Etiquette for destination wedding?

[KazzyK810]

As to the hubby's friend, just send a gift. While he was rude, don't engage in tit-for-tat, as you'll probably regret it later.

I'd just brush it off on wedding planning being so stressful.

[linz06]

Originally Posted by KazzyK810

I'd give a gift for any wedding, destination or not.

Your brother expecting you to book through his agent so he gets a kickback...hmmm. Sorry, I'd be booking where I got the best deal, too!

But a shower for someone who doesn't want anyone else invited to their wedding...just seems wrong. Many people seem to have destination weddings, and then later have a wedding celebration party back home. Are they doing that? Or just don't want to celebrate their union with anyone else other than you & your hubby?

My cousin is not doing that. This is her first wedding, but her husband's third wedding. He has no friends of his own and as far as I can understand he doesn't get along with his siblings either. This is why my husband is going to be the best man at his wedding, even though they have only met maybe two or three times. To be honest, I think he doesn't want a big wedding because it will be one-sided and nobody would be coming for him. They have four children all together (3 of hers, 1 of his) who are not having any part of their wedding. It will just be the two of them, and the two of us. They are leaving the day after their wedding to do a road trip to Alabama, so my husband and I are taking the opportunity to just have a vacation of our own. We'll only actually be in New Orleans together with them for the night before the wedding, and the night of the wedding.

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

The more I go to weddings and hear about wedding drama, the more I am happy with my decision to never get married. Weddings are supposed to be a happy occasion, yet many think it gives them a free for all to be greedy, mean, thoughtless, etc.


If no one gets to go to her wedding, when people clearly showed they WANTED to go, she doesn't get a shower.


Your DH's friend never had the thought cross his mind that maybe the server was down? That was SO rude of him to reply like that.

I totally understand the stress - if I were to do it again, I'd elope!!! My husband and I are NOT big on being centers of attention and we made a strict rule when we made our guest list - we had been together for over 3 years, and if people in my family haven't met him, or vice versa, they are not close enough to come to our wedding. But we got backlash for that and phone calls about why isn't so and so invited etc. Weddings are expensive, and we whittled our list down to 120 people which was more than enough for us!

I'm glad others agree she shouldn't have a shower when nobody is going to the wedding.

As for the website, for whatever reason it didn't work, and I think that was a totally unprovoked way to react! It's ridiculous. My husband's feelings were really hurt by those comments. That makes me angry. There's no reason to treat friends and wedding guests like that.

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

And SHE should be explaining to the family. She shouldn't expect someone else to give the bad news out.

She isn't very close to our family. She grew up far away from everyone and her parents weren't in the best situation. Her mom passed away when she was 17 and she has no relationship with her dad anymore, who is in and out of jail. But she and I have stayed best friends our whole lives. When I got married last year and she was my bridesmaid, she was around a lot more with our family. Everyone just took her right in and she told me that for once she felt like she HAD a family and she really loved it. And everyone loves her and wants to support her and be there for her, but I don't think she feels comfortable telling them she doesn't want them around. I don't understand why she doesn't want them really, and I don't want to be the one to tell them that!

[RebelBelle]

I'm crafty so I would probably just make them all something as a gift (Pinterest has lots of cute ideas)... It would be inexpensive but heartfelt.

As far as the shower goes, I wouldn't feel obligated to throw one. If it was one of the 3 people in my life that I would pay that much money to see get married, I would feel comfortable discussing it with them and explaining that money was tight due to trip expenditures. It may be fun once you're in New Orleans to split up and do a "Girl's Night" with just you and your cousin before the wedding in place of a Bachelorette Party.

PS If your brother is anything like mine, then this type of behavior is nothing new. You aren't obligated to book through his agent. Tell him to build a bridge and get over it and enjoy your time in Mexico!

[capt_noonie]

Originally Posted by RebelBelle

I'm crafty so I would probably just make them all something as a gift (Pinterest has lots of cute ideas)... It would be inexpensive but heartfelt.

As far as the shower goes, I wouldn't feel obligated to throw one. If it was one of the 3 people in my life that I would pay that much money to see get married, I would feel comfortable discussing it with them and explaining that money was tight due to trip expenditures. It may be fun once you're in New Orleans to split up and do a "Girl's Night" with just you and your cousin before the wedding in place of a Bachelorette Party.

PS If your brother is anything like mine, then this type of behavior is nothing new. You aren't obligated to book through his agent. Tell him to build a bridge and get over it and enjoy your time in Mexico!

I also made something for my bff when she got married. I was s**t or at the time so I took her logo from the invites and hand embroidered it on a cross stitch fabric and made a wedding album cover covered in silk in her wedding colors and put the embroidery on it. Took a lot of time but didn't cost much. She teared up when she opened it

[Yorkiemom1]

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

I agree!
One of my friends works for a stationery company and her specialty is wedding invitations. We had a conversation before about destination weddings, and me not knowing a lot about wedding ettiquette asked, Why would anyone have a destination wedding? That cost so much money for people to get there! She said that's the point. They DON'T want a bunch of people going, but they still feel obligated to invite them.

