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The dude's guide to wedding season

JOSH WINGROVE

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 6:30 PM EST 20/07/08

Uh oh. The invitation to your buddy's wedding has just arrived. Here's what to do next. A survival guide for the clueless ...Read the full article

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  1. hossein hajiagha from Victoria, Canada writes: you break my hart again man....I just be on daiting internet search.... and looking and looking for love and I can not date any women 12 years soon she look at my pic or nationality ,,,she run from me ...dreaming.....to date and get married....but I wish good luck for those start new life and family...
  2. Mikey Gault from The Penthouse, Canada writes: Whatever you do, don't have relations with the bride to be. I did that once and it was totally awkward at the stag, let along the wedding day when me and the Mrs. stuck away for a couple of minutes.

    What's with the Hossein guy posting above me?
  3. T. Dee from Mississauga, Canada writes: I disagree with some of these items. Firstly if you don't go, I don't believe you have to send a gift. If you choose to go or not go, buy what you can afford. Just because you may be a lawyer does not mean you can afford more. Same goes for cash gift - give what you can afford. There are no rules on gifts / cash!

    The fact that someone is getting married does not mean you have to help them pay for it with cash.

    The reason two people get married is because they love each other - end of story. If they choose to go overboard with the wedding, that is their choice. They are inviting you to their wedding to share their special day with you, not to "score" with the gifts.
  4. Montgomery C. Burns from Springfield, Canada writes: The average wedding costs $30,000! There's something wrong with spending this ludicrous amount of money that could be deployed towards more practical pursuits.
  5. Adam Berel Wetstein from Toronto, Canada writes: Of course most of the rules don't apply if you are of are going to most "ethnic weddings" where being even a little bit drunk is considered taboo and most people the next morning will not be worse for wear.
  6. Are We Having This Conversation Again from Toronto, Canada writes: What happens when you have 5 wedding invites between June - August?
    Yup....too many weddings...and summer is only a few months long! Then there is the showers, the jack-and-jills, stags, and then the bloody weddings! (maybe the writer could have written about when to say "no" and how to do it politely!
    Either way, weddings are heaps of fun, party it up but do it within reason! Don't be loser, don't get too drunk and don't make a fool of yourself....sheesh, all rather common sense if you ask me!
  7. Sybil Jackson from Gravenhurst, Canada writes: Since when is a tuxedo considered formal? It used to be classified as semi-formal.
  8. Mister Kong from Toronto!, Canada writes: Sybil - A tux has always been formal. Semi-formal is a suit. A tux is about the most formal thing a guy can wear without looking like he's in a play about the Middle Ages. Hossien, I would extend the author's suggestions about not getting drunk for not only summer weddings but also while posting to the G&M Comments sections about said weddings.
  9. dick brown from missy, Canada writes: Don't get married, you may lose your future kids, 50-70% of your wealth....family law is biased against males. Hit it and quit it!
  10. Nathan Cool from Vancouver, Canada writes: A Playstation 3 for the groom at his stag! Haha.. pfft.. as if. Paying for his drinks and organizing the stag is enough.

    $150 as a cash gift for the wedding is ridiculous too. You have to give enough to cover your meal and so on, but $150 is way too much if you're 24 years old. Try $70.

    Anybody that pays $30k for their wedding is a showoff and deserves to eat most of the cost.
  11. The Prytanis from Ottawa, Canada writes: re: gifts.

    If I even remotely know the couple (i.e. I'm not just my girlfriend's date at her friend-whom-I've-never-met's wedding) I consistenly give either a set of handcuffs, manacles, or higher end light duty bondage gear.

    Seriously...

    I have, every single time, been privately thanked within six months and told that it was the best thing they had received for the wedding. This is irrespective of whether I know the bride or the groom.
  12. Yourname 2 from Canada writes: Formal requires a suit, you wear a tux if the dress code is black tie.
  13. RD Lone from Vancouver, Canada writes: I don't normally send gifts if I don't go, and I certainly don't give $150 if I'm not attending. Give more $ to good friends and close family, less to those that are not. Also keep in mind their cost. If they rented out a super fancy place and you are having a 5 course meal, then clearly you need to give more than if it's a backyard ceremony followed by a buffet. You will also find that $100-150 is way over the top for those who do not live in urban areas. I've also never seen/heard of a single stag party where it is only the groom and the groomsmen. I guess the advice is ok if you have no idea what you are doing, but just ask your dad/brother/etc. Customs vary a lot based on ethnicity and location.
  14. mats naslund from Canada writes: the "and guest" suggestion is very important.. I can't believe how many people just assume they get one.
  15. Mr. Coffee from Victoria, Canada writes: A $30,000 wedding is completely ridiculous and overkill. No wonder they turn into Bridezillas and the groom gets a $50 tux rental and some borrowed shoes because all the money was spent on airlifting in mooching friends, imported food & drink, and grossly overpriced flowers.
  16. Rick C from Canada writes: Mr. Coffee from Victoria, Canada writes: "A $30,000 wedding is completely ridiculous and overkill."

