Your wedding is NOT a show your friends have been auditioning for your entire friendship until you awarded them a part as bridesmaid or groomsmen, etc. It is you asking for their help on a day that’s important to you, not being part of your fairy princess court.
If you choose to have a destination wedding far from where everyone in your circle lives you should at least offer to pay some part of their accommodation or travel; they’ll most likely decline because they’d be coming to your wedding anyway. But to spend someone else’s money for them when you haven’t considered if they can afford it is rude. I am not the rude one for telling you this is so, especially as I was genuinely polite about it.
Also, that tux makes him look like a waiter and the strapless gown you forced yourself into leaves a muffin top hanging off your back that no one can look away from. I understand you wanted to wear the latest trend in wedding dresses but if it doesn’t fit it’s not worth the money.
Yeah, I always wonder “What is the groom thinking as he watches bridezilla scream at everyone, push mothers around, and get all bitchy?” Doesn’t he realize all that bitchiness’ll just end up focused on him someday?
I’d love to hear of a fiancé standing up to his betrothed and saying “You’re a bitch. I’m outta here.”
I have a coworker who just got married. During the six months leading up to it, all she could talk about was the wedding. In. Excruciating. Detail. But I figured that I could suffer through it like a good sport since it would all be over once the wedding arrived.
A month later, she’s STILL talking about it. Sometimes in ways that have only a very tenuous connection to the conversation at hand.
I don’t know what it is about weddings that make some women think that it’s The Most Important Day Ever. Yes, it is an important day. Yes, we all hope that the marriage is a great one, and that this is the love of your life. But it’s only one day.
One of my co-workers was obsessed with getting married (before she even found the groom) and was constantly trying on wedding dresses, and poring over bridal magazines. When she finally DID find a groom, you’d think that she would have been married. She had to have her dress custom made, and I pity the poor seamstress, because she changed her mind about some detail or another at least once a week. Sometimes twice a week. First, she was going to have lace. Then ruffles. Then lacy ruffles. Then ruffly lace. Then a tailored dress. Gah. At the time, I’d been married a little over a decade, and I tried to tell her that I’d gotten married in a street dress, and I was perfectly happy. She wanted to know why I didn’t renew my vows, with a REAL wedding dress and veil this time around. I replied that it was because such things cost money, and we’d rather spend the money on something like dentist bills. She could not understand why I’d pass up the opportunity to have an ultra expensive party.
Airman’s cousin Brooke is pregnant with her first baby. We’re thrilled for her and for her husband, but this has really revealed more about her character than I really wanted to know. So far, she’s had a “gender reveal” party AFTER she and her husband knew the gender, and her baby shower is scheduled for next month, a good three months before her due date.
Ah, yes, the baby shower. The one that’s involved a fair amount of drama between birth mother, stepmother, and mother-in-law. The one that’s three months before her due date because her schedule simply will not accommodate a shower after that. The one that lists not one but three separate registries. The one whose invitation specified that, instead of a card, gifts should be accompanied by a children’s book. (Because, after spending however much for a baby gift, we should all spend an extra $10+ on a book.) The one I decided I wasn’t going to attend the second I opened the envelope. (It turns out that I couldn’t go anyway due to a schedule conflict. And, no, I am not going to change that commitment so I can attend the shower.)
So I’ll get her a book and nothing else because I’m not going to buy something I can’t afford just because it’s on her registries. And I’ll coo over her baby when it’s born and all that good stuff. But I will be damned if I’m going to be forced to sit through two hours of The Brooke Show.
At any rate, I blame entitlement culture for all of this.
I have a friend Susan, who was conflicted about leaving a job for a new one. The new job had better long term prospects, better potential for advancement, but the benefits package and her tight knit circle of friends at the current job just seemed too much to leave. She was offered the job on a Friday and agonized all weekend about taking the new job or not.
Susan went into work on Monday fairly sure she would be calling the new place and turning them down. The co worker she worked with most closely announced her engagement and wedding, and asked Susan to be a bridesmaid.
First words out of Susan’s mouth. “Oh lord, I am soooo sorry. I just got offered a new job, and what with training, and some out of town work, I will not possibly be able to put the time or attention into your wedding that you deserve.” Then she called and accepted the new job, and gave her notice at the current job.
She laughs to this day about how avoiding the bridesmaid duties made her career!
A friend discussed her May wedding every single day on Facebook from the February proposal until the May wedding. I thought, wow, Tracy is going to crash and suffer from post-party depression once she no longer has everyone’s undivided. Beautiful outdoor wedding with tons of great pics of the attractive couple were posted on her Facebook page. The Tracy show was finally over. Except Tracy keeps her extensive friends list fawning over her by changing her profile pic to yet another pretty wedding pic every couple days. Tracy has figured out how to milk her special day by bumping herself to the top of the Facebook feed over and over. Thanks, Facebook, for giving narcissists a platform, podium, and mirror all in one!
