Excessiveness?

If you've been following the news at all this past week, you've undoubtedly seen the story about the bride to be in Georgia who ran away from her own wedding because of the immense size and scale of what her ceremony was conceived to be. Let me just run down some of the quick statistics that I read in the news. 14 bridesmaids, 14 groomsmen, 600 guests, and 8 wedding showers. Is this really necessary? Isn't it supposed to be about the marriage anyway? What are these people thinking? I'm pretty sure there were probably fireworks to be shot off at the end of this putrid ceremony. I don't blame this woman one little bit for running like the wind from this business. It sounds like it was something that she didn't want, and was probably foisted on her by her parents who wanted to show the town they were from how important they were. I'm betting good money that out of the 600 people that were invited to this mess, the bride and groom probably only knew a small portion of those attending.

This brings me to another point. If you are getting married, why don't you just have the important people in your life attend to share it with you? This makes sense. Doesn't it? Well, to some, I'm sure it does, but to some others, I'm sure that it doesn't. I had a recent chance to see the wedding machine in full tilt this weekend when I went with my SO (significant other for those of you not in "the know") to a bridal mart to help her pick up bridesmaids dresses for a wedding that she's going to be in later this summer. Now this bridal mart has these very specific rules. You must pick up all of the dresses at the same time. You have to come and get them within 2 weeks of when they send you a card saying that the dresses are in. You might be delayed in getting your order because they might be busy. In preparation for this, the SO brought snacks and reading material just in case we were delayed in getting the dresses from the bridal mart. Luckily, we were in and out in a matter of minutes, and all was well. While in the mart though, I was able to observe the craziness that was going on inside of its borders. Young girls running around grabbing wedding dresses, trying them on, prancing around, and having everyone tell them how good they looked no matter how bad they looked. Why don't the people that these brides trust tell them when they don't look good in something? Unless of course, they actually believe that she does look good. Which in most cases that I observed this weekend, was just not the fact of the matter at all. There were some bad dresses going on there. Now, I'm no fashionista, because most of you have seen my t-shirt collection and my ratty shorts, but damn, someone needs to step in and help these young women.

That was another thing. The age of these brides to be surprised me. It seems as though every girl under the age of 23 in Alamance County North Carolina is getting married soon. They were young. Very young. Some seemed just fresh out of high school no doubt. As cynical as I like to think that I am, I'm pretty sure that for most of the women I saw this past Saturday, these are going to be starter marriages for them. They'll hopefully get it right the 2nd time. I honestly hope that they get it right the first time. No, really, I do. I'm not THAT cynical. OK, well maybe I am. I can't help it. I'm from New England.