Here Comes the Snide
Most of you know by now that in addition to doing whatever it is I do over here, I also write a monthly column for Brides.com. I figure I’ve already ruined crafting, I might as well shit on your wedding.
If this sort of thing interests you, you can read the piece here.
And now, back to the fuckery.
October 6, 2010 at 11:58 am
I’m terrified of the brides that would share bridesmaid dresses. Those are the types of women that want to wear your favorite underwear. And a fake cake? Who gives this advice? Are people incapable of making sound financial decisions these days?
(for the record, we saved a ton of money by cutting the guest list to people we REALLY wanted to share the moment with – not just people we wanted presents from. Then we went to our favorite bar where our favorite local band played for the reception. I coerced the management into letting me give wristbands to my guests for 1/2 prices drinks.)
October 6, 2010 at 11:59 am
Our non-event could barely be called a wedding, so we didn’t subject guests to it. It’s thrilling to live vicariously through your wedding research. I’m waiting with bated breath to see if you go just a little bit Bridezilla, since I wonder if a perfectly reasonable person can still lose their mind planning a wedding. I think it does something to your brain chemistry, having all that bride paraphernalia under your nose.
October 6, 2010 at 12:09 pm
I bought the designer bridesmaid dresses on Ebay (three dresses cost less on there than one would have been brand new from the bridal store); got brand new Kenneth Cole bridal shoes on Ebay as well, for 1/2 of the new price; only used real flowers for the wedding party and wedding party table; used candle centerpieces on guest tables; a friend of ours was a photographer; my husband’s family owned a beer & wine store so alcohol was basically free. We saved in a lot of other ways but there are too many to list. People can save if they just put their minds to it.
October 6, 2010 at 12:09 pm
I think you’re right HK. I will say the best wedding I ever went to was held in the brides’ friend’s back yard, the buffet was homemade, there was a choice of beer, wine, or soda, the wedding cake was three tiers of cupcakes, presents were not expected, and there were thirty guests max. A great time was had by all and not one fight broke out.
So for my next wedding I’ll remember that simpler is better. And to have a cupcake wedding cake. Everyone remembers the three slices of wedding cake you went back for but no one can tell how many cupcakes you’ve had.
Cause we all know the most important thing about the wedding is the dessert.
October 6, 2010 at 12:14 pm
“This is insanity. It’s like that Twilight Zone episode where Carol Lynley and her husband wake up after a party and find themselves in an alien child’s dollhouse [spoiler alert].”
Damn you, Helen. Spoiler alerts are supposed to come BEFORE the spoiler.
October 6, 2010 at 12:16 pm
A fake cake? Why bother at all? You can cut costs without going that far. I made my hair pins, knitted my wrap, had 3 stupendous puddings instead of cake, had prosecco instead of champagne & got the perfect shoes from Top Shop!
But most importantly baffled venue after venue by retaining my sanity & refusing to accept inflated prices at the mention of the word wedding. When I showed a hotel their own normal a la carte menu compared to their inflated wedding menu of identical dishes, they were genuinely shocked I’d query it. Their attitude was “So? It’s a wedding. What do you expect?”. Suffice to say they didn’t get our business!
October 6, 2010 at 12:32 pm
This whole thing makes me think of the cupcake paper fascinator hat from the hat making party.
That chick got alot of mileage out of a simple gesture….having been marries twice, I say the simpler the better.
October 6, 2010 at 12:33 pm
*married* I can’t haz marries..
October 6, 2010 at 12:40 pm
We were going to get married at the courthouse (worked for my parents, 44 years next month), but I found a dress too fancy (on sale!) for a courthouse. We threw together a wedding and saved money where we could.
My mother-in-law figured she would help and gave us a cake topper. It was old, but I ASSumed it was from her own wedding.
I overheard her at the reception (in my parents’ house) say: “You like that cake topper? I got it for a quarter at a yard sale!”
I was disgusted, really. I didn’t want some yard sale stranger’s cake topper! Ick!
If ever I get married again, we’re going with a courthouse thing. Maybe I can nerd up the guy and get him to go to the ren faire with me and we’ll get hitched there. Then our wedding dinner can be meat on a stick.
