Joy and Austin: Switzerland to the Backwoods of Arkansas

[Million Children For Jesus]

4 minutes ago, Iokaste said:

You're right, "normal" is the wrong word to use, so maybe a better question is: did it strike you as odd, or was it within expectations of what a wedding might be like to Americans?  

Odd. I can't speak for the entire USA because we have a countless number of cultures and subcultures, but for my area, that's unheard of. 

Traditionally, weddings had a sit-down dinner. Then buffets became vogue and, at first, old people thought they were tacky. Now, they're kindof the norm. The last 10 weddings I went to had a buffet with appetizers and an open bar (free drinks) in the time after the ceremony, but before the reception. This is set up during the time it takes for the wedding party to take pictures and for guests to arrive at the reception location. (Sometimes the ceremony and reception are at the same location, but not always.) Usually an hour to 90 minutes. The reception is either a sit-down dinner or more buffets. Usually, there is a cash bar at that time and people are sad because the drinks are no longer free. Every wedding I have been to has had a cake, or even two cakes, and some have had multiple desserts, such as a candy buffet, a cookie buffet, a popcorn machine, etc. 

I've never heard of a couple leaving early. That would be considered rude. 

[VeganCupcake]

16 minutes ago, Million Children For Jesus said:

The reception is either a sit-down dinner or more buffets. Usually, there is a cash bar at that time and people are sad because the drinks are no longer free. Every wedding I have been to has had a cake, or even two cakes, and some have had multiple desserts, such as a candy buffet, a cookie buffet, a popcorn machine, etc. 

I've never heard of a couple leaving early. That would be considered rude. 

I've never been to a wedding with a cash bar during any portion of the event. Wine is most always served with dinner, and often cocktails too. A free champagne toast is the norm. Yes most people would find it extremely rude and strange for the couple to rush off. 

[HarryPotterFan]

 

3 hours ago, Iokaste said:

Is it normal to just have a reception but no dinner or real party for a wedding?

I'm used to Jewish weddings, which mean lots and lots of food. O'derve a before the ceremony, big reception with lots of food and dancing after.

@FundieCentral I hear you on the whole insecurity despite having a master's degree thing. My family is full of people in the medical field/STEM, and my masters feels like nothing in comparison. I also haven't had the opportunity to do much with it, so it feels like it isn't worth the paper it's written on.

[Carm_88]

I'm in Canada and I have never been to a wedding that didn't have a proper sit down reception. 

[HereticHick]

I've never heard of the bride and groom leaving the reception early. That seems tacky.

[Four is Enough]

12 hours ago, Daisy0322 said:

@Four is Enough  you just made me so happy! So many people don't know what we do and just think we are breathing treatment jockies. You're my favorite person right now 

Aw, thanks. I used to work nights in an ICU. I had to learn how to do many treatments because the RT weren't on at night... Thank Heaven that rule changed! You all count among my favorite people, too!!

 

7 minutes ago, HereticHick said:

I've never heard of the bride and groom leaving the reception early. That seems tacky.

I thought the bride and groom came to the reception, ate, cut the cake, and changed into their "going away clothes", then left amid a shower of rice, while the party raged on for several hours after.. as in, "Father of the Bride" type movies.

[JesSky03]

I've never been a to a wedding without a dinner either, or dancing for that matter. We had a buffet style dinner for own wedding and while we did not have an open bar, we did buy two half barrels of beer so that was free for everyone during the reception (free soda too). 

About halfway through our reception we had people asking us when we were leaving or why we were still here. We found it odd that people expected us to ditch out early but we ended up leaving by 11, even though the dancing went until midnight. I didn't like the pressure we felt to leave but in the end it was probably a blessing. We were leaving for our honeymoon the next day so we wanted to get some sleep and really the only people still hanging around until midnight were on their way to being pretty trashed so we really didn't miss much. 

[Thorns]

Screw expectations, and screw education just for the sake of education. And screw "not knowing what life is about when I'm 20 'cos everyone thinks I should ". Life is life, and it does not matter what title you've got or how statusy your job is. I loved the reply about loving the factory job <3

Life is about every day, the road traveled and the experiences, small and big. @FundieCentral you will get there. The road is the important part. Suddenly you figure it all out, and if you don't, that is fine too. And @hollywood, I was 23 when I started on my "proper" education, and I would not be without that time for the world. 4 years of doing lots of random stuff, working and learning, and just living not taking it too seriously. It made me a better worker, and a better human being. 

The important workers in society is often the ones we don't appreciate enough. Cleaners, for instance, you can't do without them, and their importance in public health can't be calculated. Same with janitors, trash collectors, our society and health would collapse without them. The nurses aides. The clerks and secretarial staff, don't get me started, they are invaluable. The transporters, the construction workers, and all the other pieces of our societal machinery. Underestimated and undervalued, but essentially the reason we are here. 

So if that is what you want to do, or if that is what you end up doing, if you love it or you don't, screw people that thinks of it as "not good enough". They are idiots.

