I will be going to a wedding on saturday(grandmother getting remarried), and I’m interested in peoples wedding experinces, whether they’re good, bad or strange.
Well, I enjoyed my own wedding (even if I did drop the ring under the chuppah). But then again, I generally have fun by weddings.
There was one time, at a cousin’s wedding, when I completely surprised my father and his wife (my stepmother). I was dancing (very hard, as I usually do by weddings) and worked up quite a sweat. So, I broke away from the dancing and went to the bar and ordered water (on the rocks, of course). My father and stepmother were watching me from their table. I was so sweaty and worked up from the dancing that I downed the glass right away without coming up for air. I immediately asked the bartender for another one, which I consumed immediately, followed by a third. Then I went back to the dancing.
Later on, I found that my stepmother was watching me with horror and turned to my father and whispered “I didn’t know Zev had a drinking problem.” To which my father replied “Neither did I!” (For the record, I don’t drink hard liquor.)
Zev Steinhardt
It will depend on if you know any of the other guests there. Chances are there will be some relatives so if you like them, you can hang around with them and you’ll be fine. You will usually be placed at the same table as other people you know; barring that, you would be placed with your age group so you shouldn’t be completely miserable. I have been to probably 50 weddings in my life (and I’m only 32!); I never had a terrible experience. (There were some people who shouldn’t have gotten married, but the wedding itself wasn’t a total waste like the marriage was!) Some were ok and some were, in fact, great. Just don’t get too drunk; it’s pretty trashy. Dress nicely, be polite to everyone and dance if you are asked to. Unless there are a lot of bad family dynamics in your clan, there is no reason why you shouldn’t at least have a decent time.
I’ve had a good time at all the weddings I’ve been to. Although one of my friends, for some strange reason, had a wedding in July (no big deal) and during the reception insisted on a game of ultimate frisbee, which she played in her wedding gown. Since it was almost 90 degrees, I thought it was waaaayyy too hot to play ultimate frisbee, plus, although the wedding had been around 2:30, the reception was a late afternoon/evening affair, so all of her guests were in long dresses and suits. Literally everyone (bride & groom included) but the most elderly among us was soaked in sweat before dinner was served. It was rather gross.
As for my wedding, I had a great time, even though it poured and was freezing cold, at the end of April. Oh, yeah, and my father-in-law had somehow managed to invite nearly 100 people neither I nor my husband had ever met in our lives, even though we asked him to limit his list to people we knew (we only wanted a wedding of 60 or so because we wanted a nice sit-down dinner, not the 120 who actually showed up!). I got stuck with an outlandish catering bill, but everyone seemed to have a good time.
Well, I’ve attended three (marriages of my Dad’s co-workers in two cases, and a marriage of friends of the family in another) and participated in one (Maid of Honor).
The two co-worker weddings I attended were mostly Chinese in nature (the bride wasn’t Chinese in both cases, and they blended some of their family traditions into the Chinese traditions). Oooh, the fooooooood. Yum. Yum. YUM! Multi-course dinners, and each table was provided with take-out boxes so anyone who wanted to could take home leftovers. A very nice idea, as it kept the newlyweds and their families from being overwhelmed with leftovers and it made the guests happy by keeping them fed for a few days afterwards. 
In one of the co-worker weddings, the bride’s family was too far away for them to attend, so we sat on her side to help even things out and give her some moral support instead of seeing a bunch of empty seats. (As an interesting side note, we were the only non-Chinese there, aside from the bride and her parents.)
The other two (friends of the family and the one I participated in) were simple affairs: nice, simple (and quick!). Both were outdoors (one on a rooftop of a hotel, the other next to a rose garden). One had a nice traditional dinner (I only remember the food being good) the other was a buffet style (and the seasoned roast beef was very yummy).
Out of the four, I liked the wedding cake from the one I participated in the best. Alternating tiers of chocolate and white cake (nice and moist) with blueberry jam between the white cake layers and raspberry jam between the chocolate cake layers. (And some of the best homemade buttercreme frosting I’ve ever tasted: nice and light with no lard taste.)
