If you’re close enough to be asked to be in the wedding party, you’re close enough to say “Hey, I can’t quite afford this…”
Everyone is making this out to be some sort of stone-cold social contract between groups of people who couldn’t possibly talk to each other and dasn’t disappoint. They’re just friends and family! Speak up!
I paid for my bridesmaid dress for the wedding I was in. I couldn’t afford it. But I loved the couple getting married and was honored to be a part of their day and I wanted to do my part. If I told them I couldn’t swing it they’d have helped.
I have a friend who got married recently and wanted our friend A to be in the wedding, but it is known that A has been having financial difficulties. The friend put it out there to A, said she could be in it or not (the bride couldn’t afford to pick up dresses et al), A said she couldn’t do it, it was fine. Happens all the time.
I was asked to be a groomsman for a friend of mine once. He bought the jacket I was to wear, and gave me some general guidelines for the slacks, shirt and tie. And that was it! It was very simple and easy, and I got to keep the jacket!
I wouldn’t even think about going to a wedding of a friend, no matter how good, who told me I had to buy some specific outfit to wear.
The problem with that is that I can afford it. It’s not like I’ll be going into debt or skimping on food to spend $200 on a tux. So it seems awfully petty for me to say I can’t afford it. In an ideal world, I’d choose to spend my money in other ways.
So, for now, I’ll be thankful that I can grin and waste a few hundred dollars without it really affecting me, and I’ll resolve not to put my future wedding party through any such bullshit.
I’m in full agreement. The amount of social conditioning intertwined with weddings, these days, is out of control.
I had one friend decide we were going to Vegas, on top of paying for outfits, on top of a gift and other associated costs. That quickly got into four figures for various members of the party, which can sting if you have other priorities under consideration.
In another example, one person flew from Japan to the US as part of a party. Now while some say you can just politely decline participation, you now have to face down your reasoning for declining, if someone can fly from the other side of the world to attend-- and you’re just trying to save a few hundred. The costs involved are largely invisible to people, because it’s not something openly discussed, but the expectation can still be present.
And sad to say-- sometimes they get married in short time and divorced not much later…(it’s happened, more than once)…:smack:
Not to come across as a cynic or say I don’t enjoy weddings; they’re usually a great time after all is said and done, but like most of the relationships which precede them (at least for me), they’re usually fun due to the people, not necessarily what they’re wearing and other formalities. Most people just want to get to the food and dancing, anyway.
Here’s me. I say no to a lot of wedding invitations. I also say no to every bridesmaid request. (I’ve never been asked to be a MOH.) The only one I never had a choice in was my SO’s sister-in-law.
To say this hasn’t cost me is foolish! It does have an emotional cost and emotional extortion attached to it. Those people will never be my close friends again. I lost them when I said no.
Sometimes I am sorry to have to put that distance between us. Back when it was purely because of cost, I was sorry. Sometimes I am not sorry one bit.
Either way, just saying “I can’t afford it” doesn’t always float. Then a few months later you buy something you needed and you hear the passive-aggressive coments about how you can afford that but not the wedding!
And I don’t even have that many Christian friends that would want a Christian wedding with bridesmaids and such. Hindu weddings don’t have such a thing. They have specific designated roles, and if you don’t have someone to fill those roles, IME you just go without.
There is nothing about a Christian wedding that requires bridesmaids. It’s part of the traditional Western wedding, which generally includes a church service of some kind, but there is no Christian church that won’t allow you to marry without attendants. It is totally optional.
I’ve been to several Hindu weddings in America that had a full set of attendants. It really just is a Western construct that inserts itself into Christian/Hindu/Non-religious/etc weddings alike.
My daughter’s bridesmaids actually did wear their dresses again. We found them at Dillards in the evening wear section not the bridal section. She tried one on to see how a skinny girl would look and I tried one on to see how a slightly chubby girl would look (from the neck down). Liked the look and bought one for each of the bridal party. They were on sale and cost only about $50 bucks. Everyone was happy.
But the point is that I don’t know how much being in your wedding party is going to cost me. Maybe it’s a small affair that will only set me back $200. But if it’s a humongo thing, and you expect to have a fabulous dream wedding complete with Wilson Phillips and everything, then I’d need to know this before saying yes, right? Or am I just supposed to figure out this is what you want, given your personality?
I’m not being snarky with this question. I sincerely don’t know the protocol. Is it reasonable for a person to ask upfront how much their dress (at least) will cost? Or is this rude? Seems to me it would be. But I don’t know how these things work.
