wedding circuit redux

This spring, we are invited to celebrate two weddings of close friend’s daughters. These invitations mark the dawn of a new era. This is our second round in the wedding circuit but this time we will show up as friends of the parents of the bride or groom or what my daughter often refers to as “Non Player Characters (NPC’s).” We will function in the background, observing how the new generation molds traditions and trends to fit who they are and supporting the parents as they adjust to their kids starting their own marriages.

My first turn on the wedding circuit was a solid ten year run starting when I was 25 years old and lasting well into my 30’s. We went to at least four or five weddings a year as well as showers, bachelor/bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners and day-after brunches. When you go to a friend’s or relative’s wedding in your 20’s and 30’s, you know that you are central to the event and on call to bring the energy. I now realize that the “young crowd” is also there to provide entertainment for the NPC’s.

Now that I am back to attending weddings, I am very excited to report that things have vastly improved. When I say “improved,” I mean that millennials have made weddings more meaningful and efficient. I’m sure there are still many traditional weddings going on, but here in the Bay Area, I am seeing a lot of innovation in the wedding world. 

Wedding Sites

While I planned our wedding in 1997, I used an Excel spreadsheet to track who was coming to the rehearsal dinner, wedding and day after wedding brunch but the rsvp’s were physically mailed to my parents’ address. I don’t want to point fingers, but this created a bottleneck in the workflow and the head counts felt like strong guesstimates. Today, using sites like Zola and The Knot, so many aspects of wedding planning are streamlined and much more intuitive like wedding checklists and thank you note managers.

Photos & Videos

One of the biggest struggles after getting married was going through the professional photos and figuring out what to put in an album. Most of that angst was related to the volume of photos because besides the official photographer, which also included a videographer, we also had a family friend take a bunch of less formal photos as we provided disposable cameras on every table at the reception. Obviously, the disposable camera trend is completely outdated but I would also expect that wedding photographers feel added pressure to provide a unique service given that every invited guest has a camera. My absolute favorite photos from our wedding were not taken by our “real” photographer. 

Several years ago, I had my wedding video transferred by video cassette to DVD and now the total number of times our wedding video has been watched is two. The total number of times I have looked through our wedding album is about 4. The total number of times anyone else has looked at our wedding video or albums (including my husband) is under 5. 

Inspiration

I was watching an episode of “Sex and the City” from 2001 (season 3, episode 11) about Charlotte planning her wedding to Trey and she was carrying around a pile of wedding magazines – the standard way we pre-internet brides gained insight on dresses, flowers and decor. Pretty much the minute you got engaged, you went to a newsstand and bought multiple wedding magazines to use as a reference through the planning process. (God, that sentence makes me sound ancient.) Now that you can create Pinterest boards for literally everything and then find someone on Etsy to make it, the whole creative process is so much more dynamic. 

Gifts

After our wedding in August 1997, we probably spent three to four months writing thank you notes and processing the gifts from our registry. We were overwhelmed by just the recycling of the boxes and packing materials. Then, we had to manage the returns and exchanges. Of the items we kept, we had to figure out how to store them because we barely had furniture and nowhere to store china, crystal, silver cutlery, crystal vases and bowls, candlesticks and a whole lot of stuff that might be used for dressy dinner parties. And, when I say “we” here, I absolutely mean ME because my husband would have been happy to ignore the boxes for infinity years. 

Twenty-six years later, these dressy dinner parties have not happened, we are still storing a bunch of stuff that we never use and millennials are wisely registering for much more practical stuff. I just browsed an online wedding registry and am deciding to either buy the couple a piece of furniture or contribute to their honeymoon fund. To me, the most brilliant innovation in wedding registries is the ability to choose which gifts to have delivered now or later and which to exchange or return before they are even delivered. This innovation makes the part of me that loves everything about the Organized Living and The Container Stores just so happy. 

Officiant

In 1997, through a series of odd compromises, my husband and I decided to have a Rabbi from the San Fernando Valley officiate at our wedding. We met with him for an hour to confirm that he would be available on our wedding date and would agree to let me “red line” what he would say during our ceremony. My husband commented at the time that he thought this Rabbi would be willing to marry the two of us to our dog. I thought that was a reach but thirteen years of Catholic school probably makes you weary of a religious figure who appears to be flexible and easy going. Anyways, the Rabbi was a few minutes late to our ceremony which caused my husband to have a minor panic attack but otherwise performed as prescribed. We have not seen him since he pronounced us married. 

At our first millennial wedding, the friend who officiated wrote and recited the most thoughtful and poignant ceremony and I was blown away. I wish I could go back and have our ceremony officiated by someone who knew us well instead of by a virtual stranger.

Guest List and Bridal Party

Our wedding guest list was close to 350 people – 250 of which were on our parents’ invite lists. The final numbers yielded about 140 guests who were relatives or friends of our parents and then 100 of our friends. There were definitely people at our wedding who I barely knew as well as people I have only seen once or twice since then. Today, I think the pendulum has swung towards inviting more people who are close with and important to the couple rather than a wide net of relatives and friends of the parents’. For both of the weddings we are attending this spring, my sense is that the couple, instead of the parents, has the stronger hold on the guest list. 

Similarly, it seems like the bridal party is being slimmed down or eliminated entirely. I always felt like having a bridal party was a low-key way to rank your friends while also saddling one or two with additional time and monetary commitments they may or may not want. If there are no bridal parties, then there will likely be less bridesmaid dresses that no one wants or wears again and that is a good thing as well. Although, I know that my friend CJ still has her bridesmaid dress from my wedding tucked away in her closet hoping that she can break it out for a ‘90’s wedding theme party sometime soon.

Awkward Moments: Cutting the Cake, Tossing the Bouquet & Garter Belt

If you love these wedding traditions, I get it. But, if you are like me and felt a bit queasy watching or participating in them, it seems like progress to let them go. Watching a newly married couple cut into an exorbitantly expensive cake and then smoosh it into each other’s faces can be cute but no bride really wants to end up with cake smeared on their face or wedding dress. Also, few single women want to be identified at the reception and lined up to have a roomful of people watch them try to catch a bouquet of flowers. I have seen multiple bouquets be thrown only to land on the floor because none of the women even attempt to catch it. This tradition felt really awkward to me in the 1990’s but at this moment it has got to be somewhat offensive to a lot of people. And, no question the same is true for the retrieval and throwing of the garter belt. I feel icky even just typing “garter belt”  and thinking about how many dads have cringed their way through this portion of their daughter’s wedding.

As I look forward to the upcoming weddings,  I will cherish my role as an NPC and enjoy this new life chapter supporting my friends as their families expand.  Of course, all the while I will be thinking about my kids’ future weddings. I already have one very strong request for each of them: I’m gonna need at least 100 wedding invites for my closest friends!