It’s pretty common, judging from the midwestern weddings I’ve attended. Just another way for Bridezilla to feel like a precious princess on her day.
If you ask me, I’d rather not have my homely junior high school pictures displayed, nor the photos of my spectacular 1983 spelling bee win, but some girls seem to like to trot out the slideshow (or, heaven help us, PowerPoint presentation, and yes, I’ve seen those, too) of every moment in her life. :rolleyes:
Stuffy! Calling Stuffy! You have some good stories to add to this thread, cmon in.
I should also specify that it’s not Karaoke if the mike’s unattended for a second and the speakers are hot. And no one wants to hear your one-lyric-repeated version of ‘Foxy Lady’, thank you sir.
Happened at my wedding reception honest to G-d.
The schoolgirl uniforms will be saved for the wedding night. I’m not a complete asshole.
Huh. I did see a power point presentation at a reception once. I assumed it was because we (the west-coast friends) had missed the wedding.
Important wedding tip: Never pass the microphone.
I blame society.
No, really. So much emphasis is placed on GETTING MARRIED!!1!!11!! for women that it really does lead to a LOT of them having that triumphal view that their entire life was just a lead-up to the dramatic and perfect CLIMAX of walking down that aisle in the white dress, regardless of such idle pleasantries as whether or not the guests (remember them?) are actually enjoying themselves or whether or not the groom (oh, yeah…him) is being mortally embarrassed by his fanged and venomous bride. Cultural lore is stuffed with perfect wedding vignettes, that this is simply their due, that if something, ANYTHING goes wrong or even slightly but not fatally off-kilter, it’s simply RUINED for them.
Truth to tell, when such things as same-sex marriages become legal in Pennsylvania, supervenusfreak and I are very likely to go to the courthouse, sign our papers, and have a quiet party with friends and family in the backyard. Neither of us is much of a drama queen or social butterfly, and frankly, if I had to either sit down and wrangle out a catering contract or stuff myself into a tuxedo, I’d just as druther run off to the woods and pledge my troth under an ancient oak or something.
My mom says that it seemed like everyone she talked to about her wedding was horrified that she’d cancelled her ‘princess’ shindig so she could-- gasp-- be married to her husband sooner.
35 years later (and still married), her only regret is that her parents’ record player was broken, and she didn’t get to dance with her father. It was her last opportunity, as he was confined to a wheelchair not long afterward. She has made me promise that no matter what kind of wedding I have, I will take 5 minutes and dance with my dad. (She fully endorses my current plan to get married in vegas with as many friends/family as want to fly out, and as little fuss as possible)
I hope Stuffy doesn’t mind if I highlight this post, because I thought of his wedding too, reading this!
Honnestly, I found the story quite appaling. Being that worried about the shade of blue of the bridesmaids garnment matching or not with the flowers sounds largely over the top to me.
Reading this kind of stuff, I wonder how people survive their or their children’s marriages. It looks more like a painful marathon than a happy celebration. No wonder that the brides are so stressed that they’re a major pain on the day of their wedding, as described in this thread.
I’m not sure I’m following you, here. The only mention of the dresses not matching the flowers that I recall was a throw-off, “it didn’t match but oh well,” sort of comment. I mean, the original dresses weren’t replaced because they were the wrong shade of blue, but rather because they were hideous, unfinished caricatures of bridesmaid dresses and completely unwearable. Replacing dresses so that your wedding pictures don’t look like someone’s idea of a practical joke doesn’t sound over the top at all to me.
Sunspace, you just described my ideal wedding day.
Jayjay, I’m sure that Wiccan friend of mine, while he’s not officially licensed to perform weddings in Pennsylvania, would be more than happy to do the honors for you. If he wouldn’t, I’ll, shall we say, “encourage” him to be! 
