Are weddings actually seriously uncool? Naff as anything?

[comoatoupeira]

Light-hearted! This is about taste and fashion and society, not about the institution of marriage or the spirituality of the wedding ceremony.

Just reading the thread about the bridezilla who wants her sister to change her haircolour to be her bridesmaid, just the ultimate in deranged and self centered behaviour.

I've been having these twinge thoughts in the back of my mind for a while now, and I'm finally putting it out there: are weddings "over", meaning that they are actually naff and bad taste now?

What I mean is the classic wedding: overdone and over-achieving bride, matching bridesmaids in pastel satin, expensive everything. Men in expensive tailoring but who manage to not look elegant?

I think elopement and queer (in the academic sense) ways of getting married are in? Or just quietly in the registry office and then a party?

Taste arbiters, tell me your thoughts!

Is your friend still married?

Couldn’t agree more. I would also add to the positive list:
Small children knee sliding across the dance floor
Big cake
Plenty of booze
and to the negatives:
Hog roast
Portaloos
Freezing marquee

Has being an overly picky, obsessive and unreasonable person (bride or groom, or parent of) ever actually been popular with anyone or have we all just tolerated them to "be kind"?

I think big expensive statement weddings with a church, tons of bridesmaids etc has fallen out of vogue gradually in the last 30 years.
Budgets obviously play a part.
But yeah. I think so much wedding stuff just looks like it will be in a bin 12 hours later!?
Everyone should do what they like, but my preference was a Buddhist temple, non legal ceremony followed by a pub meal.
I guess as long as the bride and groom are happy. But so much money!?
My DHs brother married a woman and the wedding cost abot £30k. This was 20 yrs ago. Marriage lasted 6 months. 🙃

I think big expensive statement weddings with a church, tons of bridesmaids etc has fallen out of vogue gradually in the last 30 years.

I disagree. If anything, weddings have grown.

There’s definitely a competitive element to weddings these days. Everyone wants theirs to be better than the last one they went to. The hugely lucrative wedding industry thrives on it.

Ironically it’s always the low key, low budget ones that everyone remembers with fondness.

Love this attitude, thank you for your perspective

Yep, I wish Id done the small wedding I wanted instead of the big day I was made to feel I had to have! I've told my dc to marry any way they want to (if they want to) although I would be upset if not invited 😳

My perfect wedding would be a ceremony with close family and a scattering of friends within a few miles of where the bride lived. A cream tea served whilst the photo's were taken so the guests weren't thirsty, hungry or getting drunk. A sit down meal of soup or salad, Beef wellington/ vegan dish. A decent band or disco for the evening reception preferably all this would happen in a venue that didn't charge £10 for a vodka and coke. A small buffet supper about 21:00 would be very welcome. And children, lots of children running around enjoying themselves.
I don't care what the invitations look like, i don't see a need for chair covers and the bridesmaids could be wearing a bin bag as nobody is in the slightest bit interested.
Oh and please make sure the Grannies and Grandpa's ( well i really mean me) are looked after with plenty of tea on the go.

They're mostly bladdy awful things. Its the identikit nature of them. Ive been to several in the same old local halls, in the same suites, different bands/music, slightly different set ups but all essentially the same. Favours on the table, chair dressings, herded around for photos, the same terrible cut and paste best mens speeches. All a bit forced.
Best one i went to was some farmers I knew. Proper church wedding then the reception in a converted cow shed. Booze and food aplenty, no stuffy old halls, a lot more laid back and such a chilled atmosphere. It helped the bride wasnt a vain primadonna like so many sadly turn out to be on that day!

Chair covers are horrendous things! They look like they belong in a retirement home and never look good.

I love a wedding. Any wedding. Low budget, blow the budget, in the garden or long haul destination, I really don’t care as long as I am invited.

BUT

It occurred to be this morning as I was doom scrolling that can you imagine being a bride today and having “work out the choreography for TikToks” on your to do list. I pity the bridesmaids who can’t quite get the hang of the routine.

Is this because I’m getting older? Do the digital natives think this is fun? What do the guests do while this is going on? Hang around? Dear god, I hope they are fed and watered…

But yes, I love a wedding where the food and drink is good and plentiful, and people are just having a good time.

In my “decades” of experience, the more enjoyable weddings have not been at traditional wedding venues where they attempt to do the same thing slickly (in various different themes/colour palettes and levels of success) 52 weekends a year with carriages at midnight.

My favourites include: at a local bar in a less trendy area of New York; at a game reserve in Africa; on a family farm; a restaurant on the river in west London; in the garden of a mid terrace in suburban London; a small DIY wedding at an airbnb (with permission) All really different. All really excellent.

The “worst” were all at venues that catered exclusively to the wedding market (3 different countries). I won’t name them.

