agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have now been to three weddings where I found out that the couple was already married, and just going through the motions.

The first was a couple who had gotten legally married weeks prior to the wedding so he could go on her health insurance.

The second was an older couple who said they’d never had a “real wedding.” That made me think they hadn’t really been married all along, but it turns out they had been; they just hadn’t had the kind of event they’d wanted.

The last one, which sent me over the brink, was our college friends. Since our larger friend group is now spread out in different cities, this couple traveled around, repeating the wedding ceremony to “save people the expense of traveling.”

My mother asks me why I care if people want to make fools of themselves, and why I can’t just “be nice” and celebrate with my friends. The answer is because I’m expected to go along with this farce and play the Wedding Guest: dressing up, sitting through it all, congratulating them, and -- here’s the main part -- spending serious money to buy them something from their registry list.

In fact, I’m expected to do all of the above many times over, if I go to their pre-wedding (but post-marriage!) parties, which I try to avoid. Am I right or wrong?

GENTLE READER: You are certainly right that people are now using the word “wedding” to refer to the party associated with the marriage ceremony, rather than -- as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, and dating from Old English -- the act of getting married.

Thus the festivities you mention -- no doubt including the heroine’s white dress and the pastry chef’s white iced cake -- are considered to be the weddings.

And you are right that in cases where the party is, so to speak, divorced from the legal ceremony, the guests generally overlook that omission. If you read about the splashy so-called weddings of celebrities, you must have noted that the guests scrupulously refer to the already married couple as only affianced until the reenactment has taken place.

Miss Manners can understand your reluctance to play a supporting role in this rerun. The emotional component of witnessing the establishment of a marriage is missing.

You need only politely decline to attend. Nevertheless, you should recognize that many people have transferred their concept of cementing a union from the ceremony to the celebration. Should you care about such people, you might attend.

Perhaps it will help if you think of it as merely a delayed wedding reception or an anniversary party, without the pretense that you are witnessing a marriage ceremony.

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LW, if you don't want to go to weddings then it may be better if you tell all your supposed friends and loved ones. If you make it clear that you despise them all as liars then they'll stop asking you to do anything at all.

I wonder if this person has any non-Christian friends.

I also wonder if they've ever had any non-straight friends.

Is the couple "just going through the motions" if the partners complete the legal contract of marriage in a judge's office before celebrating it with a wedding ceremony with family and friends at their choice of venue? (Which may or may not be a house of worship. I got married in my parents' back yard.) LW's first 2 examples sound reasonable to me as to why couples might decide--or need--to hold the ceremony separate.

If LW believes the wedding ceremony is a farce if they don't get to observe the partners sign the marriage certificate, then certainly they should refuse all invitations.

Judgey McJudgerson can just pull their neck in. Getting married has two parts, the legal and the community-social. Often those are combined, but not always. A lot of people go to City Hall and have a religious ceremony later.

One couple I know had a Catholic wedding and a Muslim wedding, for each of their families. The elderly couple mentioned in the letter could have called their ceremony a vow renewal but obviously something to them wanted to call this their wedding, which is fine! The traveling couple is sweet for allowing family and friends to witness their pledge to each other without putting them out—personally I prefer that to the couples who want everyone to use their entire PTO and vacation budget to watch them get married in Bora Bora.

It’s so easy to assume good intention and to be happy for people who are being happy. So tired of these grinches. Don’t like it? Don’t go!

We almost did this, for couple #1's reason (health insurance). I got a job with insurance in time, but we had investigated driving to Vegas to get legally married. The plan was not to tell anyone but his HR, although I have a feeling one of us would have spilled. If LW was offended by the concept, I would have happily given their seat at the party to someone else.

My sister did similar when she was living in Hawaii and dating someone in the military who was getting restationed - they got married about a week after they got engaged so that she could get out of a lease and work contract and move at the same time as him (since it was going to be MAJOR relocation costs otherwise). Their marriage ended up not lasting long (infidelity on his part), but we wouldn't have viewed their (cancelled) wedding as less-than because they had already been married for a year and a half.

(She lucked out big time - she found out about the infidelity about a week before all of the covid lockdowns, so she ended up getting all of her deposits back when she cancelled)

Weddings are not just gift grabs, LW. Well, some people treat them as such, but -- weddings are the celebration part.

I wonder if LW also refuses to go to birthday celebrations that don't fall on the exact day...

This exactly!

Nobody is making you give them gifts. People are usually happy to celebrate a milestone by giving their friends gifts. If you don't want to, don't! If the whole idea of celebrating a major life event for them with a party is disgusting and inexplicable to you, just don't go?? The expectation is generally that guests want to go to parties!

I can't tell whether this is the LW just thinking that people are "cheating," or if the "serious money" is really an issue, between gifts and travel expenses and such.

If the money is the problem, LW ought to be asking "how can I attend weddings without spending a month's pay?" or "how can I politely decline an invitation because I can't afford the airfare and hotel?" Regardless, people can decline invitations to showers, engagement parties. etc., whether or not they think the wedding is "real." Couple 2 were setting themselves up for annoyance, when people ask the commonplace "why did you decide to get married now, after living together for so long?" Wanting a big party after ten or twenty years feels different to me than "we needed to get the paperwork done right away, because of X, and there wasn't time to plan a big party so quickly." There's nothing wrong with an anniversary party, labeled as such, and sometimes people will happily travel long distances to attend it.

