Hi All,
I'm keen to share an experience at my wedding, that I'm almost hoping I'm the one being unreasonble. I just had a really nice outdoor wedding with a pretty early finish time. I had asked him prior to the event if he'd be able to help put down one of the small marquees before he left, to which he said "sure". (About a 10min job)
I have reason to believe his wife hated the idea of having to stay ANY longer than she wanted and so when she decided she wanted to go at about 9.15pm. They took their opportunity to get up and leave without me noticing, as she thought it would be awkward to say goodbye in light of the fact that my groomsmen had agreed to help with a few packdown jobs.
What really gets to me is his wife never talked to me, or thanked me for the day or a congrats or anything. And her time was obviously so much more important than some basic courtesies. I hadn't expected for anyone to stay longer than they wanted. We didn't even end up packing down that night. But what got me was that I ended up running looking for them and after about 10 min someone told me they had taken off.
It just strikes me as incredibly rude and selfish. As these guys are supposed to be my close friends. I remember at their wedding I helped out all day with music equipment and looked after a few of their items at the end of the night.
I had to explain to my mate that that was quite a stressful thing on my wedding night, because of the intent behind it, and deliberate nature. I was now wondering if I had pushed something on them, etc.
You could liken it to being invited to dinner and quickly running out the back door and not thanking you host for the dinner (that'd be incredibly hurtful)
What's most troubling to me is they gave me quite a bit to digest mentally, on my wedding night, and naturally over the course of my honey moon. I'm a reasonable person and had I known she (or he) felt that strongly about leaving exactly when they wanted I would have made it abundantly clear they were good to leave no matter how early. But instead there was a very out of proportion statement made.
I've not said good bye to people at weddings before, usually cause I'm not that good a friends and I've already said thankyou and congratulations. And it's late at night and I can find them.