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Staddon-Neely nuptials and aftermath (2)


SpoonfulOSugar

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The Neely Team blog has been updated with some pictures from the wedding. I noticed the two youngest Neely sisters, Bethany and Hannah, were flower girls rather than bridesmaids. I don't know if they volunteered to be flower girls or if they were just shoved into the role (if they volunteered, that's very sweet). If they had no choice in the matter, that seems kind of insulting. I know that slightly older girls can be flower girls if they want, but going by birth dates I gleaned from the slideshow and the website, Bethany is nearly 12 years old. At that age, most girls are junior bridesmaids instead. Couldn't they have been junior bridesmaids? Sauntina, Marilee, and Nameless Niece all wore the same outfits as Bethany and Hannah anyway, so I would've just left the flower-girling to them. They'd be adorable flower girls!

It just made me think about how in a lot of these families, the kids aren't fully considered adults until they marry off, and so I'm wondering if the girls only get to be bridesmaids if they've come of courting age. Which kind of makes two girls that are almost teenagers having to dress exactly the same as their toddler nieces seem even sadder. :(

Also, I noticed the blog made reference to Kathryn with no mention of a name change, so either she didn't go through with changing her name to Sara-Kathryn or only changed it to such on paper for some odd reason.

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I just took a gander at the blessed wedding pictures on the Neely site. While they are lovely, I just can't get over how outrageously young they both look; they almost look like they're little kids playing dress up.

If they're truly happy, then that's all that matters really (to me, anyways). But there's no way in hell I could imagine getting married, especially being as young as they are.

Good luck, kids.

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6 hours ago, AliC said:

The Neely Team blog has been updated with some pictures from the wedding. I noticed the two youngest Neely sisters, Bethany and Hannah, were flower girls rather than bridesmaids. I don't know if they volunteered to be flower girls or if they were just shoved into the role (if they volunteered, that's very sweet). If they had no choice in the matter, that seems kind of insulting. I know that slightly older girls can be flower girls if they want, but going by birth dates I gleaned from the slideshow and the website, Bethany is nearly 12 years old. At that age, most girls are junior bridesmaids instead. Couldn't they have been junior bridesmaids? Sauntina, Marilee, and Nameless Niece all wore the same outfits as Bethany and Hannah anyway, so I would've just left the flower-girling to them. They'd be adorable flower girls!

It just made me think about how in a lot of these families, the kids aren't fully considered adults until they marry off, and so I'm wondering if the girls only get to be bridesmaids if they've come of courting age. Which kind of makes two girls that are almost teenagers having to dress exactly the same as their toddler nieces seem even sadder. :(

Also, I noticed the blog made reference to Kathryn with no mention of a name change, so either she didn't go through with changing her name to Sara-Kathryn or only changed it to such on paper for some odd reason.

She already had NINE bridesmaids. I think she had to make them flower girls because 11 bridesmaids would be ridiculous. 

But I admit, I hate enormous wedding parties. It's just a huge pain in the butt and completely unnecessary. But I will refrain from ranting...

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4 hours ago, LadyCrow1313 said:

I just took a gander at the blessed wedding pictures on the Neely site. While they are lovely, I just can't get over how outrageously young they both look; they almost look like they're little kids playing dress up.

Agreed. Beautiful photos, beautiful dress but... I feel the same as you about most of the fundie wedding pictures; they often look like they should be prom pictures, until you realize it's a wedding. I think the wildest thing for me, as someone not raised fundie, is realizing that this situation looks totally normal to the parties involved. 

I'm amused at the explanation on their website for choosing a flawless diamond for the engagement ring. Like, stop trying to add on some imaginary Christian significance to choosing pricey diamond -- we all know he's just trying to figure out a way to brag that he bought her a more expen$ive diamond. 

Quote

I knew Kathryn’s ring needed to be 100% pure as an accurate reflection of the internal character of Christ that radiates from her life.

:pantsonfire:

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10 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

She already had NINE bridesmaids. I think she had to make them flower girls because 11 bridesmaids would be ridiculous. 

But I admit, I hate enormous wedding parties. It's just a huge pain in the butt and completely unnecessary. But I will refrain from ranting...

