I can’t believe I did that. I meant to say " anything but a cash bar." Open bars are the norm here.
My point was that only the first part of your post was about what you dislike – it ended with a separate, broad “what’s to like” question. So I answered it. 
Southern weddings are almost all either open bar or dry (don’t ask) or just wine and beer. Cash bar would definately be commented upon. It’s just not done here, and it always surprises me when I’m somewhere else (usually - seen one in these parts) and there’s a cash bar. I don’t expect it, I probably didn’t bring my purse, I have to ask my date for the handful of stuff I made him carry in his pockets… just tacky.
The looooong wait for the pro photog to photogaph all the combinations of families with the wedding part, etc. etc, ad nauseum.
The Photo CD of all the pro photos and all the amateur candids showed the candids much more realistic that the formal stuff.
The Bride’s cake done with the current craze for foundant icing. The stuff is for looks not eating. A total flop. When I saw it on “The Ace of Cakes” I thought it must be great stuff, and it is for competition cakes. For wedding, birthday, and other celebrations it is totaly unsuitable for anything but a theme decoration. It should be labeled “Unfit for Human Consumption.”
Former wedding DJ weighing in here -
You think you’re tired of the chicken/hokey/funky white/slide?
Jeez, that stuff drives me crazy, but it also pays the bills. My partner and I always worked off of form agreements that specifically stated whether or not these songs were either
1- requested by the bride and groom
2 - not requested by the couple but OK if requested by the crowd
3 - do not play!
You’d be surprised though, how many couples said do not play and then changed their mind because gramma, nieces, nephews oldsters all wanted to hear the cheesy stuff.
We usually tried to get the goofy stuff out of the way, let granny and the kids leave, and then play club music to close down the night.
But here’s my hated thing about all of my 1985-1997 weddings - Country Rock wars. One side of the family is country and the other side is rock-n-roll and neither have a Donny and Marie attitude about it. The DJ tries to do a three-set of rock and the country relatives all come up and get in his face telling him to “turn off that trash”. The DJ then puts on a three-set of country and the rockers ask him why he’s so lame.
In the mean time the two people in the crowd that that like rap are giving him crap for not playing, “smak up my bitch-ho”. Some nights its tough to work.
The topper though is the photographer who incessantly orders the DJ to announce the garter,cake,bride-groom dance without regard to the Bride’s or Groom’s wishes. I learned a long time ago to tell the photographer, “If you want to write me a check, I’ll announce what you want and when you want it. Otherwise you need to tell the bride or groom to que me.” The first thing I told a bride and groom at their reception is that we do not take orders from the photographer. They can have the Best man, maid of honor, parent or favorite relative instruct us but never the photographer.
These are very specific to Indian weddings but
-I’ve noticed a dismal tendency for “performances” during the reception. This is the part of the wedding where people have to do songs and dance performances that would be better left to Diwali talent shows. What ends up happening is that I get desperately drunk from all the wine being poured into my glass (which I totally need to drink to alleviate the boredom) by the 3rd hindi film dance and have to hide it from my parents, who are loveable but incredibly puritanical where alcohol is concerned. For the love of gods, people have a chance to waggle their hips to the latest crappy songs during the 70-thousand Indian functions held during the year…WHEN did your cousin’s wedding become your arangetram (bharat natyam dance recital).
-I’m super fucking tired of wedding speeches that include
*Long resumes on how the bride is a doctor marrying a lawyer and they have 17 degrees from Harvard, Stanford & Yale between them. Bloody hell, it’s a darkie wedding, we’re going to assume at least 60% of the participants are doctors who have spawned more doctors who have married other doctors. Everyone already knows that the bride and groom are geniuses because it was endlessly talked about at the thousand parties leading UP to the wedding, not to mention how their parents told everyone in the community they were going to Harvard for a life of hard work as doctors when they got accepted in the womb for the Early Admission 6 year program. And at the mehndi the night before.
