Actually, I’d say that hardly counts as a “destination wedding” rather than a “local attraction” wedding.
If you and most of your circle live in, say, Minnesota and you decide you want to get married at Disneyworld, that’s a destination wedding. But if most of you live within a few hours’ drive of Orlando, I wouldn’t call that a destination wedding (unless the guests had to buy some kind of ticket for admission to the “event”).
If the wedding venue is reasonably local for a large proportion of the guests and nobody’s effectively being charged an entry fee (in the form of cruise ship tickets or temporary resort membership or what have you), then it’s pretty much a regular wedding, even if the wedding isn’t the only reason anybody might want to visit the venue.
Well, the rings. And typically, a cake.
But the industry answer to that question, as opposed to the sane person’s answer to that question, is a list of terrifying length. How about:
fancy transportation for wedding party to the ceremony site
ring pillow
special “ceremony exit” paraphernalia (rice/birdseed, bubbles, confetti, paper airplanes…)
personalized buses or trolleys to convey guests from wedding to reception
fancy transportation for wedding party to the reception site
floral decorations at ceremony and reception sites
“valet gifts” for the guests to take when leaving :smack:
disposable cameras for the guests to take silly pictures of each other
a photo booth for the guests to take silly pictures of themselves
professional photographer and videographer to take pictures of all the guests taking pictures
choreography for the bridal couple’s first dance
confetti drop during the bridal couple’s first dance
musical instruments such as kazoos and maracas for the guests to play while dancing
a “reception lounge” with couches and cushions for guests exhausted from all that whoopee
a separately booked “afterparty” location for post-reception whoopee
post-dessert pre-afterparty snacks to get the guests fueled up for more whoopee
personalized “honeymoon-departure” car decorations for when the bridal couple FINALLY get their dead-tired dead-broke asses out of there
I swear to Og I am not making any of this up; these are actual wedding “advice” sites and magazines that are telling bridal couples they should have ALL this shit. (And I didn’t even get into the wedding-party gifts or the flipflops and shawls and sunglasses and a zillion other things.)
Again, the tragic part is that the attempted selling point is often the guests’ own fun and comfort. “Make your wedding really stand out, pamper your guests, make them feel special, make sure everybody has a great time!” is the advertisers’ cry.
It’s hard to blame bridal couples for developing a certain amount of tunnel vision about wedding festivities when they get such a constant barrage of messages about needing to make their wedding SPECIAL and EXTRAORDINARY and UNIQUE and SPECTACULAR and all the stuff they need to BUY BUY BUY in order to make that happen.
At my age, I’m more likely to be invited to a “Congratulations on your First Hot Flash!” party than a baby shower, so I’m not up on the latest etiquette. However, the ones I’ve been to in the past have been within the last month or so of pregnancy, as one of the last things that are done before delivering. Still planned out to four decimal places, but set kind of late.
Our guests came from 4 to 10 hours’ drive away to a city we’re not from, so I consider it a destination wedding. The one local couple were the no-shows.
I just remembered, I paid for a hotel room that one guest used one night and a different one used the following night. So I suppose I subsidized a little of their burden.
Wait, a “gender reveal party?” Who invented that concept?
Well, traditionally, young women did attend one or more debutante balls when they came of age. But I think that’s rare in modern American culture. But some people do have elaborate “sweet sixteen” parties. (I only know this from a program on MTV.)
Like most such “traditions”, it was probably originally thought up by an individual who thought it was a cute idea, and later glommed onto by commercial businesses. I doubt it can be established with any certainty which individual first had the notion.
Bakeries are some of the chief beneficiaries of the “gender reveal party” trend, since they get to make the cakes with the telltale blue or pink filling.
This New Yorker article says that the first YouTube video of a gender reveal party was uploaded in 2008.
[QUOTE=Dewey Finn]
Well, traditionally, young women did attend one or more debutante balls when they came of age.
[/QUOTE]
Yup, and typically each debutante would have her own “coming-out party” held in her honor, as well as attending such parties for her friends. The debutante ball became a way of wholesaling multiple individual debutante parties into a more lavish one-shot event.
The debutante party is alive and well in various subcultures in the southern US, but I don’t think it has much traction elsewhere anymore.
That’s just what I was going to say - wait until she has her first baby!
I like watching the wedding reality shows, but I don’t really know why - I get tired of all the princesses and their special freaking day, too, and often wonder how their fiancés manage to not tell them how far up their asses to jam their specialness.
I’d love to see the look on the new parents’ faces if the ultrasound were wrong and all that money on pink or blue cupcakes was wasted. Not to mention the egg on their faces at being so publicly wrong. :eek::p:D
What do they do if the baby is intersex? Swirl the cake colours? Open a big box of balloons with question marks on?
