AIBU to ignore the "honeymoon registry"

[NotAHappyBunnyHugger]

School friend is getting married this autumn. We are now in our mid-20s.
My partner and I are invited to the evening do, which starts at half 5. On the invitation and wedding website, there is no mention of an evening meal, just cake and welcome drinks, then a cash bar.

In the envelope with the invitation, they have included a card asking people to contribute money towards their honeymoon rather than giving physical gifts. I resent this a bit, when I'm paying for transport, accommodation, and a new outfit to fit the wedding's "theme", and not even getting an evening meal when I'm there. It feels a bit cheap.

I had already bought the couple a gift (a household item, but a really nice version that's handmade in the city I live in), but now I don't even want to give them that! The whole thing reminds me of kids at school who'd invite the whole class to their birthday party to get more presents.

I haven't been to any weddings before. Is this just normal? My partner and I are getting married in a couple of months and we've been careful to only invite the number of people we can afford to host properly (i.e. with plenty of food and booze). We wouldn't dream of asking our friends to pay for our holiday!

YABU - honeymoon registries are normal and acceptable. Get with it

YANBU - asking for gifts is tacky. People should pay for their own holidays

Like you only get the food the couple offer and no other options, even if you pay.

There need to be restrictions on food because of the preparation involved; it's not possible to offer everything. If there's a bar there that can offer more or less any drinks, why would you prevent guests from buying something they like if they don't like your selection of prepaid ones?

Which comes back to my previous post that you were apparently so unaware it was seen as unacceptable in certain areas that you refuse to believe it.

But then I’m not convinced cash bars are as widely seen as acceptable as you claim. Tolerated is slightly different.

No, you are wilfully misunderstanding. Never said I didn't accept it was unacceptable in certain areas. What I don't accept is that every wedding you've been to (or even the majority of them) is in these areas.

Even my husband, who comes from a country where guests paying for their own drinks at a wedding is unacceptable and unheard of, understands that this is perfectly normal in the UK.

Either accept it or you don’t. You can’t say you accept it then accuse me of lying as you clearly don’t really believe it.

Holy shit, is this thread still going? An absolute masterclass in never ever giving up the last word.

How are you not getting this? I believe there are many other countries/cultures/classes where a cash bar is a no-no. It is implausible that you have been to hundreds of weddings and all of them have been not in the mainstream of the UK and therefore that none of them had a cash bar.

That it is not at all the same as saying I don't believe you when you say there are areas in which it is acceptable

In your circles. In my circles he’d find people with exactly the same attitude as his home country.

You believe it happens, but it’s implausible that it does. Ok.

I’ve been to weddings in U.K., France, Italy and India. But sufficient numbers of U.K. weddings to say I’ve never seen it done here and it’s not commonly practiced among my acquaintance. I do believe people when they say the practice is common and I believe @MissScarletInTheBallroom when she says the practice is actively promoted by commercial wedding venues.

Right, but can you at least accept that "your circles" are in the minority in the UK these days?

I'm almost 40, I've been to at least 15 weddings in the UK, mostly the weddings of middle class 30 somethings whose weddings were partly or wholly funded by their middle class parents. The only one I've been to which did not have some sort of cash bar at any point was a very small wedding where the groom was from the same country my husband is from.

And as I said, every single wedding venue I looked at in the UK assumed that there would be some sort of cash bar at some point. The only alternative to having guests pay for their after dinner drinks was to open a bar tab and hope the bill wasn't too much of a shock the next morning.

So the fact that it is very hard to find a wedding venue in the UK which doesn't operate on this basis (it was pretty much my number one criterion and I ended up giving up and getting married abroad) tells me that it really is the norm in the UK, and "your circle" is not. Perhaps you only know people who are so rich that picking up the tab for an unlimited number of drinks for a large number of people is no big deal.

You believe it happens, but it’s implausible that it does. Ok.
No! I find it statisically implausible that everyone you know who has invited you to their wedding (hundreds of people) is in those circles. I'm not saying anything complicated here.