Good point. My aunt had ten bridesmaids when she got married the first time (and no, my family isn't fundie in any way), so I know what you mean by ridiculous. Not that nine bridesmaids and five flower girls are any better. xD

I actually never got to see the entire wedding (I had only remembered to turn it on just a few minutes before the first kiss (the incredibly awkward first kiss)), so when I need to put on some background sound and video while I do something like knit, I might start from the beginning there. Because that's likely the only way I'll be able to sit through all of that.

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10 hours ago, AliC said:

Good point. My aunt had ten bridesmaids when she got married the first time (and no, my family isn't fundie in any way), so I know what you mean by ridiculous. Not that nine bridesmaids and five flower girls are any better. xD

I actually never got to see the entire wedding (I had only remembered to turn it on just a few minutes before the first kiss (the incredibly awkward first kiss)), so when I need to put on some background sound and video while I do something like knit, I might start from the beginning there. Because that's likely the only way I'll be able to sit through all of that.

I was in a wedding with 8 bridesmaids including myself as MOH. It was a clusterfuck. It's so hard to coordinate 8 women, the bride, the groom, 8 groomsmen, 2 flower girls and a ring bearer. And I'm positive she barely even talks to 3 of those bridesmaids nowadays. I had 3 bridesmaids. A sister, a cousin, and a best friend. It made things so much easier. 

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My sister stood up with me. Twice. First time, I did have two other bridesmaids and a junior bridesmaid. That was quite enough drama.

I knew a girl who had 15 bridesmaids. Nope, not fundy. Just friendly. She did admit that five years later she couldn't remember some of their names.

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1 hour ago, Four is Enough said:

My sister stood up with me. Twice. First time, I did have two other bridesmaids and a junior bridesmaid. That was quite enough drama.

I knew a girl who had 15 bridesmaids. Nope, not fundy. Just friendly. She did admit that five years later she couldn't remember some of their names.

I have a friend who basically lived the movie "27 dresses." She was in something like 11 weddings before she was married. So she felt she had to include all those girls as her bridesmaids too! Her wedding party was enormous. I remember telling her a few years before she got married that she should not feel obligated to put me in her wedding because I knew it would be big enough already. I enjoyed just being her guest at her wedding!

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We had a large wedding party--6 bridesmaids and 6 groomspeople. It was fine, mostly because we're all older and we didn't have any children in or at our evening wedding.

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I know a couple that had 12 bridesmaids and 12 groomsmen, not fundy...they were on that show "four weddings". 

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Neat hearing about everyone else's wedding experiences :) the only time I was ever in a wedding, I was 5 years old and was another aunt's flower girl. Can't use the saying "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" on me lol. I'm sorry if I might've offended anyone by implying such a large number of bridesmaids was ridiculous--I realize fully that everyone has different reasons for having as many as they do. It's just that whenever I get married I'll likely only have three attendants and couldn't see making so many people part of the party a good idea, just for the sake of not leaving anybody out or being accused of favoritism. But again, my family wasn't fundie or Quiverfull in any way even though my mom was one of ten kids, so I don't understand fundie wedding logistics.

So I got around to watching Kathryn and Daniel's wedding. And then because I'm either certifiably insane or difficult to bore, I watched Amanda's wedding to Matthew Wilkes. I have to say, despite the weddings being so similar (the families singing hymns before and during the wedding, the groom giving a pre-wedding sermon, nobody standing for the bride (wtf?), much talk of purity and death and how infallible the Bible is, that same old man (I think it's the same old man) doing a random sermon in the middle of the ceremony), they were very different in certain aspects.

