Isn’t it weird how nobody who says, “This will be the happiest day of our lives!” never seems to realize what a dour prediction this is for the rest of the marriage?
Amazingly enough, nope. As much as I’d like a nice, small, quiet wedding, it’s not worth hurting my parents to such a degree. Maybe I’ll be able to bargain her down to 100 people.
The other reason I won’t elope is the reason I posted in this thread to start - all you people who think the bride should be blissfully happy: well, the wedding isn’t the be-all-end-all of a marriage for everyone. I suspect, for me, I’ll be stressed, miserable and snappish, and I’ll be blissfully happy when I get home at night. Different strokes and all that.
If I ever get married, it’s going to be in a field. On a pleasant summer day. Among friends. With no colour-coded serviette-holders or Edwardian crystal or anything like that: it’ll be plastic cups and plates from the dollar store and a good informal chef. And Legos for the kids.
Have you ever looked at the wedding section of the New York Times? Every weekend, there are actually pictures accompanying the wedding announcement that show ONLY the bride. Now, it’s tacky enough to put what is essentially an ad in the newspaper, but can you at least acknowledge that there’s some other person involved in the process of the wedding?
I always have to suppress a chuckle when I hear that phrase too matt, because in my head the rider invariably pops up “in other words, it’s all downhill from here”.
Yes, I suppose it does sound a bit like a Trollope novel: gossip in the various ecclesiastical residences of Barsetshire etc. 
But I can assure you that the sacristan is real and he was apparently quite pissed off.
As a former banquet server, in the interest of fairness, let me at least tell you about the Grooms From Hell. Most of them are in their late 20s, never previously married, and have had drunken debauchery the night before courtesy of their three closest buds from college (these same buds will never themselves be married, mainly because they can’t find women who think flatulence is fun. During the first year of the Happy Couple’s marriage, they will have at least five knock-down drag-out fights about these guys.)
These are the grooms who get way past drunk; who start to remove the bride’s garter with their teeth but end up performing an embarrassing parody of oral sex to get their friends to laugh; who insist on shoving cake up into the bride’s nose and hair; who can’t understand why, at the end of the evening, the bride is crying. These grooms will also complain loud and long about the fact that the bar is not open during dinner, and will hassle bartenders and servers to serve them things they have not paid for, and will pitch a hissy-fit when one of those servers quietly removes drinks from the hands of underage guests.
Incidentally, there are a few Fathers-of-the-Bride who fall into the From Hell category, too.
That’s why I wish people, “May your wedding day be the worst day of your married lives.” (Preferably after the wedding day has already elapsed joyously.)
Why can’t I find a man who will marry me the way I want? I have the perfect setup, and it took me years to plan:
Run away to Las Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator.
No matter who I ask, noooo they want a nice wedding. Parents and stuff. Well, then, i’m eating barbecue chicken in my (off-white) wedding dress. And i’ll drink a little champagne, then its right back to beer, or vodka maybe.
Also, my wedding registry will include video games. Is there a video game called Bridezilla yet?
A scene:
“It’s the wrong color!”
“It’s what?”
“The cake’s the wrong color! It won’t match your dress!”
“Mom. Give the phone to (Vampy).”
Glare of Death.
“(Vampy), what color is the cake?”
“Off-white.”
Glare of Death.
“So, not…purple or something?”
“No. Just off-white. With lilacs. Is that wrong?”
“Well, the lilacs aren’t supposed to be there. Steal some roses from one of the centerpieces and put those on it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My aunt decided that the cake was the wrong shade of off-white. My cousin was mercifully calm about it. Yet another of the many reasons I’m eloping if I ever get married, though I doubt my mom would be quite this insane.
LifeOnWry, I think I’ve heard guys like this on the radio. They’re the ones who, on a beautiful sunmer Saturday, will call the local rock and roll radio station and say, “I’m getting married today! My life is over!” When I’ve heard these guys as I’ve been driving around running errands, my response is simple. If I were the unfortunate girl one of these twits was marrying, wherever he was, I would find him, tell him I’d heard what he’d said, and inform him he was getting a reprieve because there was no way I was going to marry him after that. Oh yes, it would be up to him to tell people why. This would apply even if it were less than 5 minutes before the ceremony and I was on my way to the church when I heard him.
I’m religious. When and if I ever get married, I want a priest present. For the rest, so long as family and friends have a good time and help us celebrate, nothing else is important. I like reading etiquette books and I’ve read the horror stories, including ones about people who say “I’m not coming if so-and-so is.” My response to that is, “What a shame. We’ll miss you.”
From what I’ve seen of weddings they’re insane! Where do people get the money for these things?! This months Mother Jones magazine has a two-page spread on weddings; according to it, the “cost of the average American wedding” has risen from $4,376 in 1980 to $22,360 in 2002. The article also notes that “If the average amount spent on a wedding were invested at a 10% annual return, it would pay for the expected private college tuition of an infant.” If I had $22,000 to spare, I’d pay off my car and pay a good-sized chunk of the mortgage!
People are nuts, I tell you!
