Friday night I was told I'd be waiting on a wedding party in the upstairs ballroom at the restaurant instead of waiting tables in the dining room downstairs. I'd be paid a percentage of the cost of the party and would basically have to just keep the chafing dishes full, pick up dirty plates, and put out any fires, either metaphorical or literal. OK, I'm cool with that, beats hustling for tips. All went well.
Judging by the 100 or so people that showed up dressed to the nines, an open bar, a computer monitor showing a slideshow of the happy couple as children, specialized engraved wine bottles for all the guests, and the father of the bride requesting we play "I Loved Her First" on the sound system at a crucial point in the evening, I assumed this was a wedding reception.
Nope.
It was a mere rehearsal dinner. Cost: several months of my salary. Not including the special wine bottles.
When the hell did this happen? I thought a rehearsal dinner was a low-key event where the bridal party and their significant others--i.e., people who would have a reason to be at the rehearsal--went out to eat afterwards.
Now, obviously these people came from more money than I'll probably ever see in my lifetime. But even in my own hometown, I've seen what boils down to a religious and legal ceremony followed by a party get more and more extravagant in my lifetime, even though very few of us have moved at all up the socioeconomic ladder.
I thought that maybe I was seeing things through rose-colored glasses till this Sunday, when decided to do some anthropological research and watched the DVD of my godparents' wedding rehearsal and day in 1977. (This was originally shot by a family friend on Super 8 and transferred a few years back.)
Aunt Judy was the baby of four girls, and readily admits that she was spoiled and got what she wanted pretty easily. All of her sisters remember her wedding as being the biggest and most outrageously expensive in the family. She had six or seven bridesmaids in her wedding party, and probably several hundred guests at her reception (though in a small town and with Catholic families, the guest list can easily reach 500 before you even get past the first cousins and their immediate families). She had a big multi-tiered cake with flowers and the bridal couple on top.
And yet, I'm watching her go to the church in the back of her parents' station wagon, and she and Uncle Joe squeezing into the backseat of what I think is a two-door Plymouth Duster to go to the reception, which was held at the Coonhunters' Lodge (yes, that's what it's called, yes, it's a gun club, and yes, my parents had their own wedding there two months before Aunt Judy had hers.)
The movie of their rehearsal shows them all walking through the wedding itself in the finest polyester casualwear the late 70s had to offer, then eating what appears to be fried chicken at picnic tables in what I think is a fire station garage. Their decor at the reception site was set up by them, and included the ever-classy twisted streamers running down the lengths of long tables in the basement, held in place by Scotch tape and Tupperware glasses of flowers.
And no one in my hometown would have a wedding like this today without being thought white trash.
What the hell happened?
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loveinmexico
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Comments
My sister and I had our receptions in our parents' back yard. It was much nicer (and cheaper) than a hotel basement (which is where they put the wedding parties). My brother's wedding was a pot-luck. He even had a pot-luck wedding cake. Guess what? It worked.
Our friends and family had a great time.
We're still married.
I've watched people spend the earth on several occasions, only to find that they married the wrong person. More interested in the show than the substance. Sad.
and they label the ones with real class trash?
Hope you were payed well at least L
Wedding for my current hubby and I almost went that way,so we cancelled the date, planned for a simple ceremony in the yard with a buffett,sent out invites a week before to 50 people, no presents required, just share the day with us. It was perfect.
r
My niece is getting married on Saturday. It's supposed to be a very lavish affair. I don't want to know how much it will cost. That'll get me thinking and I have 2 girls myself.
You make an excellent point. I'm trying to figure out when weddings became several-day celebrations. We got married in 1993, and then, it was just rehearsal dinner the night before, wedding and reception the next day. Period.
I didn't want a big wedding and my wedding was as basic as it gets, but for under $2,100.00, my friends and family had a great time and we didn't go broke. We paid for everything in cash.
I modeled my own wedding after my grandparent's simple, post-WWII wedding. We served more food, but theirs was a simple cake and punch affair. They were married for over 44 years until my grandfather died. I think people lose sight of the fact that the marriage is what matters, not the grand party before it.
