He had an opinion on everything. The invites, the flowers, the bridesmaids dresses, the decoration, the program. . . sometimes stuff even the bride didn’t care about. It’s kind of a haze now, but my husband was a groomsman, and complained about having to rent a specific pair of (uncomfortable) patent-leather shoes because they all had to match exactly. (Contrast this with the bride, who told him to butt out on the bridesmaids. We got to pick our own dresses and wear whatever shoes we wanted*)
*To a point. I wore nice flats because got the feeling her definition of “any shoe” was less liberal than the any shoe policy at my wedding was. My girls had everything from sandals to combat boots under their dresses. No one looks at your feet. (The lady in combat boots looked really nice, actually. She’s an army vet, and had those things shined up so well you could see your face in them.)
I’d love to be charitable about all this, but the multiple parties, the multiple registries, and the mother’s behavior on Facebook tell me that this is about attention whoring and gift-grubbing. I hate this kind of attention whoring and I literally can’t afford a gift from any of her registries. (And who the hell needs three registries?!) So she’s getting a book because that’s all I can afford. And I will give it to her when it really means something, not when it’s sitting on a table with all of the other stuff.
I’ve also since learned that the baby shower was scheduled because she didn’t want to compete with Thanksgiving or Christmas. (And, yes, the word “compete” was used.) And if that’s not attention whoring, I don’t know what is.
Since my first wedding was almost entirely navy guys, we added hot dogs, cole slaw, potato and macaroni salads a sort of generic tossed salad that got used as burger topping, and actual named booze not just beer. I was baffled by the guy that brought a lasagne, until 1stmrAru pointed out he was the cook for the boat :smack: He thought it was pot luck
My fiance and I are on the same page about our wedding: not the most important day of our lives (saving that for the birth of our children) but a major day and for our culture/parents, the transition into adulthood. Which is hilarious if you consider that we are getting married for the first time at 34/33…approximately a decade after what is considered an acceptable age in our culture.
For us “taking it seriously” as an important day in our lives means doing things to make our respective families happy, because our wedding is largely about them (our marriage is about us). I was not particularly interested in going back to India for my wedding, but my fiance is the youngest son of the 7th!! son…the baby of the whole family and this is their “last wedding” so I said okay. My fiance realized that my parents are more energetic than his family, and would do the majority of the organizing-so when he saw that the venue in North India wasn’t being responsive to them, he told his parents and relatives that we’d be having the wedding in Goa to make our lives much easier (since my parents are from there and have existing contacts that would make the planning easier). I’m wearing red, which is the North Indian tradition, rather than yellow, which is the color for my culture. Our ceremony is an inter-cultural mix. My in-laws have asked me not to drink alcohol that day and I said okay because it’s not worth it to argue about booze on one night (though we will be serving it to everyone else). I’m pretty happy because we’re both on the same page that the details of this wedding are trivial and we don’t need/want to fight with people about them and would rather enjoy our party.
I’m not particularly concerned with details like the flowers blahblah. But yes, we’re having a party, I take my wedding/marriage seriously and I am excited about it. It makes me happy to see my fiance excited about getting married (to me!). I’m not sure I’d want to marry someone who were so negative towards marriage, actually.
I guess we are definitely the assholes who had a destination overseas wedding though, since we both had the temerity to immigrate to the US and 99% of our family lives abroad while 90% of our friends live in the US. Every single one of our friends is coming, are uber-excited to travel to India for the first time. We’re paying for the accomodations because we were so touched at the gesture.
I said pretty much the same thing to my now-husband. No way in hell was I going to have a “traditional” wedding and spend a bazillion dollars on one day. We got married under the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign with just our parents and 2 best friends each in attendance and it was the greatest day ever. We threw a backyard BBQ party/reception at home two weeks later.
I do not, for the life of me, understand the whole Big White Wedding Mentality.
Whoosh, right? No, of course a bridal couple getting married with their families in their common ancestral homeland does not count as a “destination wedding”.