CJ
Yeah, no doubt. You know, this pissed me off a lot when I got married. I got married six months after graduating college, and I was the first person in my immediate family to graduate college at all, and yet all the relatives on Dad’s side of the family who totally ignored my graduation were making a huge fuss about how I was managing to do something that really, honestly, took a lot less effort than hauling my ass through school. Oh, look, I’m getting married, I finally made it! Bring on the validation! I’m a real woman now! My life is all sorted out once I walk down that aisle!
Yes, I’m still bitter. I adore my husband, we have a great life, but finding and falling in love with him was not the greatest accomplishment of my life. Making a marriage work is much more of an accomplishment, and no one’s throwing me a white-dress-catered-princess-party for getting through the every day nitty-gritty.
How YOU doin’?
I agree. The mother of the bride went to infinite trouble to ensure that every member of the wedding party would still be included (buying dresses in multiple sizes), and in fact, everyone was. She pulled off the impossible, from a handicapped scooter, no less! I say kudos to her! And I love how the MOG spent the entire wedding skulking about, not having the nerve to face anyone! Really, I hope she understood that she didn’t just disappoint the bride, she ripped her off. She was being paid, for the material, at least: where did that money go?
I happen to like this story, because unlike so many other wedding disaster stories, it has a happy ending. So many others end with “And the bride went down the aisle weeping…and this person still isn’t talking to that person…and we burned the proofs as soon as the photographer sent them…” But in this case, the whole family mobilized, and saved the wedding! And the MOB does make a good point: the color scheme wasn’t precisely what the bride had envisioned, but everyone’s smiling in the photos, and isn’t that what counts?
I think so many people get wrapped up in the details they forget the bigger picture.
Got one to add.
A couple of years ago I was working as a long-term temporary part-time secretary for several marketing Executives at a big multinational company. There wouldn’t have been any way to measure how small a cog I was in that machine. My three bosses, however, were very well-compensated and held in some regard - they’d all managed to dodge significant axing during the latest “restructuring”. I rather liked them (two men and a woman in their late 30’s) and didn’t mind the job except that it wasn’t terribly challenging.
Then the woman became engaged.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
What irked me wasn’t that she basically took the whole summer off (unofficially, she was still compensated in full while she “worked from home”) in order to plan the extravaganza, or that one of my bosses and I did her job for her during that time. It was actually fun for me to run a huge initiative that summer, doing her work; while I wasn’t paid any extra for it, I did learn a lot.
It wasn’t the time her boss had to stop a meeting to yell at her to put away the fabric samples she’d brought along, quit talking to her matron-of-honor co-worker, and start paying attention. It wasn’t that I ended up designing the program for her wedding ceremony (on company time).
It wasn’t that she sort of begrudgingly invited me to the thing, as well as her shower, which meant I was obligated to buy overpriced linens for her at Williams-Sonoma. Clearly it was something of a no-win for her - how could she exclude my riff-raff self, given that I’d listened to so many details. The wedding and reception were nice, if you like skinny rich people in black and artsy-fartsy foodstuffs served in teensy portions. Meh.
No, what really annoyed the beejesus out of me is that after they were married she and her husband continued to live in separate states! Why did she need waffle makers and scone cutters and matching bric-a-brac if she wasn’t really going to play house? Even a couple of years later, last I heard, they still weren’t co-habiting! That’s just wrong! If you’re going to have a wedding, you’ve got to face the bedfarts.
Og damn it, robotic_panda, get out of my head! That’s exactly what I want, except for two small details. I’m not all that fond of barbecue chicken (I’m leaning toward chicken-fried steak) and I have to wear pure white, all the more to slob it up. That’s been my plan since I was about eleven and still thought boys were icky.
That Stuffy post reminds me, hey Stuffy! You promised us the steakhouse story!
In retrospect, it seems like telling these stories are difficult for you, man, so I totally understand if you would rather pass. But they are great stories, and you tell them well, and you always come out looking like a great, big-hearted guy…
I think he did tell the steakhouse story, later in the thread. But it doesn’t pertain to the wedding, and it’s also not a funny story.