....to think that weddings have just turned into a shitstorm

[DesolateWaist]

Based purely on threads on here it seems that weddings are just insane now.

If it's not about the venue it's about the invitation, the dresses, the gifts, who is invited, the food or if you can or can't bring children.

AIBU to think that everyone needs to calm this shit down? It's just one sodding day and you end up just as married no matter what colour your cousins dress is or how many flowers there are.

WickedLazy if you are serious about Don't Tell The Bride it coincidentally appeared on my Facebook feed today - 2016 weddings, applications in by end of this month, £14k on Sky not BBC3 [email protected], see Facebook page www.facebook.com/donttellthebrideuk/

If you want to splurge on an epic wedding in your own private castle, complete with fireworks and a 5K dress, then by all means go ahead...

But going heavily into debt in order to have the Dream Day is arrant madness.

DH and I blew money on the wedding stuff that was important to us. So beautiful Georgian manor house venue...fantastic food...quality drink...Ian Stuart wedding dress (well, okay that was more for me than DH)...superb photographer.

And we spent very little on the stuff we weren't interested in. So, flowers... fancy wedding cars...table favours...etc.

But we could afford it all.

I have found, that all too often, it's the couples who can afford it the least who have the most showy, complicated weddings. Courtesy of watching too much reality TV tat and believing that 'all that glitters must be gold' and that they can only be happy if they cast themselves as Prince & Princess of DisneyWeddingsRUs...

YANBU OP.

Boggles me why people get into debt for weddings that are clearly beyond their means.

People do seem to get aerated about anything wedding related. We had whinging because our (very, very low key) wedding had a gap in the middle. Ceremony at lunch time (only 10 people invited a - v close family), reception from 6pm (a lot more
Guests). We had an 8 month old and we went home and put him down for a nap.

It's exactly this type of situation that causes problems. IMO it is completely selfish and unreasonable to invite guests, however few, to an early ceremony and leave them at a loose end for hours, dressed in their glad rags, just so you can go off and do what suits you.

What did you expect them to do?

The worst weddings are the ones where the b&g only think about themselves and massively inconvience their guests in doing so and that sadly seems to be commonplace and many people can't even see they're doing it.

When we started planning our wedding back in the 90's we decided to keep it small as I come from a huge family . We chose parents, grandparents, siblings and their children, one set of aunts and uncles each and one set of friends each.
My mother threw a tantrum and announced if I didn't invite certain cousins , then she wouldn't be coming.
We were paying for all of it and there was no way we could afford extra people . My mother knew this but if she had said they would contribute we could have invited them.
So we chose to get married in another part of the U.K.
We told both our parents our plans, we didn't say that no one was welcome to join us and left it at that.
My parents weren't happy and it caused a huge family row. However the in laws were fantastic about it all. MIL even took me shopping and bought my wedding outfit .

On the day of our wedding who should be waiting in the registry office but the in laws,we didn't have a clue they were going to turn up, they even took us out for a lovely meal after.

We had a really beautiful day .

We did have a church blessing when we came back, more arguments but we stuck to our plans on who we were inviting, up until the last minute I still didn't know if my parents were going to turn up.

After the blessing we had arranged to go back to the in laws for tea and cake. They surprised us by making a buffet and even arranging a wedding cake, I will never forget what the in laws done for us on both those occasions. I know how lucky I am to have them.
Our wedding cost us £600 and that included the train fare, registry office, rings and photographer.

Bearbehind totally agree.

When you get married you are essentially throwing probably the biggest party in your life.

If you throw a big party, you don't normally dictate lengthy terms & conditions to your guests. You usually try and create an environment that they will find welcoming and enjoyable, surely?

The actual wedding ceremony should be pertinent to what is special to the B&G. But the following photos, wedding breakfast and reception should be geared towards what will please you AND your guests.

I have been to weddings where guests have been left to twiddle their thumbs for over 2 hours (with just one token Bucks Fizz and a handful of peanuts) while the B&G disappeared to have photos taken.

I agree with BearBehind as well. It is massively inconvenient to have a large gap between the wedding and the reception. Especially for those who have travelled some distance for the day and aren't staying in a hotel. What do you expect them to do? Look round an art gallery, go to the nearest shopping mall, find the nearest pub and get legless?

Yes, we've been to a wedding with roughly a 4 hour gap between the ceremony and the wedding breakfast. The bridge & groom disappeared off to do various family stuff, which included them travelling 35 miles away to visit the graves of both sets of GPs (which I know is a very private, touching thing to do, but even so...).

This left guests (and most of the blokes were in top hat & tails) kicking their heels in a strange city on a Saturday afternoon. Needless to say everyone headed to the pub and proceeded to start drinking...I seem to recall that some guests failed to make it back for the wedding breakfast

YANBU I am sick of weddings that have so much other stuff to go with them. A friend is getting married. She had a hen do abroad - did I want to spend £500 and 3 days annual leave with her and a load of other women I don't know celebrating the fact she was getting married? Er no! That's what a wedding is for. Then there is a meal & party night locally - thats another £50. A John Lewis gift list and now she's just asked me for £3 for my DD's favour box - all the kids are apparently getting one that's got a colouring book in and stickers etc.