Owl--ya know, I've rarely had as much fun at a wedding as I have at any other more low-key party.
Trig--I did pretty well that night.
Poppi--The more of these weddings I see, the more I would rather just elope.
Ame--if only all brides were so generous. Nowadays the average outlay to be a bridesmaid is several hundred dollars, paid out of the bridesmaid's pocket. I thank God I've never had to be one, though my brother, when he got engaged, asked me to be a bridesmaid and of course I said I would because he's my only sibling...then his then-fiancee told him off for asking me because choosing bridesmaids is the bride's job, and choosing groomsmen is the groom's. So then he had to call and un-invite me, which I was secretly glad of. (And I was even more glad when the wedding was called off.)
Robin--True.
Vanessa--Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Kathy--a friend of mine said that his entire wedding cost about what he made in two weeks. And that seems like a much more reasonable number to spend on the biggest party of your life than the current average of about nine months' salary.
That, and I could throw a hell of a party with $1500.
The host did more cooking than others, obviously, and usually provided the paper plates and cutlery and beer, but everyone else pitched in as well.
As a kid, I never understood why weddings were different--after all, from a theological standpoint, in the Catholic Church baptism and First Communion and Confirmation are equally as important as matrimony. Yet only weddings had to be these huge money-sucking affairs.
Kat--Amen. Even if you CAN afford to blow $20,000 on one day, why not put it towards a house instead?
I spent a nice little chunk of change on my dress, and I still love that dress, even though I've, um, "grown out of it". We had about 70-80 people for a sit-down dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. It wasn't cheap, but it was really, really good. And the bar bill was pretty substantial.
We cut back in other ways, like having only a matron of honor and best man, and no limos or anything like that.
But I wasn't going to skimp on the food or liquor.
I'm still married 21 years later.
I don't really have a point, other than that expensive doesn't necessarily mean soulless and crass.
I had a bouquet made of red roses by a lovely woman who I bought flowers from all the time on my way to work. Our reception was potluck at our large apartment. It was wonderful, my girl friends did me proud with the food. People kept going out and getting more champagne. The places was crowded but we didn't count and we let everyone who wanted to bring a guest to do so. My women's group bought my dress for me. It was black wrap dress, with really big clear red poppies all over it. We forgot about a cake. Just forgot. Somewhere around midnight we went on a hunt for cake in Monterey, California with a gaggle of our best friends. It was hard to find cake but we had SUCH an adventure! 12/31 we will be married 20 years. I spent my $350 Christmas bonus on my wedding.
We had a honeymoon a couple of years later when we went to visit my uncle in Harrington, Washington. There was a blizzard. We couldn't get there and the hotel we were staying at gave us the honeymoon suite as an upgrade. It had a round bed and a jacuzzi for two. It was awesomely tacky. It was also the worst blizzard in thirty years. I shouldn't have waited so long to visit my uncle, I know that snow was storing up over the years waiting for me.
Too bad more people don't remember that and instead buy into the gigantic wedding-industrial cult!
Marrying women
Do always love their wedding;
Sometimes their husband.
For some it's a destination, for others, part of the journey.
Blue--yep.
Jeanette--That's true, and if you're happy with it, it's your money.
Mrs. Michaels--Of course expensive doesn't mean soulless or crass necessarily. The couple at the rehearsal dinner Friday seemed very very nice and happy in love. People with money are almost always going to spend more on anything than people without. What I'm talking about are the "have-to" traditions that aren't traditions at all but have merely become a keeping up with the Joneses sort of thing in the past 30 years or so.
Emma--My mother's theory is that if you have a wedding reception that doesn't allow children you'll end up divorced. I have no idea how true that is on the big scale, but it was true among our friends and family.
Susanne--That sounds like a blast.