*for the record, next month is my 24th anniversary with the disabled guy. There are no weddings in my future*
October 6, 2010 at 12:51 pm
April – I thought you LIVED in Versailles. Didn’t you just buy the place after your book deal. I am now crushed.
@ #5 lianaww : “This is insanity. It’s like that Twilight Zone episode where Carol Lynley and her husband wake up after a party and find themselves in an alien child’s dollhouse [spoiler alert].”
If you need a spoiler alert for a TV show filmed in black-and-white, I cannot help you.
October 6, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I see that the thumbs-down troll has returned.
October 6, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Patty, a ren faire wedding sounds great. Although my wife and I did not go for it.
We were under 21 when we got married and thus, sadly no alcohol, until we got to the bed and breakfast with the champagne our friend got us.
But the biggest surprise, to me at least, was that April was the voice of Cruella. Who knew? (Probably everyone but me).
October 6, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I went to a wedding once where the bridesmaids were all atmost size 3, or less, and the lady ordered 1 dress, maybe size 30 womens, and she had all women inside of the dress. It was hilarious.
October 6, 2010 at 1:15 pm
This is what led me to determine that I was planning a party for the enjoyment of everyone else but my husband and I. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a party that lasts a few hours, I decided the money would be better spent on new windows for our house. We went to the courthouse where I was able to enter into a panic-induced brain freeze during the vows with the limited audience of my husband, a judge, and a court-house office worker. I also decided to simply wear my favorite dress at the time, which happened to be black. We then went to Tahiti for two weeks. 13 years later, I’m still married… I think so much of the focus on the union is lost to an effort to put on an impressive display. Perhaps if people placed more value on the actual marriage vs. endeavoring to impress and cater to a group of friends and family, we wouldn’t have such a high divorce rate.
October 6, 2010 at 1:19 pm
#12: Idk, she does some weird voice-overs. her biggest is she played Miss. Finster, and Mrs. Detweiller, or Clarabelle cow. She does alot of Disney. She was also in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Clerks!. My favorite of all of her voices would have to be Terk from Tarzan. She was in alot of TV shows growing up.
October 6, 2010 at 1:27 pm
During my bridal sewing heyday of the 80′s-90′s I was always saddened by the brides who were spending so much on the wedding yet investing little in the actual marriage. I was proud I raised a cheapskate, though, when my own daughter got married and her wedding cost about 2000 for everything. I enjoy your writing very much, April!
#15– I thought Rosie O’Donnell was the voice for Turk?
October 6, 2010 at 1:30 pm
$600 a person! Holy crikey. That is literally insane.
kniterbird @6 – I did the same thing with the venues. I got their regular old event packages (business meetings, etc.) and then their wedding packages, and there was a huge gap between the two. Was able to negotiate then down quite a bit with that trick, actually.
October 6, 2010 at 1:53 pm
#16 mickey: April was the voice of terk when it went into a TV show. Like most movies gone TV shows, it’s usually never the movie voice actor that plays the person on the TV show. So, yes, O’Donnell played terk in the movie, but April played terk on the TV show.
October 6, 2010 at 2:06 pm
What do you mean no unicorn!!!?????? You have to have a unicorn!!!!!
October 6, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I agree with starrydreams. What kind of person has a wedding without a unicorn??
October 6, 2010 at 2:18 pm
April Winchell I LOVE YOU! Thank you for making me cry with laughter – again – on a worn out rainy Wednesday night!
October 6, 2010 at 2:26 pm
#18 Thank you, ‘mommy’!
October 6, 2010 at 2:36 pm
My whole wedding cost about $2000, and I had a real dress, the men were in kilts, and we had a catered meal and real paper invitations. The only thing cheap and fake were the flowers (because I have no sense of smell so they seemed a bit pointless to me), and I had a friend of the family who was a good amateur photographer take the pictures, since I hate pictures of myself anyway.
Of course, all that was at my fake wedding to appease the family. My real wedding was at a courthouse six months earlier.
