It often seems as if Ann Landers has only three columns:
How 80 year old Myrtle met her hubby at the USO during the War.
Reprints of “Please God, I’m Only 17.”
Screeds about how horrible and disgusting it is for grooms to slam wedding cake in the bride’s face.
Now, at every wedding I’ve ever attended (including my own), the bride and groom have each taken a tiny piece of wedding cake and fed it to each other, while everyone claps, and pictures are taken.
I have seen this at dozens of wedding (maybe over a hundred, I’ve lost count), but it’s ALWAYS been a silly, harmless ritual. I have NEVER seen a groom take a big hunk of cake and smash it into the bride’s face (a la Moe, Larry and Curly at a cream pie fight). Nor do I know ANYONE who’s ever seen such a thing.
Now, am I just lucky to have friends and relatives who behave like civilized human beings? Or are all of Ann’s friends and relatives complete idiots?
Has anyone here actually SEEN a groom smash cake into his new wife’s face? If not… where did Ann Landers get the idea that this is standard practice at ALL modern weddings?
In one or two of the wedding receptions I’ve been to I have seen the frosting on the nose type thing, but never slamming a huge hunk of cake into someone’s face.
Hmmm you must have a slightly better class of friends/relatives than I do. Yes, I’ve seen it. More than once I might add.
Usually there’s this moment when the bride and groom each have a piece of cake in their hands and are getting ready to feed the other. The crowd murmors in anticipation… will he, won’t he, will she, won’t she. Usually it is well rehearsed and nobody does anything too crazy… sometimes the groom tells the bride he won’t do it and is egg’d on by the crowd (mostly his buddies) and does it anyway.
It does happen once in a while… it’s funny when it happens… but it doesn’t happen most of the time for obvious reasons… but I always EXPECT it to happen and I am usually disappointed when it doesn’t. Nuff said.
I’ve seen some cake smashing, but it always happens both ways.
Most of the time, there is a little playing by both parties, but not some horrible women-degrading event.
Anne Landers, perched up on her perky-imaginery-bulbous- cloud-of-stupidity, is one of the biggest disgracers of women. Women should stop supporting useless bozettes like Anne Landers, Dear Abby, Oprah, Cosmo, the pyschic friends network and all the other uselss outlets of women-emotion-sucking dribble qualifiers that “help” women.
Yeah, I’ve seen it, mostly with younger couples. I’ve seen it done playfully and I’ve seen it done less than playfully.
It’s been going on for quite awhile, too. When Mrs. Kunilou and I married (more than 20 years ago) she warned me that if I tried anything like that, the marriage would be a lot shorter than I expected.
With the other, it came as a complete shock, not only to the guests, but to the bride herself. The groom was studying for the ministry! And is someone that I have known for many years, and thought of as one of the most kind and compassionate people I’ve ever met. I couldn’t believe it. The bride got cake all over her face and on her dress, and he embarrassed her in front of all her family and friends. He’s lucky he married such a nice person. I would have strangled him right there with my bare hands. I still have no idea what got into him to do that.
I’ve never seen it, either. But I think that Ann is surreptitiously giving people ideas, because my husband’s family did egg him on to do it at our wedding. (He didn’t, of course. We had discussed it in advance after I read about the custom in an Ann Landers column. This must have been about five years ago!) Well, maybe it wasn’t Ann’s fault–not like I’ve ever seen them read a newspaper, after all.
I always imagine the Stooges when I read one of those cake-smashing columns, too, astorian. You’d think that she had said all she needed to about cake smashing five years ago–I wonder why she brought it up again. Could it be…oh, yes, Mr. Tamex’s brother is getting married soon. I do sense a conspiracy, I surely do.
You are so right about the How We Met’s. The first few were unusual, but now it’s down to the ones “We were at a school party and he asked me to dance.” But they still think it’s “special” and I hope you can print one more. No it wasn’t and no she shouldn’t.
The other cake one she’s printed endlessly is “Why did my wedding cake rot after only 15 years in the closet?” Duh.
