I was watching a true crime show which mentioned how this couple couldn’t afford a wedding so they had a big engagement party instead? Which completely confuses me. What’s the difference between a wedding and a big engagement party? Anyway, made me think we should all discuss these Vital Issues.
Emily Post says, “Every wedding is a marriage, but not every marriage is a Wedding”.
With that in mind, if you had to get married in a hurry for some reason:
- Would you get married at the city clerk’s office with no guests and be happy just with that?
- Would you rush to have at least some kind of wedding, with an old dress and a handful of guests who are available on short notice?
- Would you get married at the city clerk’s office and then plan a big party for later?
- Would you get married at the city clerk’s office and then do the whole ceremony over again a second time as part of a big wedding?
I am very much of the first option. The paper’s are signed, you’re married! That’s it, no point in doing anything else later. Your friends and family can just suck it up and understand that they couldn’t be there, and you can just suck it up and understand that life happens.
Follow up question, if you could get married anyway you wanted, would you prefer:
- City Clerk’s office, no guests, done and dusted
- Small wedding, a few friends and family, in a church or a backyard or a home
- Medium wedding, ceremony and then party/reception after
- Fabulous dream wedding, big dress, ballroom, fantasy experience
City clerk’s office, no guests, done and dusted, my DREAM. And my family tradition. My parents were the 3rd generation to get married with no guests last minute and break the news to the family later.
dontcallitbollywood 
Clerk’s office, party later.
And I’m not sure whether our actual wedding would count as small or medium in your system. I don’t think there were that many more people than seem to be in the background of your “small” video, around 40 all in all. But we did have a ceremony first and a reception/party later in the day. If we’d had a big house like my parents, we might actually have celebrated there. Living in a small flat, we instead rented a venue that was very much like a large living room.
I really enjoyed having everyone who’s really important to us celebrate with us. A wedding is the one party where you really invite everyone at the same time and it’s neither your parents’ friends nor your kids’, but really your people. And it also helps that years later, when you’re talking to one of your friends about another friend from a different context, they can say, “Didn’t I meet them at your wedding?”
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I like that idea of everyone in your life meeting each other! Still not worth it for me because I hate being the center of attention. Maybe instead I should throw a big house warming party? Make the house be the center of attention, while everyone mixes in together?
I think your wedding would fall in the “small” category by my rules. Was the ceremony super separate from the party? I had a cousin who got married and had the church service, and then this massive reception at a different location. The church service was like half as many people as the massive reception, they invited way mroe people to the reception.
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 11:17 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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We considered it one event, with the same people. But the way it worked out, there was quite a bit of transit between the venues, and several hours of free time.
We were trying to make it similar to what I consider the traditional wedding: In Germany, you always have to go to a clerk’s office for the legal side. Many people then have a ceremony in church, even if they’re not super religious. That’s also where colleagues can show up unannounced, throwing rice or something like that. And then you have your reception/party with your nearest and dearest.
Since my old congregation wouldn’t marry us (grr, Catholic Church), instead we paid the clerks extra to draw out their formalities a bit, play three songs and hold the whole thing in a desanctified church. (They’re branching out these days because more and more Germans really have no ties to a church anymore.) And afterwards we went to our rented living room and waited for our guests to show up again for afternoon coffee and cake.
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Oh, that does sound nice! And more sort of small town/villagey where everyone can come into a church at any time, and the after bit is the private part.
On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 3:38 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Fabulous dream wedding is something I never wanted. As an introvert I don’t understand why some people want all this stress and crowd the day of the wedding. Mine was a “small wedding, a few friends and family, in church” and then a small reception. And still I couldn’t sleep few days before because I was affraid it will be disaster. So a dream wedding would be a very very small ceremony in a church, with only a few people. I haven’t been a fan of registry office marriages since childhood. I was always like: or all or nothing, or we marry in church with all that that entails, or we don’t bother marring at all.
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My parents split the difference, no wedding at all, but it was in a church. They found a nice minister near where they were living, asked two friends to be witnesses, and got married by a minister in a church. But no party or friends or family beyond the witnesses.
I’m okay with not getting married in a church, if you don’t believe in church-y stuff, you can still get all the legal advantages of marriage by having a civil ceremony. But if you do believe in church-y stuff, why not make it work? Even if you just get married in a church with yourself and the minister?
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 11:29 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Your parents marriage in the best way to get married in my opinion. Except that if there wasn’t any wedding there weren’t any food, and no sweets!
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They treated themselves to a really really nice post-wedding lunch for the two of them, I think. Only two people, you can afford to splurge at a nice restaurant!
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 12:29 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I was married twice.
First wedding: big hoo-hah, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, bash at the United Nations, foofie designer dress. (I am loving that word today.). I divorced the creep 2 years later.
Second wedding: Central Park, a few stoned friends, borrowed granny dress. Married until he died 55 years later.
Need I say more.
This is not the place, but I have a question. I watched a Kannada film called Pogaru, with “Action Prince Dhruva Sarja” who is a hoot by the way. It had English sibtitles but the plot was confusing and quite short for an Indian movie. Then I watched it again on You Tube, no subs, but with the warning, “Original version, all offensive content restored.” This version made much more sense even without the subs. I understood better why certain things happened and others didn’t. But I didn’t see anything “offensive” even by the more rigid Indian standards. Did anybody else watch it? Or read anything about it? The only comment about the film giving offenseI was in Pink Villa and it referred to a scene where Sarja rips the Janeu thread from a Brahmin’s neck.
