Someone asked me that recently and I said Job Interviews and Weddings. What do those things have in common? For one thing, you have to dress up. I hate that. In addition to just not liking to wear fancy clothes, I don't like to spend a lot of money on something that will hopefully be obsolete by the next time it is needed.
I especially dislike having to spend more just for a dress or shoes to wear to someone else's wedding than I spent on the whole affair when I got married. But then, we only spent $40. Yep, that was the cost of one night in Reno, and the room came with a free buffet and a roll of nickels that we were supposed to use for gambling. We paid for our gas with some of the nickels and kept the rest. I might still have a few of them around someplace. Oh, and we packed peanut butter sandwiches for on the way, and I wore jeans and a sweat shirt. It was one of those "let's do it now before we chicken out" deals. Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns. Talk about a wedding on a budget! But the marriage lasted.
Unfortunately that is more than I can say for some of the fancy shindigs I've been forced to attend. Also, fancy does not guarantee civil behavior. A high school chum got married right after she graduated and her family spent a fortune on the wedding. But her mum only paid on the condition that the girl's sister not be invited. So just as the photographer was lining everyone up, the uninvited one shows up in curlers and a bathrobe, saying "I just had to see you in your wedding dress" and the water works began, and then the yelling and screaming. Ka-Ching! Extra money for touching up the photos afterward. Aren't the guests the ones who are supposed to cry at a wedding, not the bride?
I have also been to a few truly lovely weddings, though. In each instance they were second time arounds, modestly done, but with lots of family and friends.
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