  • Obviously, besides the location being the same and the church decorations being practically the same too, one difference between Kathryn and Amanda's weddings were the bridal party colors. At Kathryn's, it was coral. At Amanda's, it was...black, which kind of surprised me even when I first saw the wedding pictures years ago. Are there any other weddings that have been discussed on here where the wedding party was dressed in black? Kind of edgy coming from this set!
  • Is it just me, or did the "production values" seem higher for Amanda's wedding than for Kathryn's wedding? There was such a big deal made over Kathryn's wedding, seems to me even more so than Amanda's. So then why on earth did it seem like with Kathryn's wedding, they just shoved a camera at the back of the room and left it running? In the video for Amanda's wedding, there wasn't as much boring crud like people being seated, and the camera was cut off immediately after the families and the bridal party walked out of the church. It was much clearer too, where I could see everything and hear everyone better. It's a shame that the audio on Kathryn's Google Hangout video was so poor, as the Neelys can certainly sing very well, but you'd never guess from that video.
  • Despite Daniel sounding like his voice had only just cracked, he seems to be rather confident while speaking. I was surprised to hear how soft-spoken Matthew and his father seem to be. Matt honestly kind of seemed like he wanted to get done with his sermon as soon as possible, and much more comfortable once Amanda was up there with him. Amanda also seems to be a fairly quiet girl; they go together well. In fact, I'm guessing that many of the Wilkes family members value their privacy, which is why the blog hasn't been updated in a long time and we've heard virtually nothing else about these two, Joshua and Lisa or Jenny and Derrick.
  • Both kissing parts of these weddings were incredibly awkward to watch, but it's amazing how differently their responses to it were after having to put up with even more hymns and sermons in between the ring exchange and this. Kathryn and Daniel, despite going at it as gracefully as two drunk teenagers on a skateboard, at least tried to kiss, even though everyone was laughing. Amanda and Matthew...they just kind of stared at each other. Well no, now that I went back and watched that part again real quick, they did kiss very quickly before Dad Neely said they could kiss, but then after that they just stared at each other. To their credit, they did look really happy while staring at each other, but still, I don't know which kiss was more awkward.
  • Did Mr. Neely seriously bring up a burn victim when talking about how he wants Amanda's life to glorify God? Does anybody want that kind of mental picture in their head during a wedding? O_O
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It just dawned on me who she resembles, Bryce Dallas Howard.

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Three bridesmaids here! When I was planning with my then-fiancé, he told me I could choose the number of attendants and he'd go along with it. When I said "three", his mouth hung open. "Just three? Don't girls have 15 people stand up?"

Not here. A friend had seven attendants and the drama was over-the-top. Our wedding party was awesome.

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I had three bridesmaids, too - Triplet1, Triplet2 and one of our cousins. I would have had said cousin's sister as well, but she was in Australia at the time so couldn't come.

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i had two attendants--my sister and Mr. CL's.   he had three--all lifelong close friends (we have no brothers).  i had moved to the area only a few years earlier, so my closest friends were out of state and could not easily participate.  we kept the odd number because we thought it was silly to drop one of the friends or add a random female just for the sake of symmetry.  

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I had 5 bridesmaids. 2 of which were forced upon me by my mother. I didn't even get to ask my bestie because of family pressure.

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2 hours ago, EmiGirl said:

I had 5 bridesmaids. 2 of which were forced upon me by my mother. I didn't even get to ask my bestie because of family pressure.

That's horrible :( I hope nothing of the sort is ever pushed upon me. I doubt it will be, though, since my parents know I'm not too close to too many people in the family. Only my brother and his wife and two kids, as well as my two best friends are the only ones besides my parents I expect to really play a big part in my (hypothetical) wedding.

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On 5.8.2016 at 3:04 PM, LadyCrow1313 said:

I just took a gander at the blessed wedding pictures on the Neely site. While they are lovely, I just can't get over how outrageously young they both look; they almost look like they're little kids playing dress up.

If they're truly happy, then that's all that matters really (to me, anyways). But there's no way in hell I could imagine getting married, especially being as young as they are.

Good luck, kids.

They look really happy and the bride is beautiful! But yet I have to agree that they look really young. Way too young to be married.

It's such a fucked up system that they are now considered adults just because they are allowed to have sex.

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9 hours ago, EmiGirl said:

I had 5 bridesmaids. 2 of which were forced upon me by my mother. I didn't even get to ask my bestie because of family pressure.

The same thing happened to my friends sister. She wanted her childhood best friend in her wedding but their mother told her no and she had all her cousins. 

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You'll have to forgive my ignorance, please (first generation American and occasionally American norms slip through my cracks of understanding), but... what is the benefit of being a bridesmaid and why do people want to do it?

I've even BEEN a bridesmaid, and I'm really not sure. At worst, you have to spend a lot of money, you wear a dress you hate, you have to participate in wayyyyy more photos being taken when you could be eating all the delicious food with the other guests... even in a best case scenario I just don't understand what the perks are. 

I'm sure the bride (a close friend) would have been offended if I asked this question, so here's my opportunity! Why would cousins, etc, battle over being a bridesmaid? Why would anybody want to do it other than as a favor to a bride?

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