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Physical wedding invitations are still tradition such that people may get offended if they do not get one in the mail.
by iblaine 10y ago
Physical wedding invitations are still tradition such that people may get offended if they do not get one in the mail.
- UweSchmidt 10y agoThat's a good chance to set the tone on how you'll intend to live life from now on. Many people seem fall back to tradition, succumb to pressure and go against their own values when the wedding comes around: Spending too much on the event, diamond ring, church ceremony despite being non-religious, doing a traditional celebration instead of something individual and fun, or geeky like OP.
- eldavido 10y agoCounterpoint: it's also worth considering the costs of breaking with tradition. I mean, sure, nobody has to get married. But then you might not get custody rights over your children. It might be more difficult to pick your kids up from school. Perhaps it will complicate inheritance. You won't get the tax breaks. You'll have to explain your relationship every time you're introduced to more traditional people, which might include family, or various other people with whom you'd just rather not get into an extended conversation about your life choices. It might complicate banking, especially in case one partner is survived by the other. There's a direct analog to this in tech. Sure, you're only going to win by innovating. But you have to do so sparingly, knowing that innovation is risky, expensive, and difficult. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, it's best to "just use postgres". There are certain things worth innovating on. Perhaps the exchange of some token item (a diamond) is worth one of them. For me, it wasn't, I just bought the stupid thing, and got on with my life. It's nice, it'll last, and it's a time-honored tradition I'll never have to get into 1000 annoying discussions over. Life is just too short, everybody knows it's a diamond, we're married, great.
- imesh 10y agoIs this a cultural thing? I have had 0 discussions about a non-diamond ring.
- Steeeve 10y agoI was in a museum the other day when a guy asked his girlfriend how she would feel about a non-diamond engagement ring. Her reaction was hysterical, and a good laugh was had by about 20 other people. Not likely they are going to be a thing too much longer.
- mixmastamyk 10y agoHysterical but not worth mentioning, eh?
- Steeeve 10y agoSorry... I don't know how to put it into words. There was an immediate pause felt by everyone within earshot, including her. You could tell she was deciding whether the pressure of being in a public social atmosphere was enough to get her to go forever diamond-less. Then the sense of frustration and being offended took over. There was a shriek. There were animated movements. There were at least 7 different facial expressions ranging from anger to flabbergasted to vengeful to mad scientist. There was a very firm "No!" There were some other more colorful words. She stomped off. He followed like a puppy with a tail between his legs. The crowd laughed. Sorry... I'm not really good at this.
- srtjstjsj 10y agoThat's really sad because he was 98% on the right side of the issue, bullied by jerks in the service of a criminal enterprise (deBeers).
- Steeeve 10y agoI don't disagree. But it was a funny moment. He came at it rather innocuously - like he didn't know that it would be a firecracker of a question. Probably was just making conversation. You could have heard a pin drop waiting for her answer though. A room full of people went dead silent. I had a relative that was a jeweler at one point. She's the only person I know who opted out of a diamond engagement ring. "waste of money. there are prettier things that can mean more" Her engagement ring was awesome. I don't know enough about stones to say what it was, but she got compliments frequently.
- mixmastamyk 10y agoLiked your main point, but diamond rings are not time honored but invented through advertising.
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoYou're conflating the cultural traditions of marriage with the legal arrangement. You can still get legally married but dump any of the traditions around it that you want.
- v64 10y ago> You won't get the tax breaks. Or in the case of a lot of folks like myself, it's worth it to break tradition to avoid jumping into a higher tax bracket due to the marriage penalty [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty
- hx87 10y agoWhat are the costs of breaking with "tradition" (mostly 19th century inventions) on a wedding?
- srtjstjsj 10y agoHonest answer: ask your parents, your spouse, and your spouse's parents.
- davidcbc 10y agoAnyone so offended by the lack of a physical invitation that they don't come to my wedding is someone I wouldn't want at my wedding anyway. Two birds, one stone
- x1798DE 10y agoI wasn't offended by lack of a physical invitation, but a friend of mine got married and invited my wife and I in a very informal way with a text message. We ended up waiting until way too late to book tickets, because my wife was expecting a physical invitation to follow the informal SMS save-the-date, and we ended up missing the wedding because flights got ungodly expensive (and involved many complicated connections). Anyway, it's not totally relevant to the main story here, since that was very obviously a "This is the official invitation/confirmation" thing, but I think it's worth considering that if you are going to buck tradition, you should try to be absolutely clear that that's what you're doing so that people can adjust.
- avh02 10y ago"Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" - or words to that effect... By dr. Seuss I believe? (Don't hold me on that attribution)
- tootie 10y agoI personally abhor empty formality. I got married 10+ years ago and can't for the life of me remember what we did for invitations and I doubt anyone who came remembers either. I remember the food pretty well because it was great. We did a chocolate cake (black forest) which people still remember.
- Veen 10y agoI think it's useful to differentiate between empty formality and an effort to raise an occasion above the humdrum of normal existence with rituals and behaviors that connote its specialness. The formality isn't empty in the sense that it's purposeless: it's done for a reason. After all, marriage itself could be considered an empty formality, so if you're going to bother getting married you might as well embrace the formalized aspects of the occasion.
- hx87 10y agoMarriage (the legal bundle of rights and obligations) is certainly not an empty formality, although weddings might be.
- Veen 10y agoIt depends how you construe marriage. Traditionally, it was a vow between two people made at a public ceremony before members of their family and community. The contractual stuff came later, and is arguably the less important aspect. If you take the first view, then the formality of the ceremony and its associated traditions isn't empty — it's the whole point. If you think the contractual, legal aspects of marriage are the the only things that matter, then yeah, might as well just sign on the dotted line.
- odbol_ 10y agoAnd people who get offended at things like that are the exact people I wouldn't want at my wedding.
- srtjstjsj 10y agoCongratulations on being too clever and enlightened to participate in society.