October 6, 2010 at 3:04 pm
You are such a funny lady.
And i completely agree with you about the Baroque crap. I can’t with that Baroque crap. It’s like “JAYZUS – ENOUGH ALREADY!.” I dunno how people could concentrate in places like that. What if someone had epilepsy? All the crazy decor could be seizure-inducing.
My man and I plan to stay happily un-married for the rest of our lives, but I have always said that if I DID do a wedding, I’d get a vintage dress (doesn’t have to be bridal at all) and do the thing in a backyard and have a homemade meal that people could add to. That would be all anyone would be required to bring, no gifts. I figure, I’m a seamstress, I can cook, I can bake, I can decorate, I can make invitations/centerpieces, I can make a few mix cd’s and put em on shuffle or invite any of the bajillion musicians I am friends with to play some music, and I know many folks who can take a good photo (you don’t really need that many). There’s be no reason to hire or rent anything.
October 6, 2010 at 3:11 pm
$600 a person? Are you fucking trying to BUY them?
October 6, 2010 at 3:31 pm
I went to a wedding where there was a big staged champagne toast- for the bride and groom. Guests didn’t even get a dixie cup of sparkling apple juice. Everyone else stared and clapped at the couple as they cut their two fancy cakes, fed each other in a creepy way, and drank their champagne. Then we got slices from a sheet cake. That is one of the major things I remember from that wedding (along with the bride crying over some guest drama at the reception).
October 6, 2010 at 3:32 pm
…or you can get knocked up, wear a cheap dress from Sears, and have the reception at Ponderosa, where the pitying staff brings you a tiny, cobbled together cake scavenged from the salad bar. We’re still married, BTW.
October 6, 2010 at 3:42 pm
When we got married in 1997, we’d been living for several years in a small town where the events page listed the 50th anniversary celebrations, and the ones who’d married during WWII made a real impression on me. The old wedding photos of the groom in a uniform or suit, and the bride in a “Sunday best” sort of dress, with a corsage or maybe a small bouquet. They hadn’t had a big showy wedding, and here they were still married and happy so many years later.
For us, it was about the marriage. The wedding was supposed to celebrate that, not be an end in itself. That helped keep things in perspective. We had a garden wedding/reception on a shoestring that nobody knew was a shoestring (except us), and mostly handmade.
October 6, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I was floating on a raft in beautiful Trunk Bay, St. John up until the hour before my wedding. My husband said, “don’t you think we should go get showers?”.
We did, had a beautiful sunset wedding, and partied all night (Red Stripe anyone?). Life is too short to be pretentious.
October 6, 2010 at 4:30 pm
#4 knittin-kitten
Sounds like you were at my wedding!
We had 40 guests. Reception in my in-laws backyard. Delicious caribean buffet with jerk chicken and roast beef.The cake topper was hand-made clothespin dolls with hand-knitted hockey sweaters (long story).
Everybody there had a great time, and no one cared the rented chairs weren’t covered or the rented china was plain white. The food was good, and the tequila flowed.
So go with what YOU want – the Heck with other people’s expectation.
October 6, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Was recently in a wedding as a bridesmaid. The bride had fake flowers for all of the bridesmaids and she had real ones. (No biggie). She only had a photographer take formal pics…then asked if I could take pics at the reception and pre-ceremony. Not to brag, but my pics were more entertaining/interesting than the so-called “professional”. You get what you pay for. Some things you just simply cannot skimp on.
I loved this article, April, as always. Wonderful ♥
October 6, 2010 at 6:47 pm
@Yzziefrog-Yours wasn’t the one I was at but it sounds like a lot of fun!
The greatest thing was everyone wanted to help with the wedding, so while there was some stress pre-wedding, it wasn’t too bad. The most stressful thing of the day was keeping the “non-vegetarian” and “vegetarian” labels on the buffet dishes.
if I EVER do the marriage thing again, (highly doubtful), I’m going the backyard route and the hell with everyone’s expectations. I figure the wedding is about me and the other person, and, of course, the dessert.
