Wedding Etiquette Dilemna

Man, that is definitely post of the year material. Made my morning.

 

WildBill, if you want to make it a bit more traditional, you could invite your parents/grandparent up.

Otherwise, sitting alone is a great idea.


BTW guys, if your girl asks for help HELP THEM OUT. Dr. J had one task in our wedding -- proof read the invites. He didn't care and there was a typo. Haven't forgiven him yet.

 

Wow. I never would have had the guts to say that. Maybe I'm misreading the tone of your post -- but I would have been pretty pissed if I was the bride.

Then again, I was so nervous on my wedding day I really don't know what I'd do.

 

the way i -- and my wife and several of my close male friends who i've known for 10-15 years who also were married in the past few years -- looked at our weddings was that it was a chance for a big party with tons of people you like, relatives and a few people you probably wouldn't have invited but who have to be invited anyway. that worked out well for us.

it also meant that because this party would happen only once in our life it was a lot of work. it also meant that i, as the groom who worked fewer hours than my bride was working at the time, was involved in the planning. i'm not ashamed of this. i didn't get into the flowers or dress or color of the tableclothes but since i know a lot about food, i was heavily involved in the food planning. my wife barely drinks anything so i took care of the bar. (caterer, liquor provider and cake came from separate outfits -- the venue didn't have any food vendors there so you were on your own). i love desert so i was involved in the cake planning -- not so much what it looked like but where we got it from. it wasn't too bad -- one saturday we went to about four bakeries and tasted about 10-15 pieces of cake. damn that was a good day.

and i planned the entire honeymoon after we decided on the location together (italy) because my wife hates planning trips.

 

Maybe being an old married lady has me looking at this differently.

Too much importance is being placed on the ceremony and reception. It's a case of misplaced priorities. Putting on a production does not guarantee a happy and successful marriage.

Bridezilla? I have a girl that works for me right now whose normally sane friend has turned into Bridezilla in planning her wedding. (Girl that works for me is a bridesmaid in this upcoming performance.) It's not been fun for her.

The whole idea of a wedding, in the World According To Rosie, is to make a public proclamation of your love for one another and promise before God (or whatever higher power you may believe in), that you pledge your love, devotion and will stick together through thick and thin. Then have a fun get-together to celebrate this committment. I've been to extremely formal weddings, I've been to extremely casual backyard weddings -- where the groom was wearing blue jeans -- and the casual weddings win hands down for fun and less stress for the happy couple. Have an informal reception and you don't have to worry about $100 per plate for guests.

And no matter how much you love someone, there will be rocky roads to traverse. It may be disagreements, it may be illness, it may be the painful loss of a child, it may be problems with his family or her family. Marriage is a work in progress, not something that just 'happens' once the ceremony is performed.

I treasure my wedding day. But each day Mr. Rosie and I spend together is more important because it is TODAY. As I mentioned before, we had a small, informal wedding. A huge production would not have brought us closer together, and I sure as hell would not want to be trying to pay off tens of thousands of dollars for ONE DAY. And 21 did have it right -- those milestone of children, the first home are just as important -- if not more.

I hope to High Heaven that my daughter has inherited some of my pragmatism. Some day she'll be planning her own wedding, and I hope she realizes what's important is the commitment, not ten bridesmaids and a formal party which will take years to pay off.

 

Modern Groom may not exist, but anyone remember Cargo, the men's shopping magazine? Y'all may not read it around here, but it's a sign of the times.

Alley, get cracking on that prototype! ;D

 

I need a photog, a business manager, an ad manager and an office aide to get this up and running. Oh, and $2 million, too.

 

You won't need an ad manager.

 

I said it sweetly...not like 'oh god, this wedding sucks, i sure hope you have better days than this!' It was more like 'You have your whole life ahead of you, this is just one special day, the first of many...'

Of course, they all think I'm a total bitch anyway, so they probably took it the wrong way. 8)

But am I wrong? Your wedding is a day....now you have to live the life you promise to live. That's where the glory is, in making it work--not in picking good table candy.

 

21 --

I don't think I've ever agreed with you more.

 

Nasty little secret: You don't get one. Before she even knew you, she was probably thinking about her wedding day. Before you knew her, I seriously doubt you were thinking about yours. It's the one day when she's somebody, guaranteed, no matter who she is the rest of her life. And she knows it.

Before Mrs. Novelist and I got married, two of her siblings and her parents each offered us money to go the JP route. One of them said, "You'll be just as married as you will with the church wedding." Ours was not an elaborate event compared to what has been discussed here, but it cost enough that we struggled financially for a while afterward. It sure would have been nice to have that coupla grand starting out.

Oh, and, isn't it spelled "dilemma"?

 

One of my sorority sisters had a big wedding about 15 years ago on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving in her hometown in Florida, which required a lot of the guests to have to fly down for the wedding. Expecting to have a fun time and hoping to enjoy the warm weather (I was coming from NY), I happily agreed to attend. To cut down on expenses, I agreed to share a hotel room with 3 other sorority sisters. I got there on Friday night, at least a day after the other girls I was sharing the room with. They were all in really lousy moods when I got there and didn’t want to go out (so much for fun). The next day, the day of the wedding, the bad moods continued. They were all snapping at each other and bitching about the bride. Sometime during the afternoon, one of them broke down crying and expressed what all of them had been feeling and what had put them in bad moods: “Amy (the bride) isn’t paying attention to me!” I couldn’t believe it. They were actually pissed and upset to the point of tears that the bride wasn’t exclusively hanging out with them and hadn’t planned to spend the afternoon of her wedding with them. As I said, this was a big wedding with at least 100 out of town guests, not to mention all of the bride’s family in town, who she didn’t get to see that often. The bride, groom and their families were sensitive that many guests had traveled and had set up all kinds of activities, including a Thanksgiving dinner for people who came in super early. Anyway, I was in shock at how selfish the 3 of them were. They spent the entire wedding and reception sitting together with sour looks on their faces. I refused to get sucked into their bitchy vortex and ended up switching myself to another table at the reception and had a pretty good time.