The Plunge Blog

Whoa. This one's a little nutty. 

Have you seen anything like this? Give us your thoughts.

A reader asks in the forums:

"My fiancée and I have been engaged for almost a year... We have agreed on everything having to do with the wedding... All has been good.

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:

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.)

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.

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?"   

A reader writes:

"We're planning on providing free margaritas and free sangria the whole night while offering a cash bar as well. 

"The state we live in has really stringent DUI laws and the cops are jerks.  Most of our guests will be from out of town and we want to minimize the drunk driving and trashed guests. 

"Do you still suggest offering an open bar on top of the free mixed drinks?  Should we compromise and offer only signature drinks (the margaritas, the sangrias, a booze, a beer and a mixed drink)?  Or should we suck it up and shell out the cash for the open bar?"

Reader jorr1104writes in The Forums:

"I just recently learned of complications with groomsmen.  We agreed early on that we'd have three people on both sides-her sister and two friends, and my brother with two friends. 

"No complaints there, three is a very manageable number.  I even found three other guys who could wear their uniforms with me.  The only problem is that now her sister has been causing all kinds of problems, and we don't even know if she's going to show up any more. 

"My fiancée decided to just cut her losses and go with her two friends as bridesmaids and leave it at that.  I'm definitely not disagreeing with her decision, but where does that leave me and my guys?"

We'll admit it. We like to think of ourselves as "experts," or, at the very least, guys who can fake it pretty well.

But when it comes to some subjects, we still know next to nothing.

Like, say, women. Or, more specifically--bridal psychology.

So, from time to time, our friends at OneWed--who have the distinct advantage of being female--will help us pull back the curtain, so to speak. From Marta Segal Block of OneWed.com: 

A reader writes:

"My fiancee's mother is very involved with our planning, which at times is not a problem at all.  However, we are almost 50 people over what we had wanted to invite for our wedding. 

"Her mom keeps insisting that we invite her cousins' son (who my bride-to-be has never met), and refuses to back down.  I want to tell her that its OUR wedding and we don't want to invite them, but she is helping us pay for it and keeps throwing that in our face.  How do we handle this?"

A reader writes:

"Am I wrong for being upset? 

"I can honestly say that if the tables were turned, a) I would find a way to get to the wedding; (he's made no attempt what so ever, just simply said "oh well") and b) would throw him a bachelor party regardless of my attendance.

"Any thoughts on any of this? I don't want to " replace" the best man, since we are getting married 1500 miles away; but I'm just looking for some insight as to how someone else would feel/handle this?

Thanks."

A long-time reader, who once asked us about how to handle the In-Laws and the Budget, now writes:

“I've got in-law issues! The issues aren't between me and them, but my fiancée and them.

“My fiancée is one of the middle children. She's got an older sister and two younger sisters. Her older sister is expecting a baby anytime now. And her two younger sisters both have medical issues. Because of all this, the attention naturally focuses on the other girls, and she tends to get ignored by her parents, particularly her mother, a lot.

“It's become quite an issue in my mind. Her relationship with her mother isn't healthy at all. She can't get any help with the wedding planning from her. She can't get the support that a daughter needs from her mother. There just isn't a real mother-daughter relationship there. She vents to me, but I don't know what to do. I do understand that she isn't asking me for a solution. She just wants to vent.

A reader writes:

"I am engaged to a very wonderful woman. An issue came up though involving her childhood friend/first boyfriend.

"The two of them grew up together. They were best friends for many years and they dated each other for a short amount of time (3 months I believe). She met me when she moved out here for college and has talked to the guy 3 times total in the last 2 years or so.

"When we got engaged she began spouting ideas for the wedding. Most of them were wonderful and reasonable, but she wanted this ex-boyfriend to be the organist at our wedding. That made me very uncomfortable and I expressed this to her.

A reader writes:

My fiance have recently decided to elope. We have 3-5 months to plan the getaway. We're thinking Paris, a Greek island, or a Caribbean island.

Any suggestions, thoughts or suggested websites?

You know plenty of Mark McGwires. They're everywhere. They're the guys who cheat on their wives, ditch their kids, or do something so obviously, staggeringly stupid that they owe--and dread--an apology.

Or maybe the crime is minor. Maybe you flubbed her anniversary, let her down, bought a forbidden lapdance, or tiptoed a line without quite crossing it.

The math is inescapable. Even if you're not injecting growth hormones into your butt, at some point in your relationship, you will need to practice contrition. 

5 lessons you can learn from Mark McGwire: