<p>You mentioned that, Cobrat. Probably good thing this was before the days of her asking for his cellphone #.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thankfully that never came to pass. If she did, I was fully prepared to play the part of the jerk to my friend and “leak” his number to her. </p>
<p>Fortunately for that older friend, would probably take her a day or so to realize the number was really for a local university’s dial-up modem pool for off-campus students trying to access their online accounts.</p>
<p>Back in “my day”, when asked for our number and we didn’t want to give it, we gave the requestor a number. It was to dial-a-prayer.</p>
<p>cobrat, I’m thinking that karma here would be a group crashing your own wedding, scarfing up food…and then leaving some of your guests without their nice dinner or dessert. Or karma might come in a few decades, when you’re a single fifty-something attending a fancy event and you think that an attractive and attentive young guest is quite interested in you…only to realize the next morning that they were playing you for a fool. </p>
<p>That might not have actually happened in your case, but you’ll never really know, will you?</p>
<p>Pizza girl, like you, I have not generally been too enamored with other people’s kids. However, I am finding that as I age, I enjoy little kids more and more. Maybe you are not old enough yet.</p>
<p>Yeah- I’m not in the sseamom “aren’t we all the happy, clappy huggy family” wedding fan. My daughter/son in law had no interest in having a ring bearer or flower girl and managed to avoid that issue even through my son in law had young step siblings.</p>
<p>I’m not old enough yet to enjoy other people’s little kids, in general. Now their PETS- that’s a different story! Bring the dogs and cats to the wedding!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It was set up as an extremely upscale version of an all-you-can-eat buffet. A reason why I was able to get 3 servings of filet mignon…and no legit guest was deprived of a course or dessert. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In our escapade, it was the heavily inebriated woman who came up unprompted to aggressively advertise her amourous interest in my friend. Said friend wasn’t the one who initiated the conversation. I don’t know about you…but that’s creepy behavior in anyone’s book. </p>
<p>Considering my life history, it’d take a radical change for me to be drunk at her level. Especially considering even in social occasions where alcohol is commonly imbibed as a social lubricant, I usually limit myself to 2 beers/glasses of wine…and only after having a full meal. </p>
<p>As much as I am an anti-prohibitionist on principle, I drink so infrequently that the only time I have alcohol in my apartment is when I have guests who enjoy a bit of alcohol over.</p>
<p>
It is extremely disrespectful to do such a thing. Surely you know that ( you do ).</p>
<p>That’s called stealing. Maybe your aunts should knock you upside the head for that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Best part of the whole darned movie, IMHO (though I liked the film as well).</p>
<p>RE: kids – They are OK by me. It’s family. We will have four at next summer’s wedding that I know of – all girls, between 6-10. My understanding is that in British weddings, young girls are the attendants and there is one maid/matron of honor. This is what S1 and fiancee are planning.</p>
<p>I was probably a bad guest – we brought S1 to a wedding when he was a year old (he stayed quiet and well-behaved). Never even crossed our minds that it might be adults only. What we did know was that leaving S1 with his paternal grandparents was utterly out of the question (issues with Child Protective Services in the recent past, plus apartment was not safe and neither GP was capable of supervising/caring for a young child).</p>
<p>OH–Uncle Jim–he and his wife arrived at our house (TX to OR) unannounced while we were on vacation. He was driving a large RV that took out some of our tree branches. He found a neighbor and was shocked they did not have a key to our house. He tried to break in. He would have had a big surprise as the alarm was set. He called my H’s office and insisted someone had to know where we were and how to reach us. No one told:)
Two years later he called to let us know that they had driven 3 of their 5 day trip and would be arriving two days later. After they arrived he pulled out his medicine (a diabetic) and looked at my doc H and shot himself in the belly through a very unclean undershirt.
