<p>bevhills, thanks for starting to share! Good for you for standing up to the boor! Ugh! Maybe it’s good my DS’s MIL & FIL wouldn’t permit alcohol at the wedding…;)</p>
<p>I am beginning to think that we need a sub-forum related entirely to wedding issues in the Cafe. So many of us have been here beyond our children’s college years and the weddings are now what bind us together. These threads and coralbrook’s “Flipping” threads are by far the most fun for me 
Thanks for checking in, ellebud, and give us the rest of the story when you are refreshed. Glad it was a success!</p>
<p>Such good news! You are a stellar MOG and I’m so glad that it went well. Now you can go moonlight as a bouncer. =D> </p>
<p>Congratulations, bevhills and DH! And of course to the bride and groom!</p>
<p>Thanks to OP for starting this thread.</p>
<p>Consolation, Thanks for the additional explanation. </p>
<p>Re: Money gift. What I heard is that the parents tend to give their offsprings money gifts. However, I also heard that in some culture/country (e.g., South Korea, Japan, China), the guests often give money gifts as well while mostly the parents (often not so much the couple) will spend the money to “feed” the guests. Especially, the guests of the parents tend to pay a large amount of gift money.</p>
<p>This is what I heard: the parents gave money gifts to those in their social circle (relative, colleagues, friends) whose kids got married during their life time. When their kid gets married, it is their turn to receive the money gifts from others who benefit from their contribution to them in the past. The “social contract” is so strong that everyone (unless they are destitute) is required to participate in this system. (Borrowing the word “Medicare” from our federal government, it is like “marry-care” system but it is run privately, not run by the government. People at a different SES class would pay into and get paid out of the system at a different scale level in their social circle so it is definitely not a “safety net” system where the money flows from “have” to “have-not.”</p>
<p>Then, there is the issue about who gets the money from all the guests. This could be a touchy issue if two side of families have a different expectation. (The kids may receive some if their parents are nice to them.)</p>
<p>Sure there will be money gifts. But, best not to spend money one doesnt yet have. Others have appropriately likened it to the college admissions process. Dont start out with big loans one isnt sure they can pay off.</p>
<p>@Consolation - that event has traumatized me so tremendously I have always since then had easily 3x as much food as needed for any party I hosted. </p>
<p>I could do a separate venting thread on rsvp’s! I can’t imagine someone having to call me to see if I was attending a wedding or not. </p>
<p>“Re: Money gift. What I heard is that the parents tend to give their offsprings money gifts. However, I also heard that in some culture/country (e.g., South Korea, Japan, China), the guests often give money gifts as well while mostly the parents (often not so much the couple) will spend the money to “feed” the guests. Especially, the guests of the parents tend to pay a large amount of gift money.”</p>
<p>What do they do in your culture? </p>
<p>I inadvertently committed an RSVP faux pas recently. I helped a close friend plan her wedding and agreed to take on some minor tasks on the day of the wedding during the event. So, when I got the invitation, it didn’t occur to me to send back the card since we were in daily communication about the event – she unquestionably knew I was coming. However, she called me on the date the RSVPs were due to ask why I hadn’t RSVP’d. Lesson learned – always return the card no matter how many emails or conversations there have been confirming attendance. </p>
<p>^^^My own brother-in-law-to-be didn’t RSVP. But then again, he had no class. My mother was pissed.</p>
<p>I could only be as assertive as Bevhills/Ellebud if under enough stress or with enuf alcohol running thru my veins. Cheers to u!!!</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl, Some of my relatives (e.g., brother) had been through that kind of “system” but we did not. To put it briefly, a generation ago, we (my wife and me) were an “outlier” from the beginning. We were very rebellious back then.</p>
<p>For our kid, we thought we might be able to follow the common wedding practice/etiquette here (so we are interested in learning this.) But, it seems that, the more I learn about this, the less we are sure about it. There could be many unknowns and it requires lots of wisdom and patience on both sides of family. (Actually, we are scared by all of these unknowns.)</p>
<p>Bev…did you say one parent was not allowed in? Wow.</p>
<p>Sounds like the wedding weekend was terrific!!</p>
<p>mcat2, no worries. There is no universal U.S. wedding etiquette. Every family from various cultures, neighborhoods, religions, states has a bunch of customs, but of course each person marries another person with at least slightly and often very different customs.</p>
