Wedding rant of anger and annoyance

The BBQ Pit
1

This was supposed to go in the “mini rants” thread, but it just kept getting longer, and angrier…so I gave it a home all of its own.

“Best man”: Give us your fucking tux measurements. Now god damn it. A month and a half ago we had a fitting date here in town. You were supposed to drag your sorry ass and your harpy girlfriend into town, stay at our house, eat our food, drink on our dime, annoy the ever-loving shit out of me, and get yourself fitted for a tux. You didn’t. Bird Man called you the day before to ask what time you were coming into town and you told him “Whoops—someone quit and now I have to cover at work.” Like fucking hell you did. You forgot and made up this pathetic excuse to cover up. And if the above was true, why the fucking hell didn’t you call earlier? What if I hadn’t forced Bird Man to call you? Would you have ever let us know you weren’t coming? WTF? And even now you can’t take a half an hour out of your pointless little life to wander downtown and get a fucking tux measurement and send it in? You work nights! It’s not like you can’t find the time during the day! If I were you I’d be *looking * for reasons to get out of the house and away from that insane freak you call a girlfriend!

Guy Who Should Be Best Man But Bird Man For Some Reason Chose That Other Wanker (GWSBBMBBMFSRCTOW): I like you. I really like you. I was totally pulling for you to be best man. I mean really—You took Bird Man into your home when he got kicked out by that cunt he was living with before. You took in his dog, too. Free of charge! You let him eat your food, sleep on your couch, you got him a job (he had been working for the cunt, too). After he moved out he could still count on you for puppy sitting, and now that we’ve moved out of town we can always stay at your place when we come to visit. You always struck me as really responsible. So why is it when I called the bridal shop yesterday to find out if “Best Man” had sent in his sizes yours were missing too? We gave you the size post card three weeks ago. Your wife makes dresses and costumes! You wouldn’t even have had to put on pants and leave the house to get measured! What is up?

Ok, now the wedding is 38 days away. I just called the bridal shop and if we don’t get the sizes in this week we may not get tuxes. AT ALL. Bird Man, my dad, and my brother all came and got sized already—you not turning in your sizes means they won’t get tuxes either. “Best Man,” I don’t give a dog shit in hell if you show up tux or not, but GWSBBMBBMFSRCTOW, I really like you! You are an awesome guy! Don’t make me think less of you by not doing this on time!

Mom: Stop it. Really. Stop it. I know you didn’t get much time to plan your own wedding. I’m sure what there was time to plan was planned entirely by your mother. But you know me! I’m not a fru fru crazy let’s have a big-ass weekend long wedding kinda gal! My “Weddings for Dummies” book was freaking me out so bad I had to shelve it. If you want to plan a brunch before my ceremony, plan the damn brunch. If you want a gift-opening party the day after, plan the damn party! You fricking know who is coming to the ceremony—I invited fricking everyone you told me to! I don’t give a flying fuck what the centerpieces are going to be at the rehearsal dinner! I don’t give a flying fuck if you invite your brother to it! I really don’t!!! I am the anti-Bridezilla, I just want to get married, I don’t give a fuck how it happens! And stop calling Bird Man and me every god damn night after 7:00! You know we have play rehearsal! And stop acting put out when we tell you that NO we CAN’T talk right now! And for FUCKS SAKE!!! I KNOW I have only one weekend free between the play and my wedding!! DON’T act like I’m an awful person for telling my aunt we won’t have time for a shower. I am NOT telling my bridesmaids and Bird Man’s family from across the entire state to come to a fucking shower a week before the wedding just to come back again for the actual wedding!! And when I tell you that I hadn’t planned to have a really big flower thing, or a band, or any other crazy posh thing don’t ask me in that condescending way if it’s because I had already spent the budget Dad gave me. First off—It was given as a gift and can spend it any way I please. Second, we are trying to keep the wedding cost down so we can have more fun on our honeymoon and then use the rest toward furniture and the mortgage. Third, we are not posh people. If we wanted butterflies, we would have gotten butterflies but we DON’T WANT THEM!! I AM NOT A FAIRY PRINCESS WEDDING KIND OF PERSON!!! So just FUCK OFF and be happy for me for ONCE in your LIFE!

sigh

I need an Advil. If you are planning a wedding, here is my advice. Don’t. Fly to Vegas, get it done, then come back and have a party. Your mom pouting for a few months will be worth not dealing with all the hassle.

2

Some friends of mine did this in December, and are having a reception tomorrow. I wish I’d have done that.

Anyway, just wanted to say I feel for you. Your post makes me so happy I plan never to get married again. Best of luck!

3

My second wedding anniversary is coming up in June, and I really wish we had went to Vegas. The year leading up to and the day of was hell. Between my nerves and my drama-queen families, I would have rather eloped.

