Maybe you're already in the thick of it. Maybe you're planning your own wedding and you wanna kick it in the gunt because you're so sick of dealing with the thousands of details you need to make decisions about. Maybe your best friend is getting married and you'd rather watch Madagascar 3 five times in a row than hear her drone on about her registry for one more minute.
I wanna know: what are YOU super sick of when it comes to weddings? Cutesy saves the dates? "Cool" brides who constantly remind you that "they're not being a bridezilla or anything" before they make an unreasonable demand about what shoes you can wear? I can't be the only one burnt out on wedding talk. So, what's been grinding your gears about wedding season? Tell me in the comments.
37 comments:
wedding season=stressful for new relationships. How soon is too soon to invite a guy as your date? what if he thinks that by going you'll demand he marry you NOW?
Good point!
I'm already slightly bummed that I don't have a date to my little sister's wedding in November. It's like not having a date to prom but it's my family's prom!
The "Its MY day!" mentality...the whole idea that the wedding itself is more important than the event it is celebrating. The torture that the bridesmaids have to go through. The men and women who have bachelor/bachelorette parties that involve their faces shoved in unfamiliar breasts/junk the night before the wedding. I could go on.
Also, +100 for use of the word "gunt". How shlooby of you.
Ugh BRIDAL SHOWERS! I can't stand them. I get to spend all my cash on a fancy platter or knife set that I can't even afford for myself. And then I have to make small (sober) talk while you open them all afternoon. No thanks.
This year, it's a second wedding - occurring less than 5 years after the first - that is being handled as if it were the first. Bridesmaid dress, check. Bridal shower, check. Bridal registry, check. Bachelorette party, check. I'm sure there's at least one faux pas in there, right? Or am I just a cheap old crone?
In college, I was dating a girl for about 6 weeks when she invited me as her date to her sister's wedding. I said "sure I guess, when is it?" and she told me it was 7 months away. I broke up with her a week later.
I love my friends dearly, and I love being a bridesmaid for them, but I am OVER these strapless/narrow-strapped dresses. I am racktastic, and this is not news to them, but somehow they all pick dresses with thin little straps and low necklines
Brides: I will look vulgar in a dress that is that bare up there. I'll be in all your pictures, looking like a harlot. Can we PLEASE start covering up a little bit?
(Also, I would like to be able to wear an actual bra instead of a corset. The corset looks great, but impedes dancing and getting my drink on. And I think we all know that's what's REALLY important.)
Bridal showers, baby showers, all the showers, any pre-event party where I have to spend money to organize it and then buy food and a gift for it. And no one ever throws a hey, great job paying your own way with no help shower.
Also, thanks for this post! I have been irritated by this and am so glad I'm not the only one!
At my cousin's wedding last week, I was reminded that, since my grandpa passed last summer, the next time we'll be getting together (if ever) is my wedding. Apparently, the fate of this side of the family depends on me finding love fast.
Also, at weddings, people keep asking me if I'm seeing "someone special". Come on. I'm 31. We all know that if I was dating someone seriously, he'd be here with me.
you know what grinds my gears? the fact that the guy i'm seeing doesn't want to "be in a relationship" because everyone getting married makes him think that being in a relationship means you should probably get married within the year...
"well i'm not trying to get married right now."
neither am i dude! just cause everyone else is doesn't mean i want to right now! so i guess what i'm saying wedding season grinds my gears because it scares other people out of wanting to be with me.
engagement photos are the worst.
Great post. I really hate weddings anymore. I hate going to them solo. I hate stupid DJs who play awful songs. I hate spending so much money on them (gift, shower gift, dress, shoes, sometimes a hotel room, etc. etc.)
And I agree with the people who mentioned those stupid little "cute" save the dates that I immediately throw away, and people who get engagement photos. Barf.
How do you tell someone that you don't want to go to their wedding? A not-so-close friend of mine was in town and I thought that I was being polite by asking about her wedding plans. I should preface that I have not spoken to this person in about a year and she happen to be in town and wanted to join up for dinner. During this conversation, she looks at me and says "I should have invited you" and proceeds to ask for my address so that she can send an invitation.I hate how everything revolves around their wedding and their lives. People, I have a life too and surprisingly, it doesn't involve an ugly dress, helmet hair, and the fakest smile on the earth.
man, someone's all shoshana about wedding season.
Save the date magnets with a picture of the couple. Gag.
People who are nearly 30-years-old making it an extravaganza. A gal I know has spent $2,000 on ridiculous gifts for her bridesmaids (her wedding is 1 year away.) No one wants to carry a tote bag with your wedding names and dates on them after your "big day." Yowza.
I hate the fact that weddings are no longer just a weekend thing. These fucking things are dragged out for like a year or more.
First there's an engagement party, then save the date cards, then registry talk forever and ever, then invitations, bridals showers, bachelor/bachelorette parties..........OH MY GOD. Enough! It can't be good when I am SICK TO DEATH of hearing about your wedding when it's still 6 months away.
