The Wedding Panner
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 3, 2009
It’s wedding season, which means we’ve got a couple of cases involving equal helpings of drama, family/friends, and bullshit. Indeed, fxckfeelings.com is the ideal place to speak now or forever hold your peace.
–Dr. Lastname
My best friend is marrying an asshole next month, and I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut, but now that the wedding is almost here, I really worry I’m letting her make the biggest mistake of her life. She and I have known each other since high school, and while this isn’t the first jerk she’s dated, he’s certainly one of the most manipulative and creepy, and, sadly, the first one to bring up marriage. I’m fairly certain that he’s cheated on her already, but I have no proof, and besides, I can tell that she’s too in love with him to listen to me. Is there anything I can say to her to make her see sense? Should I look hard for proof of his asshole-ishness? My goal is to speak now or forever hold my peace/have to avoid one of my oldest friends until the messy divorce.
You probably already know this since you’ve kept your mouth shut for so long, but just to state the obvious, opposing her feelings of love with your feelings of mistrust is a good way to end your friendship with your betrothed friend and strengthen her isolation. Doing that will make her more reliant on her fiancé. You will have vented your dislike and done your duty/more harm than good.
A better goal is to see if you can get your friend to be more careful in terms of making such an important life decision, without suggesting in any way that your negative feelings for her fiancé are the reason for your advice. You can tell her to look before she leaps without indicating that there’s a specific pile of shit to avoid.
Tell her that you wish to help her gather all the information she needs to make an objective assessment of his suitability as a partner. It’s similar to the information she would want if she were evaluating him for a job and did not want to be overly influenced by liking, love or lust.
With her blessing and/or involvement, find out what you can about his track record with money, jobs, and relationships. She might not take your findings to heart, but if there’s any way to get her to acknowledge his shortcomings, an “objective” background check is your best bet.
Remember, let the bad rap sheet speak for itself and keep your negative feelings to yourself. Your only good justification for speaking up (as opposed to your intuitive dislike) is your belief that every partnership carries high risk and that it’s your job, as a friend, to check over her due diligence review of her prospective partner’s strengths and weaknesses. The more she likes him, the more careful she needs to be, and the harder your job becomes.
STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that excludes feelings and focuses entirely on the need for her to make a rational assessment. “I’m happy that you’re happy with your fiancé and believe you have much to gain and give in a good partnership. And there’s no doubt that you and he make one another happy, which is wonderful to see. But the more you like him, the more certain you need to be that he checks out in the way a good partner needs to check out. You need to be sure that he’s been steady with his old friends and past relationships, reasonable in the way he handles money, good about holding up his end of responsibilities, and interested in the same life priorities that you are. If we all lived in a small town, you’d have this information, but in big city society, it’s impossible to know without checking.
Those are the issues that break up marriages, regardless of how strongly people love one another. So my advice is to find out all you can and, if you’re willing, I’ll share whatever I can dig up. I hope everything checks out but, if it doesn’t, we’re both more interested in the strength of your partnership in years to come, after you’ve built a family, than in how happy you are right now.”
I’m getting married in a few weeks, and I know the cliché is that the bride turns into a monster, but I think I’m holding it together pretty well while my fiancé’s family has become a royal pain in the ass. Every other day, his mother is calling asking if I’ve made appointments for her to get her hair and nails done, or if I’ve picked up her dress, and it’s not like I have a wedding planner, so I’m organizing everything else and she wants me to plan her a freakin’ make-over (and did I mention she didn’t even show up to my bridal shower? or call the day of?). Then his step-mother was hurt that I didn’t involve her in the planning and suggested that her husband, my fiancé’s father, would not be able to afford to come until my fiancé and I offered to pay for their plane tickets (we are not rich!). I know that once the wedding’s over this will probably calm down, but I’m still worried that it won’t and that I’m stuck related to these jerks for the rest of my life. My goal is to get through this, this being the wedding and the marriage.
Bridezillas are dangerous, not because of their ability to breathe fire and crush Tokyo, but because they’ve convinced themselves that their wedding is “their day” and must be perfected and controlled by them at any cost. Why anyone would think they could perfectly manage a full-scale production of thousands and enjoy themselves is beyond me.
(Then again, I don’t understand paying thousands of dollars for a dress you wear once and flowers that die by sunset, but I’m a guy, and these behaviors were not covered in my residency.)
In your case, you have appropriately relinquished control of “your day,” and while it’s good to let go of the responsibility for creating a perfect wedding for yourself, you also need to let go of the responsibility for making your future in-laws happy. It’s as dangerous as a giant monster to do that, because there are always limits to how happy you can make them, tight budget or not, and the resulting strain can be hard for your marital partnership and alienate those you would most like to bring together.
A better goal is to do a good job as you define it while keeping expectations as low as possible and discouraging too much input. Avoid the we’re-all-delirious-girls-together-cliché over-excitement. You’re offering your friends and families a chance to get behind your union and plans for the next generation. You don’t have to offer them a free ride to a spa.
You can be excited about the wedding and have strong feelings about how it should be conducted, but don’t share too much of that excitement or invite too much input unless you think the results will be positive. With this family, your good deeds of in-law pampering will get you punished, so don’t do them. Keep it simple.
Offer them respect, an appropriate welcome, and your hope that they’ll have a good time. Your goal isn’t to ensure that they’ll be happy, but to give them a chance to be happy. It’s also to feel sufficiently confident that you’ve done a good enough job so that you can face down hints of criticism without having to defend yourself. And it’s to keep your stepmother from getting drunk and making a speech.
STATEMENT:
Compose a statement. “My fiancé and I are happy to be getting married and pleased to share the event with our families. We’ll keep things simple because it’s necessary and we think it’s best. Some of you may have specific hopes or expectations about a wedding that this wedding will not meet. But we believe this wedding will be meaningful and, like our marriage, will draw on the best of our traditions.”