4

My husband and I did just that. We paid for air and hotel for his parents and brother and my son and his wife.
We invited everyone we knew. I found a dress on sale, he had a tux. The whole thing cost us less tha $5000.
We were married at the Bellagio Hotel. Three months before, we went down, talked to the wedding planner, who had everything ready when we got there.
The wedding package included pictures and video, my flowers, my bridesmaids’ flowers, corsages for his mom, and lapel posies for the male attendants. They provided the officiant, the chapel’s flowers, a limo for us to go downtown for our licence, and our first night at the hotel. Oh, and snacks for the small reception in our room.
We had a marvelous suite on an upper floor facing the Dancing Waters lake. The suite had 3 bathrooms, his, with a steam room and shower you could play basketball in, her’s with a jetted soaking tub, TVs in all three as well as in both living room and bed room, fresh flowers everyday, and of course, chocolates on the pillow every night.
It was painless, and we didn’t spend $40K on it. Our real friends showed up. The ones that would have just come to eat our food and drink our booze didn’t.
I wanna do it again!

5

I’m all for small weddings. My first was planned by the MIL and was fairly painless. All I had to do was supply names.
My second was a couple of years ago in front of the Orange County Wedding Person Gal down in Florida. So, I’ve got no horse in this race, but the rest of the weddings I have gone to that were smallish were always less stressful for the couple involved. And usually more fun for the guests since they were more free-wheeling and all, not so much structure and tradition. Blech.

LittleBird, I think you should just guess at their sizes and then add about 10 inches to each measurement. That way, on the big day they will look like the clowns they are.

6

  1. I couldn’t decide which of my two best friends would be “best man,” so I just gave them both the job. If someone asked me which of them was “best”, I just said that they tied for first place.

  2. A couple of weeks before the event, they asked me over some beers what the hell they should wear to the wedding.

“I dunno”, I said, “probably something with a tie”.

7

Sorry to hear about your troubles. People suck sometimes.

We had a small wedding, about 16 people. The ceremony was conducted by a friend (who was certified for the purpose), and took place in a public space—the arboretum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The reception was in a private room at a restaurant right near the park. We didn’t even start planning until about 2 months before the event, and even that was only so we could give my mother and sister and best friend (who were flying in from Australia) a firm date.

8

Oh agreed. This wedding is not going to be big. There are only 100 chairs at the arboritum after all. And I wanted it casual. But then Mom freaked out about no tuxes…and after all I didn’t think I could trust “Best Man” to wear something nice… At least my bridesmaids get to buy their own dresses. I want them to be able to wear them again. :smiley:

9

We had about 400 people, but by Israeli standards that’s pretty modest. I didn’t wear a tux myself (although I did buy a nice blue suit).

10

Little Bird: my BIL’s comment six months after his wedding:

“If you survive the wedding, marriage is a piece of cake.”

Best of luck to you. And second the guessing at tux sizes idea. Although I wonder whether adding ten inches is enough for fatheads like them.

11

After reading this post I have come to a realization that Inkleberry and I were very smart. When we decided to get married a year ago, we went to City Hall in NYC, got a licence, then we found a woman who would marry us in a non-denominational way. Then we told our friends and families. Wedding and reception cost a grand total of $300. Not counting train tickets into Manhattan. And that was half the fun, almost the entire group was on the train with us. We had the longest limo to a wedding, ever. Of course we just wanted it to be us and 2 friends, get it done and move on, but the more people knew, the bigger it got.

Good luck to you, may your future with Bird Man have way less drama than the wedding. And kick the best man. He’s earned it.

12

It’s not the size of the ceremony, it’s the strength of the vows.

Elopement is not a bad thing. I know someone who’s parents spent $40k on a wedding, and it didn’t even last a year.

I, on the other hand, eloped, spent about $35, and have been married for over 11 years.

Ha. And they said it wouldn’t last.

13

And kick anyone who says how wonderful wedding planning is, and how much you must be enjoying this. Wedding planning is extremely stressful for some of us (I suspect it is for most of us, but I can’t prove that). It is not in any way fun for us non-fru-fru fairy-princess wedding types.

14

My husband and I had a great wedding, enjoyed by us as well as all who attended. You know what? It still wasn’t worth the hassle beforehand. I tell every single person complaining about wedding planning the same thing… ELOPE. Elope while you still have the chance. No matter how great the wedding is, it’s not worth it.

15

I think I’m just about on the same page as you, lisa. Our wedding was also small and unpretentious, but I think more fun could have been had (especially for us) at less cost by eloping and having a huge blow-out party with everyone we’ve ever met afterwards. After all, it really isn’t about the wedding - it really is about the marriage.

