The obligatory link to Etiquette Hell
If you want to read one of the funniest stories ever written, go to the above site and click on “Wedding Etiquette”. On the side click on the “Titanic Wedding disaster” But it has a happy ending!
Cuntator, I think Desmo was just having some fun with you. 
I used to work fancy weddings. I probably did over 200 of them. To answer your question honestly, no, I never saw the groom cause any fuss at his wedding. It was always the bride, her mother, or one of the bridesmaids. They seem to be coached quite well on this task.
The ONLY thing I was even a little nervous about at my own wedding was the fact that the wedding cake hadn’t shown up by the time the girls were shooed downstairs before the ceremony. And I had good reason - apparently, the baker we’d chosen had FORGOTTEN to deliver someone’s wedding cake a few months prior (we didn’t know this when we booked him), and I was panicked that he was going to do the same at ours. But I was just nervous about it, I wasn’t snapping or yelling at anyone.
Other than that, I don’t think I stopped smiling from the minute I got up until the minute we left the ceremony (well, okay, I didn’t smile when I tripped and went flying in my wedding dress, and broke my hand, but we didn’t know it was broken at the time). My family and friends commented that I was one of the least nervous, and happiest, brides that they’d ever seen.
For chrissakes, a wedding is SUPPOSED to be happy! I’ve never understood women who turn into complete fucking Miniature Satans on their wedding day. Have a good time, marry the guy you love. If a flower falls out of your bouquet, a flute hits a wrong note, or the altar isn’t as clean as you expect, you’re still going to be married at the end of the day. That’s the most important thing.
E.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Vocalist.
I’ve sung at over 100 weddings in my time, and I can’t ever recall the groom being a problem. He usually just does what he’s told. It’s always the brides who are the difficult ones. Or worse - the brides’ mothers. I recall one mother who gave us detailed specifications of the music we were to sing as *she * entered the church, completely ignoring the fact that her dramatic processional “theme” was going to overshadow her daughter’s entrance a few minutes later.
So why is that? My goal at my wedding was to get through it with no fistfights, and then never think of that day again. I LOVE being married, but I was not looking forward to the wedding day. It was something to get through. Like root canal, or an episode of Designing Women.
I reckon my wife didn’t have time to go all 'zilla on anyone’s arse.
We were visiting Las Vagas (from Australia), woke up in the morning and were married that afternoon.
I reckon (apart from choosing a ‘chapel’) that the whole thing (including waiting in line with passports to get our marriage licence) took 20 minutes.
And that included the time for the drunk down the back of the chapel to be coerced into being a witness.
No time to get 'zilla on anything.
AMEN. Women who dare to even allow the teensiest of scowls to mar their face when they, the lucky ones, who’ve managed to find and “CATCH” the man of their dreams, SHOULD be over the top happy about it, need to be tied to a fire ant hill naked!!!
GRRRRRR, the ingratitude, the IDiOCY, the sheer arrogance, entitlement and inexplicable reasoning behind the bridezilla just makes me want to grab an uzi and take the whining little bitches out.
Were I ever lucky enough to be marrying the man I adore? I’d be so zoned out in a state of happy bliss, I could be marrying in jeans and in a basement AA meeting place and still only have eyes for him.
Sheesh, they should be so ashamed of themselves.
I can’t understand the obsession some women have with their weddings. To me it shows that (along with being self-absorbed control freaks) they don’t actually have any grasp of what marriage is supposed to be. The groom to them is just a prop for their big, attention sucking, “look at me” extravaganza. They think marriage is all about the wedding and that’s an extremely immature perception. Marriage is not the wedding. The wedding day is the least important day of a marriage.
And it’s not like anyone besides the bride and maybe her mother really gives a crap about the details anyway.
Admit it, Cunctator. You are some sort of a time traveler from the 19th century.
You can’t fool me. Nice try, though. The sacristan was furious… Hee hee. I’ve gotta work that one into a story somehow.
Personally, I blame it mostly on the freakin’ bridal industry, Dio. Granted, I blame everything from tooth decay to the Kennedy assassinations on the bridal industry, but this time it really is their fault. They’re the ones putting all the emphasis on the party, and none on the commitment. They’re the main proponents of the view that your wedding day is the best and happiest day of your whole entire life, and the best, happiest day of your whole entire life deserves the very peak of perfection in everything. It all feeds the mindset that if anything is less than the peak of perfection, this day won’t be the best and happiest ever, and thus the entire wedding day will be ruined, just ruined. (I personally find the idea that your wedding is the peak of your existance and from there on it’s just a long, slow descent into death to be weird and rather insulting to one’s spouse. But nobody asked me.)