October 6, 2010 at 6:57 pm
My niece’s wedding this summer was an all-day shindig for 400 (at least — two whole small towns were invited, so nobody counted) put on entirely by family and friends, including the loveliest ceremony I’ve ever been to, a great reception with sit-down dinner for all 400 or so, and then an evening dance. The whole thing cost less than $4000. It was also the single best wedding I’ve been to in my entire life — because everybody there was having a wonderful time. Everybody pitched in to help out where needed. In that area, there’s no caterers, so “host couples” volunteer to provide all the food. The venue for the reception/dance was decorated by family and friends, and looked just terrific. The only things any money was spent on was the bride’s lovely dress. Everything else was donated. I’ve been to 40K weddings that weren’t that nice. This was what a wedding is supposed to be — a celebration of two people’s love for each other. Fabulous!
October 6, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Here’s my wedding catchphrase: “Always a bride, never a bridesmaid!”
Yes, I’ve been married 3 times. Not quite enough to be Liz Taylor. The first wedding was a fancy affair paid for my my parents (and populated with mostly their friends), the second wedding was paid for by me and was a really nice but modest party, and the third one, I eloped. That’s the marriage that lasted (17 years this month).
Of course, I had a bun in the oven and was showing, so my wedding cloth3es were a white maternity blouse and black stretch maternity pants. I looked like a waitress.
October 6, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I’m currently planning my wedding and came across some “great ideas” including stealing shampoo bottles, wrapped bars of soap, or the “free” foil-wrapped tea bags from hotels and affixing your own “special” labels.
If you could afford to stay in a hotel to steal enough bottles of shampoo or soap for wedding favors, why the hell wouldn’t you just spend the money on favors instead? And what message does that send to your guests?
Then there’s the rampant favor-fuckery on this site:
http://offbeatbride.com/filed/wedding-diy
Or what was probably a very expensive (and really creepy) cake here:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K0NKSJjOdBg/R4aMXKj9pZI/AAAAAAAAAIk/QN01WZSHmBc/s400/CuttingTheCakeBM_468x468.jpg
I’d been avoiding brides.com up until this point. Thanks for showing me that there are articles worth reading on there.
October 6, 2010 at 7:03 pm
The whole thing is carefully managed, for example, to ensure you agree to the $600 a head catering so you don’t look mean and spoil her special day and avoid a tantrum.
This must be the next craft competition – Camera vs Bridezilla. Surely you’re planning an anti-masque of a fuckery-themed mock wedding, April?
October 7, 2010 at 3:08 am
My husband and I eloped, then had a party/reception because we were moving overseas 3 months later. We rented a big house on an acre of land for the weekend (which cost less than a 2-hour slot at a hotel). We had a small number of catered dishes but most of the food was picked up from the farmer’s market (where $100 filled the trunk of the car) along with a dozen gorgeous loaves of bread from a local bakery. The groom’s cake was twice the size of the bride’s cake (everyone prefers chocolate, don’t they?), and I decorated my cake with ivy and tiny mushroom insects from Michael’s. The photographer was a student looking for some experience, and he was great. Our friends were the bartenders.
This was 12 years ago, and our friends are still talking about it.
October 7, 2010 at 7:19 am
Cutting costs isn’t so much a money issue with me, it’s a matter of me not wanting to pay lots of money for things I can do myself. I am doing my own centerpieces and decorations, I am sewing the bridesmaid dresses (they will just pay me back for the fabric), My mom and I are making purses for the girls to hold instead of flowers, I am making the boutonnieres from colorful flowers bought on…etsy…I am doing my own photobooth with my laptop, made my own guestbook, bought a cheap flower hair pin that I will slap some tulle on…
I am paying a good deal of $ for my photographer though. I love photos, and I want a very artistic, photo journalistic style which isn’t cheap if you want nice photos.
#6 knitterbird – I applaud you. There is no reason a hotel should jack their prices up just because it’s a wedding. I would have told the local news about that so they could run a story on the rape that’s going on.