16

I got to spend most of the six months immediately preceding my wedding underneath the North Pole. Fortunately, kaylasmom had an excellent support system in place. There were a very small number of loose ends to tie up during the two weeks between my arrival and the wedding, but for the most part, everything went smoothly.

The downside, of course, is that I have been deprived of any wedding day horror stories to share.

The honeymoon, on the other hand…Oy! :eek:

17

Oh god, I tell everyone this too. We had a small wedding for not very much, and it was still insanity to plan. We would’ve eloped but my husband’s parents would’ve disowned him - not that he cares about being in a will or anything, but he didn’t want to cause such a problem with them. We ended up paying for a few uneaten meals when a SIL’s husband and stepkids didn’t show. Same SIL showed up after the vows, and got into a fight at the reception with another of her sisters. Another SIL surprised us by splitting her readings up among herself and her two daughters, as she was peeved that a nephew and niece were helping serve communion and her daughters weren’t involved in the ceremony. My FIL was describing himself to others as being like a second father to me (uh, no) and offered to walk me down the aisle - even if my dad was alive, I wasn’t planning on following that tradition. He wanted me to sign a pre-nup saying that if I divorced my husband, I’d give back the heirloom engagement ring. He told my husband after we got engaged that he wouldn’t pay for it as he wasn’t the father of the bride (heh), but then threw a fit a few months before the wedding as he wasn’t consulted on anything.

Two friends of ours eloped to St. Thomas and took my husband and I along as best man and maid of honor. Now that’s a wedding. :smiley: They’re celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary this year.

18

Come again…?

(yeah. heh. if I woulda quoted his part about the honeymoon it woulda been a funny pun!)

19

I told my only attendant that I would take her shopping and buy her a dress of her choosing for the wedding. She didn’t find one she liked, so she just wore something nice from her closet. The best man wore a suit.

Mr. S and I just went shopping and bought some fun clothes for the ceremony. Single-rose corsages/boutonnieres for us, the two attendants, and my mother. The five-minute ceremony was at the county courthouse on a Friday afternoon, and then my mother bought dinner for all 23 of us (that was her gift). We brought an ice-cream cake, and there was champagne. The city thoughtfully provided a laser light show for us (as part of a festival that was going on across the street). We spent the weekend bumming around Milwaukee.

Pretty relaxed and low key. Some of the guests still tell us it was one of the nicest weddings they ever attended. That was 15 years ago this summer.

Contrary to popular opinion, your wedding day is not the happiest day of your life (and spending more money on it won’t fix that either). It’s every day after that (or should be).

(If my mother hadn’t liked our plan, tough titty – it was our wedding, not hers. But fortunately she’s a penny-pinching non-girly-girl also. :slight_smile: )

20

Can I add in my own wedding rant to get sympathy? I really need some. Here I go (appologies for any stepped on toes):

The parents are convinced that I’m throwing my life away. Here’s why:

  1. the BF and I met when I was 15. There is a 9 year age difference between us. My parents told me to break it off then, but I didn’t

Here’s why I think the reason above is mitigated:

  1. the BF and I have been dating uninterruptedly for the last 8 years
  2. We’ve been living together for the last 5 years with narry a complaint, so the realtionship is both stable and healthy (as an aside, we were each other’s firsts, so it’s not like I was sucked in by a total predator)
  3. the BF not only did not interfere with my higher education, but actually supported me financially when the parents couldn’t.
  4. I’ve gotten into the professional school they requested and will bring much honor to the family. And I did so ahead of the curve (average is three applications before acceptance, I did it in two)

I could list more, but those are the biggest.

I think these reasons outway the big first one. They equate my marriage plans to a person walking into oncomming traffic. This is not helped by my loss of faith (not that I had much originally) and my desire to have a secular ceremony. Mom has agreed to hold her tongue, but dad is refusing to show and really doesn’t like talking to me. I know I need to just let it go, let them be their stubborn selves, but my stomach won’t stop cramping. I know they feel like they’ve failed to raise a decent child, but, damn it, I’m sick of them looking at me like a half empty glass. I don’t smoke, never did drugs, rarely drink, and in four years I’ll be a freaking doctor, for crissake. I kept my GPA high all through undergrad despite working multiple parttime jobs.

I feel like they want me to be a thought clone. Even when they aren’t mad at me, most conversations turn into a patronizing treatments of “you just don’t understand because you haven’t thought through/researched.” My dad still uses the “I know because I’ve been around so much longer than you” trump card. Any opinion that differs from theirs is inherently wrong.

So comfort me! Tell me that you’ve had problematic parents too and it was so totally worth showing them what thorough jerks they were. Tell me they eventually came around. Hug me!