Wedding Date Rivalry

This is a tale about accidental wedding rivalry.

My fiancé and I had settled on a date to tie the knot a little over a year in advance, and began the ordeal of wedding planning, locking down venues and vendors, etc. Meanwhile, my cousin (let’s call her Carol) meets a wonderful man, and announces her engagement and intent to marry the following year as well. I figure, it’s a pretty big year, and the weddings will surely be far apart. As we see each other every holiday, she and I talk about wedding planning, share anecdotes, etc.

A few months later, Carol calls me to ask what our wedding date is again. I tell her the date, thinking little of it. She then calls me the next day with her “wonderful plan.” We both have an aunt, Trudy, who lives with her husband, Trent on another continent. Carol’s wonderful plan is this: she should have her wedding a few days before mine! If we’re having back to back weddings, then we can have Aunt Trudy come to both weddings! Yay! Her mom, Trudy’s sister, also thinks this is a magical idea! And hey, maybe we can plan together and have thematically similar weddings!

Flabbergasted, I tell her I’ll have to think about it. I call my mom, to tell her about this odd new turn of events. Trudy is her favorite sister, and of course she wants her at my wedding too, so she thinks this is a fantastic idea. I’m sorta wierded out by it, for reasons I will elaborate later.

My family is big on phone trees. Having to still process this idea, I call all my three sisters and a few in-laws to discuss (yeah, I have a big family). My sisters are all outraged, from two declaring that Carol is “stealing my thunder” to my eldest sister who thinks I am entitled to be married first as I was engaged first. I don’t really care about not being the focus of attention. What I do find odd is:

1. If our weddings are back to back, then all of our relatives (as I mentioned, big family) will either have to make the commitment to schlep to both weddings, or pick one, or go to neither if they can’t take the time off. Everyone excepting Aunt Trudy lives in the same state, a few hours apart. Imagine having to drive to one location for a few hours to attend a wedding, then have to do it again a week later for another wedding. Weird.
2. Why would Carol base her wedding planning Aunt Trudy and me? Granted, I love my aunt but the reasons my fiancé and I picked our date were about us. We’re getting married, not Trudy. If she can’t make it, that’s ok. Furthermore, I’m selfish enough to plan my wedding around my fiancé and me, can’t Carol have enough spine to plan her own event?
3. Gifts. Yes, I said it. While I don’t necessarily expect gifts I know my kind and loving family will want to give us things. If the weddings are indeed right next to each other, it might put a financial strain on our relatives.
4. My cousin and I do not share the same tastes at all. There will be no “thematically similar wedding.”

After deciding that I thought it was odd to do a double wedding just to have our aunt in attendance, I called back all involved parties and explained that I just wasn’t comfortable with having the weddings that close together. The solution? My cousin grudgingly agreed to a two-week interim. Woo.

I know this is maybe a tale about my cousin being too considerate, but I still thought it was bizarre! The end result is that Aunt Trudy ended up coming to both weddings anyway. And, after knowing the date of my wedding (and basing her wedding on my date) she didn’t even come! Unfortunately for my poor cousin, since the ceremonies were still pretty close together, my relatives liberally compared the two, hers was “nice” – mine declared one of the best parties they had ever been to.  0607-10