I’ve only been to my kids’ weddings. I don’t attend other weddings, and I NEVER attend funerals.
Yeah, I find the funeral thing pretty horrific, and my father shared my view. He died in 1992 and I came home to be with my mom and siblings. I was shocked to find out that there was going to be a funeral, something he wouldn’t have wanted, at the insistence of my sister. I didn’t openly object.
I felt obliged to attend the funeral, but my mom told me I shouldn’t. She joked that my dad would sit up in his coffin if I attended.
Yeah, I know funerals are “for the living”. I’ve toasted the deceased at a bar; that’s about as close as I’ll get.
After she found he was still seeing another girlfriend came the ultimatum. Marry me to prove you’ll now be faithful. Sigh. I didn’t go to the wedding. Anyway, they came to the bar afterwards and I had to down several shots of tequila before going over to ‘congratulate’ them.
A few weeks later she caught him (and I’ve always wanted to use this phrase) en flagrante … not with the other girlfriend, but with one of the lads that worked for her.
“But he was always trying to find himself. He’d go out every night looking for himself. And on the way, he found Ruth. Gladys. Rosemary. And Irving.”
The only wedding I can imagine going to in the future would be if my brother finds a wonderful woman to make his wife. Otherwise, I’m just not interested in all the fanfare and nonsense. While I always wish a soon-to-be-married couple the best of luck, it seems to me that the focus should be on being married, not on throwing an expensive party and expecting gifts.
We were invited to a wedding once and knowing both parties we began to debate:
a) Would it actually take place
b) if it did when the divorce would be
Being both polite and curious we attended to find out most of the guests were there for the same reason. The father-of-the-groom was actually taking some bets on if it would make the 1st anniversary.
It didn’t. The book of matches I got lasted longer than the marriage did; they came home from the honeymoon to different destinations and domiciles.
I went to a bad one and as a sign of protest, did not remove my sunglasses at any point during the entire thing.
I’m hella edgy like that.
I went to the wedding of a cousin I don’t like,* for two reasons only.
- I do like many members of that side of the family (mom’s) and I rarely see them.
- My parents weren’t going because my dad had been flown out of town that day for emergency heart surgery in Hamilton, and mom went with him. I went to talk to a few relatives and quietly pass the news to one of my mom’s sisters because Mom was her main support person in caring for a disabled child.
In retrospect I should have just canceled, and phoned my aunt. It was the first wedding I attended after my own marriage fell down went boom, and I was too distraught about my dad. My new boyfriend of three weeks was great, we left right after dinner and he did all the talking for me so I didn’t have to burst into tears. Then he went home and used the French language ticket agents on Air Canada and got my son and me on a flight Monday morning.
I didn’t go to another wedding again until that same boyfriend’s brother’s wedding in 2013. That was a fun one. It was even more low-key than I had anticipated. It was supper good fun.
I guess a third one was my babysitter had swapped out a shift at her other job to babysit. I got home, gave her the pay I would have for the whole night, and she had money and no work on a Saturday night. She was happy.
*Unlike many cousins whom I don’t like because they are addicts, criminals, deadbeat parents, etc this one is just someone who’s attitude etc I don’t care for. She is actually a decent person, her mom is terrific, her brother is a good person. She’s just phony and pretentious, and not very amicable. Most of my other cousins I would not even want them to know where I live, and thus be able to invite me.
I had an excuse - the wedding was 2200 miles away and I was just out of college and looking for a job.
And, being penniless, I obviously couldn’t afford a card…
Gee, so sorry I couldn’t make your wedding to a fellow who despises me as much as I despise him, sister whom nobody likes.
It was a prefect match - let them inflict themselves on each other and keep decent people out of it.
Well, you have an option as a wedding attendee that you don’t have at a funeral. When Mr. Preacher Man says “. . . speak now or forever hold your peace”, Speak Up.
(How often does anyone ever actually do that?)
Strangely, one never hears of preachers saying that at funerals.
I know I’ve already posted on this topic, but I was thinking earlier today about how much I hate getting invitations to full-blown white-dress-church-and-reception weddings for people who are on their 3rd or 4th spouses. It just seems to me like a blatant play for wedding gifts. Seriously, how many church weddings does a person need? Clearly the first 3 didn’t mean much to you or you wouldn’t be having a 4th. (grump grump)
I have no plans on ever remarrying but if I did it would be a destination wedding with immediate family only. (Actually I have a pact with a friend… If I ever get married again I am on duress and you must stop the wedding using all means necesary)
And this destination wedding would only happen if I could afford to fly everyone there. I would never expect anyone to be put of pocket to attend my wedding.
Sooner or later…
I attended the wedding of a close friend after listening to a lot of complaints that she made about her now-husband. She spent so much time on the horrible things that he’d done that I finally asked what she liked about him and was told that talking about his good qualities was just a band-aid to the problem. She also made it clear that she was still going to marry him, so I went to the wedding because I wanted to support my friend. It made it rather interesting to listen to people gush over the bride and groom being soulmates at the wedding. Instead of hoping that they divorce, I hope that he’s actually a more decent man than she made him out to be.
I went to a coworkers wedding that I dreaded attending. We were work partners at the time, and my husband and I got married six months before they did and they attended ours, so wedding planning stuff was being talked about for a good long time and it would have been awkward and weird not to show up.
Except they were the furthest thing from a happy couple I’ve ever known. In all the years I worked with him, he constantly complained about what a bitch she was. They had a child together long before the wedding, he shared his doubts that the child was his. He loved to show the men at work risque pictures of her, she’d done some modeling and is beautiful and he liked bragging. Seemed to be the only thing about her he liked though, he even cheated on her. I don’t know if she reciprocated or not but that was the one that blew me away, I can’t imagine choosing to marry someone I had so little respect for.
I went to the wedding expecting that everyone else would have a different picture of the happy couple, he was probably just exaggerating their problems and blowing off steam to me at work because he was digging for sympathy or whatever. Everyone there seemed to be trapped in the same forced gaiety/frozen dread attitude, people I’d never met were openly telling me they didn’t expect it to last. Enormous fancy princess wedding costing tens of thousands of dollars, and no one enjoyed it.
Six years later, we no longer work in the same department but whenever I run into him he is still married, and still bitching bitterly about her.
“No, wait, I have a stake I wanna drive through his heart!”
I can support the “temporary marriages” - experience has taught me that sometimes those work out great, and sometimes the ones I think will be great fall apart. And sometimes the temporary marriages are the ones where they need you the most (a shotgun wedding some twenty years ago for a friend whose girlfriend had gotten “accidentally on purpose” pregnant and her parents kicked her out of the house. No insurance, no job - so he married her because it was the right thing to do. He is now divorced with two great adult children from the marriage - and she had an affair and left him - he was going to stick it out until the boys got out of high school).
The one I went to that I had a hard time was the wedding of two very anti-Christian pagans - you know the type (anyone here knows the type) who then got married in a huge all-the-trimmings-including-communion Catholic mass. They said it was “for Grandma” - but they didn’t have the respect to keep it as simple as they could get away with - or the backbone to say “sorry Grandma, its a Justice of the Peace wedding.” (Trust me, I had four very Catholic grandparents living when I married an atheist in a courthouse - no one had a heart attack.). Suddenly the anti-religious anti-consumerists who I had to listen to their rants at parties became huge fans of over priced dry wedding cake, religious music, and big pretty churches.
He didn’t realize it at the time but he was just one zipper away from finding himself.
He had it coming…
golf clap