While they were nice enough at the time, I hope they fall out of fashion because the food & service was never good. And my god, they all ran late… maybe the others did too but perhaps they were less traditional, you didn’t notice…

If people spent as much time and effort on the actual marriage as they do the wedding the divorce rate would be lower. I swear that to some brides it’s about the wedding not the marriage and all they want is the attention.

Trouble is weddings are often done when you are still young and still learning about yourself. I wanted to marry in my local church and have the reception down the hill in the village hall.

Maybe a barn dance because they are fun and everyone can get involved.

But the village hall wasn't big enough once we had our guest list, and our parents guest list. Then we wanted to keep everyone happy so added elements important to the family.

So we used a local golf club, and their wedding planner got involved, (because planning a huge event takes time and we were both working full time in demanding careers) and it spiralled.

It was lovey, church wedding, really good sit down meal (as the chef was excellent and created a menu for us) then disco with tons of friends and some kind of evening food. But it wasn't what I had pictured. I was just too young and insecure and not talented enough at event planning to make what I wanted a reality.

I think this is why so many weddings are samey.

Definitely.

I am not even married but I have been to enough of them to say they are naff naff naff!

The worst wedding I went to was no food until 9pm with strictly observed children's food at 5pm. For a 1pm wedding. They spent the food budget on inflatable sumo suits. It was miserable and we left to go get food and went home instead of going back. When they called food but only for children I couldn’t believe it. The food was sandwiches after 9 apparently. I was home by then. Most guests left before 8. Miserable, yes they are divorced now too. It was the grooms idea too apparently and no they didn’t tell us.

What does queer in the academic sense mean?
overblown expensive weddings seem crazy to me. Spending £20k on a day! I've been married twice and neither cost more than £4500. I did surprise myself by wearing a white wedding dress for the second one. However it was £70 from Ali express and I customised it myself. We had a lovely day with a picnic in a park and then a room above a bar. Just lovely and fun. I do cringe at the expense of traditional weddings but maybe that's because I'm of the age where many people I know are either divorced/remarried or unhappily married to their first spouse 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think the meringue dress and matching flowers/bridesmaids/favours thing with supreme of chicken for the wedding breakfast does feel very 1980s. But I have never actually been to one like that! (I know they exist, I used to waitress in a wedding venue back in 2001, I just don’t think that’s what many people choose these days)

It’s like saying “does anyone else feel like a week in Benidorm, spending your days getting sunburnt and eating ham and chips, is a bit naff, and a city break in Barcelona is a bit cooler?” It’s kind of a straw man, nobody thinks the first option is the cooler option.

Food is a very good point. Can get expensive if you're feeding people twice but eating at 9pm for a 1pm wedding is stupid. No wonder people left earlier. I assume there were facilities on site or nearby?! @Allofaflutter

Nope! Not even crisps at the bar by the time we realised. No shops nearby. Which is why people went home. It was weird no structure. All afternoon was just no music, no food, no structure, no speeches, nothing but kids playing with sumo suits.

Yep, we organised ours and it was definitely ”cool” and very “us”, but organising it was basically a second full time job for six months, and we definitely fucked stuff up because we’d never done anything like it before.

We didn’t order enough food - we had a buffet but under-ordered, and didn’t think to provide food later in the day. Plus we could really have done with an extra pair of hands to direct things like the wedding cake being brought out, and directing people towards the food - some people missed the buffet altogether because they were outside all afternoon and didn’t realise it was being served. Luckily we were in central London so they could pop out for food, but I still felt pretty bad. We did have plenty of free alcohol and great music, and a pool, so people had fun, but it could have been even better and much less stressful for us if we’d ever run an event before.

Free alcohol soothes all wedding sins!

Shocker. I'm sure ive seen people order pizzas to weddings, in the warmer months so you can scoff it outside somewhere without offending the bride. The preferred formula for a guest is sit down meal earlier on then buffet for the evening part. And yeah, free booze solves everything , seriously that farmers wedding i went to was mint - food and reasonably priced booze around the clock. Made sure everyone was in good spirits.

I don’t think it’s that. I’ve thought weddings were tacky since I was a kid. I’ve been to about 3 in my life because I’ve managed to curate friends with similar disinterest in weddings! The last one I went to was fairly traditional although quite low key (no chair covers or favours) and even that felt like a glorified school disco.

I feel quite nostalgic about the wedding-fest of my late 20s / early 30s. Because half a dozen times a year I got to go to a big party with friends, many of whom by then lived in different parts of the country, catch up, drink, dance to cheesy music, drink some more. What’s not to like?

And they were nearly all based on the bog standard traditional model - church/posh venue, white frock, canapés and fizz, meal, speeches, disco - with the occasional change to the standard formula according to taste.