And even the most laid-back bride can be pushed into Bridezilla behavior under the right set of circumstances. I like to think I’m about as far from Bridezilla as a woman could possibly be, but I came damn close to several Bridezilla meltdowns after dealing with vendors who refused to just give me a simple yes-or-no answer about the availability of their location, other vendors who couldn’t be pinned down to a price range or menu selection, family members who kept changing their minds about whether or not they were coming and adding people on and taking them off the guest list, and a chief resident who was being such a pain in the ass about scheduling around the date after the program directors had assured us it was no problem that we rescheduled the whole damn wedding. And if he hadn’t set straight the people who expected him to spend most of his first day of vacation, the day we were supposed to leave, at the hospital, there would have been a Bridezilla rampage that would have made the national news.
I’ll grant you that Dr.J took pretty much all of this in stride. No big deal. That’s because he wasn’t the one having to deal with all the bullshit. He wasn’t the one trying to get a straight answer out of the vendors. He wasn’t the one trying to figure out how to set up the room and how many tables we’d need. He wasn’t the one trying to figure out how many people to write the catering contract for. He wasn’t the one trying to come up with decorations. He wasn’t the one trying to plan the ceremony. He wasn’t the one people came to with their bitching and whining and pissing and moaning about the arrangements. No, that was all me, and it was more than a wee smidge nervewracking.
I think that’s the other part of the Bridezilla puzzle. When you’ve never organized soemthing like this before and never will again, and you feel like it’s all on your shoulders (which in a whole lot of cases, it is) it can get overwhelming fast. The added stress generally doesn’t improve one’s disposition and capacity for dealing with glitches.
Good Lord
Diogenes, we finally agree on something 100%. I could have written that myself. I have been meaning to start a Pit thread about this myself for a while. It really and truly makes me sick and undermines the foundation of marriage when it a wedding is presented as a giant shrine to the bride and nothing more. I blame the wedding industry, the media, and the bride’s family for instilling this belief. I have a young daughter and another on the way and I will try to instill values that protect against this belief.
Given a choice, I intend to have a wedding as far removed from the everyday “Victorian” style as possible. I want to get married in a church, in a circa 13th century ceremony, in a half-hour (not counting sermon) or less, and then have a party (not a reception!!!) with a home-made cake, snacks, and champaign… at home. And not with 300 guests either. Family and friends only, please. And as few gifts as possible. I intend to have everything I need before getting married. And later that day I want to be on a flight somewhere else, fortheloveofpete.
But don’t you see-it’s Her Special Day and you have to bow down and kiss her ass or you’re an evil cruel mean person trying to spoiler Her Day!
God, I hate that kind of crap.
As a photojournalist I have shot wars, shootings, fires and natural disasters, and think nothing about it.
I will not, however, shoot another wedding unless I owe someone a big, big favor.
“You made my daughter look fat,” (She’s 300 pounds lady, I had little to do with that). “You don’t capture my daughter’s true beauty,” (Ya wanna quess why lady?). “You let his family have more pictures of them then us,” (There were 54 of them and three of you, what do you expect?). “But I look short in this picture,” (Your husband is 6’8". Godzilla would look short next to him).
I have heard these and about 100 other complaints from either brides or brides’ mothers. Give me an earthquake any day.
Most wedding stories I’ve heard about are from after the wedding, or involve the catering somehow, as my boss has another catering business attached to the cafe. Nearly all the problems are cause by the distaff side, either the bride, her mother, or mother-in-law to be.
Being as I have decorated cakes the one that made me cringe the most came from a co-worker, who did catering at a previous job. this all happened before the ceremony. Seems she was helping set up the buffet line, and the baker was bringing in a lovely wedding cake. According to my co-worker the groom’s mother was hassling the bride, trying to pick a fight, or antagonize her. The bride kept trying to back off. Maybe the MIL to be from hell didn’t like sonny’s choice, because suddenly she walked over to the cake and lashed out at it with her fist, with ugly damage to one of the tiers. My co-worker had to hold back the baker, who went for the MIL, while the poor bride started to cry. Someone sent for the groom’s father, who obviously knew his wife was a bitch, because the first thing he said when he came on scene was “What has she done now?”
The MIL was allowed to attend the ceremony, under the eye of her husband, but couldn’t attend the reception. I don’t remember if the baker was able to doctor up the cake or not.
Fortunately for me, my wife was pretty much the anti-zilla. Her priorities were pretty much to make everything as casual and comfortable for everyone else as possible and to not sweat the details. We got married on the back porch of her parents’ farmhouse in front of about 50 guests. The whole ceremony took about ten minutes from start to finish and then it was just an outdoor party with homemade food and lots of beer. Her mom had done some things like put flowers all over the place but it was done in a very casual manner.
The only thing “professional” was a beautiful cake that was made by my father-in-law, a retired, former bakery owner who brought his equipment of the shed for one last wedding cake.
I can tell you right now, it’s not going to be my Big Day. It’s going to be my mother’s Big Day. The best I can hope for is the ability to choose my own dress and bridesmaids, and maybe whether we serve fish or meat at the dinner.
Can I just BE married without the wedding please?
Yup. It’s called elopement. You mom may not talk to you for a couple months, but isn’t that worth it to bypass all the stress and craziness?