I’m getting married two weeks from this Sunday. I am more scared of the wedding than I am of being married.
Here are some observations from my experiences so far:
Weddings are traditionally vows of monogamy. Why do I feel like everyone is fucking me?
Abstaining from sex before marriage is impossible (for me at least). Abstaining from sex before a wedding is dead easy.
Mouse Maven’s Rule of Religion and Politics is getting a lot of use. (The Rule: You don’t discuss religion or politics with anyone who hasn’t see you naked twice.)
Women will fight over the oddest things. My MIL and my SIL got into a fight because my SIL called up to say she wouldn’t be able to make it that evening to help fold napkins.
The groom’s job is to say “Yes dear” and stay out of the way. Oh, and show up on time.
I wish someone had told me in advance.
I would up paying for most of the wedding, planning most of the ceremony, providing directions for everyone who came from out of town, greeting people at the entrance, accepting smashed cake in my moustache, and staying sober enough to drive away after the reception.
Your rules are a lot easier.
Like tomndeb, I wish someone had told me this. I ended up co-planning, paying for, and setting up for our supposed-to-be-on-the-beach wedding that got pushed indoors by rain (the one rainy day in the week. The Powers That Be had it in for us. I spent a lot of time setting up a chapel on the Beach)
I slept with the Bride the night before, although I don’t think there was any sex. We would’ve been too tired.
Yes, there is something about the X-chromosome that makes women get very catty around a wedding. (I must have missed out on that bit of genetics since I’m the bride. All I want is for everything to go smoothly and no one to fight.)
As for my beloved, I feel very bad for him. He’s paying for most of the wedding so my attitude is “Yes dear.” I don’t mind; I had a wedding shower last week and being the center of attention was very uncomfortable. Then only thing that is keeping me from running down the asle are the heels I’ll be wearing.
Bottom line: It’s only five hours out of your life and you’ll be in such a whirlwind you won’t remember any of it but you will remember the aggrevation that lead up to it.
When my brother got married, my mother insisted on driving him to the church, so that she knew he would be there on time. She also organized brunch for the groomsmen, so that she would know that they would all be there on time. (In retrospect, she should have bough a half dozen pairs of black socks to hand out to assorted groomsmen, the groom, etc. At least two groomsmen bought socks at the last minute(or after traveling to the wedding region), and the Groom showed up at the wedding in dark socks with a pattern on the side).
So anyway, we all got dressed for the wedding, piled into cars and headed to the church. Only to see the minivan belonging to the parents of the Groom, and containing the Groom turning around to head back. Groom had left the marriage license and the ring on the counter.
Mrs. Giraffe was unbelievably level-headed and sane throughout the entire process. Her mother, not so much. The two of them got into some crazy arguments, basically because the wedding made her mother, well, crazy. The best was a week-long fight, mostly carried out over email, which started when my mother-in-law found out Mrs. Giraffe was not inviting her aunt (mother-in-law’s brother’s wife) to the pre-wedding bridal shower. The reasons this was so crazy:
This was a small, informal shower thrown by Mrs. Giraffe’s best friend two days before the wedding. Most everyone coming to the wedding was flying in from far away, so the shower was intended for close friends and family who were willing to come out a day early for it.
Mrs. Giraffe was not at all close to the aunt in question
Mrs. Giraffe’s mother absolutely despises the aunt in question.
The aunt had already purchased her plane tickets, and was not arriving in town until the day after the shower.
So Mrs. Giraffe declined to invite the aunt: she wanted to keep the shower small and didn’t want to invite someone she didn’t expect or want to attend. Her mother flipped out. For some reason, she took this as a rejection of the family as a whole. At one point, she claimed the guest list was almost entirely made up of my relatives, complete with made up statistics. (In fact, there were a few more of Mrs. Giraffe’s relatives than mine, and a bunch of friends.) After this, she threatened to refuse to have her hair done before the wedding or help with the flowers if the aunt wasn’t invited (I’m not sure why these two actions were chosen for boycott). Heated virtriol and baseless accusations flew wildly. Mind you, this is an otherwise perfectly normal woman, coming completely unhinged over an for-show-only invitation to someone she doesn’t like.
I stayed out of the way. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s this: always stay out of the way when the wife and her mom go at it.
Oh yeah, I have this with my mother too. Some background information: My parents had a very bitter divorce. I have not had any contact with my father or his family in 8 years. I have not had much contact with my mother’s family in over 20 years.
My mother has been complaining about not enough of “her people” were invited to the wedding. She got really angry when I spelled it out for her:
We’re paying for the wedding, not you.
I don’t want strangers at my wedding.
I have invited you mother (my maternal grandmother) who I haven’t seen in 20 years and her new husband who I’ve never met.
I can’t say that my mother is perfectly normal, but that’s for another thread.
We just started plannign our wedding for October, and by we I mean she is planning and I am nodding my head a lot and secretly crying about all the money that it is going to take.
I would suggest paying for it yourself. Then you get final say and the last word in an argument, “You want me to invite your third cousin twice removed who’s been living in the Amazon jungle for the last twenty years? Not until you start writing checks for the hall and the caterer and the flowers.”
Remember that if things go wrong at the wedding, you’ll have a funny story to tell later (hopefully you’ll tell it to us!) As long as you wind up married when it’s all over, that’s the important thing.
