To think weddings are a bit pointless?

[RedSuitcase]

When I was younger I wanted a big white wedding, had lovely fantasies about walking down the aisle in something meringuey and being the centre of attention. However, the reality would have been me being absolutely terrified the entire time, not from the commitment, but from being looked at for a whole day.

I'm in my late twenties and a lot of friends are getting engaged and getting very excited about wedding things, and I just can't see the appeal.
It seems to be, for some of them, a very expensive way of being centre of attention for a day and a few friends have truly lost their minds, spending thousands and falling out with family etc.

I like the idea of marriage, but not a wedding. However most people seem to think I'm nuts.
If people genuinely want a big party, that's absolutely great and I hope they enjoy it but I just can't see how it's linked with spending the rest of your life with someone you love, rather it seems to be about putting on a good show?

Am I a huge big wedding scrooge for thinking this? I feel like a right weirdo when I read the wedding threads and see how bothered people get.

Before anyone flames me, I would never dream of putting someone down for their choices! I just simply don't "get it"

I had a big traditional wedding. About 100 guests, beautiful country church, reception in a hotel with a meal and a big party afterwards. It was utterly brilliant!

Ceremony very important to us. Wouldn't have had children without being married and wanted everyone we loved to witness and be a part of us making a commitment to each other.
We very much believed that when you marry it's not just about the bride and groom. It's about the bringing together of two families.
Everyone had a marvellous day and 21 years and 2 children later we are happy as sandboys.

You do what suits you but don't denigrate other people's choices because they're not the same as yours.

Agree, it all needs to be scaled back so much.

All you need to get married in England is 4 adults (2 of whom want to marry each other) and a registrar, OP. No need for anything or anyone else. Some people do spend tens of thousands on a wedding, others spend next to nothing. Each to their own.

I do think it's foolish for people to spend loads on a wedding if they can't afford it, though.

Serves me right for asking

Horrible to compare someone's choice of wedding to "an old banger"
Not really. i enjoy driving old bangers as much as new cars. Each serves their purpose. No matter how you celebrate your wedding you will actually be married at the end of it. There's no inherent virtue in having a very low cost wedding. Have what you like.
Also some people also seem to enjoy getting married without parents and close family there. I actually think that's cruel and hurtful.
And would anyone here criticise a massive Hindu wedding?

People like different things. Obviously.

I had quite a big and expensive wedding because I have a large extended family. My parents paid for the wedding and wanted to be able to invite everyone. We were really happy with that too (though no one would have minded if we’d chosen a quiet, informal do.

I really like the ‘joining together of two families’ aspect of weddings. For a great many of the guests, this will be the only time they’ll meet relatives from the ‘other side’, as it were, which is surely a good thing. Throwing together two random sets of people who may or may not come from similar backgrounds. It’s interesting and I saw rapport struck up between people who I wouldn’t necessarily have expected to get on.

But people who don’t want big weddings (or weddings at all) should just not have them, that’s my advice.

Superb post Yorick.

‘Three guests in a wheelie bin’ 😂

Out of 11 wedding I've been to in the last 3 years, five of the couples have already separated/divorced and they all spend at least 10k. Three out of five of those couples spent that on their weddings without having a deposit for their own home. Nuts.

That's a very unusually high divorce rate amongst your acquaintances there anxious. The common denominator appears to be you. Perhaps your presence is bad luck.

Ooh maybe. That would be a sensible deduction, wouldn't it?

Yorick

"There is something really ugly and mean spirited about sneering at people's weddings and effectively wishing divorce or at least lesser happiness on them as punishment if they spent more than you did. I can't imagine that level of hatefulness."

I didn't quite read it like that. Anyone who genuinely felt like that would be being hateful.

But I think some people - myself included -- feel that quite a lot of people allow the wedding to become more important than the marriage. The wedding becomes almost an end in itself and people disappear down a tedious and self-centred rabbit hole in which they spend months expecting their friends to talk about nothing else apart from their wedding, their dress, the table plan at dinner, the bridesmaid's dresses, the after-dinner speeches etc etc. You must have been on the receiving end of this, I know I have.

I don't think its unreasonable to feel that quite often people get so caught up in the wedding that they lose sight of what's really important, which is the marriage. I'm not saying that obsessing over table decorations for six months makes it more or less likely that your marriage will fail -- in all probability it makes no difference. But you can see why people who have had their lives taken over in this manner when their friends get married may raise an eyebrow when the marriage falls over two years later.

I do feel that our society places a huge and disproportionate degree of focus on weddings. Weddings are important, as a statement of commitment and a personal milestone. I think its important that they are marked well and properly and I wouldn't take from anyone the right to get married in a huge meringue or to tie the knot privately at a beach ceremony in Bali. However you want to do it, knock yourself out.

But for a fairly sizeable proportion of people (mainly, though not exclusively, women), they become a focal point for extreme self-indulgence and grotesque financial waste and those people would have been better focusing their time and energy and money on something more productive in the long term. I don't think its mean spirited to point this out and to question whether its necessary or healthy.

The more sensible deduction would be that you were bullshitting anxious, and that you don't actually know what they all spent. But since you'd already conjured up the truly magical vision of yourself sitting glowering and sneering in the corner at celebrations that don't win your seal of approval, it seemed churlish not to go along with it.

Oh of course! I should have known that I couldn't possibly know what very close friends spent on their weddings and am therefore bullshitting. Silly me!

