Wedding Pet Peeves, Part 3 -- Long Dances

[Part 1 - no date]
[Part 2 - long wait]

Friends,

When certain things are drawn out for an abnormally long period of time, they become super awkward.  Sometimes TV shows (I'm thinking of The Office and Family Guy) masterfully extend a conversation, gesture, or pose to create a hilariously uncomfortable scenario.  However, when it comes to real life and the players aren't Dwight Schrute or Stewie Griffin, this kind of awkwardness is simply uncomfortable.


Pet Peeve #3 -- Aaaaaaaawkwaaaaaaard
And I STILL haven't gotten to the garter toss

I understand that weddings are steeped in tradition.  I know that each of the common rituals carries different weight with the various brides out there who are planning weddings.  So I'm not calling for a blanket removal of any of the following dances.  But I ask all fiancees to consider their length; imagine the following:

1. Bride and groom's first dance
This is, of course, a staple of wedding receptions.  And as the newlyweds romantically kiss and gaze into each other's eyes, it is cute and appropriate to watch... for about 30 seconds.  Each additional minute doubles the awkwardness and the feeling that I shouldn't be in on this intimate moment, whether they've invited me into it or not.

2. Bride dances with her father
Cool for about 10 seconds.

3. Groom dances with his mother
5 seconds.

4. Groom dances with bride's mother while bride dances with groom's father
Less than 1 second.

5. Entire wedding party dances with each other
This step shows up in maybe 20-40% of the weddings I've attended.  It is completely unnecessary.  This not only adds pointless spectacle for everyone outside the wedding party, it's actually pretty dumb if you're in the wedding party, too.  Suppose you walked down the aisle with a bridesmaid who's married; you'll now be slow-dancing with her as her husband looks on.  Why not just open the floor up to everyone at this point?

Summary: the comfortable attention span of the crowd, or at least one bearded member of it, for the entire "special dance" segment is about 45 seconds.  And yet, if each of the above is given a full-length song with some annoying emcee banter throughout, you're looking at about 18 minutes.

At some weddings, you have the freedom to ignore all of this after the first 45 seconds and return to drinking and talking.  But at others, respectful attention is demanded for the duration.  This is, without too much exaggeration, an experience on par with a sitting through a mostly-out-of-tune children's strings concert.


What do you think?
As per TS(s) policy: no arguments, just friendly disagreements

What is the ideal number and length of these dances?

Have you experienced any long and/or awkward wedding dances?

Jon

an easy (traf)fix

Friends,

I have very little to say that isn't already found in the picture I've made.  A few notes about reading the picture:

• Read it from right to left.
• I'm not a Microsoft Paint expert.  I couldn't find a way to rotate rectangles in any way other than 90º.  So please ignore the cars that appear to be dangerously crooked as they go around the bend in the highway.
• There wasn't a good photo size option available, so if you can't zoom in and read the version below, here's the readable facebook version.

Solution: move that sign somewhere BEFORE the exit.

Jon

Wedding Pet Peeves, Part 2 -- The Wait

Friends,
After the... lively... discussion generated from part 1 of this series, I'm a little afraid to leave my apartment at night, let alone to continue writing about the frustrating elements of weddings.  But alas, I feel compelled to make future weddings better.  And said compulsion clearly outweighs my paranoia, because here we are.


The longest wait you'll ever know
Well, it's up there with the lobby at the DMV

[Disclaimer: if you're married, and I was at your wedding, and there was a long wait involved, please accept on faith that I'm not referring to your wedding specifically in the discourse that follows.  Let's still be friends.]

Imagine being at a concert.  The band plays an amazing set, then leaves the stage amid wild cheers for an encore.  Then, feeding off the cheers of the crowd, they dramatically return for 2 final songs.

Now imagine that the time span between the exit and encore was not 2 minutes or 5 minutes, but... two and a half hours.

There are obiously huge differences between the norms and expectations of a concert and a wedding, but hear me out for one more paragraph.  Just as the encore is the culmination of a concert and the natural response to its attendees' excitement, a wedding reception is... yeah, you get it.

So how does it make sense to have all the guests wait for the reception a super long time while the wedding party takes hundreds of pictures off in a secluded meadow?  By the time they arrive and are announced, those people still awake must often think, "Oh yeah, that's why I'm dressed up in a room with all these people."

Now, as I mentioned in the last post, not every wedding situation is the same.  During one year-long wait, I might be surrounded by a bunch of friends having a blast.  But at another, I might be without a date and only knowing zero or two people.

Furthermore, there's the whole issue of food and drink.  If I have to wait eons, it makes a world of difference if I'm doing it with a parched throat and rumbling stomach vs. surrounded by an open bar and hors d'oeuvres.

I've never planned a wedding, nor have I gone through the brainstorming process for fun, so I can't offer a solution for how to remove this lifetime of picture-taking between wedding and reception.  But please think of the lonely outsiders at your reception.  And their empty stomachs.


What do you think?
Go ahead and comment now... I obviously don't like waiting.


Have you ever had a terrible wait at a wedding reception?

Can you think of a way to expedite or reschedule the post-wedding, pre-reception pictures?

Jon

Wedding Pet Peeves, Part 1 -- The Absence of a +1

Friends,

I know most people love weddings.  I don't want this blog series to in any way crush those people's dreams.  Insofar as weddings celebrate marriage, I affirm them.  But to make the world a better place in the future, I feel compelled to point out those aspects of some weddings that make them terrible.

As for my qualification to critique weddings, I have none.  I'm just a guy with some opinions.  But I have been to tons of weddings (and been a groomsman in many of them), so my opinions have at least been forged by repetition and experience.



Pet Peeve #1 -- Forcing me to go alone
This one doesn't involve garters

Weddings were simpler at the innocent age of 20.  I was surrounded at all times by a mob of other fun-loving 20-year-olds, so weddings were teeming with peers who were having fun, talking, dancing, and being single.

Fast forward 6 years, and things are different.  Weddings are now a place where a bunch of my peers, all in married couple pairs, get together to tell the new bride and groom, "Welcome to the club!"  One or two mid-to-late-20s unmarried abominations are allowed in to eat the scraps from the table.

I hope it's obvious that I'm joking for effect, but the point remains -- I'm now in the minority as a single person, and that is relevant when it comes to attending an event that focuses solely on romance/love/marriage. 

Not to make things too depressing, but the internal voice during weddings that I attend alone has shifted from
"I'm excited to get married someday!!"
to
"I hope to get married someday."
to
"Am I going to get married?!  I freaking better get married!! Oh my gosh, what if I never get married?!!"

And yet, all this could be avoided so simply.  Adding literally two characters to the RSVP card can redeem the entire event...

Having a date at the wedding makes all the difference.  It means having someone to drive with to and from the wedding.  Someone to talk to during the unbearably long wait before the reception.  Someone to dance with during the 3 otherwise painfully awkward slow songs.

I realize the decision to deny dates is a financial one.  I don't have a solution outside of investing in a money tree.  But I will say that it's not as if you have to offer every single person a +1.  If there's a huge community of people coming who all know each other, the singletons should be fine.  But if someone on the invite list won't know anyone, or will probably only know married people, it's a different story.


Other people's opinions
Specifically, my friend's and yours

One of my friends, in a text that helped inspire this post, vented, "I'd rather not get an invite than get a solo one...  People who do that have never gone stag to a wedding."

What do you think about going solo to a wedding?  Will/have you forced others to go dateless?

Jon