I got married a few months ago and I was petrified. My mantra: If you don’t eat, you can’t puke, and if you don’t drink anything, you won’t have to pee with a big dress on.
And how sad and pathetic is that? True, absolutely, but sad and pathetic. The first time I got married I was only 20. Big catholic church wedding. I was so worried about protocol and manners and doing the “right” thing I didn’t have any fun at all. I got to hear about how much fun everyone had after we left for the honeymoon. The reception apparently carried on without us and that’s when the fun happened.
Second time around we opted for a very small (immediate family only, no children) My best friend was really miffed that she couldn’t attend and even though I was paying for it (and by then I was in my mid 30s) my mom still tried to run the show.
This time (yes, I’ve done it three times) we didn’t invite a single soul. Heck we didn’t even tell anyone. We just went down to the clerk of the court and said “Hi, we want to get married today” and the lady just stood there for a minute with her mouth hanging open then she said “really?” and we said “yes”. She took us into this tiny little conference room that had been decorated to look a little weddingy and read us the standard vows and we said I do and kissed and then went to lunch and had muchos margaritas. By far the best wedding I’ve ever had. (best husband too ) In retrospect I wish I would have thought to bring my best friend (the one who was so miffed about wedding #2) to be a witness but we literally decided the night before because I happened to have the day off work.
The thing that makes everyone so crazy is trying to do it “right” because you only get married once. It is really so hard to just relax and have a celebration when you’re worried about what mean old aunt so-and-so will think about your dress or the flower girl or the groom’s socks.
They’ll still bitch, mind you. You do have more of a convincing argument this way, but people will still whine about what you’re doing, regardless.
My mother made my sister’s maid-of-honor dress, and called me all in shock over how the hem length was way too short and my sister was going to look like she was in a miniskirt. After I caught my breath I checked with sis - the dress hung immediately above the knee. Trust a mom to have distorted vision over her “baby” girl’s hemlines.
My father-in-law said he wasn’t going to contribute anything since I’m not his daughter. My husband and I said fine, and paid for it ourselves. A few months before the wedding, he bitches to my husband because he hadn’t been consulted at all on the wedding planning. My husband reminds him of his insistence on not paying, and the budget is renegotiated to have him paying for the sparkling wine, flowers, and cake, plus rehearsal dinner. In the meantime, he’d offered to walk me down the aisle since my own dad had died years before, and had said - out of my earshot - that he was a “second father” to me. Good thing it was out of earshot or I’d have laughed without thinking.
My engagement ring was originally that of my FIL’s mother. Before my husband and I went shopping for rings, he arrived home with the news that his mother remembered that his grandma had stated the ring was for him, and it was left in the safety deposit box. Not long after it was given, my FIL told my husband that he had to get the ring back if we ever divorced. This past holiday season (8 years post-wedding), I overheard my FIL telling a SIL that he was going to make sure he would get the ring back (she didn’t leave it to him!) if we divorced, IIRC something about cutting it off if he had to. I’m pretty sure he saw when I walked in the room that I’d heard this.
Part of the tux rental agreement includes a free father-of-the-groom tux. FIL refused to go in for measurements or wear a tux to his only son’s wedding. When one of my husband’s sisters heard this, she called and harangued him quite effectively, as my husband got a call about 10 minutes later asking where again was it that he had to go for measurements?
We didn’t want kids in the wedding ceremony. However, being a Catholic church they wanted altar servers for the Communion, and so our ~9-year-old niece and nephew are asked to serve. One sister-in-law who has two teenage girls is displeased that her girls are the only nieces who aren’t involved (hello, we have a total of three nieces and one nephew, and I had no kids from my side involved at all), and so without telling us until the middle of the rehearsal she divides up her scripture readings among herself and her children. I take a deep breath, say “fine” through clenched teeth, and move on.
The church assigned us a wedding coordinator who went to high school with my husband nearly a decade prior, and didn’t really like him back then. (He was just a geek, not a bully or anything.) She seemed standoffish and not that involved, then dropped out of helping not long before the wedding, and the church had to assign someone else - who came through wonderfully, mind you.
The main church secretary took it upon herself to bitch at my mother-in-law about how we were living in sin before the wedding and it wasn’t proper, etc., etc. My MIL let her have it with both (verbal) barrels. This was especially inappropriate since the priest merely asked us (in a round-about fashion) to refrain from sexual activity for about a month prior to the wedding.
Aforementioned ex-bridesmaid-SIL had a loud argument at the reception with gave-her-daughters-some-readings-SIL, over which of them was the anorexic. Another SIL thankfully hustled them outside before it got too loud.
If my husband weren’t displeased at the thought of being disowned if he eloped, I seriously would have gone that route.
Ever since this started I have been shocked by everything that’s built up around a wedding. Years ago I heard about a Bride’s Support Group. That’s doesn’t sound like such a bad idea right now.
The more I read wedding horror stories, the more glad I am that Mr. SCL and I just eloped. He proposed on Monday, we ordered my flowers on Tuesday & got the blood test, and got married on Wednesday. No hassles. No bitching. No relatives!
That was what we were going to do, whhich made me very happy. Unfortuantely my fiancee shares an office with a womanwho is also getting married and is planning a wedding and now my fiancee must have a wedding, so we are having a wedding.
) In retrospect I wish I would have thought to bring my best friend (the one who was so miffed about wedding 