It sure does happen. In nearly every wedding I’ve been to ( including mine- but my sisters, not his friends, egged him on) someone either gets the the cake in the face or its variation- feeding a huge forkful of caked
I have. Once, at my aunt’s wedding reception at my grandparents. She and her husband had a very small ceremony that most of us missed, so we had a big party for them at my grandparents’ house. My aunt smashed cake all over my uncle’s face-it was in his mustache and everything. Since everyone was in shorts and tee shirts and drinking beer, no one minded.
I also saw my cousin Tracy and her husband do it…and then they threw little crumbs of cake at each other for fun. It was funny, and silly, and NO ONE MINDED.
Ann Landers really needs to get a life-I feel sorry for Snopes and Barbara whenever she starts spreading her urban legends.
This custom seems to be very unevenly distributed. There are clearly some families or sets of friends in which it’s common and not a big deal as long as it’s not too messy. There’s also social circles (like mine) in which if the bride/groom shoved cake into the face of the groom/bride, the friends and relatives of the groom/bride would beat the bride/groom to a pulp and tell her/him that if she/he ever pulled a stupid trick like that again, she/he wouldn’t live long enough to be divorced.
My husband TRIED to shove the cake into my face, but luckily, I had a strong premonition he was about to do that very thing, and I held his wrist to keep him from doing it.
You can tell in our wedding picture that I am forcing him to keep from botching up my two-hour makeup job. And you can also see from that very same picture the devilish grin on his face while I am struggling with him. Under my breath, which only one person (my cousin) heard, I told him,
“If you get cake all over my face, I will drown you in the punch.”
He knew the punch wasn’t spiked, so he wisely kept his wits about him. The only time in our married life he’s ever done that.
Well, 17 1/2 years ago, I was about the last guy among my classmates to get married and I had never seen it happen except by accident. So I was startled when my new bride hissed at me that I would pay dearly if I shoved cake in her face. Having no desire/intention to do any such thing, I murmurred “Yes, dear.” (the only words a husband really needs to know, anyway) and proceeded to gently slip a small piece of cake between her delicate lips–at which point she mashed my moustache full of icing.
I wasn’t delighted, but I did not storm off in a huff or bury her face in the remaining cake or punch bowl, and we have been married, as I noted, for nearly 18 years.
I think Ann Landers is a twit. (Is it really Ann or is it Abby that carries on about this all the time? Not that it makes a difference.)
Yeah, I’ve seen it more than once. The worst was at a cousin’s wedding. By himself he’s not such a bad guy, but all his fuckwad redneck friends were egging him on. His bride had cake up her nose, in her hair and down her cleavage. Her $2000 satin dress was liberally smeared with buttercream. High comedy! Not.
I would guess it happens more often in smaller rural type places. Every cake-smashing event I ever attended also included the ball-and-chain device (made out of an old bowling ball) to be worn by the groom during the first dance.
A my sister’s reception, the groom put a dab of frosting on her nose. Afterwards, the best man and maid of honor held him still so that the bride could put frosting on his nose. That’s a far cry from smashing cake into someone’s face, though.
Like I said, what I saw was not cake “smashing,” just a little bit of smooshing…like, rubbing icing over your face.
Not like out and out SLAMMING the cake into someone’s mouth.
I’ll admit I’ve only been to three weddings, but at none of them was there any cake-smashing. A wee bit of frosting playfully dabbed on the tip o the nose, but no smashing. I can’t imagine who would do that and why, I mean the frosting-all-down-the-dress type.
I saw it coming, and held still for it. I could smell buttercreme for a week afterwards. Mrs. Tranq got a little icing on her nose and chin, despite her iron grip on my wrist: She was afraid I was going to give her the same treatment she’d just given me. I was just going to feed her the cake, but since she felt it necessary to near tear my arm off (Mrs. Tranq is stronger than most men), I was forced to supply just a little retalliation. Sort of the final negotiation on our partnership.
I never heard of the ball and chain attached to the groom while dancing. I have seen the cake in the face thing, not very pretty. The other thing I really don’t like is the groom or the guy who catches the garter going up the leg as far as he can even when the bride/women who caught the bouquet, is really getting embarrassed and begging the man not to do it.