The thing I hate most about weddings is being invited to weddings of people I haven’t spoken to in years. “Hi, I know I haven’t spoken to you since we were juniors in high school, but I would really like to see how fat you’ve gotten and have you bring us an expensive gift!” Fuck that. I haven’t gone to one of these weddings yet (although I have been invited to at least 3 that I can remember) and I don’t think I ever will. The cake smashing thing is also horrible.
We did our couple-only photos a couple of hours in advance of the wedding, and then had extra photos taken afterwards with all the wedding guests. Of which there were about 12. It was a very simple and wonderful day. 
Obviously this harkens back to a simpler time - - but I have all my mom’s wedding stuff from 1948, including guest books & shower notes and stuff. People did give “one juice glass” or “one salad fork” - at least back then.
VCNJ~
To bear a ring is to BE alone 
You realize that the exact quote from the movie would have worked even better, right?
Of course, I’m only sniping because I didn’t think of it first. Damn it.
I don’t know what the rules in Cunctator’s church are, but in a Catholic church (and I’ll bet this is true of certain other denominations, such as CoE), the music can’t be secular at all (so, no pop love songs, no “here comes the bride,” etc.) Some priests will let this slide, but not too often. I have had friends be aggravated (people who are actually Catholic), because they can’t have “their song” sung at their wedding in Church.
-Extremely huge bridal parties (you don’t need a posse of 14 around you in pale yellow gowns and white tuxes to make you feel like you’re getting married)
-Not booking the reception hall until X minutes after your wedding is supposed to end. Especially when it only takes X-20 minutes to get there. Guests do not want to stand outside a reception hall waiting for the doors to open after sitting through a long ceremony.
-Father-daughter and mother-son dance song choices. “Butterfly Kisses” and “Wind beneath my wings” are so trite.
-“Booty Call” - 'nough said.
-Wedding favors. I’d rather see the bride and groom save the money they spent on the wildflower seed packets (“watch love blossom” barf) that I know I left on the table (or threw out, I can’t remember-we lived in an apartment at the time) and have a nice dinner on their honeymoon instead.
What’s sad is that every one of these things happened at a wedding exactly one week before mine. Made me feel good about my own.
Argh!!! You nailed my biggest pet peeve, which I’d previously blocked out, I guess. I’ve been to several weddings in the past ten years where the “vow” was changed to “For as long as we both shall love.” I think those people are a little unclear on the concept of this thing we call “marriage”, and should perhaps consider living in sin. I didn’t spend all this money on a dress and a gift to watch y’all promise to stay together until you don’t feel like it anymore!
Bites When Provoked, you’re most kind, and I’m most flattered. 
Okay - I’ll change my complaint to long, boring ceremonies where the guests are uncomfortable. The bride and groom probably are too (no one likes to stand in one place for 90 minutes, whether they chose that or not), but not having had a 90 minute ceremony, I don’t actually know how uncomfortable it is for the bride, groom, and minister, so I’ll retract that part of my complaint.
We had an interesting problem with the vows. We re-wrote the vows our officiant was going to use, because they were just boring, bland, Government of Alberta rubber-stamp vows, and changed them to traditional vows, (love, honour, cherish till death do us part, etc.), and while we were standing up there, we’re not entirely sure, but we think our officiant changed them back to the rubber-stamp vows. Poopie head. So at this point, we’re not actually sure what we vowed to. Oh well. We know what we meant to vow to.
The idea that the bride must have only female attendants and the groom only male attendants and there must be a equal number. What is this, some mass wedding?
And giving away the bride. Ugh.
My DIL still complains about some guests at her wedding that had the audacity to give them gifts when they specifically told everyone to give them cash as gifts. “It was right there in the invitations, can they not read??!” I have to leave the room whenever she brings it up because it drives me crazy.
Other dislikes:
Pre-wedding drama about who to invite, not invite or un-invite, where to sit all the ex spouses, what if the ex-boyfriend shows up, etc. Just invite the people you love, the ones you don’t invite will get the message and you don’t want to be around them anyway.
Cake smashing = divorce in 90% of cases I have observed.
Couples who insist on opening gifts at the reception. This is usually at smaller weddings and is excrutiating.
Ugh–reception lines! I try to avoid, but most often they are situated at the main entrance to the reception hall, and the gauntlet is forced upon me before I can partake in the feast of li’l smokies and cheese cubes.
And “What do I do with the present” anxiety…do I bring it into the wedding ceremony, bring it to the reception, what? It’s different at each one, and I’m one of those people who likes to give actual presents, not money.
But overall, weddings are fun and generally harmless entertainment if you are a guest.
