The Plunge Blog

A reader writes:

"My fiancee and I have started talking about food for the wedding.  My parents offered to make the food and take care of everything foodwise (of course help will be enlisted), while her parents are worried that it would be too big of a task to undertake and that we would screw it up.

"Putting aside the question about the quality of the made food versus the catered food, and the fact that if something does happen her side of the family is going to be livid with my side and not the caterers, am I crazy to even consider my parents proposition? 

"I seem to think it would be possible, especially knowing that we have 18 months to plan it all out.  We've planned some big events before and had everything turn out, and by doing the food ourselves, we could save a ton of money.  For what its worth, we're thinking we'll have about 150 people at the wedding.

A reader asks:

"So my fiancée and I are a little confused about what to do with our first dance.  We can't decide whether to have our first dance immediately upon entering the reception hall or to wait until after we've eaten and all the toasts are over. 

"In the first case we would have something to do after the fanfare of our initial entrance.  In the second case the continuity of the "dance mentality" is preserved.  Which would be more beneficial to the flow of our reception?"

________

What's the exact opposite of chocolate and peanut butter, you know, two great things that go great together? 

Two awful things that go awful together: wedding planning and taxes.

A fairly informative (if a touch dry) article in the Wall Street Journal about how getting married impacts your taxes.

From the Journal:

Yes, it's a cliché: the groom hates wedding planning. But some clichés are clichés because they're, well... true. Forget all the stories you heard about "Groomzilla." 99% of grooms aren't Groomzillas. They're just dudes getting married.

Normally we write for men. Normally we give them tools, tricks, and insights to survive the process. Today, we cross the line to help out you, The Bride. So how do you get your man on board?

5 Ways to get us involved:

1. Don't pretend the not-fun stuff is fun.

Don't whitewash the fence. Even if you're savvier than Tom Sawyer, usually, this tactic will backfire. We're just not buying it.  When you say, "Sweetie, it's going to be so much fun to select those ice sculptures!" you lose credibility. Don't pretend that the not-fun stuff is fun. (Like, say, evaluating the different packages of flowers.) In fact, go the opposite route, which leads us to...

Email from a reader.

We thought about cleaning it up, but what's the fun in that?

Here it is, in its glorious, untouched form:

"I am the best man of my brothers wedding and that means im doing the bachlor party,all of are friends that we invited like to drink and have fun and pretty much anything goes.

This story has a little bit of everything: violence, brides, car crashes, jail, drunkenness, honeymoons, weddings, and even a sex offender. The only thing surprising is that no, in fact, it's not an episode of Jersey Shore.

From The New York Daily News: "Timothy Keene and his blushing bride Marissa spent their wedding night in separate cells after she tried to run down one of her new spouse's ex-girlfriends, Barnstable police said."

We're going to go ahead and assume that this counts as a "Don't" in Reception Behavior. 

Other wackiness: the groom is a registered sex-offender. And the bride also pointed the car at the ex-girlfriend's kid, too. Well at least she's thorough. When you go on a revenge vendetta, the prudent move is to wipe out the entire family, this will intimidate your enemies and serve as a deterrent.  (See: Keyser Soze.)

I'm convinced that Hollywood is a game of Madlibs.

Studios create titles with a fill-in-the-blank methodology that produces gems like the just-announced "The Wedding Doctor," starring Nicole Kidman.  You can probably guess the premise and visualize the entire film, right?

From New York's Vulture: "Kidman would play a relationship analyst who advises couples on their interpersonal dynamics before they marry. But after she meets her latest clients, the doc decides she'd actually be a better match for the groom-to-be, triggering a showdown with his fiancée."

Really? Do we really need that movie?

You know the obvious stuff. (And if you don't, we cover it here.) The basic things you must do in advance for a bachelor party: Picking a weekend, surveying options, reserving hotels, coordinating airfare.

That's Bachelor Party 101. And for the weekend itself, we cover your expected behavior here.)

In the past year, however, we've hit enough bachelor parties to lose a liver, and we want to add and emphasize the following. 

Okay. This is kind of funny.  And it's so obvious that it's amazing it hasn't happened a million times before. (Or maybe it has. And no one notices.)

The movie Wedding Crashers, of course, explores the idea of sneaking into weddings to score with girls.  But what about scoring with gifts?  There's usually a ripe, glittering table full of blenders and towels and fine china, just yours for the taking.

One woman decided to do just that.

 

As regular readers now know, from time to time, we turn to one of the less-crazy bridal sites, OneWed, for "her perspective." 

From OneWed's Marta Segal Block:

A couple of weeks ago over at OneWed.com we released our Top Ten Wedding Trends for 2010. I have to admit, I feel a little guilty about that. Most women who don't think of Marie Claire as their bible and aren't contestants on America's Next Top Model have a bit of mixed relationship with fashion and trends, and I don't want to add to the stress.

Although the dawn of the metrosexual has definitely increased the pressure on men to get a grip on current trends and fashions, the truth is that most men pick a look in high school and pretty much stick with it for the next 50 years. Don't believe me? Are you currently wearing any of the following: polo-type shirt, flannel shirt, button down shirt, sports/concert t-shirt, ball cap, white sneakers?  Yeah, I thought so.

Yes, we get the irony.

We realize that any website that touts articles like How Wedding-Porn is Brainwashing Your Fiancée, Your Reward for Suffering: Planning the Honeymoon, and Your Get Out of Wedding Free Card--Convincing Her to Elope...this kind of website, we admit, has no business telling you "not be sarcastic."

That said... don't be sarcastic.

If you have a little "prank" that you think will lighten up the wedding party? Don't. Just forget it. If you must, share the idea with your buddies. But don't actually do it.

A reader writes:

"Me an my fiancé are getting married. My daughter, who is 15, wants to make a toast at the reception... I can't find any wedding toast [for kids].

"Do you have any suggestions for her to use? Because he is the only dad she has. He raised her and she calls him Dad.

"Please help."

A reader writes:

My girlfriend and I are going to be getting engaged on an upcoming weekend.

The process has been very open: we picked out the ring together, she knew when I talked to her dad, and she even knows that I'm proposing that weekend.

However, she doesn't know how or exactly when I'm proposing that weekend. To further complicate matters, her parents are divorced.

Another day, another trainwreck.

Sometimes the advice we give is so commonsensical we're a little embarrassed. You're not an idiot. We're not idiots. (Well, not all the time.) So, for example, when we tell a reader who's thinking about cheating "Don't Cheat" we blush with shame. Obvious stuff, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Events in the real world tell us that no matter how obvious we think an issue is, now matter how straightforward, people will still screw it up.

For example: we never thought that we would need to suggest that you "tell your guests not to bring guns."

A reader writes in the comments:

"In regards to the Rehearsal dinner, I am in a unique situation.  Every one of my guests is from out of town. 

"None of my bride's guests are from out of town. 

"I know it is traditional to invite all out of town guests to the Rehearsal dinner, but what is the SOP for this situation??  How will it look to her family if every single one of my guests are invited to the rehearsal dinner but none of hers?"