Saturday, June 21, 2008

Wedding Party

Tonight we are going to a wedding party. It's not a wedding; the bride and groom will have already been married. And it's not just a party because it's in honor of their marriage.

I always find it interesting when people do this. It's almost like saying, "you weren't important enough for us to invite you to our actual ceremony, which is the most significant part of a wedding, but we still want gifts from you and we still want you to acknowledge our marriage so we're inviting you to this party." Nice.

In all fairness to this couple, I don't know the situation surrounding their actual wedding. I don't know if it's only open to family or if they're tying the knot in a courtroom with just the justice of the peace present or what. But my opinion is that if I'm not important enough to be at your actual wedding (meaning the ceremony) then I don't really want to be part of anything wedding-related. Is that snobby?

My husband has a lot of friends. He came to Baltimore about 20 years ago to go to school for music, and has been here ever since, accumulating many contacts, friends and acquaintances along the way. And he is in touch fairly regularly with most of them. That's a lot of people. It was very difficult for us to decide where to draw the line with who to invite to our wedding, and we had about 200-250 guests I think. There are a lot of politics involved. If we invite one person from a certain clique, then will the other people in that clique be offended? Do we care if they are offended? And it doesn't help that weddings can be very expensive, and the more people you invite, the more expensive they are. But we were very careful to not rub our wedding in the faces of those who didn't make the cut. And we certainly didn't expect gifts from those who weren't invited!

So I know nothing about this wedding party tonight. I don't really know the place where it's being held, I don't know how to dress, I don't know what to expect at all. I have a dress that I'm planning to wear- if I'm overdressed somewhat I guess it won't be the end of the world. Better than being underdressed I guess. In terms of a gift, we're giving them money since we don't know where they're registered- or if they were at all. And we're giving them half of what we usually give at weddings. Since we weren't invited to the ceremony.

And did I mention that I've known the groom for about 10 years now but I've never met the bride? The groom is a musician who plays with the man quite frequently. I've never seen the bride at any of the gigs. This guy also plays with other bands, so I'm not saying she never attends any of his jobs. Just not the ones I've been on. I actually make fun of the groom whenever I see him, asking him if he's sure he's not just making her up. If I don't see her tonight.......

1 comment:

Eludius said...

I think your allowed to punk the bride and groom at these types of parties. B-List parties are not cool.