Mawwiage is what bwings us togevver today

This weekend, the hubs and I took off to the wedding of a friend. Seeing as how we both moved up a notch in the old age-bracket tic boxes this past year, the days of wedding attendance have been rather long gone. It's been at least five years and that was one of hubby's younger cousins and doesn't count, really. (Family weddings are a different thing than friend weddings. I can't explain it, it's just the way it is.)

Regardless, having been on the inside of a few conversations about the outlandish amount of money our friend and his fiance were spending on this shindig, I have to say now on the other side of the event that either saner heads prevailed and they really scaled back from what they said they were spending or I have no idea where the money went.

Last I heard, the general bill was going to be in the area of $60K (Plus or minus a bit here or there.) I'll wait until you can breathe again, cause if you're like us, you choked and nearly died when you read that. But other than the sit-down dinner with filet as an option, I don't know where it went. There were essentially zero flowers at the church. The bouquets were long stemmed roses tied with a 2" ribbon that I hope they made themselves because really...why would you pay a florist what a florist charges to do something so simple it's not even worth a Pinterest pin? There were a few centerpieces at the reception but nothing to write home about. And so it goes.

What really struck me about this thing though wasn't the quandary of the money, it was the fact that ceremony itself was roughly 20 minutes long. And I'm being kind and rounding up. And then there was a two hour break before the cocktail hour at the reception venue. That went on for an hour (seriously, they were militant about it being a cocktail HOUR despite the fact that everyone, bride and groom included, was there at the start of the thing). Then dinner for two hours (and why, WHY would you do your first dance before feeding your guests? Just feed us already, then do your dancing.) And at that point, we'd been away from home for close to six hours so we called it and left. Before the cake. I have no idea what time they finally got around to the cake.

Honestly, if you're planning on making your wedding an event that lasts more than maybe 3 hours, you need to state that pretty clearly on your invitation so people can make informed choices about attending. Especially when you make it a no kids event. (I don't get the no kids thing, I really don't. To me, weddings are about family, so kids should absolutely be there. Throw in the fact that you just asked someone to shell out $120 to a babysitter because you decided you needed to stretch your event out for a full freaking day and, well, I feel a lot less bad about the fact that I didn't shop off your million dollar registry.)

So congrats to my friend, but next time I seriously may just send a card and be done with it. Cause wow.