Word to the tote bag comment. I have an intense hatred of couples memorabilia. And people sending me professionally printed pictures of their newborns while we are at it. What do I do with this crap?
In the meantime I have to shell out big bucks for travel clothes gifts etc. just to get two seconds to tell the couple congratulations. I could have posted it on Facebook. My presence as a guest is not the only thing missing to make theirs a sanctified holy matrimony. Thats what the parents and a priest are for. Everyone else is totally superfluous.
I am not theater prop either. That is why you shell out cash for flowers. I am not paid to be a professional mourner at funerals nor a celebrant at weddings unless I am going as a gay friend's beard. Even then, THAT favor is more for humanitarian reasons.
If its about drinking, I could have ploughed the money into a lush fund and been in an alcohol induced coma for a fraction of the price.
I dont understand when someone gets engaged after 7 years together, then sets their wedding date for 2 years after their engagement but also wants to have the cheapest wedding on record, spending 2000.00 for the whole thing (therefore it can't be that they are waiting to save up for the wedding, you see? What is the point of that?) This forces the bridesmaids to hear the whining for 7 yearsx 365 days about not getting engaged + 2 yearsx 365 days about being engaged and all the plans for the wedding. Ill probably be dead by the wedding, if Im lucky
Weddings make me hate people. As someone who had six weddings last year, two in 2012, and two on the books for 2013, I think it all comes down to the couple and how they like to treat guests. Most brides don't care. They just want the money, registries with stuff they already have, and attention for looking like a princess in the same damn strapless white dress. It's the lack of consideration for other people and expectations of unlimited financial support that slowly kill me.
I most hate being forced into social situations with people I'd never hang out with on my own.
I don't like how I have to pay to travel for a wedding then I don't even get any quality time with my friends who are getting married. I don't expect to spend a ton of time with them, but it does seem silly when I'm hanging out with ALL of their friends and the wedding couple is sequestered in a hotel room missing the fun. What the fuck?
Personally, I felt like it would've created an issue if I declined attending the wedding, so I went. But in hindsight, I spent a lot of money and time attending a wedding where I didn't even get to see the people I was there for. LAME! I'd rather have that money back, to be honest.
As a wedding guest, you need to consult 5 different playbooks to stay within the realms of common decency. And always, ALWAYS, somebody on the other team figures out a way to make your playbooks look like Cosmo magazine- utterly useless. I recently bowed out of one wedding invite after 2 months of text updates from the bride-to-be's mother. It started with an out of the blue request that I attend her daughter's destination wedding as a "surprise guest" since, despite our falling out years ago, we had been such close friends. My expenses would be paid. After speaking with my own mother, I accepted the invitation in order to avoid offending her family. I then proceeded to stress about the decision for 6 weeks. Just before I was to confirm my flight, her mother informs me that her daughter was upset that she had wished me a happy birthday the prior year and that I had not done the same a few months later on her birthday. Her mother asked me what I thought could be done about this apparent "situation." I took the opportunity to tell her mother that as wonderful an idea it was to have me surprise her daughter at her wedding, maybe this was not the best occasion for our reconciliation. I offered to contact her daughter after the wedding, which seemed to bring a satisfactory closure to the ordeal- not to mention a huge weight off my shoulders.
But with weddings, you think you've outrun one awkward situation just to have another smack you in the back of your head. If it’s not the wedding party that is driving you crazy, it will most certainly be your date!!! Awkward is having to inform a different bride-to-be that my RSVP listing plus one should be revised to plus none. Nothing like breaking up two weeks before a wedding!! Not only do I now have to face a host of happily coupled guests as the dreaded single chick, I’m the black sheep who dared to even trouble the bride with such a grievous concept as “break-up” while she’s preparing for her big day. If only I could better schedule my pathetic love life....
i like being able to rant about this. my friends who got engaged after 4 months of dating and set a wedding date 18 months after they got engaged expect anyone to give a shit about their wedding.
"OMG I HAVE TO GET A DRESS" "OMG INVITES" it's over a year before the wedding. i've seen awards shows come together in less time than you're giving yourself to plan this thing.
I like to stab the fact that this is the only place we can discuss how annoying weddings are. Anywhere else, we'll be deemed cynical or worse- jealous! It's like bizarro world out there! Good luck this wedding season. bleh.
If this is the one act of social service Shmitten Kitten provides--giving us all a place to rant about weddings--I can now die a happy woman.
What annoys me is the fact that people throw themselves between 2 and 4 parties PLUS a wedding to congratulate themselves on being lucky enough to find someone who they want to marry/wants to marry them. Overkill and totally missing the point of the whole damn thing.