October 7, 2010 at 9:53 am
My husband’s cousin did the cut-fake-cake-serve-grocery-store-sheet-cake thing at her wedding. So. Amazingly. Tacky. There was one real layer in the elaborately decorated tower of Styrofoam, which was served to the bridal party. Everyone else got tiny squares of what was obviously cheap grocery store sheet cake with plain frosting out of a can. They bothered to rent out a museum and hire a string quartet, but cheaped out on the cake — and guess what people talk about when her wedding comes up in conversation.
October 7, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Okay, so let me get this straight. The “fake cake” is a styro tower that’s already decorated and you just rent it (or buy it?), and insert your own “real” cake layer? If I’m on track, that has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. I only GO to weddings for the cake anyway. I’d be really pissed if I forked out $25 for whatever appliance was on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond and all I end up with is a piece of shitty sheet cake from Walmart.
If you SKIP the meaningless crap (scrolls and personalized napkins, etc) you can go (relatively) high end on a lot of things.
October 7, 2010 at 4:17 pm
it is because of crap like this i am NEVER gonna get hitched but i would not mind going to one for the food
October 7, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I got married in Jamaica… It was called the “Wedding Moon” Your wedding and honeymoon all in one. It was AMAZING!!! We told all our friends and family where we were going and that they were more than welcome to join us, they just had to pay their own way. No one came… and That was a good thing… didn’t want to be on our honeymoon scheduling stuff with others. So when we got home they threw one hell of a kick ass “Reception” in our backyard. We must have had over 100 ppl there and it lasted all night. People brought food, booze, ect.. every one helped out. Saved a ton of money and it was way better than any paid reception just to entreating family for a few hours.
October 7, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Column was pretty funny, but I feel a little sheepish, as I am guilty of some of these money saving tips.
We had an alcohol-free wedding, but it was also very small, and the reception was short.
AND.. my centerpieces were made from items bought at the dollar store. GRANTED… they weren’t fake flowers, they consisted of floating candles in round glass bowls.
I’m glad we saved the money we did though, because we were able to have more fun on our Vegas honeymoon.
And at the end of the day, I’m not any less happily married to him than if I’d had a $20,000 wedding.
I had what mattered… a gorgeous dress, awesome photos and an amazing husband.
October 9, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Based on the last wedding I attended, saving money means:
1) Abuse your friends and make them do stuff for free;
2) Make it clear you want to do something so cheap and reprehensible so that someone will volunteer to pay for the reasonable alternative;
3) Once someone volunteers to pay for something, decide you want the table decorations made of braided unicorn farts and invitations hand-calligraphied by the Dalai Lama.
I was actually yelled at because I didn’t think it was appropriate to have a potluck wedding reception.
The marriage lasted just under two years. It was her fourth, his second. He’s now married to a teenager and she’s moved in with someone whom we assume is #5.
October 11, 2010 at 12:33 pm
There is one situation where dummy cakes make sense. Any baker can tell you about the countless brides that come in wanting the fabulous 5+ tiered confection that they’ve dreamed of all their lives–to feed 50 wedding guests. Many brides can’t even afford the cake of their dreams in the first place, and even if they can, why pay for 200+ servings that won’t be eaten? Most bakers would prefer to charge you less, and save themselves a lot of baking time and delivery trouble by making only the bottom and top tiers in cake (one to serve, one to freeze), and decorating dummies for the middle tiers. Thus, the bride gets the look of her dream cake, everyone gets real bridal cake, vast amounts of time, cake, and money have not been wasted, and nobody will be the wiser.
No. – HK
October 11, 2010 at 10:49 pm
This will go for long. After reading this, I’m feeling so much more relieved about my wedding. I’m getting married at a top location in Monterrey, Mexico, where I’m from. Of course, being a different society and environment, there are some things customary. Our wedding will be held in a few weeks, on a Saturday evening. We chose black tie and wedding invitations are really simple and elegant, in a fine linen-based stationery. Attendees are not customary here. It’s considered “declasse”. It goes like this: first, our closest friends and relatives (about 60 people) will attend the civil service, at 6:30 p.m., in a nice terrace located in a garden at our wedding venue. That’s when champagne is served, since toasts are not that… popular here. Then those same friends and relatives will be able to take our hired transportation to the Church of Sacred Heart, an amazing church located downtown.
