Gimme Gimme

1999 Archive
Jan-Jun 2000 Archive
Jul-Dec 2000 Archive 1

A friend who is getting married soon, who already owns her own home, likes expensive antiques, is pretty well stocked for house hold appliances, etc., told me they registered for their wedding at Crate and Barrel only because you can return things for cash rather than store credit like most others. She's crazy if she thinks I am buying here anything off of the registry at all! Why not just NOT register at all?   gimme0809-00

I attended a baptist wedding once that was held on Superbowl Sunday! So already, theres a bunch of annoyed guests whose spouses have dragged them there against their will. Didn't bother me as I'm not into football, but my other half had to be dragged there against his will. We get there, to find it's a dry wedding, with wine glasses full of grape kool-aide. Ok, whatever. The music is played at an uncomfortably loud level on a really bad PA system, and its all really obnoxious baptist Christian music. Ok, whatever.

Now I'M starting to get annoyed. We're thinking about leaving, when the music stops, and the mother of the bride steps up to the mike. She has the collection plates from the church in hand, and announces that they're going to pass the plate for donations to help pay for the reception! JEEEZ, we'd already given the happy couple a shower gift, and a large check as wedding gift--and how much could it possibly have cost for kool-aid and inedible homemade mystery-meatballs in the church basement?!!!

It gets worse...the music starts again. After the plate is passed, the music stops abruptly in mid song, and the angry mother of the bride speaks again. It seems she's counted the money and is appalled that there is not more there, admonishes the guests for being so cheap, and passes it again!!! At that point, I rounded up my other half (who had snuck out to the parking lot to watch the game on a portable TV one of the guys had in his car) and we promptly left.    gimme1002-00

Back a couple of years ago I attended the wedding of my boyfriend's cousin (now my fiance). "Tom" and "Sue" lived on the other side of the country and the plans were mostly left to Sue's mother. The invitations were sent out inviting everyone with a guest, even second cousins. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and quite simple. There was a break of 2 hours before the reception (which was an hour drive away). So we headed over pretty soon afterwards.

The hall looked quite lavish and expensive. They had a 9 course meal served by the wait staff. So after dinner everyone started to clink their glasses to get the couple to kiss.   At that point the MC (Tom's uncle) stood up and told everyone that clinking the glasses was not the way to make Sue and Tom kiss. He said that since the wedding was so expensive and Tom and Sue's parents paid for it the parents could not afford to pay for a honeymoon as well for the couple. And since Tom and Sue had to fly out to the East coast for the wedding they themselves could not afford the honeymoon to Bali that they wished for. (They both work as lawyers!) Therefore they were going to raise money for the honeymoon by kissing. (BTW they also registered at the travel agency for the honeymoon so guests could contribute directly).

They set up a golf putting green. For a $5 donation you received 3 balls. If and only if you got the ball into the hole would the couple kiss. Needless to say they didn't kiss very often and the last I heard they had to honeymoon in the country at a family cottage because there wasn't enough money to go to Bali.     gimme0825-00

The bride and groom were married in Tahoe, no invitations were sent out and none were expected. All was well with the whole affair until the bride returned to work from honeymoon. She then requested donations from co-workers for the purchase of a refrigerator for the happy, at the least, financially sound couple.  I remain stunned after more than ten years by this one.     gimme0918-00

A friend of mine was married about four months ago and she and her fiancee paid for everything out of their own pockets. They were both 23 years old and were still living at home with her parents, so they were extremely proud of being able to pay for their wedding with their own money.

After the wedding, I was talking to my friend on the phone and I was a little surprised when she started to comment about which guests gave her presents, and how much each of her presents cost. She complained about several guests that only gave her presents that were probably only worth under $20.00. She said that she was expecting a present worth at least $40.00 or more, since the dinner cost about $36.00 per person, plus all the other expenses like the favors, etc. She then went on to explain that some couples should have given her more expensive presents because they cost double for the dinner, therefore the value of their presents should have been double!!

I remained polite throughout our conversation and went on to ask about other things, but she still kept ranting about her presents. She went on to complain that no one used her registry to buy her presents, so most of the presents were not what she wanted. I commented that I made sure she was going to use her new cooking utensils, which were on the registry, and that I was happy that she was going to put them to good use! I spent close to $150.00 on a gourmet cooking utensil set. I said I hope she at least got one of the pots and pans from the matching cookware set, and she said - "oh yes, we got the WHOLE set! it was worth $500.00 and we only paid $36.00 to let him come to the wedding!!"

I was shocked! Of course, I didn't receive a thank you note in the mail, even though she commented that her photographer was kind enough to make 200 wallet size pictures of the bride and groom to include in the thank you cards. Maybe she thought she already thanked me on the phone. Who knows?? Since her wedding, I haven't really looked at her quite the same again!   gimme1015-00

We went to do our gift register at the weekend. The sales assistant told us that a previous bride had put two bras on her gift list! No guests bought them.      gimme1026-00