Are Today's Weddings All About The Money??

4

40something

Guest
DH and I went to a wedding this weekend. Now, we have not been to a nonfamily wedding for years so apparently things have changed.

First of all, the bride wore two different wedding dresses. One for the ceremony and a different dress for the reception. I have never heard of such foolishness, especially when the first gown she wore was beautiful and the bride was stunning in it, the second dress was so-so in comparison so I just didn't 'get' the two dress thing.

Secondly, at the reception, the couple's wedding party went around to all the tables 'selling raffle tickets' for the brides garter. A ticket cost you $5 and of course they did this while everyone was eating so you would be embarrassed if everyone else at your table bought tickets and you didn't. People were giving $20 bills for these raffle tickets. I'm sorry, to me that was the most shameful thing I have ever seen done at a wedding just to get more money for the couple and I yelled at my H NOT to buy those f-ing tickets. We already had put a generous sum in their card, that was OUR CHOICE to give them that amount. I felt like the reception was a shake down of all the guests.

Oh, I forgot to point out before that prior to the wedding, everytime we would see the couple they were constantly whining about how much the wedding was costing them, they wanted this but couldn't afford it so they were doing that instead. Get the idea. Then, the bride has not one...but TWO wedding gowns for her wedding day? And then the raffle extortion at the reception. I was just appalled at how the whole thing was handled but after talking to some of the other wedding guests who were just as upset as I was, this apparantly is normal for wedding couples anymore...to come up with all sorts of ideas to get more cash out of the wedding guests.

I just wanted to get the hell out of there and the sooner the better. If any of my neices or nephews behaved like that at their weddings I would be going around the room returning everyone's raffle money. Absoultely shameless.
 
Ugh. How utterly disgusting! There's no way I would have paid for that garter raffle.

I don't understand weddings either. Sure, it's good to have a nice wedding. But the extravagance I've seen has always bugged me.
 
Oy. I also think it's a ridiculous waste of money. I'm all for making a nice wedding, but some of these over the top things are just ridiculous. I guess if you have the money and want to waste it, fine, but to complain about it and do that stuff? Ugh. I'd rather use the money on a house payment or towards children or something useful. I think a lot of weddings are just out of control today.


"you miss 100% of the shots you never take"


Debbie
 
Holy Cow! Raffle tickets? How embarrassing and yes, I do believe it is shameless. I haven't been to a wedding recently....that is really appalling. The last non-family wedding I attended was about 3 years ago and it was quite lovely and honestly nothing like that. I wonder if other people have seen that at recent weddings.....????

Robin
ETA: Gosh, they should scale down the wedding if they can't afford it...not shake down the guests! Yikes.
 
I thought I'd chime in here since I got married in October 2004 and have been to a handful of weddings in the past two years. I have never heard of the bride wearing two dresses and selling raffle tickets at the wedding. How embarassing! I think this might be an isolated event. Never heard of such excess!

Heather
 
I could not believe that one of the guys I work with and his bride spend $57,000 on their wedding. GASP x(

I can't imagine.
 
That is unbelievable. I was at a friends' wedding a few years ago and they were charging $5 for a dance with the bride! I couldn't believe it, after all of the gifts everyone gave. Their wedding was a bit over the top too.
 
It's crazy! "Some" People are spending a fortune on weddings nowadays.
I know someone that is sending out a "reserve the date" card, prior to the real invitation. DOH! Why waste the money? Oh, I forgot, you have garter raffle to pay for it. LOL!!
 
If you want to see shocking, watch one of those wedding shows on TV. One bride spent nearly $200,000 on her wedding!! I just about died. Her fiancee didn't know she was that out of control and remarked that she had gone through their entire savings. I can't imagine.

I'm sorry you had this experience, though I LOL at the concept of being "extorted" at a wedding. Great choice of words! :)

Marie

PS: I went to a wedding shower a couple of years ago where the bride wrote in the invitations, "Cash gifts only." It was for a cousin, so we had no choice about attending (his poor mother was mortified). We had a florist create a money tree, which is this thing they make out of a plant and $1 and $5 bills turned into origami. Well, it turned out that the plant he used looked like it came from a Charlie Brown set. It was soooooo ugly - totally unplanned, this guy assured us it was going to look nice. However, her demand was so tacky we gave it to her anyway, and laughed through the entire afternoon because she was so pissed off about it. I always wondered how long it took them to unfold all of those bills, since about 5 of us went in on this! LOL
 
>Secondly, at the reception, the couple's wedding party went
>around to all the tables 'selling raffle tickets' for the
>brides garter.