Oh and her DH to be had a stag do of 4 day golfing holiday in the Med. Did my DH want to go? Er no!

Don't even get me started on the person I know who has actually remortgaged their house to pay for their wedding!!!!!! That just gives me alarm bells not wedding bells

Roman, tell her it's not a favour box if you have to pay for it!

Also hate weddings with gaps. I've been foolish enough to reappear though. It is awful hanging out anywhere in smart clothes and I don't even wear dresses and tights etc.

roman the charging for a favour box is shockingly rude. However, all the rest of it is stuff that you're invited to, but can just say no to! I've never been to a hen do abroad, but it's not so shocking uncommon, and it seems she is also doing a much cheaper local thing, in the knowledge that not everyone can make the expensive trip abroad. I actually think the extremely poor grace in which many of the people on these threads receive invitations is ruder than the initial request.

My post may have been misinterpreted. I wasn't offended by the abroad thing - I turned it down politely. I said I'd go to the local one.

But what I found rude was being asked to pay £3 for the favour box, as I just didn't see that as something a guest would have to pay for. The trip abroad yes fine, the local "do" yes fine, I'll cough up no problem, but £3 for DD I just found rude.

I think then I was peeved by the cheek of it and asking people to cough up. One of the other women went to the overseas trip, is going to the local one and has been asked to pay for the favour box.

I do wonder if a big part of the problem now is how much further on people's lives are when they get married.

Even in recent memory people got married having either not lived together or having only lived together for a short time. The wedding was at the start IYSWIM and tended to reflect that. Shortish engagement, simple wedding, honeymoon immediately after then on with their married lives.

Now, many people marry after they have lived together for quite a long time. Often after children have been born. The wedding is then a celebration not so much of what is to come but of what has already been achieved. There does seem to be far more pressure to make it perfect because they have waited before they got married. Engagements seem to be longer which means more time for plans to get bigger and more extravagant.

It was one of those things where if it was worth doing, it was worth doing properly or else not at all IMHO I'm pretty sure a small or inexpensive wedding is also getting married "properly".

A wedding does not make a marriage. Some people want a small wedding which is fine. Some want a massive all singing all dancing wedding which is also fine. Everyone should get married the way they want to as long as they're not dicks about it!

It's been years since I was invited to a wedding.

I want an invitation to be offended by!

You write a lot of sense, Gnome

Engagements seem to be longer which means more time for plans to get bigger and more extravagant.

This I definitely agree with - and, actually, we cut our engagement short because of it! We had initially vaguely thought we'd get married about 18 months after 'officially' getting engaged, then I realised that people were expecting the sort of extravaganza that takes 18 months to plan. I expressed this fear to now husband, and he said 'why don't we just do it this summer instead?'. So we did, the whole thing was planned in about 5 months, and I now wouldn't have had it any other way!

Roman, she is asking everyone to pay for favour boxes? You can't be the only one who is annoyed.

I've never given a thought to engagement length. Ours was 2 years exactly. I don't think that's extreme or long or unreasonable? We took 1year to organise the wedding, but we got married in high season so stuff needed booking, sooner rather than later.
I have a friend who has been engaged 3yrs this summer and she plans to/says she will get married in around 7yrs time. (10yrs from engagement) It wouldn't surprise me if it gets pushed back even further. It wouldn't surprise me if she eloped before that either! Fact is, it's not my business so I'll just await the nod to go buy my hat and continue being her friend and not commenting on something that is solely her/their decision.
Why would you change your wedding date / snidely comment on someone else's engagement length? The mind boggles!

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain myself well. We didn't change the wedding date because we felt pressured - it was more that that pressure made us realise that we didn't actually need to wait so long for the wedding we wanted to have, IYSWIM? We had thought 18 months in a vague way because that seemed to be what other people did, but then we realised that that was because they were doing much more elaborate things - for what we wanted we could just do it quickly, and get on with the much more fun business of being married!

But (thinking further about this) once we'd made the decision that we were doing it pretty soon, I think that did stop it from growing, and stop us from stressing about details. Whereas I do know a lot of people who started off planning something small and casual, but it grew and grew less because they wanted it to but almost more because it could. I think it's like any project - it's going to expand to fill the time you allow for it.

As someone who used to work in the wedding industry for many years I have to say you get some lovely sweet couples, and some PSYCHOS. The worst of all are the mothers of the bride, some of them are even more batshit crazy than the worst bridezilla. I am happily no longer in that career ;)

The worst of all are the mothers of the bride

I think that some times the MOTB didn't get the wedding that she always dreamt of so wants her DD to have everything she wants. Tie that up with some family politics that have been brewing over the last 30 years and you have got the perfect shitstorm.

I can't believe someone has the cheek to charge for kids favours!!!