    Mr. Coffee sanity and common sense left the wedding business a long time ago.
  17. Tom Paine from Every tory is a coward, Canada writes: Mister Kong from Toronto!, Canada writes: Sybil - A tux has always been formal. Semi-formal is a suit. A tux is about the most formal thing a guy can wear without looking like he's in a play about the Middle Ages.

    =====================================

    Black tie is less formal than white tie.
  18. Jimmy Savile from Canada writes: What a load of piffle. Excessive pomp and ceremony like what's advocated in this story is bland, needlessly expensive and makes me squirm. What's funny is that the weddings I've been to that involved big money and lots of flash, have usually ended in separation/divorce whereas the pragmatic people I know who either live together or married and eloped, are peacefully happy and free of a drama-filled existence. Throwing money at people because they decided to marry is an outdated ideal from the days when people were very young and broke when they married. The money was to help them buy necessities. Most people who marry now have all the necessities...and more. If you must, buy a subtle, useful gift and give the other half in their name to a meaningful cause or charity.
  19. Are We Having This Conversation Again from Toronto, Canada writes: Hey Jimmy, you have an interesting point.
    I've been to heaps of wedding in my lifetime and the one wedding that clearly sticks out in my head is a wedding where the bride and groom had it in some rural small town Ontario....the reception was in a barn (yes a barn) and there were a few violinists/fiddle players. The food was buffet style, there was a real square dance "caller" and there were no "assigned tables". Even the gift given to the guests was rather unique. The bride and groom picked strawberries, made jam for everyone and on each jar label, they wrote something unique about the guests they invited!
    Not sure how much they spent, but this wedding is by far the first wedding I talk about because no wedding has been able to match how much fun I had than I did at this wedding!
    The couple is still very much in love after 12 wondeful years! Good on them!
  20. E W from Canada writes: I suspect a lot of people posting on the ridiculousness of weddings have no experience with how much modern weddings cost. The reception is BY FAR the biggest expense and the bride and groom often have little room to negotiate when there are set fees for the booking, premium fees for a Friday or Saturday night (who wants to go to work the next day?), the meal price per head and the alcohol. If you are having 100 people in the any major city, the reception alone will easily be a $15,000 to $20,000 expense. The only ways to really save money are to cut guests, cut courses (do a cocktail thing) or cut the open bar -- the bar was easily our biggest expense, and the most well-received.

    Regardless, the couple and their families are responsible for the cost of the affair. It's unwise to assume guest gifts will cover the bill when budgeting, though it can be an unexpected bonus.