CJ
Seriously, I was DREADING my wedding day. I really was. Our original plan was to grab ten friends, fly to Vegas, and elope at the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel. Unfortunately, my mother got wind of our plans, and all of a sudden, our intimate friends-only wedding had turned into an extravaganza of 75 people or more. That’s when we decided to just humor my mother and have the big wedding in my hometown.
I did NOT want to be in front of all of those people. However, I discovered after a glass of champagne, I was as happy and blissful as can be. And my mother was determined to turn the day into a 3-ring circus. I had to fight her on almost everything, from having a Sunday brunch (us) wedding vs. a Saturday night (her) wedding) to my dress down to whether the ring bearer carried a pillow or the Simpsons Season Three box set (since mr. e. proposed over an episode from that season).
By the way, I know it’s not cool to admit to having the big wedding and actually enjoying it without becoming bridezilla, but I do - now that we’ve done it with all of our family and friends around us, I wouldn’t change a thing. Even big weddings can be anti-stressful and fun. We’ve had people tell us they had the most fun at our wedding that they’ve ever had at any wedding - because we did our best to tailor the wedding to our guests’ needs - we had lots of Swing and Big Band Music, and that seemed to get everyone going. I get tired of everyone assuming (other places, not here) because we had a big wedding that 1. I must have been a bridezilla and 2. Our wedding was the same as everyone else’s.
LaurAnge, whether you do elope or having a big wedding, it probably won’t be as stressful as you think on the actual day.
E.
It’s clearly the verger’s fault! After all, everything is!
– as observed to me after a Society Wedding in a church Barb and I once did 20 years of hard time in, by the verger (a second generation verger; his father had the job before him)
I had a quite wedding in a park followed by a reception at the Holiday Inn my parents insisted on having. It was a nice change of pace for all involved.
One of my staff had a wedding over Labor Day and it was your typical big buget affair. Over two YEARS in the making and more than $10,000. My biggest issue with it was that it was no different than any other wedding I had ever been to. I talked to her later and she admitted that she had a good time but would have rather had the money to help pay for the new house. It was her parent’s idea and the new hubby wanted it as well. Go figure.
(All she really wanted was the wedding cake to be from Publix!)
That sounds a lot like my best man, except for the flatulance part, and we’ve been close friends since High School. My first wife did black ball him. In all fairness he did get me piss drunk the night before. He also had a pool with my brother and sister as to how long the marrage would last. (My sister won.)
The Most Wonderful Woman in The World (Mrs. Magill), on the other hand, is the first of his friends’ wives who has not blackballed him. Actually, on the way to the wedding site, we stopped by a small dive for a pint of liquid courage. At the bar, he made it a point to tell me what a good move I was doing by marrying her.
Mrs. Magill was not a bridezilla, I think that’s due our having realistic expectations. We were both mature enough to know that the wedding day was not her day. That’s right, the wedding is NOT about the bride. It is about the GUESTS. We wanted to get married, and would have been happy to go off to Vegas, but that would not have been fair to our families and friends. Actually, I think my wife’s family would have killed us if we had done that.
“Among my people, this is how we celebrate state funerals. Our marriage ceremonies are solemn; sober. Moments of reflection. Also regret, disagreement, argument and mutual recrimination. Once you know that it can’t get any worse, you can relax and enjoy the marriage. But to start with something like this, oh, it is a very bad sign for the future.”
- Londo Mollari
(puts on his Big Geek Hat now)
I really like this. would it concern you terrribly if I “borrowed” it? I have a couple of weddings coming up I have to attend. (My own is over; while it wasn’t the best day of my life, I must say that, so far, it is the best party I have thrown. :))
I so want a video game like that!
Bridezillas are sadly not a recent phenomenom. When my parents got engaged, they planned to a have a fancy wedding the following spring. Then my Dad got a job 200 miles away. Back then, moving in with one’s fiance was simply not done. My parents decided they didn’t want to be apart for 8 months, so Mom asked her church for the first available time, which turned out to be a few weeks away, in late september. My mother wore a dress she already owned (I think it was her prom dress or something), and they had a small party afterward at my maternal grandparents house.
My Dad’s brother had been planning a massive, expensive wedding to take place in mid-october. The bride and my grandmother threw a fit, insisting my mother was ruining her (my aunt’s) wedding my scheduling hers so close. My mother was ORDERED to put the wedding off until at least january so as to not horn in on my aunt’s spotlight. After all, it was HER special day. My mother refused, and my maternal grandmother boycotted the wedding, taking all of Dad’s family with her, including Dad’s 16 year old sister, a bridesmaid. (Dad’s brother, the groom of the giant bridezilla wedding, was the only member of his family to attend my parents wedding)
My maternal grandparents never forgave my Dad’s family. It was several years before my father would speak more than a few sentances to his mother. My mom, unbelievably well mannered soul that she is, attended Aunt Bridezilla’s wedding as a bridesmaid as had been previously planned.
The final irony? My maternal grandparents gave my mom the money they had budgeted for her wedding, which became the downpayment on their house.
Now that would be what a gayzilla would pitch a hissy fit over.
[gayzilla]“It’s ecru! I wanted Eggshell! The wedding is ruined. I can’t go on! Tell Bruce the wedding is off! I need a mimosa, quick!”[/gayzilla]