To think that couples getting married are overly criticised by other people?

[DebateWithMoi]

I just feel like couples getting married can't get anything right,

Before the day the guest list is scrutinised, the wedding party, the delegation of work, where they've chosen to get married, the cost etc ( this is a big one, lots of guests moan about the cost to attend a wedding but would they rather not be invited then? It's a wedding and it's costing the bride and groom or bride and bride / groom and groom also ), the food variety etc when asked to pick a meal. I am at an age lots of people are getting married around me and I have also and people can't help but make comments. Often they aren't directly to the couple but around them, to others etc. It seems what is meant to be such a lovely day is often picked apart for no good reason. Out of interest have you ever yourself or ever heard anyone moan about the following:

-the food
-kids / no kids
-which part of the day you're invited to
-the choice of wedding location
-the cost
-the seating plan
-your or someone else not being a part or a wedding party when you suspected they would be
-rhe music
-the weather ( this one gets me! )
-the temperature of the venue
-the seating plan
-hiw the brdiesmaids looked
-the order of the day
-the organisation of the day
-anything else

I list the above because they're all moans I've heard!

But they are often boring and expensive for guests. Generally the more planning there is, the more tedious the weddings as there'll be more photos, a longer wait to eat, more formalities and a higher likelihood of sitting with strangers.

I was once hurt not to be part of the wedding party of a friend, we had been flatmates for 3 years along with two others, the other two were asked to be bridesmaids and I was the only one excluded. I didn't moan about it to others but in hindsight I wish I'd made an excuse and not attended the wedding. It did make me reflect on the friendship in general and realise it wasn't the only time I'd been treated as the black sheep of the group and I quietly distanced myself from them.

I remember when I was still at school, probably about 1962, and my friend was talking about her sister's wedding the previous weekend, it had been 2/6 (12 1/2p) for a pint and her father was so angry!

I think part of the problem is that attending a wedding is often quite a bit of faff and expense, and that the day itself can have boring waiting-around bits. I suppose moans / analysis / comparison is a convenient time-filler. I am also struck by the trend of some brides and grooms being (in my view) extraordinarily entitled and demanding in terms of the pressures put on bridesmaids, demands for ludicrous dress codes etc, so it can almost create the vibe that wedding guests are mere props for their photos rather than people they want to spend time with to celebrate a life-changing event... Perhaps some moans are deserved on occasion.

All that said, I do ultimately agree with you OP - the scrutiny and criticism isn't nice and I suppose it just further fuels the cycle of anxious brides and grooms over-spending and over-planning in a (generally doomed) attempt to satisfy or impress everyone. It's also incredible how entitled people can be over an event that is not about them!

The only thing I’ve ever heard reasonable people complain about is when they are left too long without food or there isn’t enough food. And it’s a completely fair complaint.

People who bitch about many of the things on your list are just twats.

We ended up cancelling our wedding because we couldn’t deal with everyone my mum/mil constantly complaining about every decision we made.

• my mum insisting we needed a classic car to drive me and the bridesmaids 2 miles up to the church the cheapest one I could find was £750 and I vito’d that as a waste of money.

All I kept hearing was for the photos and that’s not how weddings are done. A bloody row over us not having soup. Every would be expecting soup as their starter!

MIL thought it was bad luck for DH to know the colour scheme/what the bridesmaids were wearing and I needed to change everything. We needed to invite 27 extended members of the family that neither of us could name. I pointed out if DH couldn’t name their spouse or know how many kids his cousin had, they probably shouldn’t make the cut over his friend he’s known his school… MIL said it was incredibly unfair that her side had to travel further than my side and we should find somewhere half way… we were getting married in our local church where we live. She then refused to come to the wedding as I was planning on using real flowers and she prefers silk flowers and she felt it was unfair that DH was always taking my side we refused to accept a penny off them.

The whole thing became tainted so we pulled the plug. Ended up eloping but that got foiled so ended up having a buffet in a pub after saying ‘ I do’.

I’m extremely bitter about the whole thing.

That sounds lovely

I think of you go with a mindset that yes, there will be waiting around, the food might be crap (but it might be amazing) etc then you aren't going to be too disappointed.

I'm a bit ambivalent about weddings. I've not been to one that I have hated but there has been a lot of waiting however I expected it. And I have been some that I've loved. At the end of the day it's about how much the couple means to you and what you're prepared to put up with.

But decent people don't create a situation in the first place that guests have to "put up with."

There is no excuse for making guests endure long waits, lack of seating, lack of generous food and drink.

