Stuff and stuff

[jethrien]

Life stuff is stressful. Don't wanna talk about it.

So instead, frivolous things!

- I visited my parents over the weekend. They bought a guest bed. Oh, what a lovely mattress.

- We went to a craft fair in the cold, miserable rain. Had a good time, but I felt so bad for the vendors. We did buy some things.

- I got a burger that was a brilliant, brilliant burger. You know beef Wellington, the little pastry packets of beef and mushrooms? Well this was a Wellington burger. Roasted mushrooms, truffles, carmelized onions on the burger. So, so good.

- We went to dinner at a restaurant that was having a wedding that only took half the restaurant. We didn't mind much--we were entertained by being catty about someone else's wedding in progress. But it seemed really weird to have a wedding in an open restaurant without actually renting the entire space. You had to wade through their cocktail hour (and first dances) to get to the hostess stand. They didn't turn off the house music, so there were random jazz trumpets clashing with their cocktail and dance music. Anyway, we made fun of their music choices for the announcements and dances. (It was like they went down the suggestion lists for each on The Knot, and chose the top song on each.) We made fun of the fact that they spent the entire cocktail hour mingling with their guests, then had the DJ very loudly and repeatedly ask the bridal party to go over somewhere else so that he could then announce them to their guests two minutes later. The bridal party ended up standing exactly where they'd been two minutes before, for the last hour. Their poor guests must have been so confused--"who is this strange woman in white? What is she doing here? Thank you, Mr. DJ, for telling me who I've been congratulating for the last hour, without me having to even move ten feet!" (Hey, if you don't want strangers to whisper about your wedding, don't subject them to it.)

- My parents are entertaining.

Comments

[maydove.livejournal.com]

"Life stuff is stressful; don't want to talk about it" is largely why I was so quiet on lj for a while...clearly I need a queue of frivolous things to maintain my presence...

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Part of my reasoning with the book reviews, honestly.

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Ok, since you both want to think about frivolous things... I need a wedding opinion. :-)

I love cocktail hours at weddings. I think they're the best part. I'd love to be able to arrange the schedule so that we can make the cocktail hour (and Tim agrees). But then is it weird for the DJ to introduce everyone? I don't think I've ever seen a bride and a groom not make an entrance... so then would it be weird to skip that?

It's clearly not important in the grand scheme of things - I'd just like to hear thoughts. :-)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Is the cocktail hour in a different room/area than the rest of the reception? Because if that was the case, you could do the cocktail hour, slip away five minutes before everyone is supposed to drift to their tables, everyone changes rooms, and then you make your big entrance into the new room.

Or if the cocktail hour is in a different place than the ceremony, I don't see why you couldn't be announced at the start of the cocktail hour.

Or you could skip the introductions entirely. I doubt most people would care much (although make sure your parents don't care--everyone knows you guys, but they may not know your parents). I suspect most people wouldn't notice until the end of the night, if ever. If you wanted something formal to kick off the reception, you could just have the dj say something like "Please [gather round/clear a space/come over to the dance floor] for the first dance of Mr and Mrs Whatever-you've-decided-to-do-with-your-names."

Other than a legally binding ceremony of some sort (and not even that for some people), nothing at a wedding is 100% mandatory. We didn't do a garter toss and Chuckro thumb wrestled his mother instead of dancing with her. We've been at receptions that skipped first dances and bouquet tosses. Some people say grace, some people do money dances. spme inexplicable insist on the chicken dance. None of it is mandatory, and as long as people get fed, most of them will roll with it.

The thing that made this particular event ridiculous was the fact that there was no transition whatsoever. Every person is standing in a room. The DJ announces, over and over and over on the microphone, "Would the bridal party please step over into the other room, I need the bridal party to come over to this room, please will the bridal party come to this room." The bridal party moves. Everyone remains standing exactly where they were. The DJ announces the couple, and they go back to standing exactly where they had been standing before. The whole introduction thing is a little ridiculous, when you think about it, but I suppose it's exciting to be announced if your name changed. But this just really highlighted the ridiculousness of dramatically introducing people everyone already knows.

[maydove.livejournal.com]

At the last wedding I went to, the bride and groom disappeared for a while after the ceremony while the cocktail hour was going on (as per Jewish tradition--this was a Jewish wedding). They returned at some point to the cocktail hour and to talk to the guests. It was nice that they were there because it was another chance to talk to them during a busy day (and take pictures). When the reception started, the band announced the bride, groom, and bridal party (and I think parents too). It seemed pretty reasonable to me. The announcements are kind of like a signal that, yay, a big party is starting *right now*! In contrast to the more relaxed vibe of the cocktail hour.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Dang. That burger sounds amazing. I love good mushroom burgers. The chip shop up here does an amazing "everything" burger that has HP-sauce-marinated mushrooms on it. LOVE.

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's sort of what I want. I imagine we'll show up to the cocktail hour late, just due to stuff, but I do want to be there to see people (and eat the food!). What Jethrien said above sounds reasonable. Our cocktail hour is going to be in a different room from the dinner, so I think we'll just sneak away as people are moving into the dinner room. There's something nice about being introduced for the first time as husband and wife that I'm looking forward to. :-) (Though I may skip the last name bit entirely and just get introduced as "Tim and Nicole.")

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

That seems perfectly sensible. Then, if you want, you can roll right into your first dance or whatever.

If at all possible--take a page from the Jews and see if you can get a little bit of time right after the ceremony with just the two of you. Doesn't have to be long--a minute or five. Just a moment to take a breath, collect yourselves, and giggle about the fact you're married. We didn't, and I kind of wish we'd had that moment. Everything rushes by really fast.

Are you doing the pictures beforehand, or are you going to try to get the family ones during the beginning of the cocktail hour?