The Wedding Pecking Order
I remember when my wife and I began preparation for our wedding, learning very quickly what the pecking order was, in terms of opinions who were valued. Before becoming engaged, my opinion was valued. Afterwards, the order changed.
1. My wife
2. My wife’s step-mother
3. My wife’s mother
4. My wife’s father
5. Me
However, being married in 1992, it was during a time when there was much talk of the groom being an equal participant in the wedding, as he would be expected to be an equal participant in other duties traditionally considered to be women’s work, like taking care of the children, cleaning the house, etc. My wife and her 2 mothers felt the pressure so they would occasionally ask my opinion, and then pat me on the head, while they got a good laugh about my idea.
To a certain degree I can relate to the strip, but having the mother make all the decisions and the bride and groom seek a very drastic revenge on her once again takes the strip from “slice of life” to distasteful, ugly humour.
1. My wife
2. My wife’s step-mother
3. My wife’s mother
4. My wife’s father
5. Me
However, being married in 1992, it was during a time when there was much talk of the groom being an equal participant in the wedding, as he would be expected to be an equal participant in other duties traditionally considered to be women’s work, like taking care of the children, cleaning the house, etc. My wife and her 2 mothers felt the pressure so they would occasionally ask my opinion, and then pat me on the head, while they got a good laugh about my idea.
To a certain degree I can relate to the strip, but having the mother make all the decisions and the bride and groom seek a very drastic revenge on her once again takes the strip from “slice of life” to distasteful, ugly humour.
posted by howard at 11:08 PM
8 Comments:
I think that the one who foots the bill has earned the privilege of saying the most.
My parents paid for all their children's weddings but allowed us to make most of the arrangements. My dad's comment was: "You can do whatever you want but please don't do anything that would embarrass me." My mother said that "parents should open their wallets and shut their mouths." And that's exactly what they did.
So it's not surprising that our families still live near my parents!
I think that the one who foots the bill has earned the privilege of saying the most.
In that case, I should have had the most say, since I paid for the vast majority of it. My wife wanted to have a wedding as nice as her friends (who had gotten married recently) were having, and she was encouraged in this by her step-mother and mother, vocally if not financially (although all of our parents made some kind of contribution).
As for making decisions, in my wife's family there were issues with her mom and step-mom not getting along, so she tried to do individual things with each of them and made concessions to both of them in the wedding planning, in order to keep the peace. She was successful for the most part, but she was about driven crazy when she got calls on the day of the wedding asking for more concessions.
Fortunately for me, both the mom and the step-mom were musically ignorant, so my influence was mainly felt in that arena, calling upon groups with whom I had performed to take part. Mom and step-mom were smart enough not to challenge me on that subject. The step-mom did want to pick my groomsmen for me (her male relatives), but I prevailed there also.
Ironically, I and my wife, now longer live near any of our families, but that had more to do with a job transfer than any wedding difficulties. We lived in Texas near my wife's relatives for 7 years after our wedding.
It is my hope, for my daughter and son's weddings (when they get to that age) to be able to "open my wallet and shut my mouth". That sounds like a perfect philosophy to me. I only hope that they don't want to do something I can't afford. Even the smallest wedding is tremendously expensive and I don't expect it to get any cheaper over time.
I have to agree with anonymous. When parents pay for a wedding, they are going to expect to have a say in the arrangements. The more money they shell out, the more this is true. This is not an unreasonable expectation.
What HAS changed over the years is the expectations of the young, marrying couple. It used to be, back when my parents and their friends were getting married (late 1960s), that big weddings paid for by parents were almost ENTIRELY about what the parents of the bride wanted. The party was given as a show of social prestige for the parents. The majority of the guests were friends/business contacts of the bride's parents. And the bride and groom knew it would be this way, and accepted it.
Now, though, the bride and groom generally expect to get to make most (if not all) of the choices, even if they are spending their parents' money. I think this often causes friction because of differing expectations. The parents of today remember that parents usually called the shots in wedding planning. But the young adults of today are used to getting their own way, and see that their friends are planning their own weddings. Frequently, parents do not want to say to their daughter, "We will pay, but remember, this money is not just a gift. We expect to have a say in the wedding." Instead, feelings get hurt during the planning stage when differing opinions crop up.
I've seen this so many times. Every friend of mine who had a big wedding, wishes now that she hadn't. It was just too much arguing with Mom. In each case, the bride underestimated how much "say" her mom thought she would have in exchange for money/labor put into the wedding.
In my experience, this bride/parent friction is 90% of what makes wedding planning so complicated these days.
Frankly, I think it is time to eliminate the expectation that a girl's parents will pay for her wedding. I think we need a new societal rule: if you want a big wedding, expect to pay for it yourself. This sense of entitlement to their parents' money amongst brides is what is causing a lot of problems.
Howard, on ARB, you mentioned that Mira threw a fit about Liz not bringing Eric to the wedding. Is that true? What did she say? Why did she care? I would think Mira would be glad to have Liz's "alternative lifestyle" whitewashed for her daughter's big day. Huh.
Q.N.
Howard--
I see you posted as I was writing. Don't worry about even small weddings being "tremendously expensive." It's not true--just a lie propagated by the wedding industry. Many of my friends have put together very lovely weddings on shoestring budgets. And, frankly, I liked those weddings better than the ones that were done just like in the bridal magazines. They had a lot more character.
Q.N.
qnjones,
Howard, on ARB, you mentioned that Mira threw a fit about Liz not bringing Eric to the wedding. Is that true? What did she say? Why did she care? I would think Mira would be glad to have Liz's "alternative lifestyle" whitewashed for her daughter's big day. Huh.
