I hate everybody–sometimes it goes one way, sometimes it goes the other.
My best friend had me as her MOH, and I suspect it’s because her sister didn’t have her as her maid of honor in her wedding. Kind of a tit for tat thing. I just went with it. Being the MOH is a bit of a pain in the ass, especially if you’re short on funds, but it’s hard to say no when you’re being asked.
I still think the MOH in the OP is a cheap ass beeyotch, though.
Okay, I went to one of those “parties” this weekend, and if my MOH tried to pull that shit as my bachlorette party, I’d likely not speak to her again. That is the epitome of tacky.
Weddings have been out of hand for a long time. I remember reading something (not the greatest cite I know) about a law in 17th century Venice that restricted the number of course that could be served at the wedding breakfast because things had gotten out of hand.
I’ve only officially been “in” one wedding. I lived halfway across the country so couldn’t be expected to come in and throw parties, I was a single mom living on a shoestring, and my friend who was getting married was not only considerate but brilliant – she asked me to take the admittedly huge responsibility of keeping her mother out of her hair to prevent Mom driving her absolutely nuts for the three days prior to the wedding and right up to the moment she walked down the aisle. She asked a local friend, who also had lots of expendable $$, to take the MOH job, and she did a lovely job. I had three fun days of dealing with her mom, but hey, it made her wedding a lot nicer that way; her mom can tizzy with the best of them. (Last year, at her son’s bar mitzvah, my assigned task was to tell her husband’s idiotic relatives exactly what she thought of them but was too polite to say. It was great fun!)
There are too many people deciding that when you get asked to be a MOH/bridesmaid/etc., you have to spend X amount of money and have to do this and that and on and on and on. And weddings are turning more and more into unashamed gift grabs. It’s really gotten out of hand. For hours of entertainment on the idiocies that people perpetrate in the name of one perfect day, check out Etiquette Hell – it’s a real eye-opener.
I’m just grateful that my daughter wants a simple wedding. I’d have a hard time dealing with most of the insanity that passes for “the right way to have a wedding” these days.
Could be so.
I suspect the “wedding as source of absurd conspicuous consumption & anxiety” is getting more out of hand in recent years, at least as opposed to what it was in living memory - sadly, in spite of my relatively old age, “living memory” does not in my case include the 17th century. 
… 
I don’t understand why you–or anybody else–should plan the bachelorette party, if the MOH is supposedly the designated Official Planner. I actually don’t understand why you took over the planning of the shower, either. I’m a big believer in letting people lie down in the beds they’ve made, so I would have let the MOH come up with, yeah, a lameass cheapskate shower and/or bachelorette party, or no party at all, and let the entertainment chips fall where they may. Where does it say that it’s your responsibility to make sure the bride has a “WONNNNNNNderful!!!” party? She’s the one who selected this lameass cheapskate as her MOH, she must know what she’s like. She was probably pleasantly surprised when you stepped in and took over the shower, but hey, her future life as a Married Woman wouldn’t have been ruined forever if the MOH had come up with a lameass cheapskate shower, or with no shower at all. Hey, that’s the way life works sometimes–you delegate someone to do something, and then she doesn’t, and so, no party. Life sucks sometimes, but there it is.
Me, I’d just sit back with my hands in my pockets and do nothing about the bachelorette party. You already busted your butt getting the shower done (when you didn’t have to), and you need to stop automatically stepping in to bail this woman out on things. For one thing, she may have discovered in Life that whenever she drops the ball, other people will step in and catch it for her, so she’s learned that she never needs to do any actual work, why should she. She didn’t have to plan the shower, she’s probably anticipating that she won’t have to plan the bachelorette party either. She may have discovered that the minute she says cheerily, about any sort of gathering whatsoever, “It can be at my house!” everybody immediately says “No, no”, since it’s out in the boonies. So, hey, lookie, she never has to have a party at her house.
So this may be a salutary learning experience for her–the Bachelorette Party That Never Was, if she doesn’t get around to planning anything.