(Because if a person should expect to be met with sighs and rolly-eyes by asking that question, then no wonder people bail out of weddings at the last minute. They obviously didn’t know what they were getting into. And I can’t see how that’s completely their fault.)
There isn’t any “protocol.” But the disconnect can come in because when most brides are doing the asking of their bridesmaids they sincerely DON’T KNOW how much the dresses will cost. A lot of women ask their nearest and dearest in the first flush of excitement over the engagement, before they really talk about the brass tacks of finances, and genuinely do not know what the dresses will cost. Most of the time, brides will look to find a dress that flatters all of their bridesmaids, and sometimes it’s $50 and sometimes it’s $350.
There is nothing wrong, etiquette-wise, with asking “I am so flattered! Thank you so much for asking me!!! But I have to say, money has been kind of tight for me, and I don’t know how much I can afford to spend. Do you know what kind of budget you’re looking at?” and most brides will be able to name a target, or offer to defray expenses or pay for the dress. But if the response is sniffs and eye-rolls, then the bride is a bitch.
A lot of people are just jerks. This is not specific to weddings. But it’s a convenient place for jerkassery to come out.
What’s even more insulting is that when the groom sends all his groomsmen to a shop to rent their tuxes, they almost always throw the groom’s tux in for free.
I am pretty much the worst groomsman you could ever ask for: I hate having my picture taken, I look perfectly ridiculous in a tuxedo, and I’m usually so sweaty and exhausted from the wedding and all the pre-wedding work and the horrible rented clothing that I’m no fun at the reception. So I guess it’s to my credit that I have so many friends and family members who ask me to be one anyway. I can afford it just fine, and I do everything I can to be a good sport, but I’m afraid my opinion of the whole enterprise is hard to suppress.
My sister got married last year, and as soon as I heard I let it be known that anything I didn’t have to spend renting a tux would be reflected in the wedding gift. She’s a smart girl, so she asked me to play the piano instead. (Yes, I made good.)
How was wearing that dress really “doing your part”, though? The issue for me, and many others, is that the expenses are not to make a marriage, or even a wedding, possible, but often just a more socially acceptable version of My Super Sweet 16.
The problem, though, is that I think a lot of brides think “Oh, the dress is $100” and not don’t really think about the dress + the shoes + the jewelry + the hair and makeup sessions + the nails . . . weddings may be the worst thing in the world for add-ons, and when you’re already in $150 and the bride calls and says “OMG! Such and such stylist agreed to do our hair and faces before the wedding which is awesome and we are getting a group rate of $75 each which is AMAZING because she usually charges $115 but she’s a friend of my future MIL so we got a break!” what can you say?
There’s also my favorite, which is when a friend of someone’s mother who sews volunteers to sew the dresses and they turn out terrible and cheap, because someone who can stitch up an A-line dress always underestimates the task of 3-5 serious dresses. So then you are stuck paying for a bunch of fabric and the emergency dress afterwards.
This thread (along with others) and my own experience of getting married and being in a handful of wedding parties makes me think that getting married is one of the biggest hassles that most adults will endure.
I always wanted - and still would love - a huge Hindu wedding, preferably in India, and the thing is, my family would probably pay for at least some of it. But now at almost 40 it just seems silly and a bit of a hassle. (plus like so many girls I dreamed of the wedding but not the marriage). After sixteen years already of being with my SO I am content with a justice of the peace, a sari, and my friends and family around me.
My groomsmen were in cheesecloth poet shirts and custom waistcoats that we paid for. They supplied their own black pants. The bridesmaids were in custom dresses we paid for. If you’re going to dictate what people wear at your wedding that precisely, only fair you pay for it.
However, having said that - if you’re just going to be in a tux, that’s just like any other formal do - rent or wear your own, but that shouldn’t be at the couple’s expense, IMO. It’s only custom things that should incur the cost.
It’s what they wanted, and I wanted to help give it to them. It wasn’t some weird-ass Barbie wedding, either, it was very run-of-the-mill Midwestern. Well except for the crown - it was Russian Orthodox Midwestern
I guess we’ll have to chalk this up to “things people do differently” because I just can’t fathom the idea of being close enough friends with someone to be in their wedding, but at the same time being afraid to speak my mind to them or tell them that I can’t afford what they are asking me to do. It’s clear that these sorts of relationships exist but I’m glad I’m not a part of any of them.
