I watch a lot of “say yes to the dress” so I understand. But in my defense, my original wedding dress was a $85 ‘holiday’ dress I bought from a catalog - so I never had the wedding dress experience. So it just fascinates me that people would spend so much.
I had some friends there, but no family but my parents. The only reason we had it in the first place was because his family guilted us into it. And then half of the ones who were bitching didn’t show up either. It cost us $3000 to throw the damn thing for people who were just bitching because they wanted to go to a free party, and that still makes me bitter. If I felt like they genuinely wanted to show support for our marriage, that would be one thing–but no, they just wanted an excuse to get together, and in the end driving 3.5 hours to do it was too much for most of them.
I didn’t dream about a wedding. I used to work at a bridal shop and would sit around and look through the bridal magazines and books and occasionally really like something, but for the most part I was never interested in being the center of attention in that way. When it came to my wedding, I let my mom have her way in most things since she wanted to pay, but we kept it small and quiet.
A relative is starting to plan her wedding and I found I still like looking at bridal gowns. Of course, I tend to like looking at clothing magazines and fashion even though I have no real desire to be fashionable.
I’ll sayno, but not hell no. It seems that weddings were not big on my middle-class radar when I grew up in the '60’s & '70’s. Mostly I recall fairly small, informal family & close friends deals with homemade dresses and potluck receptions. It seems to have taken Princess Diana in the early '80’s to bring the whole huge fantasy wedding into the general public’s notice, although I certainly had friends for whom this was the norm within their cultural and/or religious groups.
Yes, but in a different way - it’s interesting, now that I think about it - my parents, whom I did not live with at first, were real, I guess, anti-establishment, and many of the younger members of the family were “out there” in some ways, and very non-traditional. I remember asking why nobody in our family had traditional weddings (I don’t remember what type they did have) and I wanted so much to go to one of these beautiful affairs. In fact, I hated my parents’ lifestyle and lack of “normal” parental interests - no joining the PTA, no TV - boy, that made me a social pariah at school - so i didn’t fantasize about my own wedding, I just wanted to GO to one so that I’d feel like part of society. Those were my thoughts at 10 years old, anyway. They don’t necessarily represent how I feel about it now.
My family was Methodist, and I was sooooooo jealous of the Catholic girls who got to wear the First Communion dresses.
I can’t remember fantasizing about my own wedding, but I had a bride Barbie that I loved. And I was in a cousin’s wedding when I was 6 and loved dressing up and being part of something so adult.
So yes and no… I didn’t specifically plan my wedding, but I did like looking at pictures of weddings, wedding gowns, etc.
I watch “Say Yes to the Dress” too, and I always find it mindboggling when these women buy TWO $8,000+ dresses (presumably, one for the wedding and one for the reception). I’m also surprised at how insulting many of these mothers are to their daughters: “this makes you look fat, it makes you look ugly,” or “I hate this dress, I don’t care if you love it, you shouldn’t get it because you’re ugly in it.”
It’s not your bloody wedding, woman. Shut your damn mouth.
Aren’t those for adults who are actually planning their real weddings? That was always my impression. I certainly didn’t know any little girls or even teen girls who bought wedding magazines.
I eloped so there went my fancy wedding. For some reason it was not a big deal to me. My sisters had big beautiful weddings. No I would have to say it was not something I fantasized about.
I secretly wonder how they justify their actions when it is then shown on TV. Y’know they must try to spin doctor it somehow.
What? That’s all my teenage friends bought back in the day. Once you had a semi-serious bf - you bought bride magazines to drool over and scare the guy half to death. And if you didn’t have a serious bf? You bought it anyway! You tear out the pages and put them in a folder. You fill out the cards for the free invitation samples . . . .
Yup - it was all the rage.
Hello, my name is Cellphone and I’m getting married soon. I asked my fiancee if she ever fantasized about weddings as a kid and her answer was: “Ohshitno!”
FTR, there will be not a single frilly thing anywhere to be seen at our wedding. She is another who, as a kid, disliked dresses, skirts and all things frilly, and hated lace on anything, including granny’s curtains. She did really like ponies though.
As for our wedding, we’ve scaled things back so much, it’s going to be more like Thanksgiving dinner with a ten minute preamble for the whole marriage part of it.
See, my First Communion dress was pretty, and white, and somewhat lacy (my mother calls that one Richelieu lace, it’s made by cutting holes in cloth rather than by making complicated figures with thread), but it was also a white summer dress. Not only was it intended to be worn more than once, I was able to wear it without fear that I’d rip the tulle if I happened to sit too fast!
It only lasted two years, but that was because I went and grew hips. The standard First Communion dress lasted less than eight hours.
