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

All of this. I love weddings, I've been delighted to go to all of the ones over been invited to. If I felt anyone had wanted to invite me but could only afford a smaller reception because they thought they'd be judged for not being able to provide endless booze to people I'd be saddened.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Much as I can see you’re enjoying your rant, you’re the one insisting on fancy venues, champagne receptions not me. Who’s the entitled one?

Nonna‘s orchard was the opposite of your imagining - it was actually a working class Italian family whose grandparents still worked a unmodernised farm, with a working well. There was a trestle table erected in the orchard where it was shady and we all ate pasta. You can’t really get simpler than that. Or cheaper.

You’ve now invented a narrative where you’re not allowed to get married. Who has ever said that? You very clearly said you would have had a wedding without a cash bar in the U.K. if you could have found one - so it was wasn’t even your preference. It may not be other people’s either - it’s being imposed by the wedding industry because it’s convenient and lucrative. And if your friends are hard up then obliging them to pay for their drinks when they’ve already paid for their travel, outfit, present, overnight stay if necessary, isn’t really fair.

As I’ve said many times, endless booze isn’t even necessary.

You're still completely missing the point.

Most people get married in actual wedding venues because neither they nor any of their friends or family own a suitable space in which to host a large party.

They are then subject to the rules put in place by those, and indeed nearly all, wedding venues.

I'm shaking my head at the idea that a couple who live in a rented top floor flat in Peckham and whose parents live in modest homes in suburban areas of the UK should just have a rustic country wedding involving trestle tables in the garden of a family member's unmodernised farm because nothing could be simpler or cheaper.

Wedding venues exist because 99% of people getting married do not have access to those kinds of spaces!

You said that two days ago!

If you don't need alcohol to have a good time at a wedding then the existence of a cash bar doesn't affect you in any way, does it? You're free to not pay for any drinks, and people who want drinks are free to pay for them.

But if you aren't expecting your guests to pay for any then there needs to be more than you anticipate needing. Or is running out OK? Is running out without an opportunity to buy more really better than just having the opportunity for people to buy more if they want to in the first place? I know which situation I'd rather find myself in.

I asked this question before but answer came there none.

You do technically need a limitless supply of booze if you don't want there to be any possibility of one of your guests saying, "I'd like a drink" at 10pm and being told, "Sorry, it's all gone."

I would ask Mirabai why she's now saying endless booze isn't necessary when she also says it should be served until the end of the night. But obviously I'll only get some further nonsense dishonest answer, and quite possibly one that changes the actual definition of words.

Contrary to a PP, I don't think she's got unexamined privilege. I don't think it's anything that complicated. I think she said something that she thought sounded rather grand (the "in my circles" and all that guff) and when it quickly became apparent that it just sounded uninformed and silly, had to start quickly scrambling. Hence the very classy acts of nastily insulting anyone who had a cash bar, redefining what a bar is, and all the other nonsense that has been so clearly laid out over two days that isn't fooling anyone.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom No I think you’re missing the point. For a wedding you just need a large space you don’t need a fancy shmancy wedding venue. Anything branding itself a wedding venue is often commercialised and exploitatively expensive. Tack “wedding” onto anything it whacks the price up. It doesn’t cost that much to hire a church hall, an ex chapel, a refurbished warehouse for example.

As in - you don’t have to have booze at all.

Right.

So where are ordinary people finding these "large spaces" then?

What kind of spaces?

Assume there is no convenient Nonna with an orchard.

What sort of large spaces which are not wedding venues are available for ordinary people to hold their weddings in?

Church halls can be cheap options, true, but you'll still need food and drinks and music and all the usual stuff, which isn't free just because you're in a church hall. Other "large spaces" will need to be licensed and insured to hold large events such as weddings, and if they are, they are probably...wedding venues.

Assume there is no convenient Nonna with an orchard.

🤣

Nonna with the orchard really got me, for some reason. It was clearly supposed to sound so worldly!

So now it's better hosting to serve no alcohol at all if you cant provide a full bar service for free than it is to provide drinks on arrival, wine on the table, fizz for toasts and then the opportunity for people to pay for more if they want to later?

It's better to have no alcohol at all than provide a lot but not enough to last till midnight?

@NonPlayerCharacter How hard is it. If you’re having booze then make sure there’s enough and don’t charge people. If you don’t want to serve booze then serve soft drinks or tea and coffee but ensure there’s enough and don’t charge people for that either.

Far from scrambling I’ve repeated the same thing for the entire thread.

Not once have I ever insulted you, whereas your posts are a litany of personal attacks.

It basically comes across like the minor landed gentry poor-splaining how to have a budget wedding to people who for some reason don't have access to picturesque "large spaces" and need to actually hire venues.

The lack of comprehension is just mind boggling.

My ex boyfriend had a wonderful budget wedding in his parents' garden. Cost peanuts. Kind of helped that his parents owned what was basically a stately home though, eh?

Most people want to have booze and make sure there is enough and can't afford to just put their credit card behind the bar and hope for the best though. Hence, cash bars. HTH.

Other places need to be licensed and insured for large events, however there are venues that don’t market themselves principally for weddings - I gave a couple of examples, I went to a very frugal wedding at an arts centre - that’s another example.

It was an example of an actual wedding that cost next to nothing.

Yes, it is much easier to have a wedding which costs next to nothing when you own or someone close to you owns a space which would make a great wedding venue and you don't have to pay to hire one like normal people, isn't it?

You're THIS CLOSE to getting it.

JFC.

I'm out.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom

It’s clear you by this point you have a massive chip and want to shoehorn a wedding discussion into a rant about millennials and poor me. Nothing whatsoever to do with the original subject.

It’s interesting that a basic principle of hospitality that is classless in other countries and used to be classless here - is twisted into something that must be predicated on wealth because it’s incomprehensible otherwise. Of course you would charge your friends and if you don’t it can only be because you’re rich. Thatcher’s children right here.

Quite apart from the irony of defending to the death a practice you chose against yourself for your own wedding.

Half my wedding guests were from a country where having a cash bar at a wedding isn't normal and so they wouldn't have understood.

In order to avoid having one at my own wedding (being from a fairly humble background and sadly lacking in any orchard owning relatives) I literally had to get married in that other country instead of in the UK.

I don't judge people who have cash bars at their weddings in the UK and neither does anyone else I know in my generation. It's completely normal, whether you acknowledge that or not.

I'm going to stop posting in this thread now.

Do you understand how poor that family was and how insulting it is to rebrand that as some kind of privilege? How kind and generous they were to include me? And you’re trying to spin it as a privilege vs poor little victim you. They could never dream of living in London like you.

It doesn’t actually cost that much to hire a field in the U.K. - depending where it is. Or a barn, particularly if it’s open. The problem is really the U.K. weather.

Half my wedding guests were from a country where having a cash bar at a wedding isn't normal and so they wouldn't have understood.

Places where having a cash bar isn’t normal. Fancy that! Good night.

Yes, because those places are not in the UK. Whereas in the UK a cash bar is normal. Congratulations, I think you finally got it.