On the bright side she’ll be able to force her daughter to have the wedding that she would have had. It’s the circle of resentment.
Around the early 20th century when some major stores got large and diversified enough to have bridal registries, and a bridal couple could accumulate an entire dinnerware service through coordinated purchases by relatives and friends.
Couples starting out needed good china and linens and silver to use when they entertained. When entertaining started to get more casual in the mid-20th century, and when more women had jobs outside the home and fewer women had servants inside the home, the frequency with which the “company china” was used plummeted. But it remained traditional for some decades for newlyweds to acquire china, silver and glassware for “proper” entertaining.
So like the diamond wedding ring, a creation of 20th century US mass marketing. When the Final Judgement is registered, those folks will have a lot to answer for.
This is really timely for me. My younger sister and I got my mom’s wedding china. My older sister got the silver – at least that has a meltdown value!
My younger sister kinda likes the pattern. I’m not crazy about it, but we never use it so we’re just going to give it away. Just for laughs I tried to googling for the pattern, but I can’t find it. Orange blossoms on a pale green border with a gilt edge. I really don’t think it has an true monetary value, but it’d be nice to know. Guess I’ll have to dig it out to get the specifics on the pattern.
That reminds me of a Sam Levinson 78 record my mother had, called “The Bar Mitzvah Boy.” When he is reluctant to study, his parents surround him and chant “you’ll get presents, you’ll get presents.” Enough so that when he stood up during the ceremony, he said “today I am a fountain pen.”
It would have been “today I am a transistor radio” in 1964 when I got bar mitzvahed.
We didn’t get china for our wedding, but we inherited my mother’s china, my mother-in-law’s china and my aunt’s china. It all takes up lots of space and never got used. We unloaded on set on the younger daughter, the older one is too smart to take it.
So china is a gift that keeps on giving, like it or not.
Maybe I should take up skeet shooting.
Yes, that dovetails with my perception too. The more expensve the wedding, the shorter the marriage.
based on the whole thread I think maybe we ought to recast that comment as something closer to
The more expensive the wedding versus what you can sensibly afford, the shorter the marriage.
The point being that for 20yo college junior me to blow 50K on a wedding would have been stupid extravagant and a sure sign of a short marriage. But for Jeff Bezos to blow $50K on a wedding would indicate he didn’t give a shit about that person, and it’ll be a short marriage albeit for a different reason. He’s probably blown $50K on one night’s hookers & blow for himself alone. If not he sure should. I would if I had his wallet.
His optimal wedding expenditure for a long-lasting marriage is, total WAG, around $1M.
We got married at age 23. Half the stuff we borrowed. I think it came in at $4,000. I hated every second of wedding planning. I hate parties and was freaked out by the spotlight. I hated that as the woman people kept heaping their expectations onto me.
The day itself… Magical. All of our friends and family there to show their love and support. The perfect honeymoon using someone’s Florida condo. My first time on a plane.
Fifteen years married next month. Nothing is perfect, but we love each other deeply and we’re partners in all things.
I do think it’s in part about expectations. We’d been together for four years and cohabitating for a while. When we went on the honeymoon I remember thinking how grateful I was that I knew exactly who I married. No surprises there. No expectations shattered. Just the friendly comfort of traveling with my favorite person.
We got married at the home of the local justice of the peace with two witnesses on a Saturday. After, we went to Denny’s for creamed sausage over biscuits. Monday, we went back to work. We stayed married for over 30 years, not that happily for me, but I stuck it out till death did us part.
There’s a lot to be said for that.
While strictly speaking I hadn’t co-habited with my wife, we had been going together for ~5 years with a couple interruptions courtesy of the whims of USAF. And had lived in the same apartment building for a couple years and had often “forgotten” to go to our separate apartments at the end of a day. Towards the end of that era it was hard to tell which apartment was assigned to who; they were both “ours” more than either was “mine” or “hers”. Untangling that integration when the first of us was shipped out was actually a logistical PITA.
So all the little things of daily living together had already been explored. As well as most of the bigger things. Our ensuing 33 years married have held no surprises on any of those scores. Life itself has been full of twists and turns, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But one constant has been the content of our characters and our total commitment to our little team. Which we had proven out during our pre-married time. It works well.
So well said. We’ve been dealing with some calamity our entire time together. That’s life I guess. But rarely did it affect the quality of our relationship. Ironically one of the worst years of our relationship was during the wedding planning. Ooh that was stressful.
Check out Replacements, Ltd.. When my daughter dropped one of my aunt’s plates, I was able to find out the name / pattern etc. there and purchase a plate. Dunno if they would buy your stuff but it couldn’t hurt.
My mother-in-law inherited some “good china” from relatives and loathed it - so she made it their everyday dishware in the hopes that it would be gotten rid of through normal attrition. We actually have the last piece, a platter.
I could actually buy more pieces of my aunt’s silver if I wanted - it’s special order only, but the company is still in business.
That’s where I looked! Using appropriate search terms nothing that matched showed up. I have to dig up the actual china to see who made it (and maybe the pattern name).
Luxury. When I was bringing in my newly married daughters marriage certificate to get a copy at the county office, a couple got married down the hall at the window of a clerk, with one witness. I don’t suspect they were going anywhere fancy for their reception. Should last a long time.
Total marriage cost under $3000, and we have been together 34 years (35 this July 10th). My Beloved made her own gown, I rented a tux, and the reception was at my mother–law’s house.
Click and Clack, you know, the Tappet brothers, once speculated that you could judge how long a marriage would last by knowing the age of the person’s daily driver. That might be an interesting poll to put together.
The morning after our wedding we spread all the cash and checks we got as gifts over the hotel room bed and, um, consummated our marriage on top of them.
I loved Gunne Saxe dresses, for weddings or not. (Although I didn’t wind up wearing one at mine.)