    As for money, it's largely a cultural thing. My family give traditional gifts like china or crystal; my in-laws give money and for their cultural group, $300 a couple is the going rate.
  21. Veronica Corningstone from Toronto, Canada writes: I completely agree with Jimmy. I stood as maid of honour once for a "friend". As someone who comes from a small town, I think the bride should be thankful for the one bridal shower her friends and family gather for. This "friend" wanted 3, and her mom expected a 4th for her own friends. When I insisted I could not afford to buy gifts for all these parties wedding dress she insisted I could use her contact for 15% off williams sonoma.
  22. nick oliver from halifax, ns, Canada writes: i call bullpucky. the "rules" are determined more by what the guests can afford in time, money and patience than what the couple (most often the bride and her mother in my experience) or some society etiquette writer expects. if they or their families expect too much from the guests and get disappointed as a result, who is exactly being impolite? the more hoops the couple expects the guests to jump through to be a part of it all, the fewer they should expect to attend. guests are there to bear witness to an expression of love and commitment between two people, not play the role of santa claus. and it isn't the army or a private school. dress as nicely as you can if the circumstances call for it, but absolutely everything else is optional. it's rude to expect your guests to go beyond their means to fit in at your wedding just because you want the day to be flashier than normal.
    the bizarro cartoon published in the g&m the other day says it all. a priest about to conduct a wedding on a mountaintop says "we are gathered here today in this place to pretend that your union is too special to be held in a regular church".
  23. C J from Canada writes: the spending of ludicrous amounts of money on a wedding are usually driven by a princess bride who has "dreamt of this" her whole life and HAS TO have this and HAS TO have that. i pity the guys marrying someone like this. i've seen people spend $1000 on a wedding cake only to have some misbehaving kid at the reception go up to the cake before it's cut, and stick their dirty fingers into the side and lick it. care for a slice? the designer wedding dress gets ruined, the flowers die, etc. money sensibly invested? not. it's just an elegant puppet show or a competition with another sibling who had an extravant cirque du soleil of a wedding last year. personally i think big weddings both suck (they're less fun than smaller ones) and are a crazy waste of money, time and energy for one day. it's fine to celebrate the connecting of two people and have a gathering, but i'd sooner spend a few thousand on a very small ceremony and gathering of immediate family and really close friends and invest the other chunk of this $30K on a home or something else that can retain or grow in value. keep it simple, be realistic, and have fun without the 2nd cousins snitting behind the couples backs about everything that's wrong with the wedding and how the bride is bulging out of her dress.
  24. C J from Canada writes: the spending of ludicrous amounts of money on a wedding are usually driven by a princess bride who has "dreamt of this" her whole life and HAS TO have this and HAS TO have that. i pity the guys marrying someone like this. i've seen people spend $1000 on a wedding cake only to have some misbehaving kid at the reception go up to the cake before it's cut, and stick their dirty fingers into the side and lick it. care for a slice? the designer wedding dress gets ruined, the flowers die, etc. money sensibly invested? not. it's just an elegant puppet show or a competition with another sibling who had an extravant cirque du soleil of a wedding last year. personally i think big weddings both suck (they're less fun than smaller ones) and are a crazy waste of money, time and energy for one day. it's fine to celebrate the connecting of two people and have a gathering, but i'd sooner spend a few thousand on a very small ceremony and gathering of immediate family and really close friends and invest the other chunk of this $30K on a home or something else that can retain or grow in value. keep it simple, be realistic, and have fun without the 2nd cousins snitting behind the couples backs about everything that's wrong with the wedding and how the bride is bulging out of her dress.
  25. Jayna Barnes from Canada writes: Modern weddings have long lost their early meaning, which was to have their community 'witness' that they were committing to support each other through life's inevitable trials. The community could then censure behaviors that broke the promise, as well as aid in the adjustment to married life and the raising of the children. Now it's all flash and show, a dinner theatre that has been staged far too many times by far too many amateurs for the dialogue to have any meaning left. And all too often, it's not a commitment that lasts. Buying a house together is a bigger commitment, and a more sensible one financially, than blowing thousands of dollars on a single day's festivities. I'm happy that all my kids would rather have a registry wedding and spend their money for a truly memorable travel experience that suits their couple-tastes instead of on an overdone, over-priced, cheesy theatrical event at which virtual strangers drink free booze and throw up on pricey flower arrangements.
  26. Tony . from Waterloo, Canada writes: hossein hajiagha from Victoria, Canada writes: "and looking and looking for love and I can not date any women 12 years soon she look at my pic or nationality ,,,she run from me"

    Just a suggestion, but you might have better luck if you aren't trying to date any "woman 12 years". Try a little older, like at least into their teens!
  27. Tony . from Waterloo, Canada writes:
    Ok, there's some good advice and bad advice in this article. My take on things:

    1. I agree with others, $150 is WAY too much if you're 24! Pay what you can afford, if you're just out of University nobody expects you to chip in much. Leave the big spending until when you're the rich aunt/uncle. So long as you're covering the cost of your meal and that of your date (if applicable) you're golden. $50 is more than acceptable for most mid-20's folks in their first or second job, still paying off student loans.

    2. Don't give gift cards... EVER. No one likes them, cash is ALWAYS a better option.

    3. Buying your buddy a gift for the stag is not required or expected. What IS required though is buying him a drink. The one rule of a good stag is that the groom should never have to pay for any of it and he should not be left for more than 3 minutes without a drink in his hand... unless he's dancing with a stripper... that you paid for.

    4. The different tie and shirt rule only applies if there is going to be overlap in guests. If not, nobody is going to notice let alone care. Most guys in their mid-20's only have two or three shirts and ties anyway.

