dropzone, if only!
My folks are paying, thankfully, but we’re having 150 guests (100 ceremony and dinner, 50 to the after dinner party), only 10 of whom are our parents’ friends, 50 of whom are family and the rest are our friends.
To be honest, we’re having trouble cutting our friends down to that number…we’ll be the first marriage among any of our friends (I’m 22, he’s 23) so I feel honour bound to have a big bash, Irish weddings traditionally being fun things that people enjoy.
Poly, if I weren’t married you and I could be a scandal to the neighbors. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re so damn cute.
We did our wedding (paid for largely by ourselves but with some help from my mom) without most of the ettiquette nonsense.
It’s not that I think manners are a bad thing. But to live your life way ‘X’ and then suddenly proclaim that your wedding day shall be way ‘Y’ has always struck me as fundamentally dishonest. Live your life the way you life your life. If you’re always informal then get married that way. No one will think less of you for it (I speak from experience) and you’ll end up with happier memories.
Remember, folks, “etiquette” != “fancy”. Etiquette just means doing things with good manners and following certain behavioral customs, at whichever level of formality and elaborateness you choose.
There are plenty of very simple and/or unconventional wedding celebrations that are actually much more proper, in terms of true etiquette, than many fancy-shmancy, veils-and-tails weddings that run roughshod over the convenience and good nature of others in the name of attaining some level of highfalutin ostentation that bears no relation to genuine etiquette at all.
I’d like to have a Gen-U-Wine medeival wedding, complete with me wearing my finest armor and sword, staying up all night to pray to the lord before my anointing…
Oh wait, that was the knighthood ceremony.
(Emphasis mine) The grooms, too? Did they say this without their wives or any of their wives’ friends present? :dubious: Most guys I know would say that a big wedding is as close to Hell as they care to get, even as guests, and the groom has little to do except avoid the bride when she’s in Bridezilla mode and show up on time. I can only imagine how hellish it is for the brides. Ours wasn’t all that big; Wife didn’t want to “disappoint” her mother with a quickie courthouse wedding and still regrets that decision 28 years later.
Or have vague recollections of enjoying!
Warning! Quaint Irish-American stereotypes ahead!
“Saints be praised, Mary Catherine, 'tis a week since irishgirl’s wedding and I can only now pull myself from bed. Tell me: Did we have a good time?”
“Truth be told, Paddy, I vomited for two days afterwards so yes, I believe we had a very good time.” 
I think a lot of it is that, in modern American culture, most people don’t give a big, formal party (or even a little one) before their wedding. So they’ve got no idea what makes their guests happy, or how little effort they can put into it. You’ve got all these people telling you that you have to do X, Y, Z and because you don’t know any better you go with it.
I would have been a much bigger stress bunny over my wedding if I hadn’t already planned several big parties, helped with other people’s wedding, and (twice) cooked for a 100 person dinner. I knew I could do all those things, but many young brides don’t.
Yup!
Maybe it’s just my group of friends and family, but many of us (even the men!) tend to really enjoy large parties, and all entertain regularly. A wedding reception isn’t that different in my social group than a half dozen other large, sometimes formal gatherings we might attend each year, and yeah of course some of 'em suck, but for the most part the parties (including weddings, reunions, charity dinners, roasts, etc) I’ve been to have been pretty fun.
Is it really that strange for men to enjoy a good meal and a big party? Is it the actual number of guests that makes it less enjoyable? Or is it the level of formality?
I think The Devil’s Grandmother is right on, I guess if people aren’t accustomed to hosting or attending large functions, a wedding reception is probably a more stressful event for them, which is too bad, 'cuz it really can be a lot of fun! I consider myself pretty lucky, really, that I don’t need it to be “the perfect day” - I don’t get heart palpitations at the thought of the flowers being the wrong shade of magenta, or the bonbonierres containing cashews instead of almonds. As long as we have a good dinner, some good drinks, a lotta good company, and a bit of good music, I know most of my guests will have a good time.
I think a big part of it is that there’s so much pressure (or so much perceived pressure, which is pretty much the same thing) put on brides to make this THE BEST, HAPPIEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!!! that it can be awfully overwhelming. Personally, I think the happiest day of your life stuff is crap. Your wedding day should be a happy day, certainly, I’d even say it should be one of the happier days in your life. But the very best, happiest day of your life? Well, that pretty much means that getting married is the peak of your existance and it’s all downhill from there. Seems like a pretty shitty approach to being married, if you ask me.
