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<p>How did I miss this? If the guests are British and that’s their habit, it seems a bit rude to tell them not to wear their hats. I would think that would be fun, actually, to see what they came up with.</p>
<p>yes ^</p>
<p>You never know when someone might pull a Princess Beatrice. That hat was the BEST part of the otherwise boring Royal Wedding.</p>
<p>cross posted with robym2</p>
<p>“conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginative” Oscar Wilde</p>
<p>The person who wears the copy of the horrid creation that Beatrice at the recent royal wedding would gather all the attention, that is what would happen…</p>
<p>When the Brit gets married, they can request everyone wear hats if they like… right? A</p>
<p>zooser,</p>
<p>For your children, I would invite them. A 20 yr old is not a child, and I would leave it to the parent of the 13 yo to decide if they “make” them go. No 13 yo wants to attend a wedding if they don’t have anyone in their age range to hang with.</p>
<p>We actually did it clear when sending the invite. If in college, and they were in a relationship, they got a personal invite like their parents and it would say XYZ & GUEST. If they were in HS or middle school it was Family. If they were of an age that would require a babysitter, it stated Mr & Mrs.</p>
<p>AS for your DD toying with the idea of kids. I have been at weddings with children where they hired babysitters. </p>
<p>One of my cousins did this. They actually thought about it and it was amazing. They paid for a room in the hotel (suite) and had the hotel supply an in-house babysitter. They hooked up the TVs to have XBox or Wii or DVD player. Parents, even if they were not staying in the hotel, would ride the elevator up, drop off the child and come back down to the wedding. They got a suite, so they could separate the youngers ones from the older ones.</p>
<p>If you invite children IMPO that are young, you have to think about the impact it will have on the parents. I have seen kids curled up on chairs sleeping, I have seen parents not enjoy a moment because their kids are being fussy. I have seen parents trying to placate their kids because as teens they are bored out of their mind. </p>
<p>I really do fall on the fact that although it is the couple’s day, if you want it to be the best you need to remember you are the host/hostess. It also goes back to my comment that you should spend your money wisely.</p>
<p>In the case of my cousin, it probably cost about 400 bucks for the in house babysitter and the additional room. Nobody would have been ever able to see if she shorted flowers for that, or if she dropped 2 appetizers from her menu, or changed it form filet mignon or prime rib. Even if she did, the fact is she made everyone enjoy the wedding.</p>
<p>True story, wedding ended at 11, but the hotel bar was still open, and so all of the cousins (inc. parents of kids being babysat) went and hung until 1 a.m. It was truly the best wedding!</p>
<p>Weddings are expensive, but you have to decide how to spend.</p>
<p>We took our children to Italy @ 5 yrs ago, and my DD turned to me and said I want to buy my gown here as we passed a wedding shop, I saw the tags and said, okay, you, me and your MoH will due that. The gowns there were beautiful and cost at most 1K, and I am saying that stateside they would be 5-8K on a good day. I figured for the 3 of us we could fly, stay for 3 days and buy a dress for the same amount here stateside. Best yet she would not only have a dress nobody in the US would ever see, but a special memory too.</p>
<p>It is all about working the numbers.</p>
<p>As I said our DS is probably going to get married within the next 24 mos. I love, love, love this girl, and could not ask for a better mate. I know I will lose my tongue because I bit if off due to her Mom and her sister. I will be placed in an awkward situation since his GF has her beliefs, but her Mom and sister have their idea.</p>
<p>I don’t really care about the wedding at all. Tel me the time, the place, what to wear, feed me crappy food.</p>
<p>I have already told Bullet that we will gift them their honeymoon. It will be a surprise, and they will have to do what I always wanted…Orient Express from Paris to Italy.</p>
<p>For some reason we’ve turned our culture in a direction that encourages ungracious behavior by wedding hosts. Otherwise lovely and considerate young people, who are careful about other people’s feelings most of the time, seem to lose all perspective where their weddings are concerned. I have no idea if this is going on in other countries too, or if it’s an American thing.</p>
<p>There are a million ways to be a rude and inconsiderate wedding guest, too, but that’s been going on since forever. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of cultural shift happening there.</p>
<p>“When the Brit gets married, they can request everyone wear hats if they like… right?”</p>
<p>The hat thing didn’t sound like a request to go bareheaded “if you like.” It sounded like a directive. But if I got that wrong, please correct me. Regardless, I don’t believe that everybody getting their turn to be rude and boss their guests around solves this kind of problem.</p>