October 11, 2010 at 10:51 pm
We decided to hire transportation so those guests wouldn’t have to take their cars out and then come back again to the reception. Religious ceremony will take place at 9:00 pm (since the civil ceremony is a much more intimate affair, the rest of the wedding guests will only be invited to the religious service). After ceremony, guests will be arriving to the reception. A ballroom exquisitely lit and decorated: creamy cymbidium and phalaenopsis orchids along with some light pink dendobrium orchids and pacific (deep purple calla lilies) with touches of unexpected but beautiful light lime green hydrangeas, along with hanging candles and a tree setting will make for the centerpices. Chandeliers and silk-organza linens will complete the decoration. 450 guests, 4 course dinner, full bar with a martini bar for appetizers; white and red wine, scotch, vodka, baileys for after dinner, tequila and ABC shots, a macaroon-based dessert station, and a five tiered exquisite cake will do for the dining
October 11, 2010 at 10:52 pm
And a great band that will be playing our selection from 10:00 pm through 4 a.m., then a DJ that will spin until the whole affair its over, which won’t happen before 6 a.m. sunday morning. Oh and very important! here in Mexico is a nice touch to serve a dish we call “trasnochador” or “party plate” around 3 am, as a “second dinner”, for our hight spirited guests still rocking to “reload energy”, which is basically a traditional-regional plate called chilaquiles or tacos. Keepsakes and favors are like bridal parties or wedding attendees; they’re considered tacky and of no use. We hired a great photographer called Fer Juaristi, along with a great videographer. I will wear a vintage circa 1950 silk embroidered short dress for the civil service and then change into my beautiful alencon lace Lazaro gown, along with my mom’s mantilla, which I love because its hauntingly beautiful and 3.5 meters long and of course, my Manolos. (continues…)
October 11, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Adding it all up, it will be around $200-a-guest and even with all the aforementioned, it doesn’t come even close as expensive as a “blah” wedding would cost at the US.. I think besides it all, we’re very lucky to be able to pay for the wedding of our dreams for a fraction of the cost of an US based wedding… PS. I would rather die before serving home made alcohol. Or having to assemble 45 centerpieces. That’s why I hired my great wedding planner. Also, clinging to another couple’s honeymoon? Unromantic. And extremely tacky. And about the aged flowers and other similar details, there is a different in “no one could tell the difference”, to “no one will tell you they did notice because they don’t want to hurt you”.
October 13, 2010 at 12:09 pm
You had me until the homebrew bit. All the beer at my reception was homebrew. Made by me and two of my groomsmen. People drank little of the wine (we had almost 3 cases left of the 4 we bought), but there was amlost none of the beer left. Homebrew isn’t swill. It isn’t bathtub gin. It’s actually a lot easier to make good beer than you think. Plus we have a couple souvenirs because the labels were custom printed with our names, the date, etc.
October 28, 2010 at 12:58 am
I laughed until there were tears in my eyes!
I had no big wedding. I married to “make it right” which was so wrong, so very wrong but what did I know then? You know when some people say “half a loaf is better than none?” or “When you have lemons make lemonade?”
They weren’t talking about marriage.
Half a maggot is still a filthy maggot and when you squeeze a maggot they just make a nasty mess.
It took me eight years to figure that out.
October 30, 2010 at 1:29 am
I heart you! I’m working on my second of what will eventually three degrees. Me and the fiancé are broke, well in my case beyond that and in debt due to school. We are planning a wedding right now, and everyone thinks it odd that we are doing money saving things like grilling out for reception food and skipping a DJ and using Internet radio and speakers instead. He’ll, out ‘venue’ is at a campground, but I still think it’ll be plenty of fun cause it’s supposed to be a party, not some fancy pants sit down and be polie dinner. It may surprise the older people but at least those around our age will get it. Noe if I could just stop my mother from bugging me about having dress shop with her so she can see my face when I find the ‘perfect’ dress. Don’t know if dress shopping will be anything by exhausting.