I realize that it would have been difficult to keep the bride’s mother and blood kin from stepping in to give her a shower, but surely Mom and Sis aren’t going to feel the same degree of obligation to see that she has just the right Chippendales strippers at her bachelorette party. Sit back and see what happens. You did your bit. You can chill now. 
And I don’t see why announcing that it’s a “Sex Toy Party” automatically obligates you to BUY sex toys from this woman. If she’s clueless enough to think that she’s going to cash in this way, then she deserves the spanking she gets when every single person sits there firmly on their wallet, smiling. If you can organize a pirates party at the drop of the hat, it oughta be child’s play for you to foment rebellion within the ranks and arrange for everyone to have “left their checkbooks at home somehow…”
I’m evil.
You’d think so, what with it being tradition and all. But some grooms (say, my brother) believe it ok to tell their brother (me) that they are not invited to be in the wedding party at all, because they are gay but they are welcome to attend the wedding, except please come alone because your boyfriend is not invited.
Who me, bitter? Not at all!
But oh, so very good at it. 
Do you think she asked me or anyone before she took the stuff? We were bringing the shower gifts to the car while she was supposed to be cleaning up the room. When we got back inside, it was boxed up, a fait accompli. The pinata was too big to be boxed up, and thus is was saved. What was I supposed to do, in front of the bride and her family, say, “Fuck you, and fuck your son too! Give me back my palm tree?” That’s what I would have had to do, in that setting, because it would have gotten ugly. Also, I would be answering tacky bitchiness with same, and I didn’t want to do that to my friend.
Let’s say the bachelorette party is at this MOH’s house. If I don’t go, am I being petty and letting my friend down? If I stage a coup and insist we have it elsewhere, am I enabling the MOH to be a lameass? I am not an experienced wedding party member. This is only my second, and the first one was in capable hands.
Fuck this. I’m going to Vegas to get married so I don’t have to make anyone go through this bullshit.
**Malthus **for the win. Well said, man. My wife and I also had a small ceremeony and no big events beforehand and it turned out great and was no stress for me, low stress for my wife(after she decided to stop worrying about doing all the traditional crap). We ended up buying our wedding off eBay(haha, no joke!) and we got married in Vegas, which I was initially against, but it worked out perfectly and everyone had a blast.
On a side note, I was the worst “best man” of all time. Some friends of ours got married in Vegas about a year before we got married. Anyway, I was supposed to be the best man but we got lost and couldn’t find the chapel and I missed the ceremony. :o Luckily there was a better man to stand in my place. I still feel like shit to this day for that. I really should have taken the time to find the chapel beforehand. Ah well, you live, you learn.
Yeah, but not as evil as Antinor01’s brother. Damn, I’m sorry you went through that Antinor01. That really sucks.
As for whether or not she should take over, I agree that she’s not obligated to, and she might teach the MOH a “valuable life lesson” by not bailing her out. But it depends on what she wants to accomplish - life lesson, or ensure she and her friends have a good time. Me, I *like *to arrange parties. I like to throw parties. It wouldn’t be a burden at all for me to whip up a kick-ass bachelorette party with a week’s notice, and I’d want to do it as a gift to my friends (not only the bride, but everyone else who’s dealing with this woman). But the OP has to make her own decision based on what she’s willing to do, and what the bride is willing to let her do. It may be that the bride doesn’t want her help, anyway.
Please tell me that you didn’t go.
It’s not a fait accompli unless she was out the door and gone before you got back inside. If the stuff was boxed up, you could’ve tried, say, “Oh, how nice of you to box these things up for me! It will be so easy for me to take it to my car!” and picked up the box and walked out with it. Or, you know, tried “I’m sorry if there was some misunderstanding but I need to take my decorations with me.” If the bitch then wants to make a scene, then that’s on her. She’s the one who looks petty, small and ridiculous.
See above. And if she was unresponsive to that, escort her into the kitchen or outside, somewhere away from the bride and her family, and explain in no uncertain terms that you expect to take the decorations or be reimbursed for them on the spot.
