I understand that. My point of view is that, from your list: “eating and drinking [alcohol] and dancing and mingling and talking and singing”, the one thing I see as least essential to the wedding reception is the drinking alcohol. It’s not like we’re telling people you can’t drink anything at all, only that you won’t be having alcoholic beverages. If I went to a wedding reception without any food, I would be surprised. If the meal was vegetarian (no meat at all), I wouldn’t throw a pork chop in my pocket before going - I would eat the vegetarian food.
Amen, sister. I’ve been to exactly one, and this 22 years ago, and should I ever be invited to another one, I shall be bringing a flask. Whilst the “taking off the garter portion” was going on, I tried to liven up the proceedings by suggesting the groom remove it with his teeth. I heard later that I scandalized some of the ladies present, and who later watched the video. Yeesh.
Here’s another thing I’m wondering. Here, if you rent any sort of venue and intend to serve alcohol, you need to have a liquor license. I’ve never been involved in buying one, so I’m not totally sure of the rules, but wouldn’t someone showing up with their own booze be a violation of the license and thus if an inspector showed up they can close down the party and fine the license holders.
Would you want to be the idiot that screwed up the special day? That would be social suicide of the highest degree…
It might depend on your district, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the case, at least here in NY. I’ve often seen restaurants that have just opened but haven’t received their liquor license yet to put up signs that say it’s fine to bring your own drinks to dinner.
As for the OP, everybody comes from a different backgrounds and cultures. In some, a flask would be considered mandatory, in some an outrageous scandal. YMMV.
There a million styles of weddings and reception parties, and a million more when you bring in the religious factor. Like any party, it’s up to the host to define what kind of event it is. There are plenty of good reasons to have an alcohol free event, and “that’s what the host prefers” is one of them. If the invite says “black tie” I’m not going to show up in a tshirt. If it’s orthodox Jewish, I’m going to wear the yarmukle even though I’m Christian. If it’s vegan I’m not going to complain about the lack of cow flesh. If I have a special need or a desire to bend the rules a bit for whatever reason, I’ll ask the best man/maid of honor if it’s ok, or follow the lead of the other guests who are in the know.
I’m going to have to beg to differ with Miss Manners about the cash bar. Maybe she is running in elite circles where it’s bad manners not to have a different color tux for every occasion too. The whole reason the concept of ‘cash bar’ was invented was because alcohol is a major added expense and one that is often considered an unnecessary luxury. The only receptions I have been to without a cash bar were extremely lavish affairs with multiple courses and so forth. I would much rather have a couple planning their event on a budget choose some other major component such as having a DJ, or be able to invite more people to the event, than have an open bar. Open bar is nice, but it’s lavish, and a special treat for the guests. That said, it’s considered fairly traditional obviously, to have a free glass of champagne to toast with. And a cash bar at a private venue would be fairly tacky.
I have a feeling that this is the reason for people believing cash bars are inappropriate.
In my experience, weddings are pretty much always in private venues - anything from the local VFW hall to catering halls with multiple weddings going on at the same time. I have only once in my life attended a wedding in a place with a separate bar open to the public. There’s a great big difference (in my mind, at least) between guests being able to leave the reception and buy a drink at the hotel or country club bar, and having the bar inside the reception charging for drinks. The latter seems an awful lot like serving chicken, but having steak available for an additional charge.
I have a feeling that this is the reason for people believing cash bars are inappropriate.
In my experience, weddings are pretty much always in private venues - anything from the local VFW hall to catering halls with multiple weddings going on at the same time. I have only once in my life attended a wedding in a place with a separate bar open to the public. There’s a great big difference (in my mind, at least) between guests being able to leave the reception and buy a drink at the hotel or country club bar, and having the bar inside the reception charging for drinks. The latter seems an awful lot like serving chicken, but having steak available for an additional charge.
This was eventually the option I chose to go with, and I’m really glad I did! Caused a bit of a long-standing drama with the rels, of course, but I think it was worth it; really, if they can’t behave for just a couple of hours without picking a fight and/or ruining the event, screw 'em! Even children can usually hold it together that long.
I appreciate that this isn’t always possible for everyone, but it worked in my case.
Hubby and I loved everything about our wedding day - it was relaxed, it was low-key, our closest friends were there, and there were no quarrelling family members. It doesn’t get better than that! Also, because we had a simple wedding it was a 15-minute civil ceremony followed by about an hour of group photos - we’d got the ‘couple only’ ones out of the way before the wedding so we wouldn’t have to keep people waiting. We meandered our way, as a group, to a restaurant-cafe about 2 blocks from the ceremony, and everyone sat down and whiled away a couple of hours eating, drinking, laughing and chatting. Since everyone fit on one long table it made it easy to to make sure nobody got left out.
I love our wedding pix. It’s really clear in them that everyone involved had a great time; they’re not formal in the least (although everyone was nicely dressed) and there’s a great sense of closeness there.
Booze would be how you bribe me into sitting through your boring wedding. No offense, but weddings are boring and irritating and perfect excuses to imbibe.
I don’t know why people feel so controlling over their silly weddings.
Wedding are like family reunions and it’s either really fun for your family or it’s an known invitation to huge boring emotionally uncomfortable bitch-fest you can’t wait to get away from.
If we’re friends, we’re friends, but you still have to pay me to attend you wedding, just like you’d have to bribe me into sitting through three hours of your boring vacation slide slow, now updated with Power Point 2007 animations!