I also find it very odd (saying it nicely) that he didn't even put out formal invitations. Weddings are one of the FEW things that I think you cannot do without formal invites. the fact that he did it the "free" way was tacky in it of itself. He's just trying to invite as many people as he can so he can get free stuff.

Gosh....I tend to agree with this thought process......I would have really been offended if my brother had gotten upset with me for not going thru his agent, then finding out WHY it was so important in his mind, for me to use his agent....KICK BACKS AND FREEBIES!!!!! How tacky, to say the least.....I would attend his wedding, I would give him a gift card for dinner at his favorite place to eat, and that would be the extent of my financial involvemnt in that wedding!

All I can say is I have reached an age where our biggest expense is sending flowers to funerals! I can not even get my mind wrapped around spending thousands of dollars to go flying off into the wild blue yonder, for a wedding! Unless I was absolutely "joined at the hip" close to the bride or groom, I really do think that is expecting people to spend way toooooooo much money, especially with the economy as bad as it is. And if they did opt to attend, as far as I am concerned, their gift to me would be their devotion to our relationship and absolutely NO additional money should be expected to be spent on a gift!

[linz06]

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

I also made something for my bff when she got married. I was s**t or at the time so I took her logo from the invites and hand embroidered it on a cross stitch fabric and made a wedding album cover covered in silk in her wedding colors and put the embroidery on it. Took a lot of time but didn't cost much. She teared up when she opened it

That is an AWESOME idea!!!

Originally Posted by Yorkiemom1

Gosh....I tend to agree with this thought process......I would have really been offended if my brother had gotten upset with me for not going thru his agent, then finding out WHY it was so important in his mind, for me to use his agent....KICK BACKS AND FREEBIES!!!!! How tacky, to say the least.....I would attend his wedding, I would give him a gift card for dinner at his favorite place to eat, and that would be the extent of my financial involvemnt in that wedding!

All I can say is I have reached an age where our biggest expense is sending flowers to funerals! I can not even get my mind wrapped around spending thousands of dollars to go flying off into the wild blue yonder, for a wedding! Unless I was absolutely "joined at the hip" close to the bride or groom, I really do think that is expecting people to spend way toooooooo much money, especially with the economy as bad as it is. And if they did opt to attend, as far as I am concerned, their gift to me would be their devotion to our relationship and absolutely NO additional money should be expected to be spent on a gift!

I kind of thought the same thing, that us going to take part in their day would be the gift. But I didn't realize so many people do give, and expect to recieve, gifts for destination weddings. I don't want to be the only one who doesn't give them a gift.

I tried to explain to my brother that we spent a lot of money going to Africa, and didn't have the extra money to go to his wedding so it was a big deal to save as much as we could. I think he looks at us and thinks, if we can afford to go to Africa, why can't we afford Mexico because it's way cheaper??? Well, it's not exactly something we're advertising, but we want to have a baby. Going to Africa was going to be our "last hurrah!" before settling down to have a family. It's something we dreamed of doing, and we made it happen. I'm not pregnant yet, but we're trying, and we'll be faced with me having a year off work on maternity leave, and trying to save up money to supplement that as well. But we don't want to tell everyone that, not our siblings or parents, and we don't want to put our lives on hold just so we can make sure everyone else is happy. We are still going, just a little bit more cheaply. We could have gone a LOT cheaper and not stayed at the same resort, but we wanted to show we are there for his wedding, for our family, to be with everyone to celebrate. I didn't want to be difficult about it. He tells me to my face that it's fine, but he has complained to our mom about it, and tried to tell her we'll be spending wayyyyy more money in the end, which makes no sense. Ugh.

[capt_noonie]

You know what bothers me about weddings is the high rate of divorce nowadays. If one of my friends were getting married and I didn't think it would last, I don't know how much I would want to spend on their gift. I didn't spend much on my sister's gift for her first wedding.

[capt_noonie]

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

I also made something for my bff when she got married. I was s**t or at the time so I took her logo from the invites and hand embroidered it on a cross stitch fabric and made a wedding album cover covered in silk in her wedding colors and put the embroidery on it. Took a lot of time but didn't cost much. She teared up when she opened it

Sorry I didn't mean to type that! It was an honest mistake. I was trying to type "dirt poor", I have no idea how that came out.

[linz06]

Originally Posted by capt_noonie

You know what bothers me about weddings is the high rate of divorce nowadays. If one of my friends were getting married and I didn't think it would last, I don't know how much I would want to spend on their gift. I didn't spend much on my sister's gift for her first wedding.

Ahem... New Orleans wedding. Yup. It didn't look like the wedding was even happening a few months ago.