Tl;dr: Society would collapse without the jobs that are most undervalued. And screw everyone

 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

53 minutes ago, Four is Enough said:

I thought the bride and groom came to the reception, ate, cut the cake, and changed into their "going away clothes", then left amid a shower of rice, while the party raged on for several hours after.. as in, "Father of the Bride" type movies.

This is how mine was, minus the rice.  We left about 9:30 (4:00 wedding) I was exhausted and wanted to get some sleep before our early flight the next morning. I guess a lot of guests hung around until 1:00 am  they ordered pizza and just kept on going. 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

38 minutes ago, Thorns said:

Tl;dr: Society would collapse without the jobs that are most undervalued. And screw everyone

 

Pretty much agree with everything you said.  I don't care what any one does with their lives as long as they are good people and treat other with respect and mind their own damn business if they don't like someone elses life choices.  You wan to work digging ditches, go for it, someone has to do it. and it isn't going to be me, I'm lazy.  I have this fight with some uppity members of my family every so often. DH is a plumber so I use that for an example a lot. I will say fine we can't have plumbers fire them all we'll all be swimming in our own shit & piss in a year. 

I had to rip a soon to be ex friend a new one for whining about not getting her lunch fast enough and saying they don't deserve a living wage.  I'm like of course, princess had to wait for something, so screw them, how dare they keep YOU waiting.  I told her you have no idea why they had a problem, it could be any number of things all out of their control, but you choose to think they are morons who can't figure out how to do their jobs and therefore not worthy of being treated decently. 

 

[OyToTheVey]

On 6/17/2017 at 9:50 PM, HarryPotterFan said:

I have no fucking clue what I want to do. I'm 27, have a master's degree, and working in my field has made me hate it and desperate to escape it. I have no idea what to do.

Pretty much me. I'm almost 34, I have a master's, worked in the field a couple of years and absolutely hated it. I'm now taking a sabatical from it. I'm not sure I'll ever go back. Mind you I pretty much hate what I'm doing now too. So I really don't know.

[mpheels]

 

6 hours ago, Iokaste said:

So I watched the wedding last night and have a few questions for the USians here:

Is it normal to just have a reception but no dinner or real party for a wedding?

It's fairly common in parts of the Southern US, though that is changing as more people move from other parts of the country to Southern cities and mega-weddings get a lot of TV air time. In my family, most weddings are a mid-afternoon church wedding, followed by a reception with cake, punch, and mints in the church fellowship hall. A "fancy" wedding might have finger sandwiches and/or canapes. If the couple attends a very liberal church, they might have a champagne toast. This was the norm 30 years ago. Now bigger weddings are more common for people who live in cities, but the small/simple reception is still pretty common in rural communities.

[VineHeart137]

My experience with weddings has always been exactly the same as @Million Children For Jesus, except for the cash bar. I've never been to a wedding with a cash bar and in fact have always heard that they're tacky and rude. Every wedding I've been to that served alcohol has either had an open bar through the whole thing, or limited the drinks, like only doing champagne for the toasts.

[Georgiana]

Where I am from, what is expected of the wedding reception is dictated by the time at which it is held.  If you hold your reception over a meal time, you are expected to provide that meal for your guests.  

So if you have an informal wedding at 1:00 PM and the reception from 2-5, you can get away with only providing light refreshments.  But if you have your wedding at 5:00, you should DEFINITELY be providing dinner to the guests.

If you want to go cheaper, there are ways to do that without treating your guests poorly.  For example, if you have a 10:00 AM wedding you can provide your guests brunch or lunch, which is usually MUCH cheaper per head and less formal.  

Custom also dictates that you should provide as many meals as possible for any traveling guests.  Usually dinner the night before the wedding and breakfast the morning after.  You do not need to invite all guests to these extra meals, so you can restrict it to closer friends and family (and anyone close enough to travel for you).  These can be (and often are) more pot luck style where friends and family help to provide the food.  

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

Weddings that I normally attend serve beer & wine with a full stocked, cash bar, if you want anything besides what is being offered for free.  Depending on where you are in the US some will find this totally acceptable other will find it rude.  Just as there are some who find cake a punch receptions (ala the Duggars) rude while other don't.  

[nausicaa]

4 hours ago, Iokaste said:

You're right, "normal" is the wrong word to use, so maybe a better question is: did it strike you as odd, or was it within expectations of what a wedding might be like to Americans?  

Definitely seems odd to this American. Been to about twenty-five weddings, and never been to one without a sit down dinner or a buffet, even in the South. 

Cash bars are generally looked down on in my circles (and in my Irish-American family they are unheard of), but I've been to two weddings where there were cash bars. One wedding it might have been a cultural thing; the other wedding the couple really couldn't afford the big white wedding the bride's mother had pressured them to have. (There was a buffet, but they ran out of food. It was bad. They would have been better off just having cookies and punch in the church afterward.)

