This goes along with the thread on funerals for persons you didnt like.
What do you do if invited to a wedding where deep down for some reason you do NOT approve of? This could be for example you dont think the bride and groom are a good match. Or maybe you are friends with one of them but dont like the other but you go to just be polite. Or maybe you go because of family.
Its really tough when deep down you are supposed to be celebrating this happy occasion but deep down you are anticipating or maybe even hoping for a divorce. But, you smile, be polite, but plan on exiting fast as you can.
I know for me I know of 2 recent weddings of friends where at least one member of the couple had been previously married to other people, they had had an affair, but now were getting married.
I don’t really get on with my dad that well (nothing acrimonious, we just move in different circles and don’t have much time for each other), but he seemed to want me and my sister there, so we attended.
His fiancee, however, was a woman that neither me or my sister could stand. We grew up in a fairly working class family, and my dad was always fairly down to earth (he was a carpenter by trade, before he moved up to management. But she was quite well off (from her previous marriage) and had upper middle class pretensions. Her three kids were spoiled brats.
The wedding itself was fairly small and held at their local church (I thought this was a bit hypocritical; my dad is very much an atheist and as far as I could tell so was she - I think they just wanted the church wedding because it looked nice), while the reception was a horribly pretentious affair at a country house. We looked it up afterwards, wedding meals started at £120 per head! :eek: It had everything - a team of ushers, a toastmaster, a magician after the meal and even fireworks(!). It was painfully obvious who had planned every part of that wedding, and who had just gone along with it…
So I was highly amused, but not entirely surprised, when they split up 18 months later. :rolleyes:
My youngest sister was engaged to a guy who had all kinds of problems, mostly related to substance and alcohol abuse. The date was set and we were going to drive the 800 miles to attend, when the groom flaked and it was called off. Then a few weeks later, it was rescheduled.
The new date was after school started and I wasn’t going to pull my daughter out of school that early in the year, especially in light of the previous wedding attempt. So we missed it.
They married in September. He was in jail by November. He hocked her jewelry and TV and left her in the spring, and the next April, the divorce was final. Somewhere in all this, he headed out west (Montana??) and eventually word came that he’d died, related to the substance abuse. I have no regrets about missing their “wedding.”
In my lifetime I have not gone to far more weddings than the number I have attended. Particularly in the last 10 years or so it seems that the done thing is to arrange weddings so that they involve days of travel to get to and no prospect of free accommodation. Some of those I have not attended but would have gone if it was simpler.
I have never bothered making an excuse just declined and said sorry I can’t make it. I’m sure if I were still married I would have ended up going to several of the ones I skipped.
Weddings have become the modern equivalent of potlatch, and I can tolerate neither the financial waste nor the squee turned up to 11.
I will attend those that are focused entirely on the couple and the ceremony - the kind at which there is no color theme and where the catering, the venue and the bitchy wedding director and her staff are as ignoreable as the parking spaces.
Real sentences, of which I have too many on personal file: “Ronnie and Jack? …oh, yes, the white and violet one at Shadow Grove. The roast beef was horrid.”
Why the hell would you go hoping for a break up or divorce? No one needs a “frenemy” at a wedding, if your thoughts on the couple are so negative stay away.
Whatever you personally think of the couple or one of them and their odds of a successful relationship no one needs negativity at their wedding.
Because sometimes, society expects it. On some occasions (like with my dad’s wedding, above), not going would be seen as a snub and may cause relationship difficulties further down the line.
Sometimes it’s better to just turn up, smile politely and endure it.
I think very few people would be rude enough to accept an invitation to a wedding and then show up and be openly negative about it. Most people do at least have enough social skills to keep their feelings to themselves on these events.
It was just a possible example. One designed to start the conversation. As I said it was the thread on a funeral one attends when they really didnt like the person but you go anyways for… reasons. But yes, I can see your point and I’m glad I’ve never had to do this myself.
Ok, sorry if I assumed anything. But yea my opinion is stay away instead of showing up if that is how you feel, ditto for funerals unless you’re there to support someone else emotionally.
I guess I look at it from the perspective of the couple, and I sure wouldn’t want someone who disapproved there. If even because I’d feel like I was forcing them to fake approval.
I’ll never forget when one of my closest college friends got married. Another friend and I were bridesmaids and we sat on a bench outside the church and debated whether or not to just not go in. The bride was marrying a guy she’d known for 16 weeks and met on the rebound. He’d been married twice already and had no job at the time of the wedding. Reluctantly, we did participate, but neither of us were surprised when the marriage broke up 8 months later.
More recently, my oldest friend was getting married a second time and asked if they could marry in my backyard (I had quite an impressive garden at that house). I didn’t like her husband to be, but still said yes. He nit-picked and fussed about everything in my yard, wanting me to pull up current planting and replace with something else. I kept my mouth shut and my gorge down and got the wedding done.
In both cases, I made the decision I made because of the bride. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and support your friends, no matter how foolish you think they are. Whatever their lives have been like after their marriages, both my friends had wonderful wedding days that seemed perfect to them, and that’s all that really matters.
My BFF, who lives in another state, got married in 1998, and they had intended to have a big wedding, but ended up having a small wedding because so many people checked the “will not attend” box on the RSVP card. I was one of them, and not because I was going to have to travel several hundred miles. It was because I, and a lot of other people, did not approve of the marriage. For reasons I won’t go into here, it just sounded like a bad idea from both sides.
17 years and 3 kids later, they are still together and appear to be very happy.
10 years ago this month, another friend was getting married (her second, with 2 kids, and his first - no kids) and I went even though I was quite hesitant. I had not met him (we were living in different cities at the time) but I had seen pictures of him, and he was VERY obviously gay. I mean, this dude was FLAMING. :dubious: Meeting him confirmed it for me; trust me, it was that obvious. As for the reception, the food was bad and there wasn’t enough. Really. It was catered by a local grocery store, and by the time we ate, the Sterno cans had gone out on the chafing dishes and the food was lukewarm, and they ran out and the last people in line didn’t have a full selection, and all they got was cake.
They had a child a little over a year later (she was almost 40 at the time) and when she told me she was pregnant, I was doubly disappointed and thought, “This is not going to end well.” And sure enough, in early 2012, numerous Facebook posts about what a wonderful man she was married to, and a great father, blah blah blah, she changed her relationship status to “It’s complicated” and announced that they were separating. I still do not know what happened, but I’m guessing that she found out something I knew the first time I saw his picture. :smack:
There’s a line in one of the middle Travis McGee novels about his giving an unlikely couple a six-pack of liquor as a wedding gift - “a disposable gift for a disposable marriage.” Like so many of JDM’s little throwaway observations, that one continues to ring true.
I still do not know what happened, but I’m guessing that she found out something I knew the first time I saw his picture. :smack: