#59062 - Stereotypical Mormon weddings

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/59062/

Nicely done, folks. I predict that this question will be voted one of the week's best by the end of the day.

[Katya]

I predict that this question will be voted one of the week's best by the end of the day.

Or by 8:30 a.m. (MST).

[TheAnswerIs42]

That person has certainly hit a touchy topic. With a bludger. Yikes. Good work writers.

I'm sure she had good intentions with this question, but . . . wow. It is sad that she is looking down on everyone that focuses on the marriage and skips an elaborate wedding, and then talks about how she doesn't want to get married because of it. The only way to get through all of that is by not judging others, and hopefully this girl will listen to the writers about that. Everybody can do their own courtship/engagement/wedding they way they want to, and the rest of us can just deal with it (and pray for them, when we get nervous).

[Katya]

Setting aside the wedding / reception issue, I think that one of the big problems with giving engagement advice is that most of us only get married once or twice in our lives, which isn't a terribly big sample size. So one person has no trouble finding someone to marry, and concludes that everyone who's single past a certain age is "too picky." Another person has a short engagement and decides, in retrospect, that it was too short, and they rail against everyone else who has a short engagement.

Sometimes there is good data available—such as studies that show that people who marry later are less likely to get divorced (although I don't know if those studies have been repeated for a Mormon population, where there are different cultural pressures and expectations). Also, we can probably agree that an engagement should be long enough to plan a proper wedding, an engagement + courtship should be long enough for the couple to get to know each other well, and an engagement shouldn't be too long, but the definitions of "proper wedding," and "know someone well," and "too long engagement" are going to vary from person to person, family to family, and culture to culture. (I've had a hard time explaining to people outside of LDS culture why, for Mormons, a 4-6 month engagement is just fine.)

[thebigcheese]

You know, something that was interesting to me as I was planning my own reception was simply the question, "Who is this for, anyway?" because everyone and their dog seemed to have an opinion about the way things should be done.

So...if the reception is for the parents, then we should let the parents decide how they want it to be done. If the reception is for the guests, then we should take great care to ensure that they are well-fed and taken care of to show our appreciation for their friendship and for all the wonderful gifts that they will be bringing. If the reception is for the bride and groom, then we should have free reign to do whatever the heck we want! (Let's have a cheap BBQ in the park!)

For us, despite the fact that a BBQ was the cheap and easy way out (not to mention the fact that we both LOVE barbecuing and like to make that fact well-known among our friends), we decided that the reception was for our friends and guests. So we rented a nice reception center and we got some excellent, excellent catering to show our appreciation for their friendship and thoughtful gifts. Overall, it was a wonderful event and everyone was very pleased with the way it all went down. Perhaps this girl feels, in a rather overzealous and entitled sort of way, that receptions are one way of showing appreciation for your friends and guests, and as a result, feels like she's been cheated and unappreciated whenever she goes out of her way to be a good friend and takes the time to pick out a nice gift...only to eat warm cheese cubes and a couple of cherry tomatoes under a basketball hoop.

That might be a stretch, but with a rant like that, it's hard to know what's going through her head.

[mic0]

All of your comments here are really interesting. It sounds like most of us are pretty well grounded New comments keep coming in for this question! Apparently the Board *is* the readers' forum now Just kidding. But seriously, the latest comment made me wonder something. It seems like the people who are frugal about their weddings now feel like they are better than those who spend a lot on their wedding. If someone has the means, or if their parents pay for the wedding, then why shouldn't they have a "lavish" party? This reminds me of the other thread on these forums about the arrogance and condescension - it can really go both ways. We shouldn't look down on someone because they choose not to spend a lot on their wedding, but should we look down on people who do spend a lot?

Personally, I want to elope. Forget all of this planning, have a small party, snap a few pictures and be done. But then again I'm not engaged, so whatever.

[Katya]

It seems like the people who are frugal about their weddings now feel like they are better than those who spend a lot on their wedding.

That's an interesting observation. I think part of it comes down to people wanting to be proud of whoever they are or whatever they have. So, people who come from large families are proud of how many kids were in their family and people who are descended from or related to important people make the most of that and people who had inexpensive weddings can find a source of pride in that as well. (And all of this can be good pride or bad pride.)

There may also be a certain degree of . . . I don't know . . . sour grapes? Like, you couldn't have an amazing expensive wedding, so you're going to focus on how righteous and down-to-earth and non-materialistic you are and act like this is what you wanted, all along.

To be fair, I've had plenty of friends who've had inexpensive weddings and who never made a big deal out of it, but one tends to forget them because they're busy not making a big deal out of it.

I do get frustrated with people who had lavish weddings and who think that they somehow "deserved" it and I have a particular chip on my shoulder where Mormon "destination weddings" are concerned, but I have issues with spoiled rich kids, generally, so don't mind me.

[Katya]

Also, I have to point out how perfectly this question fits Board Question Template 1e:

Dear 100 Hour Board,

Expression of love or hatred for a particular bit of pop culture/societal quirk. Attempt to get approval for liking or hating this thing disguised as a question, sometimes without even the use of a question mark.

- statement about cleverness of alias

(link)

[TheAnswerIs42]

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thought "AJ" was a little self-righteous there. Just because she didn't have any money to spend on it, doesn't mean that people who have fancier receptions have a "habit of overspending and a sense of entitlement". If your parents have money and want to help, that doesn't make you a bad person. Sure, there are bridezillas out there spending money they don't have. But out of the more expensive receptions I have been to, many/most were just funded by rich, loving parents. It made them very happy to do something like that to celebrate their children. They could afford it. So who is AJ to judge?

Once again, I think Katya hit this right on the head.

In other news, am I the only one suprised by how many comments the Board is posting? I guess the comments guide really did get very lax.

[Craig Jessop]

In other wedding related news, today I went to a session in the Salt Lake temple and there was a girl receiving her endowment prior to marriage. After the session was over, the eight or ten people accompanying the happy couple went straight into one of the little sealing rooms off the celestial room and were married right then and there. I think I'd want a few days, but then again I'm a boy, so what do I know?

[vorpal blade]

I'd just like to make an unscientific comment based on more than forty years of watching people get married. As a general rule, the time between marriage and divorce is inversely proportional to the amount spent on the wedding.

Many exceptions, to be sure.

[Darth Fedora]

I know this is sort of off-topic, but since it's been mentioned a couple times, I also think that the comments are maybe going a little overboard. It sure seems like most of them are just some random person's opinion or anecdote about something, instead of actually providing new information to answer an incomplete or incorrect question.

[Katya]

I know this is sort of off-topic, but since it's been mentioned a couple times, I also think that the comments are maybe going a little overboard. It sure seems like most of them are just some random person's opinion or anecdote about something, instead of actually providing new information to answer an incomplete or incorrect question.

Yeah, I agree.

[Katya]

As a general rule, the time between marriage and divorce is inversely proportional to the amount spent on the wedding.

Interesting. How big a sample are you working from?

[vorpal blade]

About 500 couples.

[Indefinite Integral]

I know this is sort of off-topic, but since it's been mentioned a couple times, I also think that the comments are maybe going a little overboard. It sure seems like most of them are just some random person's opinion or anecdote about something, instead of actually providing new information to answer an incomplete or incorrect question.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree as well. The board isn't supposed to be a forum, right?

[Katya]

About 500 couples.

I'm impressed that so many couples told you how much they spent on their weddings!

[Craig Jessop]

About 500 couples.

I'm impressed that so many couples told you how much they spent on their weddings!

It's kinda obvious how much people spend on their weddings from how opulent their reception is...

[Marduk]

I'm impressed that you know 500 people....

[Katya]

About 500 couples.

I'm impressed that so many couples told you how much they spent on their weddings!

It's kinda obvious how much people spend on their weddings from how opulent their reception is...

Weeeell, yes and no. Some people are just really good at putting things together on a budget or at doing things themselves or they have connections that make things cheaper. (E.g., I have a family member who's a wedding photographer and who has promised to photograph my wedding for free, should I ever get married. So that's hundreds of dollars saved, right there.)

I agree that you can probably put a ballpark estimate on the relative cost of a wedding just by casual observation, but if you're going to make a broad statement about money spent on a wedding correlating with marital woes, you'd better have a good methodology and solid figures to back it up.