Diannani--I looked it up. In my hometown, the median wedding costs $21,000. The median yearly income for a household was $38,000. That's completely ridiculous.
nolalibrarian--And you know that the bridesmaids had a chance to wear those dresses again...
ladyslipper--I know Dad's youngest sister re-wore one of her older sisters' wedding dresses. I don't think anyone noticed.
Because I'm from a small town, everybody's wedding gets in the paper, written up in excruciating detail. A few years back we found the write-up of Mom and Dad's wedding, which contained the line "The bride was radiant in her gown of polyester knit." Mom got a far bigger kick over the years out of that than she would have if she'd had a fancier dress.
And of course, she says it takes a special kind of beauty to be radiant in polyester.
Harry--yep.
Shiral--The Wedding Industrial Complex. I like it.
I have to say, there is just no correlation -- none -- between wedding costs or fanciness (or lack thereof) and longterm marital happiness. I wish there was a formula so I could pass it on. I know awful marriages that were lavish and awful marriages that cost nothing but a license fee at city hall, and the bride & groom in their jeans. I know a lot of good ones too, that sprung from marriages big and small, lavish and cheap, everything inbetween. I even know happily/unhappily married folks who had arranged marriages.
My FIRST marriage in 1981 was small -- and utterly charming. People who were there still mention it to me, even though Hubby #1 is long gone. It was at my parent's modest home, in March (least popular month to get married! at least everything was on sale), and we were as poor as the proverbial church mice. My mother -- who was handicapped and in a wheelchair -- couldn't do much, but this was in many ways HER day as she'd wished it for me for so long...so her darling wonderful girlfriends all pitched in, loaning china and crystal, making homemade foods, decorating...honestly, it was wonderful. They turned our frumpy family room into a flower filled garden. I guess you'd call it a sort of "potluck" as everything but the cake was handmade or brought from somewhere by someone.
I had a simple off-white linen suit from "The Limited" that cost $39.95, with a pink silk blouse I already owned, and $10 shoes from some thrift shop. People stayed for hours -- even the rabbi, which is rare -- and we could barely pay him, only $35 (all we had left). We drank Cold Duck, because we couldn't afford champagne. Oh, and everybody cried, because it was so beautiful and honest and simple, and we were obviously so much in love.
Didn't last though. He just up and walked out one day, no explanation. Never saw him again. Thank god my mom died a few years after the wedding, because that would have killed her; she really believed marriages were forever.
You'd think it would have killed off any hope or enthusiasm to do it again for me too -- but I did end up married again, and this one appears after almost 18 years to be a keeper.
But you never know.
There was the homemade 10# pound cake, preceded by beer and BBQ, as well as the the bride and groom
with the 10 piece orchestra, the $5K flower budget, a seated dinner for 100, and 3 day rental of the entire establishment (which the couple paid for themselves). I have to say, on the last one the cake was spectacular in size, but it was, uhhhm ... purple. There's no accounting for taste or budget when it comes to a wedding. I never ceased to be amazed.
My fave advice column is Dear Prudence which runs on Mondays and Thursdays in Slate. It seems that every couple of months someone is writing in about how they can't afford to attend a destination wedding of one of their best friends or the round of multiple showers. A recent one was by some young woman who could afford to buy the FOUR different bridesmaid dresses required by the bride-to-be.
There's some perverted materialistic trend going on here.
Gabby--Google "Cake Wrecks" and be prepared to laugh yourself silly.
Abrawang--I don't get it at all. Perhaps because I've never been possessed with the desire to dress my friends up in matching dresses like they're Barbie dolls or something. I mean, should I get married, I'd probably ask a friend or two to stand up with me because it's an important day and they're my friends, but I could care less about what they wear and whether it matches. I trust my friends to dress themselves appropriately for attending a wedding.
The smartest and nicest matching bridesmaid-dress decision I've ever seen was made by my friend Jana--she put them all in matching classic, never-out-of-style skirt suits from J.C. Penney's. There's really not much occasion to re-wear even the most versatile formal-ish dress in Decatur County, Indiana, but everybody goes on job interviews.
At Home Pilgrim--Congrats to you and your wife!