own mother. He lied. To his mother (and father and stepfather that all had a hand in raising him) about a pretty big milestone in one’s life. They were already married and had been.
You can dance with the semantics, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were already married and lied about that.
All of these examples of people signing marriage certificates on one day and having a “wedding” another day are missing the point.
A wedding is defined as a marriage ceremony. These kids had already done that part. You can certainly choose to have two types of weddings- a legal one and a ceremonial one for whatever reason.
But the fact that the second one is “ceremonial” and not “legal” because the marriage has already taken place should not be hidden, and especially not from the PARENTS of the groom. The OP isn’t talking about friends, acquaintances, distant cousins… he’s talking about the groom’s **parents. **
If one of my kids did that - the LYING part- I would sure as hell be pissed. If, on the other hand, they said, “We are going to get married legally at a courthouse for xyz reasons, but we really want a full wedding ceremony and we want you to be a part of that” I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. Something quite similar happened with my stepdaughter, as a matter of fact, and we fully understood and supported her decision.
It is not okay to lie. And it’s not ok to deceive people who love you and have supported you and especially if it’s in order to get something from them. That’s just wrong.
I keep meaning to mention this this, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this distinction made before. Here’s the thing- nobody thinks watching people sign the piece of paper is important. Everybody thinks the solemnization is important. The thing is , some people think the legal and binding solemnization is the life-changing event and not a ceremony repeated six months or a year or two or ten later. My husband and I could have booked the church, rented a hall, gathered together a bridal party, said our vows and thrown a big party every November for the last 27 years but only the first would have been a wedding- the rest would have been vow renewals. I don’t think anyone in this thread would believe that all 27 would be of equal significance.
*although I must say I’ve been to a few delayed receptions and even more “one wedding-two receptions” and have never seen the ceremony repeated.
The legal paperwork is irrelevant. I’ve been to weddings where it happened before, sometimes well before, after, and not at all. It made no difference. The legal status is nobody’s business but the couple’s and the state’s. It isn’t deception or a lie if they keep it to themselves.
Because the only difference I could see was there wasn’t a signing of the register. Everything else played out as weddings play out. If there actually is a real objective difference can you please point that out?
Even the situation in the OP wasn’t a secret. The groom told people that they were already married. In the words of the OP this was considered by the bride to be her real wedding, so telling people it was their wedding isn’t a lie.
This strikes me as irrational: but if thats how you feel then thats how you feel. I’m not as judgemental as you. I don’t consider that I’m so important that my feelings have to be taken into consideration when someone else is planning their own wedding. But each to their own.
Because Rule of Funny trumps all?
Because you don’t know what a real fake wedding looks like, so I thought I’d show you?
Because you seem to think that a wedding is not a celebration of love, but a stressful, life changing no going back legal event?
If you want to believe that I actually think that this is a documentary you are welcome to.
Well at least you’ve got your biases out in the open.
I’ve been photographing weddings for four years.
Before that I spent 15 years in the hospitality and events industry.
Never had to deal with a bridezilla. I’m sure they exist. But they aren’t typical.
Wanting your wedding day to be “your day” is not bridezilla behaviour. Its just normal behaviour. And letting the day be about the bride and groom is a polite thing to do.
And if you really feel that a wedding for a couple that are already married is “an anniversary party with pretensions” then you should have the courage of your convictions and tell them that. At least then you could be the shining example of an honest upstanding citizen and you can show them that they are deluded fools. And they would get a better idea who their real friends are.
…there is a huge backstory to the OP: and we only get to examine a small part of this. This was the OP’s step son: he had to be persuaded by the wife to attend the wedding in the first place, and appeared to resent helping out financially. Even the process of helping out is called “subsidizing.”
Just from the words of the OP we can see the relationship between step son and father is not a great one. We aren’t getting the full story, but that isn’t the OP’s fault, as I said earlier we are all biased. We know the step dad was pissed. But the OP didn’t share the opinion of the mum.