What amazes me is that to this day people still believe that the wedding is about two people who are to be married. That old tradition died years ago.
Today’s weddings are all about the bride (and her mother) creating this giant “look at me, I’m the princess/center of attention” event.
I wish that modern American culture would adopt something like the Latin American Quinceanera. It would give some of the young ladies (and their mothers) an outlet for this big princes show that they feel they have to perform.
It might at least prevent a lot of poor schmucks from getting dragged to the alter because some girl got stars in her eyes and wants to be the center of attention.
Now if only we could add a “The Twilight Zone”/Horror movie ending.
Just after the bride has thrown the boquet and is smiling and waving, suddenly the smiles on the onlookers take a darker bent and they advance on the bride.
And freeze her in carbonite.
Your perfect day, frozen in time for all eternity.
some years ago, while involved in a project committee, one of the females quit because her wedding was a year away and she was quitting everything but her job to devote to that.
If they decided on the “destination wedding” plans AFTER they roped in the friends to be bridesmaids and groomsmen, then yes, it’s rude to take it for granted that the friends will still want in. Remote vacation destinations generally involve a sizeable investment of money and vacation time, and not everybody wants to invest that much in somebody else’s wedding.
If, on the other hand, the bridal couple explained the plans in full when they asked their friends to be in the wedding party, then the friends knew what they were getting into, and there’s no obligation on the part of the bridal couple to help subsidize their trip.
While obsessed mommies-to-be can indeed be as much of a pain as obsessed bridezillas, I don’t get the problem with the shower plans. Baby showers are generally held any time during pregnancy, depending on when it’s most convenient for the hostess and the honoree.
But in general, yes, treating your special life occasion as a theatrical event is kind of pathetic. Do you really not have any ideals of beauty and meaningfulness other than what you’ve absorbed from the entertainment industry?
I would really love to attend my niece’s wedding at the end of next month. I really would.
Why on earth did she decide to have it in the middle of the fucking desert, 5 hours away from the nearest airport? In order to go I’d need to arrive when my parents do, leave when they do, and get similar hotel reservations. All to the tune of well over $1000.
Assuming that the location in question is a special “destination” (rather than, say, the hometown of the bridegroom’s bedridden grandmother whose presence at their wedding is deeply important to them), the answer is as follows:
Because it was more important to her (or her bridegroom, or both of them) to be married in that one particular location than to make it as easy as possible for people who love them to share that special occasion with them.
A lot of bridal couples who are otherwise perfectly nice and thoughtful people fall into the trap of assuming that since it’s THEIR day, nothing matters except THEIR personal preferences. Everybody else should just reach into their pockets for whatever THEY decide would be appropriate because it’s so important to THEM.
All the weddings I can remember going to, on the other hand, have been really great, because the bridal couples were really concerned about their guests’ convenience and enjoyment. When I get a wedding invitation from people who aren’t like that, I send my polite regrets.
That’s what I figured. I really doubt that the groom’s grandmother is there, being that it’s a “town” of about 20 houses. As much as I love my niece, I think she’s being a little selfish.
In many cases it’s not even deliberate selfishness: the bridal industry is falling all over itself trying to sell bridal couples on the idea that a wedding is somehow more “special” or “memorable” for the guests as well as the couple if it’s held in some exotic locale.
After all, when couples decide to marry in their local park or their parents’ church, the bridal magazines’ advertisers are not making as much money out of the deal as they might. And we can’t have that!
Yup folks, the modern wedding industry has successfully conditioned many of its customers into believing that the measure of a wedding’s success is how slavishly it obeyed the current fashions dictated by the wedding industry and how lavishly it rewarded the wedding industry for allowing the donors to follow those dictates. Designing a wedding to focus on mutual love, friendship, family affection, and generous but affordable hospitality is exactly what the industry doesn’t want you to do.
Ours was a destination wedding BUT - it was driving distance for nearly every guest; the wedding & reception were casual and in the same venue; we provided baseball or IMAX tickets for after the reception to anyone who wanted them; we didn’t have any attendants so no one was asked anything more than any other guest (and no one felt left out); we had souvenir postcards for everyone to write to themselves (we mailed them) as a wedding favor rather than something cute but useless; not only did we **not **register we made it clear in writing that if someone came to our wedding that was the greatest gift. We had a nearly 95% attendance. Exactly 9 people who were invited didn’t attend including a couple who didn’t show but lived in the same town as the wedding.
Impressionable young people see what looks like real people easily becoming glamorous celebrities; they think their BIG DAY needs to make them feel like a celebrity. They think that’s an honor to be shared w/ their BFF’s. They are NOT thinking straight. And TV/movies/magazines aren’t about to educate them otherwise, there’s no money in that.