I'd better go back to glowering in my corner, ensuring that I magically split the other couples up too, solely just by being me. What fun!

Each to their own - when you watch something like "don't tell the bride" or "my big fat gypsy wedding" it is easy to see that some people get a lot out of a big 'do'. But a lot of us can't see the point. I really don' see the point of celebrating a birthday either - unless you are under 10 or maybe if you have reached 100 - it's not like you metamorphose on that specific day into something different - age is a gradual thing so I can't see the point of picking one day to celebrate your evolving age.

It strikes me that if you like the idea of being married but not the idea of a wedding, then you're a hell of a lot more likely to stay together than the people who spend a year and a fortune on a massive pageant with themselves in the middle and then have nothing to talk about thereafter :D

(I had a big wedding myself, by the way. It was great. I don't mean to knock anyone else's choices. But you don't have to do it.)

I understand where you are coming from OP.
I think there has been a shift of emphasis over the past 35 years or so and more pronounced over the past 10 to 15.
These days, instead of the couple being "sent off" on the road to living together by one or both sets of parents, many couples have already been cohabiting for some time, have bought their own flats or houses, even have children, so the legal aspect is more a formalisation/normalisation of an existing arrangement rather than the start of a new couple.
Add into the mix that fewer people are marrying in church and the liberalisation of civil wedding locations and weddings can seem like "just a big party" rather than the start of an exciting adventure.
A whole new wedding industry has grown up around the civil wedding scenario with all the advertising and spin this entails, in order to attract the custom of a relatively limited client base, again shifting the emphasis towards the commercial/show aspect.
Mix in all the transatlantic "reality" bridezilla shows and you get a section of the population, that thinks it has to put on a do for a cast of thousands with cohorts of bridesmaids etc. etc. and an evening party for a further 500 of its closest (Facebook) friends.
Obviously I am exaggerating and being somewhat cynical. At the end of the day you still get the same non-negotiable legal contract, whether you have signed in the presence of a deity or in the local registry office or in a tarted-up hotel lounge.

Oh it's possible to know what very close friends spent on their weddings anxious. Especially if we set aside any scepticism about you apparently being privy to finances but there not being enough love there to prevent you being so snide about them all. It's just that when we combine all this with the claims about the number of weddings that ended in divorce within 3 years, frankly it looks a bit less likely than the alternative possibility.

Yawn, wedding bashing time again! OP if its not for you then don't get married, nobody but you cares. I certainly didn't get married for the 'attention'. Don't know anyone who has got married and ended up falling out with family etc...over the wedding, you must know some lovely people.

Oh how miserable are you OP. Life is for celebrating and if you can't celebrate two people's love and commitment to each other then just stay away.

Eh. I feel about weddings the way I do about most things really, people should just do whatever the fuck will make them happy. Life's too short. So whether they want a quickie registry office, no fuss affair or a £50k extravaganza, crack on.
Personally I adore weddings so, selfishly, the more £50k extravaganzas the better

I'd have just filled in a form given half a chance - we both found even the minimal ceremony a bit cringey. Just 15 mins of life though.

Please can I just make the very boring point that YES while the legal situation is very different for married vs cohabiting couples; it is NOT NECESSARILY the case that it will be better for you, whoever you might be. PLEASE stop trotting this "get married for security" line out on mn.

I am separated and I thank my stars every day that I was not married. I have two children and I support the three of us through my work and I am SO GLAD I do not have to support my ex as well. THINK, please.

I totally agree with you OP. I think weddings are a big waste of money. The more cynical side of me thinks that we have been manipulated into spending that much money and making sure a fuss by the media and corporations. It's like as if the bigger your wedding, the happier you will be.

Some of the best marriages I know are of people who rocked up to a registry office and then went out of lunch. Others who spent 25K on a wedding or similar are now divorced. One of the biggest pressures on a marriage are finances. You would be better off investing that money in a deposit on a house or paying off debts.

I've always quite enjoyed weddings, but then I don't have a big family so I haven't had the experience of going to loads and getting bored of it! We liked the idea of making the commitment in front of a lot of family and friends and, being Jewish, had always expected to have a largish wedding which would include our parents close friends.

I hate the idea of weddings being 'all about the bride' or that they should be 'perfect' - my main concerns were that guests enjoyed it and weren't put to expense, there was enough space and capacity to cope with bad weather. In the end, DH had more of an idea what sort of wedding he wanted to have than I did, so went along with him on the basic kind of day (in the countryside - PITA to organise, turned out lovely in the end).

A lot of people feel pressurised into having something they don't want, whether that be a big wedding or having to wear a 'big white dress'. I would have looked an idiot in a long white dress personally (unlike my sister, who was capable of looking lovely and elegant in one), so I married in a mid-length blue dress. I did have to tell someone worried about not liking wedding dresses that she didn't actually have to have one to get married in.

If it's just the commitment of marriage you want without being the centre of attention, you can always just get you, your fiance and a witness down the registry office. That can be easier said than done obviously if he or family has other views!

Agree. We did it but didn't like being the centre of attention and both found it exhausting and overwhelming, (like all parties for us poor introverts). Parts of it were lovely. If I could do it all again. I'd skip the speeches and the evening do. I'd have a nice ceremony and a nice meal then go off on holiday. Do what you want OP, don't get sucked up into it if you don't want. But don't judge those lovely extroverts who enjoy a good do.