I get the feeling that ruby is trying to insulate her friend from seeing what a lameskate cheapass her MOH is. It’s not like the bride is planning to get married again, so she doesn’t have to know this information.
I’ve always said that the wedding party should have a position called Chief of Staff, whose job would be to plan stuff like this. The poedestrian title would prevent brides-to-be from making sentimental appointments.
Actually I did. The only real reason was to see family members that were coming from out of town that I hadn’t seen in a number of years and wouldn’t get to see for a long while after. To make myself feel better I flirted with the photographer right in front of my family’s pastors wife. (she never liked me anyway)
Anyhoo, my dearest friend in the world wants me to be her…well maid of honor is the wrong term, but the male equivalent. I’ll probably ask on here for ideas and direction on what exactly I’m supposed do.
Well, I see that Otto beat me to it. You were supposed to whoop enthusiastically, “Wow! Thanks for packing that all up for me!” And if you were truly evil, you could have added, “And after I worked so haaaaard on it! It’s really niiiiice to have someone get that all ready to go for me…”
If she and her friends just wanna have a good time, she can throw her own separate, very private bachelorette party for her friend. People do, ya know. Some brides have all kinds of friends throw all kinds of parties for them, it’s amazing they have any time to get married. And all the members of the wedding party don’t necessarily have to be automatically invited to each and every one of them.
You’re viewing this too two-dimensionally. There are more options here.
If it’s at the MOH’s house, and you don’t go, then yes, you are being petty.
If it’s at the MOH’s house, and you DO go, you get to not look petty, plus with any luck you get to see the MOH get a richly deserved comeuppance as her non-party collapses of its own inertia.
If you insist on having it elsewhere, then yes, IMO you are enabling the MOH’s lameassery.
But.
Why should you “stage a coup” and insist on the party’s being elsewhere? Have it at the MOH’s house. Better yet, thank her fulsomely–fulsomely, my dear–for her generosity in opening her home to the festivities. “But, it’s so much WORK for you!” you must protest. “I don’t how you’ll MANAGE it, with your busy schedule!” So, then, either she’ll back out, or else she’ll go ahead and have it at her place, and you get a front-row seat at what I predict will be a most entertaining disaster. Bad parties can be a lot of fun, you know. It’ll give y’all something to talk about for the next 50 years. At your friend’s Golden Anniversary bash, you can bring up the awful MOH, “Oh, god, what WAS her name?” and reminisce about how you all somehow left your checkbooks and credit cards at home so you unfortunately couldn’t buy any of her sex toys. And you can reminisce about how much better your party was…
A pirate theme? Wedding showers have “themes” now? People are starting to take that shit way too seriously.
Ya know, that would’ve been the perfect thing to say/do, but it’s so easy to think of the perfect comeback a few days later.
I’m thinking here that Rubystreakwas so shocked/pissed off about this lameass behavior that she thought it best to take the high road and not say anything that would have caused more of a scene.
Exactly, thank you. There was no way to get into it with the MOH without making my friend feel that anger and tension. When someone has all your shit in their car, you are standing in the parking lot with a bunch of mostly strangers, are you really going to make her get the box out and rummage through it? Esp. when she plays the “it’s for my precious one year old’s birthday party!” card?
I did not want to make a scene, be petty, or try to make it about myself. Better to let her go with the damn decorations, since I have to deal with her again quite closely. If you would have done this, then you are a more brazen, dare I say, ruder and less considerate of the bride’s feelings than I could be.
I normally would totally agree with you. In fact, a very large part of me wants to do this, and I just might. BUT, I feel like my friend deserves a good party; I don’t see how she could know that the MOH would punk out in every way possible-- this is a pretty unique set of situations and true colors have come out. AND I don’t want to drive out to East Bumblefuck for a sex toy party at the bitch’s house either. AND I want everyone to have a good time, which we couldn’t if we all have an hour’s drive each way.
Sigh. Fuck.