agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Prudence,

My husband got totally hammered at my sister’s wedding and somehow ended up falling into the wedding cake. I reimbursed them for the cost of it and made my husband write a letter of apology, but they are still furious, as are more than a few family members. What can we do to mend fences?

—Cake Catastrophe

Dear Cake Catastrophe,

I really wish everyone could embrace the idea that weddings aren’t supposed to be perfect. It would eliminate so much angst. We all know that when you invite your friends and family with their various quirks and issues into the same room together and give them alcohol, things happen. Inappropriate outfits are worn, strange comments are made, and speeches include TMI moments and embarrassing tangents. And yes, occasionally, something more dramatic takes place, like someone chooses the moment to propose and steals attention from the couple, or a man collides with the cake. It’s a departure from the plan, but at the end of the day, the married people are married, they are surrounded by loved ones, and everything is fine.

But that advice is for your sister and brother-in-law, not for you and your husband. You’ve handled this unfortunate incident perfectly, and now you should give them space to decide if they can get over it. It’s worth reflecting on whether the wedding incident was a last straw (has your husband been trashed every time he socializes with them? Did he also pass out and crash into the balloon arch at the bride’s 30th birthday?) and if he needs to work on his drinking or unruly behavior. If not, and if it was truly just a one-off freak accident, accept that they’re mad and wish them luck with their marriage from afar. They’ll need luck because if they can’t lighten up about something like a cake collapse, life’s actual challenges are going to be a lot for them to handle.

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Prudie kinda dances around it, but I think it's better than even odds that Husband has a problem.

(Also - LW "made him write a letter of apology"? Is he an actual child? Because of so, he shouldn't be drinking and he really shouldn't be married.)

And this is why we severely limited the alcohol at our wedding. I’ve been to enough weddings that got derailed by drunk buffoons, and later on the only thing people remember about the wedding was the humiliating incident; that’s what gets talked about. (I can’t even tell you whose wedding it was that these happened at, but I can sure remember the time an uncle got tanked and started groping his relatives, or when a preteen started stealing drinks until they puked in front of everyone, or a best man spent his entire speech drunkenly wailing about the end of his own marriage, or a religious person started railing about how no weddings performed outside of churches are actually real (at a wedding outside of a church).

So yeah. #TeamTheyAreRightToBeAngry, because they spent a ton of money (most likely) on that event and someone else’s reckless and selfish actions caused a massive problem that likely overshadowed much of the wedding in other people’s minds. Cool beans on paying for the cake, but that doesn’t undo what happened or make it okay that their one special event got very screwed with.

Every time people get into a tizzy that some person has the audacity to want a liquor-free wedding I say "Listen, if you can't go without the booze for a few hours then you don't need to attend at all", but none of them like to hear it. Probably because they have a problem....

I'm still grumpy about a wedding I went to that had a $$$$ open bar but the food was so skimpy that people ***left the wedding reception*** to go to the restaurant downstairs and order/pay for their own separate food because they were starving.

Holy cow, I would have been really upset as someone who needs to eat regularly to keep my system stable! You can’t put people somewhere for 4-8 hours and not have sufficient food!

Yeah, I got a migraine from low blood sugar

because I waited too long to leave the reception

to go and buy food for myself at the restaurant downstairs

(I was the first person to do it, and I started a bit of a mass exodus when lots of other people followed my example...)

Right?? Like are they SO dependent on alcohol that they literally can’t have a decent time in a social situation unless they’re drinking? Because while that may not be alcoholism (some folks only drink in social situations and not regularly otherwise), it’s sure using alcohol to deal with the stress and/or anxiety of social situations. There’s a problem there that needs to be examined, whether it’s alcoholism or something else.

They act like it's an affront to suggest they spend time with their loved ones sober, and then get more affronted if you suggest that they really should consider why they have a problem here.

(Unsurprisingly, many of them will claim they don't drink much, and then cite numbers which are well above the average *for Americans who drink alcohol.* That's not even counting the 30% of Americans who basically don't drink at all. Drinking a glass of wine or a beer every night, plus some hard liquor on Fridays and Saturdays probably isn't a sign of a problem in and of itself, but arguing vociferously that "everybody" does it and that people who don't are the ones with a problem very well might be.)

As a person who can’t drink got medical reasons, often I _do_ have a problem with drinking, but my problem is that people around me are acting like assholes due to their drinking. There are good reasons I associate with few of my family members anymore, and I know better than to go to pub outings and most parties. There are few things more obnoxious than being the sober one while everyone around me gets more tanked and turns into Angry Drunk, Sobbing Drunk, Withdrawn Drunk, Horny Drunk, or Puking Drunk. (I have done way too much duty holding people’s hair in the bathroom while they vomit up their intestines.) I’m good if I never have to spend time with any of the five drunk archetypes ever again.

Wow, I don't blame you. I have been to my share of weddings, some dry, mostly not, and I can't say I have ever seen anyone get hammered at a wedding. I think of them as demure occasions, even when lively, if you see what I mean.

Something good about my childhood: the weddings I grew up with didn't have alcohol. Most of my Traumatic Wedding Stories are about my mother hurting me while getting me dressed and painted to her satisfaction, which I will definitely take over having to put up with an uncle groping me or someone destroying a carefully made cake.