I'm a bridesmaid in a wedding at the end of this month. This is the fourth wedding I've been in, but this is by far THE MOST expensive. Between the cost of the dress, alterations, gifts, bachelorette party cruise (totally regretting now), shower, hotel, and travel, this wedding is costing me about $1,500. YAY.
This wedding also had a 2 year engagement complete with an engagement party (joy! Another gift expense!) and a cutesy Save the Date engagement photo combo. The bride wanted a destination wedding but knew that was out of the question, so "compromised" by having it 2 hours from her hometown. It's not that unreasonable, but I didn't look forward to requesting time off of work, paying a hotel for 2 nights, and begging my bf to come with me a day early to the rehearsal so we can carpool together.
Thank you. I needed this.
I want to stab all the "I CAN'T WAIT TO MARRY MY BEST FRIEND!!!!~*~" Facebook statuses.
Since May 11' I have been to 6, count SIX bank account draining weddings and I was in 3 of them. I want to stab my friends during wedding season and especially the one who signs off all her emails and text with her soon to be new last name followed by 74 exclamation marks.
The last wedding I went to, I was a plus-1 at a big wedding which had a number of awful clichés.
1.) Photobooth with "costume" options consisting of faux afros, big cheap sunglasses, inflatable guitars, tiny plastic trilby hats (that's the short-brimmed fedora that hipsters wear, for the uninitiated out there), little plastic tommy guns, etc.
2.) Shitty DJ who played the cha cha song, a conga line song, and -- if memory serves -- the chicken dance. Also played a game where the winner got to keep the lameass centerpiece from the table.
3.) Held at a country club carved into the swamps of New Jersey.
4.) Shitty wine (like, Fetzer and Yellowtail) and overcooked beef (or, I suppose, overcooked fish -- I had the beef) served to the several hundred guests attending. At my table, the bulk of the guests hadn't spoken to the bride since high school.
All of those things irritate me about weddings. Well, about bad weddings.
The other thing that bugs the hell out of me is the sense of obligation that pervades the entire process. As the couple throwing the wedding, you're "obligated" to invite certain people -- even people you haven't spoken to since high school. Why? Because you might offend them. Oh heavens! Whatever will the person you haven't spoken to in at least 10 years think if you don't invite them to your wedding?! Guess what: you won't have to know if you don't invite them, because you probably won't speak to them for ANOTHER 10 years, if at all!
As an invited guest, you're "obligated" to attend...because you've been invited. Even if, again, this is someone you aren't particularly close to. If you don't attend, you're "obligated" to pick them up something from the registry. Oh well. I guess everyone needs a set of napkin holders, or kitchen towels, right?
As a participant in the wedding (especially for women), you're "obligated" to put up with inordinate amounts of shit, including various forced marches to go buy your wedding attire (guys get off easy on this one), rehearsal dinners, bridal showers AND bachelorette parties (seriously? Why do people think they're entitled to both?), bachelor parties (which, admittedly, isn't too bad as long as you don't mind coming home smelling of stripper and cigar smoke), not to mention jumping through any number of other hoops required of you by the "happy couple."
And at the end of the day, all of this is to celebrate the first day of the rest of the couple's lives (well, until they get divorced, depending on the couple). People spend all this time stressing about the wedding itself and completely lose sight of the fact that the wedding is supposed to be celebrating the start of the MARRIAGE. Instead, the wedding all too often becomes a celebration...of the wedding.
For this, I blame fairy tales and romantic comedies.
Not a rant, but about a wedding. My niece got married a few months ago. The couple met at school in Philly, although the wedding was elsewhere. At the end of the ceremony, the groomsmen and bridesmaids paired up in a procession. I noticed that almost every bridesmaid was taller (in her heels) than the groomsman she was paired with. I thought of you. The men were probably mostly single and all were probably in your preferred height range. Enjoy.
Ugh, the super cool bride for sure is the cross to bear for me right now. This "coolness" has cost me close to $600 since she changed her mind from pick whatever dress you want in this color palette to buy this specific dress and these specific shoes. So great, I have two dresses that make me look naked thanks to her nude palette.
I've had this discussion with friends when they're single - we complain about the cost of weddings, the unreasonable demands, the bride's complaints about "the stress," the dress that looks good on NO one, etc. And every single one that's planned a wedding (excluding those who elope, bless their hearts) has done the exact same thing, down to saying "You can wear it again!" Every single one. It's like their engagement rings carry some sort of zombie-bride virus.
I guess I've been lucky, in that (1) I've only been to 4 weddings in the last decade, and (2) of those 4 weddings, two of them were low-key and/or intimate ones that were more about having fun and sharing the day with friends and family, rather than some ostentatious display or "Today is my day to finally be a pretty fairy tale princess." The other two included a pretty traditional but classy larger scale wedding and reception, and one truly awful, tacky reception where I was a plus-1.
I am in total agreement with the things set above. Still, I have a fear that my friends and me will all continue these annoyances when it's our turn. That is truly my most hated component of weddings.
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