<p>A longago bit of wedding meanness from a woman who has for the last 15 years in our lives been nothing but lovely–when her daughter got married in another state, we were invited to the wedding and intended to go. Our children were not invited, but they were small (under 8) and we werent’ offended; we were going to bring them and get our own babysitter for the wedding–but when the MOB suggested that we may want to stay in a different hotel than the rest of the wedding guests–because our children might be too active–THEN we were offended. We didn’t attend the wedding.</p>
<p>At my oldest D’s wedding. one of the guests wore a white dress which didn’t really bother my D at all. She actually got quite a chuckle from it with her sisters because this particular guest is known for being kind of a PITA in her circle of friends. A few of the other guests expressed displeasure to each other (not to the guest herself) but none of us really were bothered at all. It was such a joyous occasion that something like that wasn’t going to spoil anything. It’s funny how often that topic has come up in the past few years since the wedding when wedding stories are being told. Wedding stories are part of the experience and it’s fun afterwards to say remember when… </p>
<p>As for kids at weddings, we attended the wedding of the son of a very close friend a few years ago. The groom’s aunt and uncle brought along houseguests that were staying with them!! which included a couple and their three children! Just showed up with them and told my friend “oh, we would have felt badly leaving them at home”. Amazing.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier, I did not not want my 19 year old sister’s BF in my wedding photos. She started a tantrum so I let it go. It irritated me when I saw the photos, it irritated me more when they broke up. Fast forward 23 years they are back together and probably getting married. My pictures would be current but BIL and SIL divorced! Oh well.</p>
<p>I would be somewhat uncomfortable directing guests attire, beyond what the formality of the invitation suggested. I love the look of groomsmen in khaki suits with pastel ties and bridesmaids in short pastel dresses, but I’m already married. I don’t have a daughter so I will have little or no say. H and I will of course offer to contribute to S’s hypothetical far off in the future wedding. I hope my mythical future DIL respects me enough to ask me to wear a color I don’t look hideous in! The aforementioned purple!</p>
<p>At my ex-SIL’s wedding one of her friends came into the chapel very late, clattering up the long stone aisle (Princeton U’s) in a white lace dress. She had been married 2 weeks prior, her mortified H kept telling everyone, “she still thinks she’s the bride”. My best friend and I still laugh about it.</p>
<p>I have been to many different kinds of weddings, indoors, outdoors, formal, middle of the week casual, a pot luck reception, the beach, the reception when the bride and groom were in recovery so no alcohol, the firehouse, the Country Club. I cry at every one, I dance at every one with music. I am always hopeful and happy at a wedding.</p>
<p>I only had one friend with a baby at my (outdoor) wedding. She asked if it would be all right to bring him. I said it was fine. She sat on an aisle ready to escape if he got fussy, but he was a doll. If he ever made a peep all evening I certainly never heard him and he was adorable in the photos.</p>
<p>I had the same reaction to the ban on fascinators and hats. What a missed opportunity to have something fun to look at in all those photos. I believe the hat thing comes from the notion that women should have their heads covered (even if only theoretically) in church.</p>
<p>By the time my brother got married lots of us had children and he had a babysitter for both the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, though as I recall most of the babies came to the wedding and were well behaved. I remember having to find a dress that I could also breastfeed reasonably discreetly in.</p>
<p>Our band was three women who all wore white. They were very apologetic, but in fact their dresses didn’t look at all like wedding dressings and I wasn’t at all bothered by it. (Mine was long and satin, theirs were tea length and Laura Ashley-ish.)</p>
<p>I do think that the idea that nothing, and I mean NOTHING should distract from the bride, is an extension of our celebrity obsessed culture. The wedding is now a performance and the “celebrity for a day bride” is the star and unforgiving merciless director of the show. I think we are headed in a direction where the guests, faces covered and dressed only in black, will sit in a theatre while “she who must be obeyed” parades back an forth on the brightly lit stage. But the great pictures will make it all worthwhile.</p>
<p>Can you tell that my last wedding experience was not optimal? ;)</p>
<p>musicamusica, that’s so astute. My mother thinks that’s exactly what’s going on with my niece and suggested that the bride should hire professional revelers to celebrate in place of her imperfect extended family!
The problem is that after the celebrity day, they have to return to live among the masses.</p>
<p>musicamusica, you’ve got it exactly right!</p>
<p>Last summer I went to a wedding that was picture perfect! Not at all over the top…just a lovely setting, great food and drink, terrific dancing and a wonderful brunch at MOB’s home the next morning. Really, really nice.
The parents of the groom were divorced. Groom’s mom became very religious at some point in their marriage and they were no longer compatable.
MOG wore a dress similar to what you see Mormon wives wear - pastel, ankle length, and long-sleeved. No makeup, hair in a bun. She was a very sweet,quiet woman.
