Rev. 2001-10-20
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2001-10-20
Carolyn Hax, tellme@washpost.com,
I clearly have not attended enough weddings in my life to make my
opinion worth much, but after stumbling over the beginning of the
"Wed-o-Rama" item in 10/19 issue - I first interpreted "invited
to four of them sans date" to mean the invitations were sent
without the date of the wedding
being specified and couldn't see how that came down to money - I
had a bit of a hiccup over your reply.
The most notable wedding I ever attended was a Greek Orthodox one
in Cleveland which specifically had responses from the
congregation saying (effectively, if not an exact quote) "We
believe that marriage is a wonderful thing, we stand behind your
marriage and reaffirm our vows." None of this stand
back and speak generally about the sanctity of marriage. So
going to such a wedding with a spouse/partner/companion/hopeful
seems proper. But the
cost reason and your slashing justification for single invitation
seems rather dumb.
My sister's wedding was a traditional blow a small
wad catered dinner kind of thing, but my mother made the
bridesmaid accessories in matched colors.
My step-sister's was an even more blow the wad, huge
church, matched bridesmaids gowns in pastel colors but my
stepmother's best friend was the seamstress and her nominal
payment for flowers buried the church in (professional) flowers
because of her (true) friendships in the display industry.
My two marriages (as husband) were held before a justice
of the peace (we dressed up nicely) and had 1) a reception with
friends at a friend's house who baked a linked ring angelfood
wedding cake and 2) a very nice dinner at a tower restaurant for
the two of us and then to demonstrate handicapped computer
software.
The weddings of my two nephews-in-law in Louisiana were
nice standup weddings for huge crowds (with me suffering from
culture shock at the people who came in colorful sport shirts and
shorts) while the reception was a buffet sit down at the VFW hall
"catered" by friends of the family and supervised by
church members. The
Greek Orthodox wedding reception was a huge feed fest assembled
by the church members presented with joy.
All of which says to me - if the cost of the reception
requires pruning/limiting the guest list then people need to
redefine what is going on at the wedding and at the celebration
of the marriage to something else than these people (and you)
assume must be done.