They stayed 4 days. On day three I told him he had to take a shower and change his clothes. When we moved I told everyone in the family that they could not give him our new address. This is the only person H has said could never return.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In my book, party crashers who complain about being hit on by a legitimate guest are in the same category as a house burglar complaining about tripping over a rug. Also in my book is that it’s creepy behavior to crash a wedding party, creepy to make sanctimonious judgements about at least one of the legitimate guests, and even creepier to seemingly not understand years (?) later that all this was inappropriate and wrong.</p>
<p>Back on topic…a grown friend brought his dog to the evening party for D2’s bat mitzvah. Didn’t even call to ask us if this would be OK. Not a formal affair–outside, in our backyard–but still, what was the man thinking!!! We’d boarded our own dog for the weekend!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know that’s the way Kate & William did it, but I don’t know of any other Brits that did things that way. When my kid was getting married, I was PMing a Brit on CC whose D was also getting married. I know the D had multiple bridesmaids.</p>
<p>My kid and spouse have a lot of Brit friends. My kid has been in a very upscale British wedding and there were probably about six bridesmaids.</p>
<p>So, I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules. Except the church thing…which is a real pain…</p>
<p>As I understand it, most people who aren’t C of E end up having to get married civilly and then go through a separate religious ceremony. </p>
<p>If you opt to have a civil ceremony, you can’t have anything at all religious. The people who are authorized to perform civil ceremonies can’t do anything religious. So, some not at all religious friends of my kid wanted to have one hymn. That wasn’t permitted.</p>
<p>Not a wedding story, but there’s a child in our family who, when he visits our house, always sees something he wants and asks if he can have it. There’s something extremely weird (or worse) about this behavior. I mentioned this to his mom, and her response was, yeah he just does that. And so… why doesn’t his parent tell him to stop? Eventually, I asked him to stop. And now I go around the house before he comes, selectively putting things away. On his most recent visit, he didn’t exactly ask for stuff, but he did say, “Whose [fill in the blanks] is this?” Therapy might be in order here.</p>
<p>cobrat: I think it’s funny.</p>
<p>jonri – maybe it’s a regional thing? S’s fiancee said it is pretty common in her area, assuming there are young girls in the family. Probably makes choosing the dress easier! 
The mom of two of the young ladies kinda of pushed them on to S1 and fiancee, but they had already thought about asking the girls anyway. I am not going anywhere <em>that</em> thicket!</p>
<p>“Yeah- I’m not in the sseamom “aren’t we all the happy, clappy huggy family” wedding fan.”</p>
<p>Ha ha-that’s the funny thing-none of these people are especially huggy or clappy. They just expand the definition of “family” to include a lot more people than one usually thinks “family” would include. To me that makes more sense than inviting somebody’s boss for the sake of business, or people no one really knows well because it meets some social expectation.</p>
<p>On the non-wedding front, I kind of like that my youngest has some unofficial grandparents even though her own died before she was born, “cousins” her age even though most of her blood cousins are 20 or even 30 years older, and “aunts” and “uncles” who invite her to sleepovers with their kids. It probably sounds odd to people who have never experienced it. But I’m closer to some of these people than to than to some of my actual relatives. And I got to know them because I’m part of their “village”.</p>
<p>I have a funny wedding crasher story. This was at a wedding that my parents were at a very long time ago before I was born. One of their friends was getting to know different people, so he asked a woman what her connection was, meaning did she know the bride or the groom. Her response? “Serendipity.”</p>
<p>Back to the original topic of outrageous requests (don’t need too many wedding threads, right?). It wasn’t even a request but an action. DH’s uncle, a long time widower, brought a longstanding lady friend to our wedding. We knew her, sent her an invitation, etc. Fine. Fast forward many years to DS’s bar mitzvah. Uncle is no longer with that lady friend but has a new recent one we’d never met. We had a small invitation list, under 50 people, relatives and close friends. We hear from MIL that Uncle is bringing new lady friend (all the way from Florida to Chicago). Uncle never asked us. MIL says do we want lady friend’s address so we can send her an invitation? No, we reply, we aren’t inviting her. Uncle brought her anyway.</p>
<p>Not too traumatic but the best I could do. Other than brother and family tending to fall asleep after meals at our house while we clean up, although that’s happening a lot less.</p>
<p>One more on the wedding stories: When H and I were dating, his younger brother got married in another city (4 hours distant). I was not invited, and, in fact, was asked to watch his parent’s dog while they were all away. </p>
<p>So for 4 days I trekked to their house and minded the dog. Sometime after their return, I happened upon some photos taken while they were at the SIL city, and lo-and-behold there was H at the rehearsal dinner with one of his college girlfriends. No one has ever been able to convince me that SHE wasn’t at the wedding, although they all claim that wasn’t the case. Boggles my mind that we’ve been married nearly 22 years…;).</p>