I never fantasized about having a wedding when I was a child. When my husband proposed it was sort of an oh shit how do we do this moment, but as we were both in agreement on a small ceremony in Hawaii, it made planning pretty easy.
I didn’t invest a lot of time in finding a dress, a venue, an officiant, hair and makeup, photographer, flowers, etc. It was more about the people we had there than LOOK AT ME ON MY SPECIAL DAY. In fact, I was absolutely terrified walking down the aisle because everyone (and by “everyone,” I mean the 20-25 people who came) was staring at me and my legs were shaking. We had an awesome time, however (including a roast pig).
But … I love the HELL out of wedding shows. Bridezillas, not so much. But Platinum Weddings? Say Yes to the Dress? My Fair Wedding with David Tutera? I’m half-serious when I tell my husband I want to get the Wedding Channel when we move. I can’t explain it – I would never have wanted all that at my wedding, but I love watching other people do it.
Maybe your “back in the day” was before mine (1990s), because this sounds really strange to me. I never knew anyone who bought a wedding magazine before actually becoming engaged, not unless they worked in the wedding industry or needed a magazine for some kind of art or media studies project. If some girl in high school had been buying wedding magazines just because she had a boyfriend, or without having a boyfriend, everyone would have thought she was either really pathetic or plain psycho. I don’t remember anything about weddings appearing in the mainstream teen girl magazines either.
Ah, see, I was the generation before you - in the 80s - the Princess Di wedding era . . . . Once they saw the Princess Di wedding, they all wanted to plan theirs . . .
It was very customary to see a Cosmo and a Brides magazine on someone’s bed in the dorms.
Sorry for the highjack but a lot of hymns with recent copyright dates are traditional tunes that somebody arranged into a four-part harmony and copyrighted the arrangement. Maybe that’s what happened here?
She probably thinks all women pine for having kids, too. 
I didn’t fantasize about my wedding as a kid, and we had a very small, low-key wedding eight years ago when I got married, and I still watch this show. I don’t know why - I like looking at the pretty dresses and watching the drama, I guess. There was one with a Latin American girl who was trying to lose ten pounds or so for her wedding (she looked just fine as she was, anyway), and her cousin and mom who were with her to find a dress were unbelievably mean. If I recall correctly, the saleslady finally intervened on her behalf and basically told them to STFU.
I never fantasized about my wedding as a girl. Now as an adult I sort of do.
See, most of my friends are guys and I keep wondering who will be in my bridal party. I do have a girl that would be my matron of honor but otherwise I’d really like to have my best friend (a guy) and my brother stand up with me. I am trying to figure out what I would have them wear and how the processional would go.
As for the rest of the wedding, I haven’t given it a bit of thought. I have a feeling I’ll end up getting married at the courthouse then throwing a huge party. How my mom feels about this (I’m her only daughter), remains to be seen.
Oh, and I need a fiance too.
I still have dreams about my wedding. I wake up and am extremely relieved when I realize that it was just a dream.
I had one last night, probably brought on by this thread. I and some of the other people who were in my wedding were re-enacting the wedding, but saying humorous things while we did it. I started talking about how bad I was at wedding planning and that I didn’t really like it, which went over like the proverbial lead balloon. My mom in particular got really upset.
It made me happy to wake up 15 minutes before my alarm went off, I guess that’s one good thing I can say about it.
No more weddings for me, ever. No vow renewals or anything like that, either.
I never fantasized about my wedding, IIRC. Sure, I played with Barbies, but my dolls were always busy getting GI Jane haircuts and ambushing GI Joe’s Tonka trucks. I wasn’t a very “girly” little girl.
I married the first time when I was 19. (Note: This was a Very Bad Idea. I was much too young, and far too smart to realize just how stupid I really was.) I had the traditional wedding, with +100 guests, let my aunt talk me into a butt bow (it was the eighties, after all!) and seven years of a very bad marriage to follow. I might as well have broken a mirror! After that marriage broke up (thankfully, I survived it,) I made the rookie mistake of marrying the next guy who seemed interested in being married to me. We went to the JP’s office. Marriage ended because he cheated on me. After that, I remained militantly single for over five years. That ended last year. My husband wanted a small but traditional ceremony, because he’d only ever had a civil ceremony. So, we had a small but lovely service, in a church to make our mothers happy, and the officiant was the chaplain for my husband’s police department. Our attendants were my two children and my husband’s dog. My favorite memory of the service is of the dog trying to eat the ribbons from my bouquet of roses. I spent the last two weeks before the ceremony trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for not showing up.
I love my husband. I absolutely don’t regret being married to him. But I hate weddings!