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Several years ago, I attended the wedding of my next door neighbors. At the time, I was an editor for a very liberal local newspaper, and a hotly contested mayoral race was underway in the city. The groom in this wedding was a local attorney, and he and I had engaged in some good-natured political debates for the past several months.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been paying as much attention to local politics at the time as I should have (because I had just gotten married two weeks before, so I was all preoccupied with my own wedding). At the reception, I found myself at a table with a bunch of friends of the groom. Conversation turned to the mayoral race, and the gentleman seated on my left made some crack about the Democratic candidate. I offhandedly tossed back some comment along the lines of, “Well, he’s sure better than that [name of Republican candidate].”
I received a very strange look, and my then-husband kicked me under the table. I’ll give you one guess who the man sitting on my left was…
Yep, the Republican candidate himself.
Now I make sure to know what political candidates look like before I start mouthing off at wedding receptions… :o
The weddings I’ve attended have been nice enough, I suppose. They’re just all a bit boring, is all. I rather enjoy the ceremonies of people I love, but I’d be perfectly happy to skip the reception entirely. Inane chitchat (“Oh, wasn’t that such a lovely ceremony?” “And doesn’t she look pretty?” “Oh, my, such moist cake!”) makes my eyeballs bleed, but it’s much better than the (former)discussions of when I’m going to get married, what exactly we’re waiting for, how I’m not getting any younger, you know, and when we’re going to get cracking on cranking out some young’uns. I usually tried to make it a point to be in the bathroom when they threw the bouquet, too.
My wedding has been described as interesting, unique and different.
I got married in Nashville’s replica of the Parthenon. My mother’s Iranian, so it had a strong Persian influence. I had two ceremonies, the American one on the steps out front and the Persian one inside.
The American one was very short, about five minutes for the wedding party to get to their places and five minutes for the vows and ring exchange. The Persian ceremony was every one’s favorite. We were seated in front of a something similar to a blanket on the floor that was decorated with all sorts of different things that symbolize fertility, depth in a marriage, light, etc. (It’s called a sofreh aghd in case any one is interested.) We had sugar cones grinded onto a cloth that covered our heads. The JOP asked me if I would take my husband in promise of love and family, which I ignored until the third time. Normally the groom would have to offer money and property, but we figured that was a bad idea since half the guests wouldn’t have been aware of the custom. And any bride who answers before the third time would seem too desperate and anxious.
The reception consisted of a lot of Persian dancing, one of my cousins playing the guitar and singing for me, and another cousin dancing a Spanish dance and then later an Arabic dance.
I don’t think a single person was bored at my wedding. Some people are still talking about it and it was two months ago.
I have been to a lot of weddings in my day, and a few things stand out.
Catholics should know that you can’t be twenty minutes late to a Methodist wedding or you will be greeting the couple as they walk back down the aisle after the ceremony.
Even if you throw a no-alcohol-served reception in the church basement to avoid the sight of your Cousin Tim passing out in his plate like he did at Cousin Lynn’s wedding, he will still go out to the parking lot and drink with Cousin Harry.
Prepare something witty and profound to say when someone comes up to your table during the reception with a videocamera and asks (no, demands) that you “say a few words to the happy couple” Practice this so you won’t have to refer to notes. I can’t imagine how bad these videos must be to watch.
If you are the maid-of-honor giving a speech about the happy couple, try to talk about what a wonderful couple they are. Do not regale the crowd with tales of how you know you and the bride will always be best friends because you used to hold each other’s hair out of the way while puking. Try to mention love, marriage and the groom at least once.
Do not be shocked by “the Chicken Dance” and the “Hoky-Poky” Even perfectly rational, extemely adult people who never show a bit of whimsy like to get out on the dance floor with all the kids and tuck their hands into their armpits and flap their elbows like wings.
When one of my young cousins got married, the reception became an Ohio State frat party with a lot of intensive dancing and an incredible amount of sweat. The bride got mad at the photographer when he pulled her away from the dance floor for family shots SHE had asked for and was paying for. Neither the bride nor the groom spent any time dancing with each other except for the obligatory first dance, nor did they even go around the tables together as is customary…if they weren’t being forced to sit still or together for pictures, she was dancing with her girlfriends and he was drinking with his buddies. There was a very long slide show of pictures of each of them when young, and then pictures of the two of them together. It was obvious that all the “together” pictures had been taken on one day at a park in a planned shoot…here they are peeking out from behind a tree…here they are sitting on a picnic table…here they are in front of the fountain. Not a single candid shot of them together at any other time…no birthday partys, football games, Christmas gathering…nothing. I just love watcing all these relationship dynamics!