Seriously, if the scan results are being send straight to the bakers or whoever, what do they do if it’s not as simple as boy/girl?
The wedding batshittery is hardly new; I remember my cousin staying with my family about 15 years back, when she was about 19, and her telling me all about her wedding plans. It went on for about 20 minutes, detailing the colour of the horses pulling the carriage, what confetti she’d like, how the cake was to be. She never once mentioned a guy being involved in this.
I can’t really blame her though, her father regularly and proudly tells everyone that the first thing he did when she was born was to rush out the hospital, and start a savings account for her wedding…
She finally got married about 4 years back; I was over 10,000 miles away at the time in Australia, which is one way to avoid being a bridesmaid
I don’t know from personal experience, but I imagine that determining from an ultrasound that a baby is intersex gets a more cautious response from the medical professionals than just scribbling a note to that effect for the baker.
AFAICT, parents who have fetal ultrasound done may opt not to be told the gender, but they do want to know if there’s any unusual or “abnormal” condition detected. So I think they’d be having a talk with the doctor before throwing any party. I could be wrong, though.
I have NEVER understood this. I suppose that from time to time in my life I’ve imagined a possible wedding outfit or setting for myself, just as I’ve daydreamed about being the first girl player in major league baseball or giving a really witty speech at a conference. But whether it’s something potentially realistic or something absurdly impossible, I don’t tell people about my daydreams as though they were actual plans.
My brother had a destination wedding but they didn’t really invite anyone except the parents and wedding party. A bunch of other people came because they wanted to (it was on the beach!) It ended up being a lot of fun really. It was like a spring break-y vacation except it included family too because a bunch of friends came down. Then they had a reception back home since we have a big family.
A girl at work got engaged over the weekend and the nonstop wedding talk will be starting again. She is already talking about venues and whatnot. Another girl in my department was married last year. I am in a wedding this winter. I hate all the big white dress huge ordeal blah de blah. My bf and I live together but marriage not discussed yet, I hope he is OK with Vegas or something one day
Just because someone had a viral video of their bridal party dancing down the aisle doesn’t mean you need to do it too. Thats a lot of pressure on people who might not want to look like fools for your wedding video.
See now, I love all that stuff (for other people, mind you: I’m not married myself and wouldn’t want the fuss-and-feathers if I were), right up to the point where the people involved start spending irresponsibly and/or stop having fun.
I am thrilled to embroider pearls on your wedding gown or help address your invitations or help design the seating chart or decorate the bike-taxi for your big entrance or do whatever you’re genuinely enthused about to make the wedding special for you and your guests.
But when you start bursting into tears because some little thing goes wrong, or stressing out about some stupid tchotchkes that you can’t afford but that some bridal magazine says you HAVE to have, well honey, I think somebody needs a nap.
I’d say seventy percent of the trouble with modern festivities is not being able to distinguish clearly between the fun you really want to have and the fun somebody’s trying to sell you. (The other thirty percent is plain old-fashioned selfishness and greed.)
We got married in Vegas, and paid for the airfare and hotel for our bridal party members. Everyone else was invited, but told there was no obligation to attend. A few people used it as an excuse to party for a few days.
At home a month later, we had a standard reception, where I made the centerpieces, bought Hobby Lobby “silver” cake cutters, and used only silk flowers. We also paid for the bridal parties’ clothes, had no shower nor expected any gifts, and had an open bar. We paid for everything ourselves, and truly wanted nothing but good wishes and a great party.
Contrast that with the “honor” I recently had of being in my cousin’s wedding, which, between the dress, the shoes, the gifts and the bachelor party, cost me almost $500. The wedding was paid for by the bride’s parents.
I’m still mad about it - how is it possibly okay to ask the people you love to drop multiple hundreds of dollars on a wedding? Especially with the pressure to say yes, because they are people you love?
Threads like this make me appreciate my wife more & more.
Our wedding cost around $3000. Did most of the decorations/flowers/invites etc ourselves, the photographer was a friend of mine who has her own studio and did the day for free as our wedding gift. Even the transportation was my white 1997 Subaru, run through the car-wash that morning :). We set a limit of 25 guests each and picked a small venue in our city which was in the suburbs but the photos look like we are out in the country. Weddding and reception were at the same place. One bridesmaid and a best man (our closest friends) rounded out the wedding party.
Mind you, we were 37 (me) and 34 (her) at the time with an 18 month old and another kid on the way. But we had a very relaxed and fun day.
