AIBU to be disillusioned about weddings?

[supersop60]

The more I read on here (and, granted, no-one is going to be on AIBU about their perfect wedding), and the more I encounter IRL, I think that weddings are an enormous source of stress and unhappiness.
For eg My DN had a lovely destination wedding in September -( it cost a lot for me to go and my family stayed at home). Two days ago she announced she'd met someone else and was leaving her husband. It now appears that the wedding was a band-aid.
So many wedding that I've attended, have ended after a relatively short time. What on earth was all that fuss and expense about? All the family and friends wishing them well, supporting them in their relationship.
On MN - worries about money, invitees, cf bridesmaids etc.
AIBU to think - just don't do it? Go to a register office and make your commitment legal in private.

@ZaZathecat yes this! It's those that care more about the wedding than the marriage too. I'd have married my dh happily in a registry office with a couple of witnesses, I wanted to be his wife. Once we'd decided to take the plunge we decided we wanted to make it more of a day for all our family and friends. The day was great but it's our marriage that happened as a result of the day that is important to us.

A wedding (or a baby) will never be a good sticking plaster on a bad relationship.

I've known of a few good bridezilla sagas through friends that made for an entertaining real life soap for a year or two during planning... they all ended in divorce after a couple of years, mainly because the bridezilla was such an unreasonable, demanding type in general that the groom had had enough and couldn't live with her anymore. Added debt (particularly of the type that outlasts the wedding) is only going to add to stress on the relationship.

Most weddings I've been to were about 10-15 years ago, and the survival rate so far, is pretty good. Most of the ones that floundered after a few years were the ones where you hoped they would do well rather than felt confident that they would. One surprised me, but they had a few relentless years of life crap, and depression interfering.

Budget hasn't been a big factor in survival (most people I know stuck to what they could afford and avoided debt even pre-credit crunch), actually some of the lower budget weddings weren't the marriages that survived because they were the result of financial pressure and quite young relationships. Most people with bigger weddings took their time and saved.

There's so many obsticles to a marriage surviving 50, 60, 70+ years that if a marriage gets past 10 years and the early days of children, it was worth the intention behind the wedding. A promise for life pre-NHS and social welfare wasn't likely to be such a long term commitment

Get married for the right reasons. Have the wedding you want and can afford.
Big weddings are a useful social glue for scattered family and friends and much nicer than a funeral

I'd love to hear more about what weddings were like from 1900-1950s. Maybe there is a book out there. Surely much simpler, less about trend and style.

For normal people, it was church service followed by food and drink at bride's family home.

And xmas day used to be a popular day to marry as it was the one day everyone got off (about a 100 years ago).

abacucat we didn’t’ take out a loan or get into debt, we had a day we could afford. A wedding that isn’t held in a registry office doesn’t have to equal ‘big’. I would not have had my ‘dream’ wedding if it meant I couldn’t still go on lovely holidays

Fluffyears you sound v defensive of your wedding and I’m not sure why you seem so determined to, rather absurdly, insist that your wedding was ‘just as good as mine’! I’m happy that you loved your wedding, I loved mine too it’s not a competition!

The OP asked if she was being unreasonable to be disillusioned with weddings and asked if she should go to a register office. My own experiences are all I have to offer and in my opinion, my wedding was worth it to me. I’m sorry that it appears to have annoyed you

Actually, I didn't ask if I should go to a register office. I am not getting married.
I'm not against marriage at all, just a bit about some weddings.

I'd love to hear more about what weddings were like from 1900-1950s.

I know that during the war they mostly had to be small affairs, but I have photos of my great-grand parents weddings, and they put my friends modern weddings to shame.

Some families had been saving for years to pay for it all!

@Jayne310 I think people are just concerned because you said upthread that all marriage is is changing your name. That really isn’t the case.

Of course you don’t have to get married - it’s totally your choice, and many people choose not to. There is no right or wrong decision.

But it should be an informed decision. There are advantages to getting married. Most importantly, it will save the surviving partner a lot of money when one of you dies. There are other benefits too (next of kin, protection if you split etc).

These reasons don’t have to convince you. But I think it would be a shame if you didn’t get married because you thought there was no point at all, when it does have quite signicant legal and financial implications.

generationsnowflake Then your family were well off.
Generally weddings were not surrounded by the hype there is now. A 100 years ago xmas day was a popular day to get married as it was the one day everyone had off. There were few restaurants then, so only well off people had a do in a hotel or restaurant. Most people had them at home. It wasn't till the late 50's/early 60's that you started to get many restaurants outside of London.

Beyond that it depended on what type of family you had. The teetotal part of my family had a sit down meal in a family house but no alcohol at all. Others will have been very different. My gran who was born to an ordinary working class family 112 years ago, thought it was a scandal if you did not serve a proper sit down meal at a wedding or a funeral.

Remember though that people still eloped when their families disapproved of the marriage. And in cities many couples did not et married but simply lived together.

I think you forget country weddings, which were a huge affair in the village, irrespective to a point with the family status.

Most people did marry at home, it's only the ones with less money and smaller properties who had to do it in a hotel or restaurant.

Yes country weddings were huge affairs I agree. I have farmers in my family and basically the whole village went to their wedding and to their funerals. I know as with weddings at that time, the guest list and the wedding presents they gave were published in the local paper and we have some of the clippings.

I think it depends when you talk about 50-100 years ago in terms of hotels and restaurants. 50 years ago yes, 100 years ago in some places the only local place was an old man's pub, there were no restaurants. Can't find the link, but I read that 100 years ago I think there were only about 50 restaurants outside of London.
Eating out was for rich people, unless you are talking about street food from carts.

whilst nowadays the only ones who can really marry at home, or at least have the reception there, are the wealthy couples!