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Entry tags:
Wedding booze
Dear Miss Manners: Our daughter is getting married in about six months. My husband and I told her that we would help out financially, and have contributed a significant amount thus far. She and her fiancé have to cover some of the costs, as well. The groom’s parents are not contributing anything toward the reception.
My daughter doesn’t share the same etiquette as I do on certain things. She balked at our wanting to invite seven friends, but then I found out that she invited about 40 more guests than originally planned. She will give all of her guests a plus-one, but was reluctant to do the same for her one aunt.
She chose to have a destination wedding that’s about 90 minutes away from our city. In our area, wedding receptions include an open bar, but she told me that they will only have an open bar for three hours, ending with a cash bar. We offered to pay for the additional hour, as we feel like you should provide for your guests, especially if you are asking people to travel out of town for your wedding (and possibly expect them to pay for lodging for the night).
She won’t hear of it. Their logic for not having an open bar for the full evening is that the groom has one friend who might drink too much. (Just don’t invite him?)
We are feeling a lot of frustration, as she doesn’t accept any suggestions from us and feels that she knows everything. Another relative did this to her parents: insisted that she knew everything, and then ran out of wine right after dinner. Our daughter has told us that she won’t repeat that behavior, but she is showing all the signs of doing just that.
Am I out of touch, or out of line, in wanting to provide an open bar for the guests? I see it as a courtesy, and if we are willing to pick up the additional $7 a person, it is worth it.
MM: Just because someone is paying for a wedding does not mean that their decisions should dominate, Miss Manners has often said. But just because they are the parents does.
Your daughter’s rejection of your generosity is baffling. And her logic that the drunk friend will drink less for the one hour that he has to pay for it is even more so. If your daughter is truly concerned about the well-being of this gentleman, then offer to close the bar and shut down the party entirely after three hours.
Faced with the prospect of ending the festivities early, Miss Manners feels fairly certain she will come around.
My daughter doesn’t share the same etiquette as I do on certain things. She balked at our wanting to invite seven friends, but then I found out that she invited about 40 more guests than originally planned. She will give all of her guests a plus-one, but was reluctant to do the same for her one aunt.
She chose to have a destination wedding that’s about 90 minutes away from our city. In our area, wedding receptions include an open bar, but she told me that they will only have an open bar for three hours, ending with a cash bar. We offered to pay for the additional hour, as we feel like you should provide for your guests, especially if you are asking people to travel out of town for your wedding (and possibly expect them to pay for lodging for the night).
She won’t hear of it. Their logic for not having an open bar for the full evening is that the groom has one friend who might drink too much. (Just don’t invite him?)
We are feeling a lot of frustration, as she doesn’t accept any suggestions from us and feels that she knows everything. Another relative did this to her parents: insisted that she knew everything, and then ran out of wine right after dinner. Our daughter has told us that she won’t repeat that behavior, but she is showing all the signs of doing just that.
Am I out of touch, or out of line, in wanting to provide an open bar for the guests? I see it as a courtesy, and if we are willing to pick up the additional $7 a person, it is worth it.
MM: Just because someone is paying for a wedding does not mean that their decisions should dominate, Miss Manners has often said. But just because they are the parents does.
Your daughter’s rejection of your generosity is baffling. And her logic that the drunk friend will drink less for the one hour that he has to pay for it is even more so. If your daughter is truly concerned about the well-being of this gentleman, then offer to close the bar and shut down the party entirely after three hours.
Faced with the prospect of ending the festivities early, Miss Manners feels fairly certain she will come around.
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It took me a second to realize that the LW is calling a wedding ninety minutes from the city a "destination wedding" is probably at least partly so people can get drunk and not have to drive home afterwards. Which is the responsible decision, but it presupposes a level of drinking culture that perhaps the couple getting married don't necessarily subscribe to.
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Right? It’s like a trial subscription after which the paywall slams down.
(If this in the US, I suspect the “destination” may be a wet county.)
Another relative did this to her parents: insisted that she knew everything, and then ran out of wine right after dinner.
Must…not…make…gratuitous…Biblical…references.
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and why is Miss Manners advocating for nonsensical manipulation
and that's not a destination wedding
*throws hands up*
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to me, a destination wedding is one everyone *including the people getting married* have to fly to.
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It's kind of like when my cousin got married in 2001 - she and her husband lived in New Orleans, but her family lived in Connecticut/New Jersey and his lived in Texas/Colorado. So sure, them getting married in New Orleans wasn't a destination for them, but it was for the vast majority of their guests
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No matter how much money you donated, LW, you should BUG OUT of the wedding organisation. Paying for a portion of the wedding is a gift to the couple being married, not an "in" on the organisation of the event.
Disclaimer: I may still be bitter that one of the stepbrothers wanted his wedding reception at an expensive restaurant, so his mother paid for it under the condition that his father and my mum (his stepmother) would be excluded from every speech and would not be allowed to do the "who comes to represent this man" part of the ceremony. She tried that shit with his brother, a decade later, but stepbrother 2 bucked that.
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— Three hours of free drinks is plenty hospitable. If your party will be that long, transition hour four to mocktails, hot cocoa, etc. 90 minutes away means a lot of people will be driving back.
— The wedding is for the bride and groom, not the parents—wtf is MM thinking. (Note the % parents are contributing is not specified.)
— “she doesn’t accept any suggestions from us and feels that she knows everything.” Gee, wonder where she got that trait from, mom who wants to uninvite groom’s friend, invite her own friends, and keep the booze flowing all night…
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"...you may be relieved to hear that selling drinks is disgusting. By serving them tea and homemade cake, she could be perfectly gracious within the limits of the budget."
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I think this is terrible advice, the parents don’t get to dictate the terms of the wedding, it’s entirely reasonable to want to stop serving alcohol at a certain hour (particularly if you don’t want guests to get hammered!!)
Perhaps switching to mocktails and sodas versus switching to a cash bar would work better, but in the end, it’s the couple’s decision.
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Agreed. I know the writer is not the original Judith Martin, but I don't know who it is. I have wondered if it changed again in just the last few years.
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Judith Martin always would say (paraphrase) "the way to not have to listen to your parents' opinions about how to have a wedding is to not take their money, and instead have the wedding you can afford without it." She'd say it differently than this letter does, but she was pretty adamant about that one.
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LW is way too invested in what people will think of daughter's wedding. (And it's her wedding; daughter and fiancé get to say "we'd rather invite these 40 people than these 7 friends of LW", assuming they're staying within the number of invitees LW's agreed to finance.) OMG so inhospitable for cutting off the booze in the final hour!
Daughter has a ridiculous excuse for refusing the extra hour of open bar. If the friend has that much of a drinking problem, having to pay for his booze after three hours of open bar won't stop him. Skip the open bar and do drink tickets instead, or *gasp* don't have the booze. (I admit to being kind of on LW's side here; if I had a friend who drank too much and I wanted to have an open bar at all, I'd be inclined to not invite that friend. But that's daughter & fiancé's call, not LW's call.)
LW needs to let daughter make "mistakes" about the reception. If running out of wine is something that's still talked about and whether that couple has a good marriage isn't on the radar, LW's family has weird priorities, but LW can take comfort in being able to say "I told you that the one hour of cash bar would have disastrous consequences" till the end of time.