We don’t know the step son lied. We do know that the bride considered this the real wedding, and I have no problem believing the step son believed the same.
Different people have different weddings. A Mormon couple is going to be married in a closed door temple ceremony. A gay couple in Georgia might not ever be legally wed, but the state can’t stop them having a wedding and living as a married couple. Some religions might not consider the marriage complete until it’s consummated. An efficient couple may just drop by the courthouse. Some couple have sham weddings for benefits, and never live as a married couple.
The only thing that matters is what the couple considers their wedding. As long as they only have one of them as a couple, I’m not going to worry about the details-- I just want to celebrate the couple.
Not every wedding is a gift grab or Pinterest explosion or. tribute to the bride. I have no real interest in these things (we live in a tiny apartment and need for nothing.) We genuinely just want our families and friends to have some food and drinks, dance and have fun.
The OP’s son blurted it out while drunk AFTER the wedding. And if you can’t fathom why putting on a show like this might be beneath the dignity of adults (even if it looks exactly like a real wedding), then I don’t know what to tell ya. Maybe communication is impossible.
I can’t make heads or tails of either your rambling or your non-sequitur videos.
There is such a thing as social etiquette, which goes BOTH ways between the bride/groom and the guests. I get it that you’re a hopeless romantic and a sucker for love stories, so you’ll happily roll with whatever is thrown at you. Nothing wrong with that. But some people would resent being manipulated (that’s the whole point of this thread!), and their opinion is no less valid.
…well thats how the OP characterized it. But the OP wasn’t there, was he?
And a wedding is not a “show.” Its a wedding.
I answered your question. And I showed a funny video. What more do you want?
The OP resented his step son way before he found out they were already married. If it wasn’t this that pissed him off I’m sure it would have been something else.
And social etiquette is such a subjective thing that you are never going to please everyone. There are no absolute rules. When issues of etiquette invariably cropped up during weddings I co-ordinated: I would tell the bride and groom what the established principals were, then reminded them that ultimately this is your wedding, this is your day, and you need to do what you feel is best. And if that upsets the occasional person who considers that he is “not good enough to be told something”, then so be it.
should get slapped with either a wet trout or other large fish for not being clear on the situation, I have some frozen salmon you can borrow.
And stop feeding that troll.
We’ve had several of those in my own circles, but it has always been clear from the start that it was a religious ceremony with no civil involvement. In general, it’s not because of “what if we split up?” (they wouldn’t be having a Catholic ceremony if that was the case) but because of taxes, pensions or the attitude of HR at the bride’s job (many companies will not offer certain positions to a married woman but will reluctantly offer them to a single one).
That’s very strange to me. The Catholic Church where I got married would not marry us unless it was also a legally binding ceremony. The priest wouldn’t go forward with the ceremony unless he had the license in his hand.
To me, the signing of the paperwork is not the stressful part. It’s the wedding day itself, going in front of all those people and publicly declaring your love. Signing legal papers is easy.
I do agree that it wasn’t cool not to tell the parents. I’d probably be upset as a parent. But as a guest? I wouldn’t care in the least. The last “non-wedding wedding” I shot the bride and groom had a “secret” (in that only close immediate family knew about it) home ceremony, because according to their Hindu priest, they had to get married on an “auspicious” day, and the day they wanted their ceremony (a month or so later) wasn’t an auspicious day astrologically. So they had a quiet home ceremony which I attended, and in which the paperwork was signed, but the general guest population for the full-blown wedding celebration were not told about it. It’s really, in my opinion, none of their business as to the technicalities. To me, the important part is sharing the day with your friends and family and throwing them a great party to celebrate this momentous occasion with them. And that’s the day they celebrate on their anniversary, because that is the date that was important to them and the date they announced to all their friends and families as witnesses their union as husband and wife. Different strokes for different folks.
Why on earth would you post a video from The Office to make that point? Did you really watch that show for years without realizing it’s not a documentary? Hot damn, you just made my day. 