Weddings and Society

[blas87]

Sorry I'm late to chime in, std.

But I'm awfully sorry this has happened, and I have your side and completely understand why you're upset and frustrated.

And to add a gripe.....

My cousin is having a "destination" wedding. In another country. And she and her whole family are irritated that a lot of extended family members can't afford to make it or take time off.

Um, my brother is the only person in my family with a passport. I can barely afford to take a day off, even with pay, and none of us want to have to save thousands of dollars to fly to another country.

[Andara Bledin]

I'm of the opinion that unless you're willing to fly the guests to your destination, then a destination wedding is a bit on the selfish side.

Which is fine, since it's the couple's big day, not the guests', but to not pay to get people there and then get pissy because they won't be there? That's just stupid.

^-.-^

[Boozy]

My sister has decided to have a destination wedding because she wants to keep it small. If they were to get married here, there's no way they could keep the guest list under 150 people. Our family and his are large and close-knit.

Until now, I've never heard of anyone planning a destination wedding and expecting anyone other than very close family and friends to go. My husband and I considered one, but two of my three siblings were full-time students at the time, and wouldn't have been able to afford to go. So we opted to do the traditional wedding at home.

[Cats]

One of my cousins got married in Aruba. Only a small portion of the family was invited there for the ceremony. That was their choice. However, a little while after they got back, they held a reception for the other members of the family. Nothing too big, like no sit down meal, but they had sort of a mini buffet. It was fun.


I am also of the mind where you don't have to have this big wedding. It's just ONE DAY. My parents were married in a civil ceremony more than 30 years ago. They're still happily married (hell, they still kiss each other goodnight). Still, I cannot really fault people for having their own dream wedding, provided that they are respectful to the people who they invite to be involved in it.

[Pinecone]

This has been interesting reading since I've never understood why anyone would want to make a big public display of a wedding. To me it seems it should be a very personal and private thing and that to make it very public would demean it. But I can better understand now how a public event could be another way of marking the event's significance.

I have had two weddings.
Kept the 'catering' receipt from the first as a souvenir for years; it was around 12 dollars. Took our two witnesses for fish & chips (1987 prices) after the JP ceremony.

Second time we got married in Havana, which had the happy side-effect of ensuring that my partner's US relatives could be safely invited without risk of attendance.
We each had two family members attend and it was completely stress free.

No showers, stags, stagettes, special clothing, or gifts in either case.

My sister on the other hand had a cathedral wedding with many guests and larger reception and it was a fun and memorable event.

[jackfaire]

I agree with what you're saying, but $1000 is a steal for a decent formal gown. Any formal gown, not just a wedding dress. I don't think its unreasonable for your friend to want to wear a dress of quality on her wedding day.

Yes but from the sounds of it her Friend isn't doing it because she wants a dress of quality but because that is what the wedding industry tells her she wants.

I am an anomaly as a guy I spent a lot of time dreaming about my wedding. When my ex and I got married we pulled it off for less than a hundred dollars. We had family do the catering, no they aren't professional caterers but we just wanted good tasting good food to serve.

We only invited family and our friends none of this inviting friends of our parents stuff. I mixed the music. We even used my MILs backyard. She wore a dress that looked as good as any designer gown but was thousands less.

The photography was all done by family as well and turned out quite well.

We had the wedding industry standard wedding but didn't have to pay wedding industry standard prices.

[AdminAssistant]

We had the wedding industry standard wedding but didn't have to pay wedding industry standard prices.

You were lucky.

Your family is small enough that you were able to invite them and friends and fit them all into a backyard that someone was willing to give over to you. I'm assuming you also lived in a location with good enough weather that you didn't have to worry about heat or rain.

You had family that was willing to cook for you and that was able to make food that tasted good. You had friends who were willing to give up being active participants to snap pictures for you.

Gowns...it's true that you can get lucky and score a nice dress for cheap, particularly if you are thin, live in a city, don't want white...or are willing to trust the internet. I saw some insanely cheap dresses on Etsy, but weeding the actual dressmakers from the fronts for Chinese sweatshops was almost impossible.

[Giggle Goose]

Oh man, don't get me started on destination weddings! At my old office, there was a "clique" of party girls that I keep in touch with via Facebook but never hung out with too often. Anyway, one of them got married in the Dominican Republic in September and invited pretty much everyone in the office, so there was almost NO ONE there for a week while everyone was there! I felt bad for the folks who had to stay and pick up the slack.

I mean, I guess it's nice they can afford it and all, but it kinda made me shake my head....it reminded me of a bunch of adults going on spring break

[protege]

Which is fine, since it's the couple's big day, not the guests', but to not pay to get people there and then get pissy because they won't be there? That's just stupid.

My aunt (dad's sister) is still pissed that my family didn't bother to go to her wedding. Rather than have it in DC, where she lives, she and her new husband decided to have the wedding out in Arizona. At the time, my parents had (and still do have) some money issues. They couldn't afford to spent $600 for plane tickets, and another $500 on hotel reservations. All that, for what basically amounted to a large party...and it wasn't my aunt's first wedding either. She ran out on my uncle a decade prior, because of his health issues, and because 90% of their income was being used to *help* with said issues. That was the other reason why they didn't go.

[guywithashovel]

I am an anomaly as a guy I spent a lot of time dreaming about my wedding. When my ex and I got married we pulled it off for less than a hundred dollars. We had family do the catering, no they aren't professional caterers but we just wanted good tasting good food to serve.

When I was a teenager, I sometimes thought it would be cool to get married in one of the chapels in Las Vegas. However, my "dreaming" about weddings typically hasn't gone much farther than that. Though sometimes when I'm at a wedding, I wonder what my wedding will be like (if it ever happens) or what it would be like to be the groom in a wedding.

[jackfaire]

You were lucky.

Your family is small enough that you were able to invite them and friends and fit them all into a backyard that someone was willing to give over to you. I'm assuming you also lived in a location with good enough weather that you didn't have to worry about heat or rain.

I live in the Pacific NW your lucky when it doesn't rain.

As for the rest it's how most of my friends got married too. I have a very large family but most of them I have seen twice once when I was 8 and then when burying my grandmother.

In my mind there is no reason to invite family to something like a wedding if they aren't family you see on regular basis.

As such I didn't invite any of my numerous cousins or anything like that. I fail to see a point to inviting family just because they are family.

what it would be like to be the groom in a wedding.

For me the only concession to our wedding that my ex made was buying the wedding chalice that I wanted.

What was messed up is I got little say in the actual wedding when I was the one that had been dreaming about it since I was 5 and my ex had figured, "Just do what her mom did"