When the Guests Attempt Overthrow
This weekend I attended the most fun wedding I’ve ever been to, besides my own. The ceremony was beautiful, the bride was beautiful, the whole day was beautiful. But then the guests got ugly!
The Expected Order of Other People’s Wedding Days According to Me:
Attend wedding in the middle of the afternoon, after being unsure of what to do for the rest of the day. (This weekend I was involved with the wedding party, so this did not happen. But normally it does as a regular guest.)
Go to wedding, cry, hug couple, take some pictures.
Leave wedding, go back to hotel or out to the bar. Get buzzed or more before reception.
Go to reception at scheduled time as announced in the invitation.
Dance and have a merry time.
A pretty normal day, right? This wedding had an odd glitch in the dinner plans. Since my husband was the best man and I did a reading in the wedding, we went out with the wedding party to a brewery after the wedding and before the reception. As we were having a good ol’ time, the maid of honor received a phone call stating that the guests were at the reception already and wanted to start dinner at 4:30 instead of 5:30.
We were all surprised and unwilling to leave, as it should be, but I remained shocked. Since when did wedding guests get so ballsy? They can’t sit for an hour and wait for the wedding party to get there?
When all was said and done, everything stayed on schedule and the dinner was not moved to an hour earlier. This is a new scenario that most certainly belongs in Emily Post.
Hookers'N'Dogs 
That’s seriously the rudest thing I have ever heard “Can we eat our free food now? We’re really sick of waiting already, and an hour more is just too much”, one more reason for me to hate weddings.
I’m not sure who’s ruder in that situation… The guests were invited to the ceremony at a certain time, so I’m assuming they didn’t arrive at the wedding hall 2 hours early and demand the couple get on with it so they could go eat lunch.
After the ceremony, they have nothing to do but wait around either at home or the reception hall for the wedding party to finish with their photos so that all can eat. They’re not free to go get dinner, because then the bridal couple would wonder why nobody ate the food they paid for, but they are expected to wait until the bridal party arrives before eating. I would say that the happy couple could have planned better for the situation so that their guests are not left to spend the day waiting around in their best clothes.
For the guests to demand being fed before the appointed time is extremely rude, but presumably they were informed ahead of time (on the invitation) that the reception would be held much much later than the ceremony. They could have then declined one event if they had such a dire need to eat that they could not wait for dinner to be served or just waited patiently, knowing it would be a while (i would have just skipped the reception). However, I simply can’t imagine the bridal party out at a bar enjoying their own festivities with the “VIPs” while their less important guests were left twiddling their thumbs.
Just my opinion, but aren’t guests important anymore?
Guests are certainly important. They are part of the celebration.
The reception was scheduled to start at 5:30, as stated on the invitation. The reason for this was to allow time for the pictures, as the wedding was later (2) and about an hour long, then there were photos afterwards. They didn’t want to have people there eating and wondering where they were if the pictures went into overtime.
Every wedding I’ve gone to the reception has been much later than the actual wedding…maybe I am just used to that?
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