I think the idea of the bride and groom going away for the weekend with their respective friends is very common now. A lot of the couples are older and have more disposable income and young people travel a lot more than they did back in the day. It does not have to be budget busting, though. D and her friends had a beach weekend at a house borrowed from family friends of one of the bridesmaids. The location was not difficult for anyone to get to and no one had to fly. Food/alcohol was purchased at Costco. This was a group of young women who were more into hanging out on the beach by day and just relaxing with drinks at night - not wild partiers.
The bride(s) and groom(s) are allowed to plan whatever they want and invite whoever they want.
I think it is completely unreasonable to EXPECT anyone to come. Having everyone fly in for a one-day turnaround isn’t something I’d personally do but to each his/her own.
Planning weddings and attending weddings are expensive. It is no longer just the cost of the gift anymore.
Clothes, gifts, travel, and hotel arrangements have to be accounted for. My brother (early 30’s) attends at least 7 or 8 weddings a year. He always has to book travel and hotel arrangements. It’s like paying for several vacations for the year.
My daughter was in two weddings last year. She went to the weddings, but missed the showers and bachelorette parties because she was living out of town and she didn’t have the money to travel back and forth. Neither had elaborate or expensive events because both brides were JUST 21 (within the month before they married), and one is LDS so there was no drinking involved for that one at all.
At the time it is very difficult to say ‘No’ to the friends, to say ‘I don’t have the cash’ but we as parents can attest that these as just a small part of life.
As to the original question, YES things are out of control. My friend’s nephew was married about two weeks go. He lives in DC, was married in a small town in Nevada which required either expensive airfare or a 4 hour drive from SLC for almost all guests and certainly for everyone the groom knows and invited. The bachelor party was somewhere in Europe (Switzerland?) and the bachelorette party was in New Orleans. My friend was invited to the wedding and to the bachelorette party. She had originally been planning to fly to SLC with the grandmother (who is 94) and renting a car , two hotel rooms, etc., but MIL had broken her hip in April so couldn’t travel and it was the excuse my friend needed to say “We can’t travel because grandmother needs us.”
She sent a card and a check, the check being about an 1/8 of what she would have spent.
I am planning a low-key bachelorette weekend for my sister, who is getting married this fall. It will be a reasonable drive (2-3 hrs) from where almost all of the guests live and pretty low cost, hanging out in a rented house and hiking. I will fly out because I don’t live nearby, but I probably would not do that for anyone besides my sister.
Friends of mine have done similar things–camping or a group rental somewhere pretty within an easy drive. Where I live it is pretty common for folks to spend weekends on backpacking/climbing/camping trips, and so bachelor/bachelorette getaways tend to be fairly similar to that. Bridal showers, engagement parties, etc. are not common in my circle.
OTOH, I have seen high school friends (that I am not particularly close with) doing the destination types of trips from FB photos and party after party.
I wonder how much of it is regional and how much is individual personalities. Most of the weddings I have been to have been lovely but relatively casual, outdoor affairs. I am on the West Coast, while most of my high school friends are on the East Coast.
My older niece had a nice day at a nice resort and beach with the cousins. No one had to fly anywhere. This younger niece (her sister) chose Vegas. I guess since she and at least some of her friends live in SF and D lives in LA, it’s not THAT far, but it’s a much pricier weekend than a day at a nice resort they could all drive to from their homes in 90 minutes.
I guess these young adults have a lot to weigh as to whether to participate and how much it will cost to do so. It sure is more complicated these days.
I am such a curmudgeon when it comes to this stuff. I have zero tolerance for narcissism, gift grabbing, queen for a day nonsense. A wedding is a ceremony uniting two people. A reception is a party put on by the couple and/or their families for the pleasure and benefit of the guests to celebrate their union. If they can’t afford the party they want, they should have the party they can afford. If people spent half as much time working on the relationship as they do the wedding, the divorce rate would be a lot lower.
We have friends whose daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks. She had her bachelorette in Vegas and ended up having a second one locally since so many people couldn’t make it.
It’s complicated trying to figure it all out when folks are spread out so far geographically. Have been to showers two days before the wedding because that was the only day most folks would be in town for it. It makes things much more compressed but reduces air travel back and forth for guests.
I can’t see how a shower would work with my FDIL either. My sister offered to have one.
But I live 6.5 hours away, my mom is 10. My D is 6.5 hours in the opposite direction of myself. My neice has an internship in NYC. The bride is close though, only an hour and a half. Her mom lives 3 hours and I’ve only met her once, my family not at all. The other bridesmaids live near her mom. Brides BFF is pregnant.
And who would I invite? Hey, come to a shower 6 hours away. I moved 4 hours away from where my kids grew up, so having it at my house wouldn’t work. And it’s been 9 years since I moved away, so I have friends but not that many I’ve kept in close contact with. And my friends here don’t know my kids since they were in college when we moved here.
It’s a mess. I feel bad. And friendless, even though that is not the case.
I have heard of virtual or Skype showers. The out of towners send their gifts and then gather together at a central location, if they can, and call in to watch the party and see the gifts opened. The bride to be could skype with different groups at different times as well. I discussed this concept with my D, who is not yet ready to marry, but who has friends who are in the process. Her bf’s family is in Europe and Australia, so I doubt they would be coming to any shower in person.
Sometimes I can’t tell if a couple wants to be married, or just wants to have a wedding. There is a difference. And I thought (like massmomm) the guests were to be treated as such, with the bridal couple acting as de facto hosts. Not king/queen for a day. The most wonderful weddings we’ve been to were not the most splashy. Most memorable was a bride who supplied a huge basket of flip flops for “everyone who’s had enough of their fancy heels for today”
Showers are for supplying the new household, so if you’ve got a new household already underway, what exactly is the point? all these expectations : getaway weekend, a shower gift, a weddding gift, and a gofundme honeymoon? But I see that this modern bachelor trip is not an outlier. Still seems nervy, as my Nana would say.
@Marian…unless something changes…my bride will still be a student. Not an employee. No shower there.
I won’t do a skype shower…sorry but that feels like a gift grab.
We might do a small meet the bride and groom party next December for friends and family who love near us…both our family and the groom’s. But that would be a NO gift event.
I was at a bridal shower yesterday for my great niece. As her fiance is from Toronto his older sister who lives here in NYC had her mom and another sister who lives in Canada on SKPE the whole time. They had shipped their gifts or sent cards with the pictures of the gifts being delivered to her house, not to the actual shower. A friend of mine had a shower for her daughter who lived in another state. The gifts from the registry were being sent to the daughter’s apartment and so people just brought pictures of the gifts that she shared with those there.
Regarding bachelorette and bachelor get-togethers they are becoming more elaborate and for those in certain circles, almost more important than the wedding itself as people try to outdo each other but it is not uncommon for people not to be able to attend all the events and go to either the shower or the bachelor/bachelorette and then of course the actual wedding