Yes exactly, far better to force your guests to only drink what you can afford to give them, even if it's not what they want to drink or even like, just so you avoid the appearance of being gauche. Totally makes sense 🤦🏻‍♀️

this.

and i suspect a heck of a lot of time on their hands

Actually, I find this very interesting.
I'm retired and obviously weddings (receptions) have changed over the years.
A lot will depend on the venue.
In the past the B&G would hire a hall (which did not have its own bar), and a variety of drinks (usually beer, wine and a non alcoholic alternative) would be provided (mainly free but sometimes paid for) on a return basis ( ie one could return that not drunk)
I think the problem here is that these days there is usually a reception then an evening party. If all drinks are free then some would take advantage of the B&G generosity.
On the other hand, I found it annoying when my DH and I were invited to total wedding, but adult DC invited to church, NOT the wedding ' breakfast' but back again in the evening (especially as we all drive in the one car). It was a cash evening bar (drinks provided free in the afternoon with the meal), a few buffet items of food put out in the evening, but this was eaten by the 'day' guests before the evening ones turned up.
My adult DC thought it all very shabby. They had no food (at the venue, but had eaten earlier in the afternoon), but also had to buy their own drinks. (Well obviously, we bought them some).
Reading these posts, it has made me realise that they could have worked out a system whereby the evening guests at least got one drink free.

You find it implausible I’ve been to weddings of friends and family rather than people I don’t know? I’ve been to weddings of work colleagues but in Italy as that’s where my business is based. If it helps I’ve got 21 cousins one 1 side alone.

And in this apparently vast circle of friends and family that has resulted in you being invited to "hundreds" of weddings everyone is entirely monocultural and everyone has had a wedding with exactly this same avoidance of a cash bar.

Yes, I do find that utterly implausible.

I don’t really know how representative they are tbh. I’d have said there are a lot of us. The wedding industry has changed a lot since I and my friends were getting married even 20 years ago when I didn’t encounter this issue. This doesn’t explain why I have yet to experience the phenomenon tho -In the last year I went to one wedding in a barn in Gloucestershire, one in the Arts Club, Dover St with an actual cocktail bar, and a marquee in Suffolk.

I don’t really know how representative they are tbh

I think that's been made clear by now.

They’re not monocultural are they - quite the opposite - British, French, Italian, Indian - (bearing in mind Indian weddings can cost 100k and are crazy lavish) - but definitely from the same social brackets.

And there we have it. Most of your wedding going experience is 20 years out of date.

The point being that no-one here actually does. It can be said that it’s hard to find a large commercial wedding venue that doesn’t enforce a cash bar, but it’s not possible to quantify what everyone does. There’s enough discussion of cash bars online to indicate the practice is controversial, whatever venues choose to do.

That’s not what I said, merely your inference. I flagged my age early on. My personal close school and uni friends got married some time ago but I’ve still been going to countless weddings annually since then - family members, younger friends, older friends remarrying etc, even my godfather who got married for the first time at 79. My wedding going isn’t limited to my 30s.

OK, I take it back. You really are so blinkered and limited in your social life that you only mix with people of the same class (the class being the monoculture).

And your entire family have all married within the same limited circles as well. All the hundreds of them. Fun!

The consensus from UK forums, websites and the lived experiences of people who arranged weddings recently are that it's totally normal here. If you want an unlimited open bar for your wedding, once you've figured out what that is, that's fine. But your repeated assertions that a cash bar is bad manners, bad hospitality, all the endless insinuations that it's lower class etc etc, are clearly hogwash. The only thing you were right about, funnily, is that it is indeed British!

I agree there's no way you've been to hundreds of weddings in Britain and never, ever, ever seen one. Not unless your sphere of experience is unbelievably narrow.

You've just confirmed that most of the weddings you've attended as a guest were 20 years ago.

When was the last time you actually planned a wedding yourself, out of interest?

Because when I was researching wedding venues, my mum, who is from the baby boomer generation, kept saying, "Why don't you just hire a barn? Linda's daughter's best friend's cousin had her wedding in a barn and it was fabulous apparently!"

She had no idea that, unless you actually know a farmer who is willing to let you use an actual agricultural building for your wedding venue (in which case getting it spick and span ready for your wedding and making sure you have all the necessary insurance etc in place would probably cost an arm and a leg in itself), the kind of "barns" that people have their weddings in are just wedding venues with a rustic aesthetic. They typically cost just as much as having your wedding in a country house hotel, and have all the same rules and regulations, and all the same techniques for persuading couples to part with their money. Because they are in the wedding business, and these barns are actually wedding venues, not barns.

Just because the vibe looked cute and rustic on Instagram does not mean that guests free poured their own drinks from a selection laid out on a table, or that the couple got any change out of 30 grand.