Grampa Simpson quote.
My sister was one of those women.
Told me I had to lose 40 pounds if I wanted to be in her wedding. It wasn’t long after that someone wrote Miss Manners (wasn’t me) about a bride to be expecting all of the bridesmaids to diet to fit a certain size gown. Miss Manners said a wedding is supposed to be about family and friends coming together to celebrate, not a fashion show.
My idea of the perfect wedding was keep it as short as possible and get on with the reception.
I guess I have a bad attitude though, I always figured the reception was the reward for sitting through the wedding.
Or the sperm on their faces, if it’s a boy. 
My feeling is that the wedding couple (or maybe just the bride) have mixed up the concept of “wedding” and “honeymoon”. To my way of thinking, you have your wedding in a hometown. Then the happy couple goes off to a destination by themselves, to have a sort of vacation/getting to know you time. They don’t drag all their friends and family along.
Our hometowns are many hours apart, and at the time we didn’t live near either one of them. Our friends are even more far-flung. So there was no place we could have had the wedding that wouldn’t have meant several hours’ drive and a hotel night or two. So it made plenty of sense to just have everyone drive a few more hours and have it in New Orleans, a place that means a lot to us.
Not to mention that having it in either of our hometowns would have meant inviting dozens of people–old and distant relatives, friends of our parents, etc.–that we didn’t want there. Moving the wedding a little further away solved that problem for us.
Besides, which of these sounds better?
1.) Drive six hours to northern Illinois in the dead of winter (temp on wedding morning: -6) to spend two nights in a completely unremarkable (yet still somehow pricey) hotel in their hometown at the time. Spend $150 to rent a tuxedo and at least a few bills on a bachelor party. Spend every spare minute of the weekend folding programs, arranging flowers, and all the other crafty wedding bullshit that somehow got left to the last minute. Suffer through an overly long ceremony, far too many pictures, and a mostly edible dinner with a completely irritating DJ.
2.) Drive ten hours to New Orleans. Run around with us for a couple of days if you want. Somewhere in there we’ll stop and have a 20-minute wedding in Jackson Square followed by dinner at the Acme Oyster House. Wear whatever you want.
#1 is what my best friend asked us to do for his wedding, and #2 is what I asked him to do for mine. And yet somehow I’m the one who put him out, to hear people tell it.
Not even the dress, several of the weddings I’ve attended didn’t involve “bridal” dresses. My aunt’s second wedding: red power suit. A cousin’s wedding: a veil, belt/scarf and oversleeves crocheted by the bride’s grandmothers over a plain white cotton dress.
Yeah, I think it’s possible to be too rigid about the definition of a “local wedding” versus a “destination wedding”. It’s comparatively rare nowadays for both the bride and groom and both their families to live in the same hometown, so pretty much every wedding involves some travel on the part of at least a sizeable minority of the guests.
Hell, I went to a wedding this summer in which the bride and groom do live in the same urban area where they both grew up and where most people in both their families and many of their friends still live. Even for them, the wedding was actually held in a venue in another state, a couple of hours away. No, it wasn’t literally their “hometown”, but I find it difficult to count that as a “destination wedding”.
I’d say that the “honeymoon test” mentioned by Lynn Bodoni is the way to tell them apart. When the B&G deliberately pick a distant special locale or setting (especially one that comes with its own price tag, like a cruise ship) solely because of its appeal to them and with no concern for the inconvenience or cost for any of their wedding guests, those are the criteria that traditionally apply to a honeymoon. Expecting your guests to schlep out to such a locale along with you is what makes a honeymoon a destination wedding.
Your wedding sounds charming except that (and this was just glossed over out of modesty, I’m sure) nowhere do you make any reference to requesting your guests’ presence or offering them any hospitality.
“Please join us in New Orleans and be our guests at a brief wedding ceremony and informal dinner reception” is a wedding invitation, and a perfectly fine one. “Hey, we’re going to New Orleans for the weekend and will get married at some point, you can run around with us if you want to come” is a perfectly fine way to suggest a group outing, but it isn’t an invitation from hosts to guests.
Your friend’s wedding also sounds perfectly fine except for the poor planning that resulted in burdening the wedding party with last-minute tasks like folding programs. No ceremony style, photography session, dinner or DJ is going to please everybody; and if you really begrudged the cost of the tuxedo rental and bachelor party, you could just have politely declined the honor of being chosen to be a groomsman.
And while wedding hosts are supposed to look after their guests’ comfort, they’re under no obligation to provide them with a “vacation experience”. The charm of a wedding isn’t supposed to depend on how exciting the locale is or how nice the weather is. The guests are presumed to care enough about the bride and groom to be able to enjoy the celebration of their union even without the bright lights of the French Quarter to keep them entertained.
So no, I wouldn’t say that either of you bridegrooms really “put out” the other one by his wedding arrangements.
- a groom
A couple of my friends and other members of a bridal party paid for their bookings for a destination wedding. Now the bride has changed the wedding date. It looks like there will be a sizable wedding party without the bride and groom.
The bridal industry still hasn’t been able to come up with a legal method to sell those, you see.
There’s opportunity here for Kickbacks to dating websites.
I’ve been perusing Santorum’s site and it appears by 2016, we’ll be able to pick them up from PetSmart.
Interesting that you say that, because the inspiration for the wedding was a “group outing” we had done to New Orleans for NYE a couple of years in a row. The idea was, “Let’s do that again, but this time let’s get married in the middle of it.”
We both pretty much hate traditional weddings, so the less it felt like that, the better.
I didn’t begrudge the cost or the trouble in the least. My point is that people hate on destination weddings because they’re self-indulgent and they ask a lot of the guests and wedding party, but since we were in the weddings of most of our 30 or so guests I don’t think any of them put as much effort or expense into our wedding that we put into theirs.
I’m not saying that destination weddings can’t be overly self-indulgent, or that traditional weddings necessarily are. Like most things, it’s all in how you do it.
Rent a proxy groom who better fits the look for the bride’s special day. The real groom can watch from the back.
I must be out of it. I’ve never heard of a gender reveal party. Are you expected to bring a gift?
My mother was invited to a shower with this request. When she told me about it, I said, “You’re giving one of the books I wrote, right?” (IRL I’m a children’s author.)
When she said yes, I said this was a splendid idea for all baby showers. Just everybody be sure to give one of my books. 
(I won’t tell what my real name is so the moderators don’t get annoyed with me.)
I saw a gag wedding card that was addressed solely to the bride. Open up the card and it says, “Nobody cares about rental boy.”
Yesterday I saw (on TV) a wedding with a flower girl, a ring bearer, and a little girl holding a sign that read, “Here Comes the Bride”. Talk about unnecessary. If you can’t figure out who the dame is in the fancy white dress, that sign ain’t gonna help.
A Slinky, maybe.
But how great would it be for the bridal industry if they could!
You’re J.K. Rowling, aren’t you?
Of course you are, why else would they be having a party? (No, but seriously: it’s just another excuse for a gift grab).
Worse. She’s actually EL James.