I might feel much the same way depending on the invitation. I seldom drink, and if nobody mentioned it might not even notice that a wedding was dry. If however, the invitation came from that particular side of the family and was stressed as being dry, because after all, “alchohol is teh eviluz!!!”, then I’d be tempted to decline the invitation or have a drink somewhere out of contrariness. 
If one thing can be said about the cash bar issue, is that it is basically a regional variation. See also, dollar dance.
Cash bars are nearly unheard of/horrifying social breach in the Northeast and some parts of the South (noting that dry Baptist weddings are relatively more common in the South as well). In the Midwest/Heartland/Big Sky states cash bar seems to be a relatively accepted phenomenon, possibly even the norm. In California, anything goes.
As I understand it, open bar is virtually unheard of in Canada and England. Apparently venues charge ALOT for open bar there. $50-60 a head! No wonder they consider open bar a lavish indulgence. Compare to my recent wedding, where we were charged us $10/pp for an all night (~6hrs) open bar by a private venue (who handled all catering internally). Yes, that is low, even for the U.S., but open bar is usually under $20/head in the U.S… This difference in costs is part of the different perspective vis-a-vis the open bar from Brits & Americans, and very likely part of the regional difference (with liquor laws that vary widely by state).
Finally, “cash bar” and “open bar” are not the only choices available - a quite popular option is to offer open wine & beer, sometimes with a single “signature” drink that can be easily premixed in batches (sangria, rum punch, etc). No hard alcohol is served. Sometimes people select limited open bar – in which the bar is open for a certain number of hours, or until some pre-set tab is reached.
Holy crap, you’re me! Seriously – except our ceremony was about 5 minutes, and there were only about 5 posed group photos, which wouldn’t have taken anywhere near an hour. That was 18+ years ago, so it seems to have stuck.
I don’t remember this for weddings, but I’m familiar with it for things like christmas parties paid for by the company. There will be free beer, (cheap) red and white wine, soft drink, and juice. You can have spirits or expensive wine if you like, but you’ll have to pay cash for them.
Very true.
I’ve been at dry weddings where money was tight. It was cool. People knew, and groups of friends coming into town all booked rooms at one specific hotel, and after the reception ended, it was a party at the Marriott. No drink/driving and a good time was had by all.
I’ve been at a dry wedding where the father of the bride was clearly trying to lord his belief system on all attendees too. “Hell’s full of drunks already & I’m not paying for that. Not with My money”.
This was repeated loudly Ad Nauseum until 8pm, when the party ended “Because respectable people don’t stay out later than that on the night before Church”. :rolleyes:
The bride & groom were mortified into silence… but by then we all knew he was an ass and laughed about it afterwards. Hey, some 'Zillas aren’t brides.
On a sad note, someone did spike the punch at that wedding. It was a groomsman and while we didn’t rat him out, we did corner him and make damn sure he knew that no one was laughing at his ‘joke’. Life is full of bars/hotels/houses where the hosts agree to allow alcohol among their guests. If the prickly curmudgeon says no alcohol, either bite your tongue & go, or just say no on the RSVP.
You don’t have to go, you know.
Surely your friends know by now that you hate weddings?
I think my folks are planning to sneak wine into my wedding (next weekend - eep!) but they’re welcome to. We’re beer and hard liquor people and their wine people. It’s not the same as bringing alcohol to the wedding of a couple philosophically opposed to it, but I think it’s funny.
I would sneak in a 2 liter “mini-keg”, as I only drink beer. Don’t ask me how I would sneak it in.
My wife and I had a generous Bar Tab (courtesy of her dad) at our reception that covered Beer and Basic Spirits (not the top shelf stuff), and after that ran out, if you wanted more, you had to pay for it. Soft Drink was free all night though, which was nice.
Every Wedding I’ve been to here has a similar arrangement- Queenslanders like to drink, and if you don’t have some sort of pre-set bar tab or cash bar system in place you could very easily end up with a bar tab that- to quote Moe Szyslak- you’d need to send away to NASA to calculate.
Heh. By private I meant more along the line of “at someone’s house”. In other words, an event that is catered by the host themselves and not an outside party. Most receptions will have free champagne or whatever to toast with, and plenty will have a complimentary glass or two of wine with dinner. And of course, free water, soda, tea, etc. I think that’s sufficient.
Having an open bar is more along the lines of expecting to have the chef prepare whatever dish each person wants on demand, with unlimited refills. Whereas no one complains that reception menus are typically limited to say, 3 choices of entrees. It would be like having an on site cigar roller. It’s a nice extra, but certainly not something the guests should expect as standard. If there is a cash bar though, I think it’s fine to bring a flask of your own.
If you thought that was tacky, don’t look at current Spanish wedding customs.
Most couples have been living together or setting up their place for years, by the time they get legally hitched. So there’s no need for toasters. Hence, money as a gift.
Middlebro and SiL were the exception to the reason, but she’s got, ah, “control issues” putting it mildly. So, there’s no way she’d risk letting someone else choose a toaster of the wrong color. Hence, money as a gift.
The four parental units spent on the wedding about 2/3 of the money the bride and groom got as presents… and what still pisses Mom Scrooge McCatalan (mine, aka the groom’s mom and matron of honor) 8 years later is that they whine they didn’t get enough money!
It’s definitely a cultural/location issue. As it happens, the only wedding I’ve been to with a cash bar was the one with a public bar. There was one dry wedding, but aside from those two, the others either had an open bar, or had a limited drink menu (beer, wine, soda). I think it’s fine not to have an open bar, but a cash bar is different- it’s almost like having the photographer off in the corner, taking portraits of guests and charging the guests for them. Expected at a prom, fine at a reunion, but out-of-place at a wedding (although I’ve heard of it).