It’s a joke of sorts. Actually, it was Elly who threw the fit about Eric not coming to the wedding. Liz wanted him to come, and he refused for some reason I don’t remember, but was really because he was messing around on Liz with the other girl. The joke is that Michael Patterson remembers mother Elly as perfect, so he has, in his memory, assigned this fit to Mira and not Elly.
Bride/parent friction is 90% of what makes wedding planning so complicated these days.
As for wedding, and I can only speak to my own, most of the difficulty had to do with friction between my wife’s mom and step-mom who both laid a claim in for my wife, because she was the only daughter between the two of them. All the other children of both women were boys. If my wife had to deal with only one mom, I think things would have gone more smoothly, because my wife has never really had a problem with seeking out their advice on things. When I think back on it, I remember my wife taking her mother on her trip to pick out a dress (which she did before we were engaged on the premise if I didn’t work out, someone else eventually would). She took her step-mom on a trip to pick out a place for the reception. In each case, the decisions made were more of a group decision and those worked out fairly well. Each woman had their say on the matter and think they were satisfied about the arrangement. My wife did play them both brilliantly, and the only time we had any real problems was when they both were together at some event related to the wedding, like a bridal shower or the like. When we got married, it had been 20 years since my wife’s parents had divorced, but the resentment was still there, even though you would think women in their 50s would behave better.
The complicated stuff:
1. The main complication was me. I insisted on being a June bridegroom, and the booking of reception halls, the church, the minister, the photographers, the videographers, etc. had to be done so far in advance for that month, that the nice places and competent people in town were booked more than a year in advance, so we were constantly seeking after alternatives, which was a frustration.
2. Personal friends. We also had to be careful with personal friends who worked in the wedding-related industries. For example, a close personal friend of ours was a florist, and we had to use him for fear of offending him, even though the bulk of our wedding day disasters were due to his lack of preparation.
3. Idiot relatives. In our case, it was my wife’s stepbrother’s wife. She was assigned things to do to include her in the ceremony to please my wife’s step-mom, her mother-in-law. Our other wedding day disasters were due to her belief they didn’t really needed to be done.
As for me, when my kids marry, I plan to stay out of it. I doubt my wife will. I’ll just open up the bank account and say, “Leave a little for our groceries, and if you could make sure our daughter doesn’t dress like a slut, I would appreciate it.”
"The main complication was me. I insisted on being a June bridegroom" - Why?????
So LJ's take on weddings seems to be on the money! In my family the marriage has been the important thing, not the wedding.
We only had room for 95 people at my wedding so I was initially upset that I would not able to invite many friends. Two weeks before the wedding I complained to a friend that the dancing would be terrible with so few young people. My friend, who at that time was married five years, showed me her wedding album. She pointed out that she was out-of-touch with most of her "best" friends that attended. Her relatives, in contrast, were still an important part of her life.
On that day I learned a real fact of life. Blood is thicker than water. My wedding was perfect because everyone who attended loved us and wanted it to be that way.
Why was June so important to you? Just curious. :)
I'm a terrible person to comment on all this, I suppose. I was brought up to believe that big weddings = big waste of money. Nobody in our family ever had a big wedding. They either eloped or had small ceremonies. Then, when my friends started getting married, all the ones who opted for big weddings just wound up spending money they didn't have, on stuff they didn't really care about, just to keep the mouthy relatives happy. Every last one of them wishes they'd eloped instead.
A big share of the misery was that weddings seem to give older women license to misbehave. The reason the big weddings I've been to turned out so crummy was because of Mothers of the Bride, Mothers of the Groom, Grandmothers, Aunts, etc. all pitching fits over meaningless details, usually at the last minute so as to be extra obnoxious. The culture around weddings really seems to tell older women it's okay to do this. It's like a freakish tradition or something. I'm glad my marrying-type friends are all married now, so I can be done with weddings. Ugh. Never met even one person who had fun at one of those things (unless they were small/nontraditional).
Q.N.
Anonymous and QNJones,
The reason for June. I have bad tendency to fixate on things. After being involved in a production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where there is a long musical number expressing why a June bride is better than all the other brides, I determined that I wanted to be a June bridegroom. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that is the explanation.
Anonymous, your wedding sounds great with that large a number of relatives who love you and were in attendance. I wish I had that many relatives who took an interest in my life.
The situation is not the same for me. My father, in his young and foolish years, tried his best to remove himself from his massive number of cousins, aunts, uncles and other relatives, largely because he considered them to be a bunch of uneducated, drunken, backwards rednecks. He kept up with one uncle, his brother, and his parents and that was it. My great grandfather and greatgrandmother on my mother’s side were involved in a terrible scandal, which estranged them and their children from almost all their family. The net effect was that at my wedding, the bulk of the people who attended were friends. I cannot claim to have kept up with all those friends, but thanks to the wonderful world of e-mail, we do keep up with a surprisingly large number of them. If I opened my wedding album for you, I could tell you about what many of them were doing.
qnjones,
I suppose I had an advantage that the bulk of the older women relatives in wife’s family were in New Jersey, and in my family were in North Carolina, so there was not much of an opportunity for them to misbehave. Most of them barely made it into Dallas, Texas much before the rehearsal dinner.
The key words you mention to me are these: “spending money they didn't have, on stuff they didn't really care about”. A huge debt after a wedding can taint a wedding no matter how good it is. I didn’t get married until I was 30 years old, and I had a nice sum of money saved up. We had a great time at my wedding, I think because we spent money on things we wanted to do.
Example: My wife and I sprung for a horse-drawn carriage to leave the wedding reception, which is an extravagance. However, it was a great ride. We were raided a few times by members of the wedding party. People in cars who saw the carriage honked at us and yelled well wishes. Then after we saw the video for the wedding, we realized the carriage driver had not replaced the “Tolberts Chili” advertisement on the back of the carriage with “Just Married”, so we had a good laugh. It was well worth the money.
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