holy hell.

[kaigou]

Sitting in my mother's living room, late Saturday night after getting back from 12 hours of wedding decoration, wedding, reception, and breakdown.

Me: After all this wedding hoopla crap, if my sister's marriage doesn't even last a year, I swear I'm going to smack her.

CP: Sorry, but you misspelled "shoot". Glad to help.

Comments

[branchandroot]

Having gotten seasick hauling myself through the first wedding of my S-in-L, only to watch them break up about a year later, I can only say: word.

[kaigou]

I can only think of one wedding that cost more than my car that's still around. My sister's criteria for "amount to spend" was "cannot be anything like our childhood friend's wedding" -- which easily could have paid for two of my cars, brand new, and it still barely lasted over a year. Something about the proportion of how much you spend, to how long you last.

A'course, by that notion, I've got a good forty more years with CP, seeing how our wedding cost all of about $25, not counting the dinner for the family after the JP. Okay, maybe we hit about $200 total, and that was a major splurge in my book. I mean, hell, I even wore shoes when we got married! I figured that was about as dressy as anyone was going to get me to be.

[nagasvoice]

OMG, shoes? Stylin'!

[nagasvoice]

Aaand then there's some really awful marriages that last more than a year when they shouldn't have bothered.

[kaigou]

Well, they've been together for like almost seven years now, so I think they'll last. They'll make a damn good attempt at it, at least. Besides, I'm not sure who else would put up with my sister!

[nagasvoice]

Bwahahah! And nothing quite like telling his family that, right in front of her, either!

[dragonhand]

Best wishes to them, and congratulations to you for surviving it all! And more congratulations for having air conditioning in the nearest future. Now I can stop sweating for you every time I read you're still without.

[kaigou]

I'm not so keen on the rest of the family she's been connected to (oh the stories I could tell you ALREADY) but the guy's a good one. Besides, I told him if he broke her heart, I'd break both his legs. Had to say it at least once, y'know.

[nagasvoice]

Hey, somebody had to warn him, right?

[dragonhand]

Absolutely! It had to be said!

[starlady]

My parents always used to tell the story of how one time they were at a country club eating dinner with friends and crashed a $100,000 wedding (and this was 20 years ago, so $100K went a bit farther). On the way out after dinner my mom & her friend M stopped to use the restroom. When they came back out my dad was hitting up the open bar at the wedding reception and M's husband was dancing with the mother of the bride. The marriage broke up six months later.

So, you know, I tend to take "as long as I'm not paying for it and the bar is gratis, more power to however much people want to spend at their weddings" attitude. But then, only one of the weddings I've attended has so far ended in divorce, so I suppose my numbers are skewed.

Congrats to your sister and B-in-L, regardless!

[kaigou]

Yet another marker that I'm the introvert in the family: since finishing college, I think my sister's attended at least one wedding a year, and for awhile there, it was up to three weddings a year. I've been to... hmm. Including cousins' weddings (of which I attended only one cousins' [first] wedding, and the other three, hell if I know why I wasn't there), I think I've attended... Hold on. Oh, whatever. All the fingers of one hand, and we're done. I think most people assume I have better things to do than attend their weddings, and for the most part, I do. I personally find weddings to be excruciating affairs, but then, I have a strong personal allergy to pomp and circumstance -- and anything that might, in any way, make me stand in front of (or even near) a photographer is enough to have me ducking for cover. I hate photographs with a passion rivaled only by my hatred for bad dubs, distressed damsels, and anything that mixes citrus with chocolate.

But! On the plus side, of those weddings I've attended, the smaller and more affordable, the greater the marriage's longevity. I honestly think it has something to do with having a sense of perspective, in recognizing that "the wedding" is just a one-day thing, really, and that the real focus is "the marriage". Suddenly, spending $40K (or quadruple that) on a wedding seems ridiculous, when you know this is just one day and twenty years from now, no one will remember (or care) whether you had monogrammed napkins. Hell, no one will remember in two years. And chances are, with the exception of your great-aunt who wouldn't be pleased at anything you do anyway, probably no one cares as it's happening, either.