Or a vow renewal. My in-laws renewed there vows every few years, just a small gathering with the priest and a few friends/family members.

We did the legal marriage stuff a month or two ahead of our actual wedding, for paperwork reasons. Decades later, I can’t even tell you exactly which month it was we did the City-Hall-married thing, because we celebrate our anniversary as the day we had our (non-legal) wedding with people we cared about. I don’t care when we signed paperwork; I care about when we committed to each other in front of our loved ones. So if LW is upset because they didn’t get to attend the legal ceremony, I’d say they have their eyes on the wrong prize.

My childhood pastor ran us through the entire core of the ceremony at the rehearsal the night before, and then he said, "Great, you've done the thing! You're already married, let's sign the paperwork and then you don't have to worry about anything that comes up tomorrow, you can just relax and enjoy it, because YOU ARE ALREADY MARRIED." And we did sign it, and the next day was indeed less fraught.

And we were part of a tradition. The night before my parents got married, my dad's father, who was also their pastor, said, "If you two aren't already married in every way that counts, nothing I do tomorrow can actually change that. And if you ARE married in every way that counts...nothing that happens tomorrow can change that either."

I know this is not a universal tradition. There are groups for which the wedding ceremony is a sacrament. But many or possibly most people are not part of those groups, so Miss Manners going on about the EMOTIONAL CORE is assuming facts not in evidence.

I chose not to go to a wedding once because I thought it would not be in the spirit of the event to sit there thinking, "I'll still be their friend when you're their ex-spouse." Others I haven't attended for money reasons, health reasons, schedule conflicts, all sorts of reasons. A wedding invitation is not a subpoena, nor is it a bill due. Don't give gifts you don't want to give, don't go to weddings you don't want to go to, the end.

oh come ON. my Extremely Catholic grandparents had one civil and one religious ceremony because Austria required at the time that the legal proceedings take place somewhere other than a church. so they got the legal bits done on the last day of the tax year, so Papa could claim Mama as a dependent for the entire tax year, about which he was delighted for the entire rest of his life, and absolutely did not consider themselves married until the religious ceremony several months later. I can't remember all the details of why the ceremonies were separated by several months (some separation was required? they still lived in different countries?) but really. REALLY.

oh hey, very much still a thing!

Imagine having enough free time and emotional leisure to turn this absolute nothingburger of a situation into your very own (first ever?) personal problem. Can't relate to LW at all.

Edited 2025-10-14 22:40 (UTC)

Word.

I've been to at least two wedding receptions where there'd previously been another on the other side of the country, and one actual wedding ceremony where another had occurred in a different country previously. And all of those were multiple decades ago.

I could understand the complaint about spending money on the gifts if they had given them a gift when they legally got married, and then were now being asked to get another gift for the party, but if that's not the case and they're only asked to get a gift one time, then why does it matter when the legal ceremony took place? It's exactly the same amount of money.

Right??? So weird. My sister did a version of this, and so did a cousin I'm close to - they both married people from other countries, so they had legal weddings + receptions in one country and receptions in another. They didn't redo the ceremonies but that would've been fine! And in both cases I gave gifts once, and I'm pretty sure that was standard???

One of my sisters was living in Hawaii and dating a man in the Marine Corps. They got engaged while he was waiting to be restationed, so they ended up having a short civil service in Hawaii so that she would be able to get out of her work contract and move with him; the actual reception was going to be a year and a half later. That wouldn't have made the ceremony and celebration any less of a wedding.

I have another sister who got married in the LDS church; my parents and sisters were converts while the rest of the family was a mix of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox (not to mention the couple's friends), so most of us were not allowed to attend their ceremony due to the restrictions of the religion. They had a short vows and ring-swap ceremony at the start of their reception - I guess that wouldn't be a wedding in this LW's mind either.

At one point in my life, I was discussing marriage with a boyfriend whose family lived on the other side of the country from mine; our plan was to elope Labor Day weekend and then have East Coast and West Coast cocktail party-type receptions at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It would have been way more convenient for our guests (including grandmothers in their 90s) than forcing at least half of our friends/family to travel, but hey - I guess doing things that way would have been unacceptable to this bitter individual as well.

Spouse #1: legal ceremony at the justice of the peace; two celebrations in his home country (one with his mom's family, one with his dad's); one celebration at our home, where we reenacted our vows.

Spouse #2: legal ceremony at the JP; celebration the next day.

LW would have been welcome to skip all the celebrations.

We got married back in December because we figured the Supreme Court was going to mess everything up (and lo, they've taken a case on equal marriage for this term, sigh), and will likely have our Family Celebration this spring.

LW: You're wrong in that, to me, weddings aren't all about the Gifts, they're about the connections and love and celebrating that with the people you love. But if you're overwhelmed by the giftage and other expenses, you can just opt out. And accept that you'll be seen as a Grinch. And accept that you'll get further away from friends and family.

(Wedding gifts don't have to be *massive*. Start a new trend!)

TIL that my wedding early next year is going to be "fake." Whatever, man.

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