My cousin just got married and her husband had his best childhood pal, female, as his “Honor Attendant”.
Evidently after the first time he met my cousin he told his pal that my cousin was “the one”…his pal joked, “I want to be the Best Man when you two get married!” and he took her up on the deal!
Ain’t that cute?
I’m a chorister in a Catholic church. As **Sarahfeena ** has noted, that means that pretty much any secular music is ruled out. What would be considered outrageously inappropriate? An obvious genre would be contemporary pop songs that say a lot about sex and very little about love or marriage.
A girl I was friends with in high school got married a few years ago. (Had a big wedding, and is now divorced, but that ain’t the point.) I was one of her bridesmaids. While we were getting ready, the telephone rang. My grandmother was on the line, in hysterics because there was a horrible family crisis going on. I managed to calm her down a bit to find out what was going on and assured her I would be there as soon as I could.
I ran to find the bride, but her mother wouldn’t let me in to speak to her because no one’s supposed to see the dress. I explained there was an emergency and I had to go and I wanted to apologize to the bride personally. The mother looked horrified when I explained what was happening, but it wasn’t because of what terrible thing had happened to my family.
“You’re leaving?” she spat. “You’re going to skip out on the wedding?”
I tried to explain that I wasn’t “skipping out” by choice. My family needed me because something awful was going on. She just stared at me as if I was speaking in tongues, shaking her head in disbelief and without a word of sympathy, went in to speak to the bride. She came back out rather quickly and said with icy disdain that the bride didn’t want to talk to me. “You’re* ruining *her wedding!” the mother snarled. “Now the whole bridal party will be off-balance!”
I kept my cool, repeated my apology and left. The bride never spoke to me again, though I know the reason why I left was fully explained to her by a mutual friend, if not her mother. And to tell you the truth, I think it’s no great loss. Wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like that, anyway. Must be nice to live a life where the worst thing that ever happened to you was having one extra groom attendant.
I was my brother’s best man and my sister-in-law’s brother was her man of honor. Worked just fine, and got us out of one of those traditional pair-people-up dances, too.
One of the odd points in the wedding was that the man-of-honor had arranged for a trio of (quite good) singers for the ceremony. I recognized the song – it was from the musical, Big River, that he and my sister-in-law both liked. However, it was the song from the funeral scene (?).
The other odd point was that he and my brother’s mother-in-law arranged for a marching band to parade by the reception hall before we all went in. Not from a school that anyone there went to. It was very odd – they’re all “ooh, wait!”, and along comes drum majorettes twirling batons and the works.
I guess those fall under the “secular music at religious ceremony” heading.
Ye gods! She didn’t have any concern for you at all – just for herself and her Special Day I’m the Princess Me Me Me Me Me. Total Bridezilla. You should submit that to Etiquette Hell.
…And that was for Lissa, of course.
I recently attended a Catholic wedding where they had little bottles of bubbles for everyone to use when the bride and groom left the church. What was funny to me was listening to some of the non-Catholics talking amongs themselves asking if it was little bottles of holy water. My wife and about busted a gut laughing when we were in our car. We had this image of a couple coming out of the church doors and all the guests are violently slinging holy water on the newly married couple, while screaming “The power of Christ compels you!”
I dislike the whole “wedding as vacation” thing. Not everyone can afford to go overseas, or even to a Stateside resort like Disney or another city, and not everyone can get time off to make it a vacation.
For example, my SiL decided she had to get married at Disney World. She gave our name and address to Disney’s wedding planners, who promptly sent us all kinds of “planners” and other crap to “help us plan our once-in-a-lifetime trip!” The prices were atrocious, even with military discounts. (Before anyone asks, we did look into Shades of Green and they were booked that weekend.) There was no way we could afford to go to this wedding. We sent our regrets.
The sad thing is, this is SiL’s second wedding, and half of it was at her parents’ expense. Call me old-fashioned, but second weddings should be simpler affairs, and they should be paid for by the bride and groom.
Robin
I’m not wild about parties after the wedding being held at places other than somebody’s house. Renting time at a club or whatever is a drag because they chuck everybody out after only a few hours, bleah. Even if you don’t have a big house or yard, maybe adjust the number of people invited so they fit. Having the wedding at a time of year when you’re more likely to have good weather can help spread the guests in and outside of the house so nobody’s too crowded.
Then people can party as long as they want and crash if they get tanked so they don’t have to drive and can get up the next day and make breakfast together or whatever. Put 'em on the couch, the floor, in guest rooms, wherever. Like a big pajama party. With booze, yay! That’s basically what we did with my sister’s wedding; a lot of people we know do it that way and it’s cool.