Couples who give guests the short end of the stick because they'd rather spend time and money on photography, dress, decor, crap like photo booths, should just elope. Not treat their supposed loved ones like spectators or background actors.

I’ve only heard complaints about hen/batchlor weekends (yes plural) and food. I think it’s hard to argue with the latter. Attending as a guest involves a lot of waiting around and hungry guests (especially on a hot day) is bad hospitality.

I’ve read many posts about wedding on here over the years and I think that crappy guests and crappy bride/groom stories seem to be 50/50. For every controlling guest, there seems to be a bridezilla/groomzilla. I understand that they are often spending tens of thousands so the pressure for this once in a lifetime event is high but that is their choice and guests should be treated like they usually are by the couple and not some pawn to create a insta worthy day. I am surprised that there aren’t more elopements so that the bride and groom can have their day exactly as they want without them having to juggle other people’s feelings.

photo booths keep getting mentioned - as if they are equivalent in cost to some of the grumbles around not enough food/drink etc - eg paying for canapés is usually £10-15 per head, so 100 guests, that’s an extra £1k to find for the wedding costs. A Photo Booth is around £150.

we had an open bar in the evening and it cost £4.5k for 70 people.

the £20k weddings reach £20k usually due to cost of hiring the space (the “not enough chairs, places to sit” grumble is “you didn’t hire enough space/pay for a bigger venue” grumble) and the cost of food (not enough food = you spent £2k on food not £6k) and having to buy your own drinks (as I said, our small wedding hit thousands on just the evening drinks, the wine on table was another couple of grand).

There’s this odd view that you are both stupid for spending thousands, but at the same time expect to attend a wedding where at least £15k has been spent.

actually thinking about it, a lot of the complaints really come down to people not getting how much things cost, how much time putting on a whole day event takes, that their idea of what would make a good wedding as a guest varies greatly around the country and cultures.

(The poster upthread who mentioned the church service, then only a small group went for a meal then a big evening party is possibly missing that when I talk to older family, in the 60s and 70s in the North West, that’s how everyone’s wedding happened. Church service was open to everyone, the wedding reception was in the evening, the wedding party went for a meal in the afternoon then went to their evening party. The whole day affair with everyone being fed a sit down meal only really started as a tradition in our family from 80s onwards. If you’ve gone to a wedding of a family who have kept that tradition then they aren’t just being cheap not taking everyone for lunch, that’s just how weddings happen for their family.)

People who aren’t used to entertaining on a big scale suddenly decide to invite a huge amount of people to an event and assume they will enjoy it regardless of things like distant location, difficult dress codes, poor speeches and hours of hanging around while photos are taken.The end result can be very expensive for everyone and doesn’t always work very well. The other issue is that people tend to get married at a similar age so some summers are very wedding dominated. It is impossible not to get a bit fed up with the formula and it is also impossible not to make comparisons.

Spending £20k on a wedding doesn't necessarily buy a good day for anyone but the bride and possibly the groom. Yes, the venue might be decorated lovely, the bridal party have beautiful outfits but for guests IME it's a long, boring day where you spend most of it sitting around waiting for a free meal and overpriced alcohol.

Best wedding I've been to recently was held in a NT property with 22 for the ceremony with wedding cake, wine/prosecco/tea after it. There were 3 or 4 staged photos then the photographer simply took casual, unobtrusive pics of everyone chatting, laughing and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere. Guests could have their photos taken with their SO/Kids if they wanted to also. Next stop was a beautiful local Italian restaurant with another 12 people. Everyone chose whatever they wanted from the menu, not limited to the usual pre-order chicken/beef/veg option. Drinks were also provided - whatever anyone wanted, no limits at all.

The two families that had to travel stayed in a gorgeous airbnb, again, paid for by the bride and groom.

The aim of the day was for the bride and groom to marry in front of their nearest and dearest and to be able to spend some quality time with them, not disappearing for off for photos and have people hanging about bored, perhaps not knowing many people or worrying about their kids etc.

Ultimately everyone likes what they like and it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, that isn't what a wedding is about IMO. Also, anyone getting into £20k debit is a fool.

Just did a quick calculation and our wedding came in at around £4k and we had the absolute best day every, as did our guests (who also didn't have to spend any money at all).

Weddings these days suck because people have lost all sense of throwing a celebration for friends and family that takes care of your guests. Everything is about me me me me, and what I want on my special day, be damned who is inconvenienced/ hurt in the process. Who wants to spend loads of money and often put themselves to great inconvenience simply to feed someone else’s narcissism?