But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that there’s a lot of pressure to make this into a whole lot bigger deal than it has to be. If you buy into this whole happiest day of your life nonsense, then you feel like every single tiny detail has to be just exactly perfect, lest it mar your happiness. 'Cos that would make it not the happiest day of your life, see, and that would defeat the whole purpose of having a wedding day, now wouldn’t it?
Jonathan Chance, re: “etiquette nonsense.” Actually, you’re probably making a common mistake – confusing “wedding etiquette” with “wedding tradition.” I see this a LOT on the wedding boards. A bride will come in and say, proudly, “I ignored etiquette! I wore a red dress, didn’t have a wedding cake or the garter toss, we didn’t register for gifts, and everything was really casual and fun!” But none of these things have anything at all to do with etiquette. It is perfectly proper and acceptable to have a simple wedding and an informal reception. It’s very unlikely you committed any real etiquette crimes. If you’d post a list of what you thought you were doing ‘wrong,’ I’ll bet I’d not find a violation in the bunch.
Though it may well lead to the best night.
I don’t care whether you saved it for your wedding night or this is the 500th time you two have had sex, after all that stress and a big party and maybe too much to drink I doubt very much it’ll be the best night of your life, either, bandit.
Elret, I agree with you about what Grannie said. The less exposure one has to big events, especially planning them, the more harrowing a wedding can be. I trust yours WILL be fun because you understand the right level of expectations. I only wish more brides did.
Psssst! Don’t tell anybody but the odd little UHF TV stations around here often show wedding reception videos (it must be hard to find good local programming for Chicago’s various ethnic groups) and I love watching them, especially the Greek ones. Only part of that is a hangup on Greek girls all dressed up, too. Another part of the fun is seeing how drunk the older people can get. :eek:
Again, the idea that it’s all downhill from there seems like a shitty approach to a sex life.
That would speak in favor of big, hellacious weddings–it can’t help but get better after that!
Before I got married, I tried to avoid wedding boards for the same reasons as the OP - the one brain cell shared between 500 posters made visiting these boards far more irritating than helpful. Problem is, probably about 90% of message boards in general contain more shit than flowers. The SDMB is honestly the best I’ve ever seen and wanted to participate in. There be brains here, lots of brains!
Which reminds me, if you want to see some of the most horrible, terrible, most embarrasing examples of bad message boards ever, go to Something Awful. And check out their feature, “The Weekend Web.” You’ll laugh, and probably cry, too.
I can tell you how to do that, badbadrubberpiggy:
Wear a dress with sleeves. Cap sleeves and short sleeves count, but spaghetti straps or removable wraps do not.
The rabbi at our wedding said no bare shoulders, and I found that about 75% or so of the bridal gowns I saw in shops were either strapless or had spaghetti straps.
Actually, a lot of the dresses I like either have tank sleeves or cap sleeves (longer than that I just don’t like, and they’re not flattering on me).
Obligatory board rant: Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, the grammar! I’ve never seen more run-on sentences in my life. There are posts that are 6-line paragraphs long that are ALL ONE SENTENCE. And you can’t correct them, because then you’d be MEAN. MEAN! :mad:
It makes the English major in me die just a little bit every time I read one.
I briefly contemplated being a Bridezilla on my wedding day.
Motorboy & I were very casual about the whole process of getting hitched. We rented an Irish pub, invited some people, asked a friend who is a minister to be our officiant, etc. I had an ivory cocktail dress, Motorboy wore a navy blazer & khakis.
Anyway, I found a picture of a hairstyle I liked, took it to a local hairdresser who had been recommended to me by a friend and told her I wanted that 'do.
She worked on it for a bit. It turned out looking really really… odd.
Then she shellacked it with about 12 cans of hairspray and I went on my way.
I got back to the house with about 15 minutes to put on my dress & makeup & head over to the pub for the ceremony.
I looked at myself in the mirror and did NOT like what I saw. My sister, on the other hand, took one look at me and told me I looked like Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Which made me crack up. And since there was no time to do anything about my weird hair-do, I figured there was no point in getting upset about it.
Spent the rest of the day making people touch my hair to see for themselves how crunchy it was. Kinda funny.