<p>When my dad died, I got a bunch of wedding photos from the 40s. Beautiful black and white pictures of brides, grooms, and their parents in top hats and formal garb. But that was just the custom of one group of working-class Jews from NYC. My mother was an immigrant from 1939 Danzig and she and her parents knew zero, so they just went with the flow. My mother borrowed her dress and the wedding reception ended early because the staff at the hall urged her to cut the cake and she didn’t know that that meant the party was over.</p>
<p>But things are very, very different now and almost anything, as long as it’s presented positively, is acceptable. Every couple and their families get to invent their own wheel.</p>
<p>We had a friend who didn’t receive her invitation and thought we hadn’t invited her. She was very hurt. She wasn’t a close friend but a very sensitive person. Well, lo and behold a year later, our invitation arrived. It had been all over and yes, it was correctly addressed. She wrote us at Christmas and was apologetic about the bad thoughts she sent to us. We laughed and said, of all people not to get the invitation…</p>
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<p>I think this is a great way to look at the whole wedding thing. My H and I had four people at our wedding–we all went to dinner afterwards at the nicest restaurant in town. A week later, some close friends had a party for us and invited all of our friends. It was simple and inexpensive and just as nice as my D’s wedding–just a different kind of celebration. </p>
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I’ve never heard of any US educated parents who would keep money gifts for themselves to pay for the wedding. I’ve heard that from friends whose parents were immigrants and I was stunned. These are parents who couldn’t afford to have lavish weddings and did so to save face. I guess this is also where gifting the amount to “cover your plate” comes from.</p>
<p>We had a small rehearsal dinner even though we had quite a few out-of-towners. I don’t know what they did. A month later I went to my cousin’s wedding and they had the world’s best rehearsal dinner (much more fun than the wedding reception!) It was pizza, the band her husband played in and lots of dancing.</p>
<p>@oldmom4896, Thanks. Now I learn that cutting the cake is the last step in a wedding reception.</p>
<p>@cbreeze,
Out of my curiosity, I look it up. At least in one country, it is really like that. My jaw drops when I read that groom’s parents usually buy a house for the newlyweds when they are married. (One of my old neighbors in US used to tell me the same and I could hardly believe them at that time.) On the other website, I learned that groom’s parents (over there, not here) should at least save enough money (like 60% of the cost of a house) for the newlyweds, otherwise the bride’s family would likely not be very pleased.</p>
<p>Granted, these parents are not US-educated parents. But their “parenting job” seems to be not “easier” compared to ours.</p>
<p>I could not provide the link, so I just cut-and-paste a few paragraphs from that site:</p>
<p>"In Korea, giving cash for major occasions, including weddings, is perfectly fine. Therefore, it is not uncommon to have a large pile of cash after the wedding is over. Then a question could arise – who takes the cash? Technically, the answer is: the parents. But it is more important to understand why the parents take the money.</p>
<p>The parents take the money because in Korea, the parents of the newlyweds generally pay for the wedding. In fact, this question is rarely actually raised because, in most cases, even the huge pile of cash is still not quite enough to cover the wedding expenses. Even if the cash were somehow enough to cover the wedding expenses, Korean parents generally shoulder a much greater burden than wedding expenses – the groom’s family usually buys a house for the newlyweds, while the bride’s family buys the furniture and electronics with which to fill the house. The two families exchange expensive gifts for the immediate and extended family as well, again usually out of the parents’ dimes.</p>
<p>Another consideration is that the parents are essentially receiving a return on the many, many cash gifts that they have made throughout their adulthood. By the time they are marrying off their children, Korean parents have paid an untold sum of money to their families, relatives and friends for every major occasion. Those gifts are made with an implicit expectation that someday, they will get them back in some measure by the same families, relatives and friends.</p>
<p>But of course, like everything else in Korea, this custom is constantly in a state of flux. If the newlyweds ended up paying for the entire wedding themselves, there is some room to say that a portion of the cash gift belongs to the newlyweds. However, in most cases, the cash gifts will be gone by the time they were applied to the wedding expenses, making this a non-issue.
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<p>mcat, I agree with cbreeze, that is not the custom, cash gifts are for the newlyweds not the parents. I have several Korean friends at work and I can assure you there is no such thing as buying a house ahead. My old neighbor’s husband(a Korean couple) wouldn’t dream of getting any money from the in-laws. She told me her husband made her returned $5000 she borrowed to buy her armoire, the one she didn’t get an agreement with her husband ahead. They both grew up here in USA but I would be surprised if things changed that much.</p>