No because all of my family and friends weddings were lovely welcoming events where relatives weren't excluded, brides didn't dictate a million things and everyone was happy to celebrate. However, some of the things I read on here really surprise me like chief bridesmaids with newborns not allowed to bring their baby or people being invited but their partners or step kids excluded. I think I would have a good moan if I knew people like that!

I'd agree with this.

I see posts in a wedding facebook group asking 'how to entertain people between the ceremony and the meal?' and I'm thinking - well, why have 3,4, or even more hours between the ceremony and the meal ? You are creating your own problems here. Have the ceremony later and you've a) saved yourself the problem of finding 'entertainment' b) saved family and friends being bored and hungry c) quite possibly saved some guests having to book accommodation the day before as they can travel up in the morning.

I do like this thought:
You don't have to invite people to be with you when you get married, but if you do, then you should treat them as guests, not an audience.

I think a lot of people feel pressured into attending a wedding.
I have been to many weddings of family members as I couldn't really say 'no'.
This year, I was asked to be a bridesmaid at my sister's wedding which I wasn't really 'allowed' to turn down. It was so stressful from start to finish; the lead up, the 'faff', the expense, the time taken in the lead up to attend hen-dos (kill me now) and dress fittings and hair trials.

Now, if you don't really want to go somewhere in the first place, you do tend to complain about things such as cost, amount of travel, time taken up.

Wedding services are lovely; watching someone say their vows in front of their loved ones is a beautiful thing and something I would never grow tired of seeing. The rest of the nonsense that comes with weddings is tiresome.

Modern weddings are generally crap with the couple more focused on a big show and the social media pictures. We’ve had a number of younger family members get married over the last year or so and without exception, it’s clear the weddings ( and pre/post wedding ‘celebrations’ ) have been planned with little or no thought about the guests that are expected to attend. One of them turned out to be a total charade with the most bizarre ‘ceremony’ as the couple had secretly got legally married the day before.

I think one part of this is the idea that if you've spent a lot you are somehow beyond criticism.

That's not how it works. Not for this, not for anything.

We had one of those scams in my family. Giant wedding at expensive inn that most had to travel cross country for, my BIL spent 4k on the night-before dinner (against his will; the proprietor handed him the bill at the behest of the groom, BIL's son) and people had to pay for a minimum four-night stay.

Turned out the couple had secretly married eight months before. Caused endless hard feelings. Most people went no or low contact with them, including their parents. Nothing but attention seeking grifters is the general consensus.

People feel entitled to slag off something really expensive and difficult to plan ( even though some people insist that if the wedding was just tailored to suit them as a guest all would be will and forget the other 100 odd guests and their circumstances ) for the plethora of reasons given above.

A wedding does not need to be really expensive or difficult to plan. Guests don't want it to be individually tailored to them they just want to be considered, standing around for hours and hours with nothing to eat or drink whilst endless photos are taken of the Bride and Groom and members of the wedding party is having zero consideration for your guests and is totally unnecessary. Why does it take so long to take photos? The Bride and Groom seem to be treating it as a photo spread for a fashion magazine rather than as a photographic reminder of the day.

I'm not saying people have to love weddings, just be respectful enough to try to make the most of it given the 20k debt most will be in trying to deliver a big day, often one where for once everyone is in the same place too.

Respect goes both ways, respect your guests enough to consider their comfort.

It's nice to be dressed up and in the same room as your nan, your aunt, your cousin you haven't seen in 10 years and their kids etc - it's not nice to call weddings boring or say the food is crap.

If the wedding is boring and the food crap then it is a factual description.

Perhaps instead of spending money on all manner of fripperies, hours and hours of photos and instead focused on providing a comfortable and enjoyable experience for the guests with enough food and drink and no endless waiting around people would be more inclined to look forward to and enjoy weddings.

I totally agree with OP - especially on here where it’s seen as a huge imposition to attend one.

Thing is if you’re hosting a wedding for 100 people, you will never be able to please everyone. We had our wedding local to where we live so most of our family & friends didn’t need hotels or to travel far. My Auntie who lives further away moaned to my dad on the day about having to pay for parking at the hotel she was staying in!!! I mean honestly did she expect that whole wedding to travel to her?!

best piece of advice I heard was ‘the people who matter won’t care, and the people who care don’t matter’. Brides and grooms just need to do what they want to do and not worry about people moaning because it’s not exactly the way they would have done it.

like someone else said often there is an obligation to attend. So yes when things are less than the moans will flow more.

We have even been demanded to be off holiday early before to attend a wedding because family now even if was strong enough to say no, it was dh’s family and we where “only camping” so what was more important (person) or a silly camping holiday 🙄 personally I’d of told them to fuck off. Lucky for all of us I guess lockdown happened 🤣