Step MOG wore a sleeveless, skintight red satin dress, updo, major makeup, 5 inch heels - and SPANX which she showed to my husband at some point in the evening! She was actually very sweet, and extremely fun-loving with a drink and a cigarette her constant companions.
I don’t think I have ever seen 2 more dissimilar woman in my life but they were both lovely and the groom was thrilled to have both moms there.</p>
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<p>If you want to go all Miss-Manners about it (and like Hanna, I think she is a riot - and spot-on), you’re not supposed to address an envelope to XYZ and Guest. You’re supposed to find out the name of the person and use their name, because this isn’t like buying theater tickets where you are buying 2 and giving them to someone to bring whoever he likes - you’re supposed to be inviting specific people. You’re also supposed to write out the names of all the children, not Mr. & Mrs. XYZ and family.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t automatically invite children. Only those children that I’d care about. There is a world of difference between extending an invitation to my cousin’s child and to my coworker’s child. I certainly wouldn’t think all the children of my invitees “deserved” invitations.</p>
<p>I was a bridesmaid in a wedding where a sitter was provided in a hotel room. I think I left two kids at home with our own sitter and took my nursing infant. However, I did not like what I saw in that hotel room at all. A ton of kids with one sitter, jumping all over the place, etc and it was on a high floor with the window open. When the dancing got started, I took my baby out and danced with him and kept him with us.</p>
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<p>Is that truly a gift if that isn’t what they want? That sounds like your fantasy, not theirs!</p>
<p>At this point, I am rather sorry I posted the story in the first place. </p>
<p>Hanna, if I had a friend I knew just hated A-line skirt or a certain color, I’d think that was pretty silly, but I wouldn’t wear an A-line skirt or that color to her wedding if she asked all of her friends not to. Nor would I refuse to go. I’d go and wear something else. </p>
<p>Her Brit friends all know how much my D hates fascinators. It’s not as if that was shocking news to them. (And, robym is right; she has worn them when she attended Brit weddings and was expected to do so. ) </p>
<p>I doubt any of my D’s friends were surprised or miffed by the fact she didn’t want them to wear fascinators to her wedding and it’s just one of her many American ‘quirks’ as far as they are concerned. None of the family members are Brits. The only people who may have been a bit put out were wives and dates of Brit male friends of the groom who aren’t really her friends or friends of the two of them as a couple. And they “got the memo” when they asked they boyfriends or husbands what “people were likely to wear” to the wedding and they asked the groom. </p>
<p>My D wouldn’t have thrown out anyone who showed up in one, but any photos of them would not have been purchased from the photographer. (For all I know, some people showed up at the church wearing them and figured out that they stood out like sore thumbs and took them off. )</p>
<p>And zoosermom, the wedding has been over for a long time now, and they had the opposite problem–they had to pare the guest list and had extra invitations to send out when people turned them down far enough in advance that they could add people without it being too awkward. (It wasn’t that small a wedding, but it wasn’t huge either. ) They really felt badly for having to cut some people who very much wanted to come. I assure you that " a certain standard of comfort and consideration" was provided. The guests had a great time. </p>
<p>So, yes, it may have been a bit bridezilla-ish of my D, but nobody forced her to back down. I don’t think anyone tried.</p>
<p>I do think comments about how you feel sorry for the groom written in a thread when you know the B’s mom is reading them are just plain rude.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl,I totally missed that about the honeymoon. I didn’t read closely and just assumed it was what “they” always wanted.</p>
<p>I’m going to a wedding tomorrow–groom was my son-in-law’s best man. Went to the couple’s wedding website to order to gift. On the website, I noticed a heading entitled “children”. Clicked on it and found that children were invited to the church ceremony, but not the reception. There was also a listing for baby sitting services in the area. The couple apologized for the inconvenience. While I agree that some requests can be pretty demanding–I think this one wasn’t outrageous. </p>
<p>When my D got married, we invited children (mostly cousins of my D and son-in-law). We had two baby sitters for them. (Wedding was at a venue right on the beach–and we really wanted to make sure the kids weren’t going in the water.) The kids had seats at tables for the reception and there was a room where they could go with babysitters during the evening. It felt like the right thing to do, but it was an added expense of (in our case) 10 people and fees for the babysitters. </p>
<p>If you need to cut costs, I think what this couple requested with regard to children was reasonable. On the other hand, I think telling guests that they can’t wear a particular type of clothing is a bit demanding, especially if it’s in the form of a command. I posted earlier about a wedding I attended where the bride created a beach resort at the reception venue and suggested that resort clothing was completely appropriate. It was a request that clearly indicated the guests had a choice. In my mind, a command to NOT wear X is over the line.</p>
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I was actually referring to my own niece’s wedding, so I apologize if you were offended.</p>