*Horrible speeches with super-sad cliches (including “I’ll beat you up if you treat my sister bad” or any variation thereof, also “my sibling and I used to fight growing up but now [he/she] is okay” themes). I refuse to believe that none of these people know the good writers in their community. Please! Get help on your speech! The community wiseass/wit will be more than happy to help out. Actually, I could even deal with bad speeches if there were time limits.
*I am going to gouge out my eardrums the next time I hear either the bride or groom announced by their “title”-it’s so sad and pretentious.
Spoons, I went to the wedding of my Mennonite grandmother, with the whole ceremony done in Low German, with any number of black-wearing Old Colony Mennonites* in attendance, and it sounds like it was more fun than the four-hour witnessing wedding you attended. Yikes! (No surprise, that was a dry wedding, too.)
*Old Colony Mennonites aren’t too far removed from Amish.
Amen to that! A couple years ago, I got suckered into traveling across the country from California to Connecticut for a wedding. The wedding was in Connecticut, but the reception was in Rhode Island.
I’ve never been to either state before, and now, I’m playing “Follow Jerry and hope I don’t lose sight of his car!” to get from one place to another on a twisty road, then onto some road called Mass Pike and then more zigs and zags.
Ya know what? It’s great that you got married in the church you were baptized in. It’s swell that your neighbor runs the resort where the reception was held and gave you all the possible discounts. It really is.
But would it be so tough to warn those of us that have never been to that part of the country that the reception will not be anywhere near the wedding itself? That way we could do something wacky like do some Mapquesting so we don’t have to panic when Jerry forgets he’s got a flock of lost ducklings behind him and speeds off on the highway?
Madmonk, will you marry me?
Then you have GOT to submit that to Etiquette Hell.
I’ll check with my wife, but I gotta tell you she can be a hard-ass on this kind of thing.
I hate to break your heart, but that’s not at all specific to Indian weddings. Unfortunately.
You’re not breaking my heart. The Indian specific thing was more about the dance performances to Hindi songs. I think I would get a surreal kick out of seeing that at an American wedding, though.
I have found American speeches to leave out the resume bit way more than those given by parents at Indian weddings. Most of the people in my community are pathologically obsessed with education, which is not at all a bad thing, but considering the fact that everyone’s child ended up super-successful I don’t see why we have to go over their resume again. Especially when the food is usually so good and they are delaying my getting to it.
I’m glad I have never been to a wedding where they did the cake-smooshing thing. (Is that only a US thing?) And I hadn’t heard of the ‘dollar dance’ until this thread, and I don’t know exactly what it is, although I have a nasty suspicion.
I’ve been to some cool weddings as well. One of the coolest was a Jewish/Pagan wedding held outside on a fine summer day in Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. The Happy Couple leapt over a fire to signify their entry into their union.
But the one thing that I just can’t stand? That banging of cutlery on glasses to signal the Happy Couple to kiss. For sheer gut-wrenching primal annoyance, it ranks up there with the screeching of nails on blackboards and knives on plates. It makes me want to dive under the table, dig a hole, dive in, pull the hole in after me, and keep going. Words cannot express how much I loathe that custom.
Other than that, weddings don’t bother me that much.
It’s an immature, uncouth idiot thing.
Ummmm… these people do know that, after you’re married, it is customary to live together, right? And they know that most grocery stores sell cakes? It’s not like a married couple couldn’t buy a cake and have a monster cake fight in private at home, when nobody’s wearing expensive clothes or elaborate makeup, and nobody gets publicly humiliated by someone who claims to love them. They could probably even videotape it, if they wanted to.
I would totally pay money to see some sort of Bollywood amateur dance extravaganza at a white American Southern wedding. Wow, would that be awesome or what?! (Especially since we believe in open bars.)
And then sell it on the Internet for $19.95. 
Robin
I keep seeing mention of “cake smashing”, though in my experience it is more like cake “cramming”. In other words, how much cake can the bride shove into the groom’s mouth all at one time, while also getting some on his face.
I think that people still belioeve this is funny, when in reality it is a really, really tired and tacky act.