What a Wedding Is

People seem to have forgotten what a wedding IS. I've been hearing stories of people getting married during their child's funeral, holding guests hostage as they stage a political lecture, weighing the bridesmaids, and marrying while planning to get annulled after they split up the gifts. For heaven's sake, a wedding is not the time to show ignorance or victimize your friends, but to show you are an adult and get your friends to sincerely wish you well.

Therefore, out of the goodness of my heart, I offer this public service message in attempt to get the world of weddings back to normal again.

A wedding is an event in which you marry someone. You do it in public so that your community can witness your vow to be married to that person.

That's really all it is! I swear!

So, think of a simple and charming way to do that, and you will save yourself and everyone you love and even just like a lot of grief. By charming, I mean understated, affordable, respectable, elegant, and refined. I do not mean cutesy, tacky, bold, outrageous, or offensive.

There are many small ways to make your wedding unique without trying to top everyone else you ever heard of or saw on TV, and without spending more money than you'll have in your lifetime--even if you're not planning on the money you spend being technically yours.

As getting married is one of the most visible and important bridges from childhood to adulthood, it's a good time to show your witnesses that you are an adult.

Looking at the questions posed to advice columnists and things I've heard about popular TV shows, it seems a lot of people plan to stage a display of their brattiest behavior ever as part of their wedding. The most outrageous plan to do this with other people's money.

Plan a wedding you can afford. Within your budget and savings, that is, not the limit of anyone's or everyone's credit card. Traditionally, the bride's parents pay for the wedding reception. That's still fine if they want to, or if the bride has not already established her own home and/or her own career. It's okay for the groom's family to help if they want to. But it is not okay to arm-wrestle either family into huge debt.

If the bride and groom are a little older, have their own means, have been married before, or want something the parents cannot afford, they should (as adults) foot the bill. (Within their budget and savings is best.)

Any questions?

"What about getting the guests to contribute?"

Ah, the guests. I'm glad you asked that.

No. Guests are not compelled to give gifts or money, and paying for the wedding means they are no longer "guests." Traditionally, guests give a present to help a young couple set up their own household. You know, people at that stage where it never occurs to them to buy their own Scotch tape or safety pins because their mom always has them. When you get married, you need your own stuff. Wedding presents are good for that, but they should be given voluntarily, which means the bride and groom are supposed to not count on them. Gifts are not admission to the wedding. Ideally, they are given from the heart, and the bride and groom should be delighted and surprised to be the recipients of generosity, however modest.

If the bride and groom have already set up their households--and particularly if they have already set up a household TOGETHER--gift-giving gets a little trickier. They should register for and expect less, not more. They should be thinking how lucky they are to need less, not how to get their friends to upgrade all their stuff.

"You mean you can't have a money tree or register for the stuff you want?"

Money trees fall in to the tacky, bold, outrageous, and offensive category. It's okay to register, but let's keep it down, huh? Register for your fine china and/or a few nice affordable household items to match your decor, but don't pretend that you wouldn't sleep in less than $300 sheets in your little one-bedroom apartment. Let people buy you one spoon if they want to, for example. And please limit the registry to things that are a little bit special. I have seen the following items on wedding registry lists: a swimsuit for the bride, socks for the groom, video games, packaged food, and even laundry bleach. Are they serious? Do they really want laundry bleach for a wedding present? Are they going to think fondly of Aunt Gladys as they pour it into the toilet, or what? It should be something that will last. Buy your own groceries, and let Aunt Gladys pick out a nice clock or toaster to be remembered fondly by. And the registry should only be mentioned to wedding guests who ask for that information. Since you're technically not supposed to even expect a gift, you don't want to be blatantly telling people what to give you, what to pay for it, and where to get it. The registry is to be helpful, not proscriptive.

I have seen registries that have very expensive items on them (come on, how many people are really going to spend $300 on your wedding besides maybe your parents?) and very silly, cheap things on them, but not very many reasonably-priced nice things. People don't want to give you hangers as a wedding present.

"Without a money tree, how can you have a decent honeymoon?"

You should take the honeymoon the groom or the couple or the groom's parents (when offered) can afford. The most important thing is being alone together. Where is almost beside the point.

The good news is, some people will give you money. But it's not nice to ask for it nor to count on it to fund your trip. There are honeymoon registries now, which I guess is okay, if people want to contribute that way, but I have to wonder if it really is tasteful not to take a trip you can already afford. Are brides and grooms already so tired of each other these days that just being together isn't what matters most?