Huh. I would definitely take a fall into cake over someone hurting me. The cake is inanimate!

*now has "MacArthur Park" stuck in my head*

Maybe it's because my grandmother made wedding cakes so I know how much labor goes into them, especially if made by a hobbyist rather than a bakery? The cake is inanimate but the creator is not, to say nothing of the couple who chose it and delighted in it.

Besides, I'd rather be hurt than hurt someone by wrecking their wedding. Most of my childhood bruises have faded but I'm pretty sure if I destroyed a wedding cake people would still be telling the story.

The cake is inanimate!

Not in Mario RPG...!

(I'm both dating myself *and* revealing myself as a hugely nostalgic nerd here, aren't I?)

I think it depends on the type of hurt - things like a too-tight ponytail or an accidental jab with the pin from a corsage hurt, but the pain/discomfort fades pretty quickly.

Yeah, of course, if we're talking about an one-off "Oops, sorry!" then I'm not even going to remember it when I'm an adult. But if we're talking about that being memorable enough to bring up as the worst part when reflecting back on the weddings of my childhood? Then it probably forms part of a larger pattern that affects my relationship with the person in question. And at that point, I would take a random husband accidentally falling into a cake and expect the adults to deal with it like adults, over a vulnerable child being at the mercy of adults who seem pretty cavalier about their pain.

And I say this as someone who never had this particular problem with my mother, but she had it with her mother, and it was definitely part of a larger, harmful pattern.

Edited 2025-08-18 17:54 (UTC)

Heh, your comment made me realize I was excepting myself from my own rules. I would of course never sacrifice any other child to save a cake. Maybe I should be kinder to my past self.

Funny how our brains do that as a coping mechanism, isn't it? Trauma is a helluva drug. :/

You definitely shouldn't have had to endure physical abuse, any more than any other child.

And btw, when I say "deal with it like adults," definitely being upset, refusing to invite the person to social events (or until they get help for their drinking issues), demanding repayment, etc., would be fully justified! And the poor newlyweds and cake hobbyist I feel lots of sympathy for! I just expect the accident to be less traumatic for them than pain is to a child who's in their formative years, dependent on their caretakers, and unable to escape.

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blush

Heh, don't I wish. My parents were pretty big believers in "spare the rod/belt/slaps/beatings, spoil the child."

Oh I get that one also - I still have vivid memories of being dragged through the house by my ponytail when I was 11, and then needing to kneel next to my mother's bed for 2 hours (naturally, the reason WHY I got this punishment is lost to time - probably something stupid like talking back). But I also have memories of the ponytails that were just a smidge too tight before Field Day at school, or braids done in wet hair that got tighter as they dried (something that's been self-inflicted many times also), and I feel like these smaller repetitive "harms" are far less abusive/malicious than intentional injury

Getting hammered is not an “accident.” It’s not just a thing that happens. It’s a choice. He made choice that ruined a looked-forward-to part of the wedding, and he is suffering the consequences. As he should — it was a selfish, asshole move to make that choice.

Right, like, can see how a teen or young adult might not know what they're doing in time to stop - but if you're an actual, factual married adult then you either ought to know your limits or you ought to know that you don't drink much and take extra care!

I feel like the word "somehow" may be doing extra work here? Like, "my husband got hammered and fell into the wedding cake" would have been bad enough, but...hello, "somehow," are you hiding something? "My husband got hammered and staggered into the wedding cake": bad. "My husband got hammered and danced around like a fool, interrupting the best man's toast and THEN falling into the wedding cake": worse. "My husband got hammered and danced around like a fool, interrupting the best man's toast, mooning Aunt Mildred, and/or assaulting the groom's sister, who had to shove him off her and he fell into the wedding cake": yet worse. And also if he did additional things and ONLY apologized for the cake, that will rankle.

It could also be, though, that they need to be allowed to have their feelings for a minute. Apologies are not feelings-erasers. The person you wronged is allowed to accept your apology (and the money for their cake!) and still feel angry, sad, disgusted, or whatever else they feel.

They’ll need luck because if they can’t lighten up about something like a cake collapse, life’s actual challenges are going to be a lot for them to handle.

Also, WTH is this advice? Being justifiably upset together about a selfish jerkwad causing a scene and disrupting their day that they’d spent enormous time and effort planning for has literally no relevance to how they’re going to handle challenges in any other sphere of life, including interpersonally with each other. Especially combined with the “wish their marriage luck from afar” line, the columnist makes it sound like they’re being irrationally pissy about nothing and this bodes poorly for the future of their marriage because they’re fragile people who aren’t going to be able to deal with anything.

+1 It's one thing to accept that a complicated event with +100 guests is unlikely to be perfect for every single person every single second, but in fact they can go well and be thoroughly enjoyable with no significant problems and this is a reasonable expectation to have! Including if alcohol is served. It is an even more reasonable expectation that grown adults not get so drunk that they fall into a cake (and table, presumably) and wreck it. I don't think I know anyone whose wedding I've been to who would have laughed that off as just hohoho one of life's little amusements. The bride and groom are pissed off at something worth being pissed off about, and I'd bet a substantial part of that is also that neither LW nor her husband really seems to grasp that this was a deeply shitty way to behave. The family are furious for good reason.

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