Probably to get enough money to pay for the second dress.

All sounds very tacky to me. I though weddings were about love, not about rampant consumerism and the 'love of money'!
 
Thats going really low and desperate for money. If money is such an issue than to save money and keep your pride as a young married couple I would elope.

I thought a friend of mine was desperate. On her wedding invite she asked for money as a gift instead of a gift. She wrote on this card that since she and her hubby to be have bills to pay (don't we all?) that money would help them save for a house. Meanwhile they were already given a honeymoon gift by a collection of friends...two weeks in Europe all expenses paid! Now they want more money for their wedding.

Also, these same people that collected money for their honeymoon are not invited to the reception - family only - you know- because they are so broke!!!!


I thought that was low - but honestly it wouldn't suprise me if they did a raffle too!
 
I'm all for weddings at city hall, and saving what the couple would have spent for future expenses like a house, or kid expenses.

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Mark Twain ;-)
 
I have been to 4 weddings in the past 2 years and the one I went to this year, the same thing happend with the tickets and they also went around asking people to "pay for a dance with the bride and groom". What ticked me off the most is my DH was forced to be in the wedding since the bride had 10 bridesmaids and the wedding was Friday night and all the party had to be there at 3 PM on Friday afternoon. I was sooooo mad, DH is currently the only one who works in our household so he had to take 1/2 personal day to go. I am like so we have to pay for the tux rental which was $300, take 1/2 day off from work and then you want us to pay for a raffle ticket and pay to dance with the bride and groom??? OH I DON'T THINK SO!!!!

People are nuts these days. I say save the money, take a nice trip to a beach somewhere during the off season and get married. Buy a house with the money instead or pay off credit cards. No need to spend all that money for 1 day!
 
My first thoughts on this was "Who would even want the garter in the first place?" Is she so conceited to think that her garter is even worth any money at all?

Three years ago at my nephew's wedding, the ring bearer was walking around with a big container asking for donations to help the bride and groom pay for their wedding. At first I thought it was some kind of sick joke. My DH and I looked at each other in utter horror. I told this kid that we already gave in the card.

The whole situation made me sick. I felt like digging in the box of cards and taking ours out. To top it off, we gave a large sum of money, but never even received a thank you card.

A raffle to purchase a bride's garter? That is totally incomprehensible. Someone needs to teach these people some kind of etiquette.

A wedding is to celebrate a couple's love for each other, not a greedy match!

Cheryl
 
I checked with DH, who has been at several hundred weddings in his job as a hotel banquet manager. He's never heard of the raffle thing. Personally, I think it is unbelievably awful.

We have been to weddings where they have a money dance, but that is the guests' choice. We never had one at ours! I would have felt so embarrassed. (And taken the cash, LOL!!!) I don't think we received any cash (but DH thinks we got about $400 all told, in cards from our guests).

And every person who gave us a gift of any sort received a thank you. I kept it on a spreadsheet, and refer to it whenever I use something and want to let the giver know we use their wedding gift. ;) Nerdy, I know...
 
That's pathetic. I've never heard of a raffle (although I did bartend at a wedding where the bride changed into a less formal dress for the reception). Still - weddings are out of control nowadays. The last one I went to cost me $400 to attend!! (dress, earrings, etc. plus car service, gift, etc). The one before that cost me about $200 or so. I live in NY, so we don't give gifts here. Basically, it's $100 cash, per head, to attend. Luckily I haven't had to attend many.
 
I can just sit here shaking my head. It seems to be yet another symptom of the bewildering collective desire to attempt to live the 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' with lavish (over)spending perhaps in the hopes of eluding to a lifestyle that obviously doesn't exist for them. The irony is that with ploys like the 'raffle extortion' (nicely put 40something) the illusion of the lifestyle is bankrolled off of the backs of invited guests who are bullied into becoming accidental investors. To carp at invited guests about the cost of the wedding is tacky and crude at best. It is common knowledge that one of the biggest challenges for newlyweds is finances, why would any intelligent, well intended adult choose to invite financial stress into their lives before marriage? I don't get it.....

Take Care
Laurie:)
 
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