[QuiverFullofBooks]

I think of Joy's reception as being more old-fashioned, small-town, and Southern than most of my personal experience, but not inappropriate within that context. It used to be very common to have only a stand-up reception with finger foods and no alcohol. I think it's still common for large afternoon weddings in the Bible Belt (like Joy's). As for the couple leaving early, it used to be considered very rude to leave a wedding reception before the bride and groom. Some couples would even leave and come back, to give those who wanted to leave a chance to go. In the days when premarital sex was rare, everyone understood that the couple wanted to get it on. 

[December]

I've been to weddings in various parts of the US, formal and informal, religious and non-religious,  and they all had some sort of substantial food offerings for guests. Maybe I've just been lucky?        

Brunch at morning ones, lots of hors d'oeuvres at afternoon ones, and a buffet or sit-down dinner at evening ones. It makes sense to me, as at least in my experience you usually have people driving like an hour+ to get to the   event.

[Fundie Bunny]

Here I have never ever seen a bride or groom leaves the reception early. They have paid for the whole mess, they might as well enjoy it 

And every wedding here has a sit down meal. Unless it's a really casual and low key wedding, but that'she unheard of. And i'm going to a wedding in a couple of weeks that will only have an open bar until 3 am or so, so i'm taking my flask  

[O Latin]

I think I've said before that dinner/dancing/alcohol receptions sound like absolute hell to me. I would infinitely rather attend an ice cream in the parking lot in November reception. 

Wasn't Joy's wedding at 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening? So then it would have been at least 7:30 or 8:00 by the time the reception got started. To me that seem late in the evening to have a full meal anyway, especially if the guests are mostly families with kids.  

[EmmieJ]

On 6/17/2017 at 8:29 PM, singsingsing said:

For me, that was 100% true. And I realized that the things I loved were things I do outside of work. So I came to realize that what I really want is a stable, decent-paying job with benefits, where I don't have to take work home. Regular hours, no shenanigans. Five days a week, eight hours a day (I mean, ideally I'd love to work four days a week for six hours a day, but this is the real world).

When I first started college, I planned to become a teacher.  After finishing up my general ed stuff and getting into education classes, I realized that I don't have the proper temperament for teaching.  So I changed my major to English Lit with a minor in history and graduated, with no clear idea what I'd do with my degree.  Ended up temping for a bunch of firms, doing admin stuff.  I liked the variety but when I was ready to settle down, I got a job offer from a law firm for legal secretarial work.  I liked the work because it's both cut and dried (there is a process to be followed, step A, then step B, etc.) but also each case has its own unique set of facts.  Plus, it paid pretty well at the time.  I made enough to easily support myself, still have extra money to take nice vacations, do fun stuff on the week-ends, etc.

Now, 30 years later, I'm still in the same field although as time went by, I became an office manager, a bookkeeper, a paralegal.  I work for a small firm, have a lot of autonomy in my work.  I worked briefly for in the legal dept of a big corporate entity and soon realized the corporate world and all its BS is not for me.  I've been fairly content in my career but now I'm ready to retire.  I can't say my work has been my passion.  Raising my child was my passion - that will always remain the time of my life where I felt the most fulfilled, the most needed, and both the happiest and sometimes the saddest.  I'm guessing when the time comes, my second favorite time of my life will be when I'm a grandma. 

[Chewing Gum]

4 hours ago, Jessie E said:

 

A close friend of mine got married at 19 as well. She was pregnant with her first child one month after the wedding. She was pregnant with her second child 6 months after having her first.  She has major regrets about doing it all so young and fast. She has told me this more than once.  I know it may be different for Austin and Joy because of their upbringing and beliefs  but my heart still hurts for them. Now I just hope that Joy has a better outcome then poor Anna.

On the other hand, she'll be done by 40, and can spend 20+ years traveling. Both early or late parenting have their good sides. 

[FundieCentral]

@Million Children For Jesus: 

funny enough, yes, many times actually. Thanks for bringing that up again, and also whoever suggested outdoor education. Totally might be a thing. I'll update you guys in a year or two.  

I think I always get analysis of the paralysis because I set out to find THE thing. Which doesn't exist. And after looking at 5000 university Homepages and career counselling websites and job adverts later, I could cry every time. So overwhelming.  

[Jana814]

I have to say although I love my business of dog walking/pet sitting. I miss being in an office and being around other people. 

[Swamptribe]

I find the attitude expressed by so many on this board, that somehow, getting married is the end of 'fun' or experience in life, a bit disturbing.   (and yes, I know the Duggars are kind of a weird situation).  Getting married young (or at all) doesn't mean you are settling.  Married people can still go on to get a higher education.  They can still travel and have great life experiences. You can still experience life in all it's glory. What it very much means is that you have chosen a proverbial partner in crime to share all those exciting things with. To share your future with.  You take the journey together.

Insisting that someone should 'shop around' or get their degree and have a life, before they get married is just as judgemental and small minded as the Duggars courting/marriage mindset is.