Wedding culture - vent

[Anonymous]

[b]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it was hurtful though to be the only bride in my friend group that was the last to marry and was totally respectful of their costs after I threw multiple showers bought whatever, traveled.

No one threw me a shower. Or anything in my bridal party after I had gone above and beyond for theirs (which they wanted)
Then I got cheap dresses and shoes of their choice and then they didn't do anything.

If it makes you feel better, I was the second in my friend group to get married in our 20s and nobody did any of that stuff for me either. We just straight up had no idea what we were doing, we were all new to this and nobody was a wedding pro. (The first friend was Southern and had two bridal showers thrown by older relatives/friends, no bachelorette, her kind and well off parents asked us broke new grad bridesmaids if we needed any help buying the $300 dresses.) I think I gave one friend an embarrassingly low amount of money for a wedding gift, my ceremony started late because nobody was assigned to tell the organist we were ready and start playing, my bridesmaid who I asked to make sure people were cued up for toasts at the reception forgot...stuff like that.

I'm sorry that you were hurt. That is a real thing. I just wanted to say what looks like "everyone's" experience isn't, you're not alone, and not everyone else got it right either.

I love this story! I wish more people would share stuff like this. Nothing horrible happened, but it just didn’t go quite right!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I once got "fired" as a bridesmaid because I couldn't afford to drop 1k on the Bachelorette party. I was in grad school at the time. I was saving up for the $200 dress too. Thank goodness I didn't buy it.

Ha! I had a job as a hostess at a restaurant when I was in med school. A couple of my current med students do UberEats when they have time. Finding an extra couple of hundred dollars when you are living off student loans is tough!

$1,000 in a bachelorette party seems insane.

The worst part is she didn't even do it herself. She had her MOH, who I didn't know do it. Like literally like I was being fired from a job. She told me I should get the money from my parents (my parents are not wealthy).

We did not stay friends.

[Anonymous]

It’s totally out of control and has been for at least 20 years. You honestly just have to be strong and put up boundaries. Your friend isn’t going to like it but honestly you might not want to be friends after this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This drove me nuts when I was in my 20s and early 30s -- the presumption that you just had a couple grand lying around for every friend's wedding (bridesmaids dress, travel and accommodations, wedding gift, bachelorette activities -- easily added up to 2k per wedding). I started turning down invites to be a bridesmaid for this reason, and even skipped several destinations weddings altogether, especially when scheduled at really difficult times. I also had three siblings get married during this time and while I didn't have to pay for as much of that myself (still bought my own attire selected by them and wedding gifts, but my parents paid for my travel and accommodations). I was in grad school and then just starting out. I felt like weddings ate up all my leave and energy and I didn't have time for myself, so I started saying no. It did actually kill a few friendships.

When I got married, we did a small ceremony and reception at a restaurant near our house. No wedding party. We hosted our own bachelor/bachelorette parties on consecutive weekends at our apartment, and put up any friends who travelled in from out of town at our place (yes it was cozy, people slept on the floor, it's fine, we were young). I have zero regrets. I'm not sure where these expectations for these very elaborate and expensive wedding plans come from -- celebrities? It feels soulless to me.

One thing we splurged on was our wedding photos, and we wound up with such wonderful, intimate photos of a great party with just family and our closest friends. When we sent out thank you notes, we included copies of some of the photos of guests. Over the years we've seen those photos in other people's homes and it brings me such joy.

We also just invited family and close friends. We just have a much bigger family. Between DH and I, we had 40 aunts and uncles and 52 cousins. And these were people we knew well. DH grew up near his cousins, saw them every week, and went to school with them. My extended family lived further away, but we would see them 1-2 times a month my entire childhood.
We talked about having a smaller wedding, but we really couldn’t have done it without really upsetting some people. My dad was a lawyer with a solo practice at that time and felt he needed to invite his most important clients (also people I had known since I was a little girl). We ended up having about 150 people.
My cousins who grew up with my mom’s cousins and all of our extended family and those friends ended up with close to 400 people at their wedding.

I don’t think anyone is inviting random strangers to their wedding. Some people just have a larger circle and more social obligations.

That's fine if it's equal but it's not ok if there is the antiquated custom of the bride's family footing the bill and it's the groom's side demanding all their social obligations be met and all extended family near and far with all their kids be invited at someone else's expense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s totally out of control and has been for at least 20 years. You honestly just have to be strong and put up boundaries. Your friend isn’t going to like it but honestly you might not want to be friends after this.

+1
There's also a huge factor of timing/sequencing. It came up on a recent wedding thread (of course).
If you already got married and demanded this of other people and now the people at the tail end are getting married and you don't want to do this for them because you have kids now, it's expensive, etc. etc. then you are obviously a huge a---hole. If the people at the end have upped the stakes and everything is quadruple demand, then of course you have a case!

[Anonymous]

We got married at the beach. Told people we understood if they didn't come (it was out of the country in a place special to us and where we were engaged). About 20 came. We didn't do a registry. Our best man and woman wore whatever they want. Small party at a beach shack with a DJ and meal we paid for. All in all it was about $5K vs. tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, my shower (that I didn't ask for) had about 10 ppl there. My "bachelorette" was ME paying to fly to my home state to go out with friends for a night.

You can opt out if you want. We never regretted it as we used that money to buy a house, which is now worth over a million dollars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I once got "fired" as a bridesmaid because I couldn't afford to drop 1k on the Bachelorette party. I was in grad school at the time. I was saving up for the $200 dress too. Thank goodness I didn't buy it.

Ha! I had a job as a hostess at a restaurant when I was in med school. A couple of my current med students do UberEats when they have time. Finding an extra couple of hundred dollars when you are living off student loans is tough!

$1,000 in a bachelorette party seems insane.

The worst part is she didn't even do it herself. She had her MOH, who I didn't know do it. Like literally like I was being fired from a job. She told me I should get the money from my parents (my parents are not wealthy).

We did not stay friends.

I can top you on this one, not that your story isn’t cringey.

I had to decline flying to another state for a wedding that I already couldn’t afford because my mom had a stroke and I was by her bedside in the hospital for weeks while she recovered.

The bride was so pissed that now there’d be an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen that she never spoke to me again.