Another question that comes up a lot is who, in a complicated family, should give the bride away. I understand that this can get tricky. I personally think that wedding ceremonies that don't require that are charming, but, to answer the question, it depends. Traditionally, the father does this. It is also okay to have a stepfather, grandfather, mother, or both parents do it. But think about what it means. This tradition started back in the Dark Ages when daughters never married by choice but were bartered like the property they were. The wedding was not their own idea, but a business deal between the groom and their father. I believe the father was actually dragging them to the altar and literally handing them over to another man. Modern women could ask themselves if this is a tradition they want to uphold.

The unseemly origin of giving the bride away also gave rise--I believe--to the tradition of the veil over the face. The veil was not lifted until the vows were finished. THEN, in some cases, the groom got his first look at the bride he'd just married. Maybe the veil also served to hide her tears. Or her identity. Some sister switcheroos were apparently performed way back when.

Despite this history, some people seem to still consider this tradition charming. So, if it makes sense to you, have at it. At any rate, it would probably not make sense for someone to whom you never "belonged" to give you away. The worse case I ever heard of was one where the bride's little boy "gave her away."

If the bride has already "given herself away," especially many times over, the tradition makes even less sense and will come off as absolutely ridiculous to those who are thinking about it. She might as well just "give herself away" again by not pretending someone else is.

When I was young, some weddings were tacky, but the worst problems were an invitation seemingly issued from beyond the grave or printed on green paper so that the happy couple's faces were green. Now, they seem to be outrageously out-of-hand, as in the following examples.

The reception before the ceremony--in which case, there is no "new couple" for the community to receive, and no reason to celebrate. If you want to hold an engagement party, that's fine, but you might want to do it sooner than the night before the wedding. Guests don't like feeling hoodwinked showing up with a gift when you didn't actually get married yet. What if something happens and you don't? This falls into the tacky, bold, outrageous, and offensive category.

Gifts for the guests: one of the worst new trends is giving every guest a goody bag (possibly in lieu of thank you notes?). One can only guess that this was the bright idea of some wedding planner who noticed that some misguided, overindulgent parents thought that every child at a birthday party needed to receive, as well as give, a gift, and then capitalized on it. Sort of makes the whole gift-giving thing meaningless, huh? And, at one to three dollars a bag, this is really an expensive unnecessary expense to tack on to an already expensive day. Not a must-have.

Destination weddings: pretending that your wedding, your love, or maybe your own self is too special to waste on your local church or reception center is a headache and budget-breaker for everyone you know. If you really want to go to Tahiti, choose it for your honeymoon (if you can afford it--see above), and let great-grandma worry about getting uptown, not halfway across the world. Advice columns are full of people asking this question: "With attending the wedding costing me hundreds of dollars, do I really have to give a gift, too?" This is not the direction you want people going in.

Wedding colors: these days, it seems like two or three colors are picked at random, like Cabbage Patch Doll names--Dolores Josie or McKensie Nelly--that should have nothing to do with each other.

Risque wedding dresses. Please. Save it for him. Later. Don't make your guests feel like they married you, too.

Having the big traditional white no-holding-back wedding when the circumstances do not call for it. If it's not your first wedding, taste requires doing something small that doesn't scream "give me presents again." If people gave you wedding presents once upon a time, that's all it's nice to expect. Someone who already had a nice first wedding should not expect bridal showers or wear a white dress. The same goes for people who got married quietly a year ago, or already have children between them. If you chose to get married another way, that was your choice and your wedding. Instead of expecting the same people to come to big-and-fancy wedding after wedding, it would be charming to host a big 10th or 25th anniversary party in the future.

I see that things that would have been way out there a few years ago now seem necessary, and brides will die of shame not to have them, so it's no wonder the price of weddings has skyrocketed. Like having both showers AND bachelorette parties. Apparently, people COUNT on this stuff and come unglued if it's not perfect/better than everyone else's. Come on. Consider the current economy, if nothing else.

I once read in an etiquette book that there is something charming about being secretly better than how you present yourself. You know, instead of bragging and exaggerating your assets at the outset, being a little more educated, more generous, more wealthy, or more gracious than you at first let on. Modesty is the opposite of being a braggart. If you really want a charming wedding, spend a little less than you have, show a little less skin than you possess, and leave people (and yourselves) with a few of their own resources when your wedding is over. Make those you care about happy that they shared your day with you, and give them nothing to talk about except their hopes for your happiness.

Coming soon--what an obituary is.