Very awesome that all your friends are making the trip, though, and very nice of you to put them up! (If anybody wants my tried-and-tested advice about how not to get a tummy bug on your first short trip to India, it has helped keep several friends healthy and is very simple to follow: In addition to following the usual caution about ensuring clean water and avoiding most uncooked foods, make sure to significantly under-eat (unless you’re really skinny, of course). I’m sure that will be a real test of willpower at a wedding banquet, but staying a little bit hungry seems to make it easier for your system to handle meeting all the new microorganisms.)
And even though I’ve been to two traditional Indian weddings (one in India itself) and read lots of Indian bridal magazines, I never realized that yellow rather than red was a traditional bridal color in some Indian cultures! Way cool.
The surprise to me was the reverse - mentioning the word “wedding” is a several-hundred-dollar markup. To everything. Cake? A normal cake is $x, a wedding cake (same sort of decoration) is $x + 20%. Everything. It’s stupid and crazy.
Been there. Not going to happen again. After three years of hell the divorce still won’t been final for a couple of months. Yes I’m talking about the divorce taking three years not the marriage. That was 8 years. And my girlfriend has already had a big wedding. She is not interested either. She still wants to get married though and I don’t. I’m sure we’ll come to an understanding (meaning she’ll get her way eventually).
Yeah. Grooms sometimes come down with “wedding fever” even worse than brides, sometimes even though (or perhaps because?) they’ve never really thought up to now about things like graphic design for invitations or menu planning for a buffet dinner for 120.
It can just happen, especially if their bride is relaxed and not hyper-controlling about all the details, that bridegrooms find that some of this executive/organizational/artistic/crafty stuff can be kind of fun, and that they really like certain choices better than others, and before you know it, it’s welcome to the wonderful world of serious event planning.
[ETA: whoops, replying to Zsofia and Loach snuck in there again. Not trying to imply that Loach himself is necessarily doomed to be a groomzilla.]
No, it’s definitely a destination wedding-for almost everyone and I totally acknowledge that we’ve made life difficult for people who want to attend but we’re from completely different parts of India, I’m an Indian-American, he’s a recent transplant…people were going to travel. I do feel pretty bad about it but it happens these days when you’ve been dragged all over the world for immigration etc. 99% of my family is over there too but our (and I mean my and my parents’) close friends for the last 30 odd years are here. Plus, we are having it in Goa, which is a 3 day train away for all of his family (we are paying for those tickets too)-it’s my ancestral homeland and a close trip for my bio family, all of whom are in Bombay now. If we had kept to the North India plan, it would have been a destination for my biological family. We are trying to do the best we can but almost everyone is traveling to see us except for my oldest relatives who are still in Goa and my mom’s favorite sister-I appreciate the effort they are making, and like I said, we’re trying to do things like pick up train tickets and hotel accomodations for both days of the wedding. For everyone. His family. My family. Our friends. I realize the effort people are making on both sides and we’re trying to do right by people.
I know someone somewhere is complaining but I hope the open bar smooths over any hurt feelings Plus, I refused to have a wedding party for this very reason. I don’t want people to feel obligated to attend. I think the pressure is higher when someone’s like “hey, be my maid of honor and by the way, the wedding’s in Vanuatu. What, you’re not coming? What kind of friend are you anyway??”
Yeah, yellow or green is the color for Maharashtrians & Konkans. It varies-red is popular in the North. Gujaratis have white with a red border. Keralites tend to wear a white sari with this beautiful gold border etc.
It goes back to the days when a “proper” woman would have her name in the newspaper only three times in her life, when she was born, when she was married, and when she died. Since she was too young to appreciate the first notice, and too dead to appreciate the third notice, she had to make the most of that second appearance.
Never going to happen. My first wedding was nice. But we didn’t go crazy. We were paying for it. She was 5 months pregnant. She has a lot of faults but bridzilla isn’t one of them. And I am soooo far from that. Jeans and t-shirt for me.
Whoosh, right? No, of course a bridal couple getting married with their families in their common ancestral homeland does not count as a “destination wedding”.
Plus, I refused to have a wedding party for this very reason. I don’t want people to feel obligated to attend. I think the pressure is higher when someone’s like “hey, be my maid of honor and by the way, the wedding’s in Vanuatu. What, you’re not coming? What kind of friend are you anyway??”