    5. "Formal" means a nice suit and tie. Unless you're in the wedding party nobody needs to a wear a tux.

    6. If you know both the bride and the groom, fill out the empty side at the ceremony. There's almost always one side at the ceremony that is full and one side that is empty.

    7. 99% of all wedding ceremonies are TERRIBLE, particularly if they're in a church. But you have to go, it's basically like purgatory before going to the reception later.

    8. Getting totally canned at the stag is not only acceptable, unless you're the DD it's expected.

    9. If you have to give a speech, tell a story that will make people laugh, it will make them cry and it will be over in 5 minutes. TOPS! Nothing kills a wedding worse than 15 minute speeches, no matter who you are!
  28. I_Hate_David Miller from Toronto, Canada writes: I agree with the other posters on the amount of money to give. If I know it's an open bar I'll give $100, if it's a cash bar I'll give $50 and if I'm not going to go to the wedding I give nothing. If you RSVP no they will take your name and replace it with another so no cost to the couple. Also with most of my friends they live together for several years so they basically need nothing so it's cash, cash, or cash.
  29. RD Lone from Vancouver, Canada writes: @ E W: You must be a woman who just had her $30k wedding. Look into the cost of something like a community college, way below what you cite even in a big city. Consider going to the mountains/park and doing the ceremony there with priest. I've been to ceremonies where there aren't even seats, go to a nice summit of a small hill/mountain, the priest says his 2 cents, kiss, voila! Even though the bride thinks otherwise, big ceremonies are BORING and no one enjoys hearing the choir sing every 5 minutes, self created marriage rituals and half an hour of reading out of the bible. Basically I agree that if you want a "nice" wedding that the modern day woman thinks she deserves it will cost you $20-30k, but you can do it for much cheaper if you are willing to compromise. PS. not all my friends skimp, I just went to one last week where the wife was a doctor, total cost of the wedding was $70k!
  30. Chris Eaton from Fredericton, writes: These types of rules seem to have no bearing on weddings in reality anymore, at least that I've been going to. $30k for a wedding? Screw that, spend it on a down payment for a house. You'll both be a lot happier with the long term results.

    If you're not going, why would you be required to send a gift? Sounds like a rule created by Sears to encourage more spending.

    My entire wedding was $3000, last year, for 40 people. You can save a fortune if you decide that maybe its not worth it spend $10,000 on getting everyone you invited drunk when there's a perfectly good downtown with perfectly good bars they can use themselves, which they'll have lots of time and energy for if you don't drag out the wedding ceremony for 2 hours.

    Money problems are one of the leading causes of arguments amongst married couples. Thus, starting a marriage off with a huge and utterly pointless expense is really stupid.
  31. S J from Toronto, Canada writes: DICK BROWN, TEAR YOURSELF AWAY FROM THE G&M AND GET SOME MUCH NEEDED THERAPY!

    dick brown from missy, Canada writes: Don't get married, you may lose your future kids, 50-70% of your wealth....family law is biased against males. Hit it and quit it!

    This nut's full-time job is posting vitriolic, misogynistic posts on any articles about anything to do with women. It's obvious from this mose recent post that Mr. Brown cannot get beyond his own person issues. He suggests "hit it and quit it", yet, in a recent message board, he spews venom at unmarried women who chose single-motherhood over being childless, and hatred for those who support a woman's right to choose. Were his comments not so childish they would be nauseating.

    While I guess it's a typical instance of someone's failures and inadequacies causing them to lash-out, it's sad that a person would spend some much time and energy posting such trash instead of trying to better themselves. I hope you can get some help, Mr. Brown.
  32. Immigrant Chick from Zimbabwe writes: SIMPLE RULES: spend more on people who matter to you and less for the ones who don't. Not spend more on the acquaintance with the grand wedding and less on the old friend getting a registry followed by a dinner at a restaurant or a "hoe down" no?

    How come no one mentioned that?
  33. My eyes are open, Are yours? from Canada writes: I like weddings. To me, they are a spectator sport, like watching the Formula One. Weddings bear as much relationship to marriage as the formula one bears to driving in traffic. If everyone in the Formula One drove a base package Ford Focus, no one would go.

    Then again, I'm a girl, so I don't expect most men to understand.
  34. Jen Dobson from Canada writes: I think it's a good article, as not everyone knows this stuff. Weddings are alot of fun. Great meal, free drinks and usually good company.

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