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Wikipedia says that one of the songs from the movie glorifies the harassment and eve-teasing , and some of the secenes demean Brahmin priests.
https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/regional-cinema/story/14-scenes-to-be-removed-from-dhruva-sarja-s-pogaru-after-brahmin-community-takes-offence-1772811-2021-02-25
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Thank you, Angie. That helps a lot. Dhruva Sarja does manhandle Rashmika Mandanna a bit in the big dance number, but you can tell he’s just showing off. You should check him out. He’s adorable in his early films and can really dance. But he’s just a mad dog mass of muscle in Pogaru. One thing I did notice that might offend some: when he looks at her, his eyes roam subtly from her face all down her body, something you never see in Indian love stories unless the bad guy is doing it. One of the things I liked bout RX100 is that Payal Rajput looks at Kartikeya like that.
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For your question, it’s super standard for non-Hindi films to get recut and released funky different. It’s so FRUSTRATING. Because usually the edits make no sense, there’s no logic to it, and then you end up not being able to follow the plot. Just feels like someone randomly chopping up the film to get it down to 2 hours.
I suspect, from your one example from Pinkvilla, that the issue in this case is disrespecting Brahmins/Hinduism. Which I suppose could be related to a whole bunch of plot points if the Brahmins are the villains somehow?
And it sounds like you land on the “small wedding”! Not a total no guests elopement, but nothing fancy.
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 11:36 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Didn’t know that about non-Hindi movies. I watch a lot of them and when I decide to go back for a second look because I think I might have missed something, if I catch it on another streaming channel, it’s not the same film! Thanks. Now I know it’s not me.
Got my Mother’s Day card. Thank you. You beat out my sons and greadsons.
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I still haven’t adjusted to the post office actually being on time again 🙂 I mailed my Mother’s day cards very very early.
And it is definitely not you! For some reason the channels feel like they have to recut movies when they dub them. It’s very weird.
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 2:13 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Clerk’s office! No muss, no fuss.
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100% !!!! The point is to be married, not all the fuss around it.
On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 12:40 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I have a different question after watching a couple of Govinda movies with very fighty women in them. Have there been any movies lately (past five years or so) that have had women doing a lot of fighting? I don’t really watch a lot of action, but I don’t recall seeing a modern one at all. For the purpose of this question, ones where it’s Kangana doing the fighting don’t count.
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Why did I think this was the small talk post? I’ll repost it there, if you can delete please do.
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Fun fact – Emily and Murphy are married in real life. They made a show Hot Date, which is really funny. Season 1 on Netflix. Season 2 is on Hulu, I think.
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I just watched this movie – Love Life & Pakodi on Amazon and this post makes it a good place to promote it. Unknown actors but a really good movie. It is about whether a relationship should end in a marriage. It is set in Bangalore and having lived there it is very accurate depiction of lives of young people. Movie mostly has English dialogues with Telugu in between. Spoiler – If you watched O Kadhal Kanmani but were frustrated with the ending you will definitely enjoy this movie – End spoiler.
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Last week I was undecided what I should watch first: Tuesdays & Fridays or Love Life & Pakodi . I chose T&F . In the meantime Love Life & Pakodi ratings on einthusian dropped drastically but that made me even more eager to watch the movie. Your opinion confirms what I already knew – people who rate movies on einthusian know shit about good films.
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Once I watched the movie I looked into it a bit more. The makers released the movie exclusively in multiplexes because it is a niche movie in terms of who might watch and enjoy the movie. On Bookmyshow which is a booking platform the movie has 81% rating meaning those who actually went to the theater and watched it liked it. If some one’s idea of relationships is conventional then I guess they will not like it. I hope you do end up watching the movie.
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I thought a lot about my wedding when it came time to actually plan it, turned out very different than the picture I carried with me as a teen of Celtic style dress and old stone chapel. The reality was my husband, a nonbeliever who was raised Catholic, marrying me, an agnostic raised Episcopalian, in a city where none of our family or oldest friends live (but located about halfway between our two hometowns). I thought a lot about what pieces of the wedding part were still meaningful and which could be cut out. What it came down to for me was a declaration that this is the human you’re choosing, made before the most important people in your life (who will now have to share you). We rented a loft space in NY and did the ceremony and the party together, about 100 people (my parents both have a lot of siblings and everyone ended up coming, so a lot of those people were family). The ceremony was civil, led by a celebrant, but in a space and at a time we chose, with the people we chose in attendance, plus music and a beautiful view. And good food and more music and libations after.
Most of our guests traveled in, which made convenience and a one day and done event priorities. If the guests already lived here, I might have chosen somewhere more natural outside the city.
Agree with Eva about it being a unique moment when all different parts of your life come together. The moment I most remember was walking into the room to process down the aisle and everyone turned around and it was like my whole life looking back at me. I just barely held it together. Before the wedding I made a passionate, ultimately unsuccessful, plea to my sisters in law in Spain to come because I knew it might be the only time they met my side of the family. As it was, my husband’s brothers came alone, which has still become very meaningful over time because one of them passed away a few years after but my friends and family all had a chance to meet him and had a sense of who had been lost when we were supporting my husband through that. Same goes for other folks from the pictures who have disappeared over the years.
So anyway: urgent wedding I would go with option 2. Planned wedding, I guess I’m in the medium category. But with the note that it’s not about the trappings of the wedding, it’s about the people.
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Form follows function! Start with “these are all the people I want there”, and then pick a location, date, etc. that makes sense for them. Very different from the “it’s my day I get to do whatever I want!” sort of attitude.
On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 10:40 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Exactly!
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