Wedding invitations are by far the most infuriating waste of money on the face of this Earth. They're like hundreds and hundreds of dollars!
The entire design is completely retarded. Firstly, you put the invitation in an envelope right. Then, you put this thingie into another envelope, along with this stupid card and another fricken envelope! What the hell people?
I mean, when I was a kid the local skating rink used to host birthday parties. If you had your party there, the rink would send these little postcard invites to all your little crumb-snatching, rugrat friends. It doesn't really take three fucking envelopes and three sheets of paper to invite someone to a shindig am I right? Or email. Why can't we just send a mass email to everyone, and have them RSVP?
Well, apparently women are insane. Did you know when they're little girls they starts planning and thinking about their wedding? Like how they want it to be and all that? Okay, show of hands, how many of the men here ever thought about what kind of cake they wanted at their wedding say, more than a year before they got married? Yeah, that's what I thought. I mean, I don't even know what I'm going to wear each day until I get up, and the women are planning this wedding thing like decades in advance. The only thing I've ever planned more than a year in advance was a car loan or a mortgage. And I only did that because I had to.
So in the end, I've concluded what every married man already knew: You can't fight 'em on anything. A logical appeal doesn't register when they've spent years living their wedding day in their minds, yapping it up with other women about how they're getting married. It's like a fucking cult man; and my fiancee is only a fraction of the freak that some of these other women are. I agree with her, and count my blessings that she's not completely lost her mind.
I tried to teach myself to surf recently. I can't decide if I'm a worse teacher than I am a surfer or vice-versa. Either way I've decided to take lessons. There's a Hawaiian expatriate at work who gives cheap lessons. I'm not sure what in the hell makes a native Hawaiian move from his home to this relative dump, but maybe he knows something I don't.
We've been trying to pin down a photog for the wedding recently. Some people actually had the nerve to tell us they didn't want to book us because; based on our budget, they were afraid of losing someone else who could make them more money! No offense, but I went to school with some photography majors, and they're hardly the type to turn away work, nah mean?
The best part was this little exchange.
Dialing phone, ringing.
"Hello, Fucknut's Photography."
"Yeah, Fucknut; I was just wondering what your rates are for weddings. I'm looking for someone to take some shots for maybe an hour or two during and after the wedding."
"Well, we normally don't do that. But what our usual package involves is about 4-5 hours of photos, usually about 2,000 photos narrowed down to 1,200 really nice shots, and we put them on disk for you. The package runs about $1300."
"$1300 for the whole day?"
"Yeah, and we may show up for the rehersal dinner just to get to know the wedding party."
"Hm. Who makes $1300 a day? Isn't that what the whore in Pretty Woman charged?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The whore in the movie, I think she charged $1,000 bucks a day. And she was played by Julia Roberts. I mean, unless you're gonna show up with a hot, really hot, hooker on your arm who will suck my dick on command, I don't really think I'm willing to pay $1300 for you to stand around at my wedding and take photos for a few hours."
"We'll be at the rehersal dinner too."
"Right, which I am paying for. I'm not going to pay you to stand around at my rehersal dinner, eat my food, and not have my dick sucked by the hot whore you're going to have with you."
"Well, we could drop the price to $1,000."
"Who the fuck makes $1,000 a day?"
"It's actually more than one d-"
"Right. I forgot, you'll be at the rehersal dinner. Great. I'll tell you what, $850 for both days and a blow up doll and you got yourself a deal."
-click-
It's like they don't want to make any money. I mean, if someone offered me $850 for a day's work, I'd be all about it. I should just buy a better digicam, put a decent looking whore on retainer, and I'd have myself the goddamn cheapest photography biz in the nation; plus a sweet gimmick to boot.
Well, the fiancee and I have officially scrapped all our plans for the wedding. We had begun to plan this event so that it would be an above par affair. We didn't want our guests to be disappointed after travelling from far and wide, only to show up at some average ho-hum todo. We wanted them to be happy they came, grateful that at least they hiked all that way for a little friggin ambiance.
Let me tell you how much of a pain that was. It was emotionally grinding us both against eachother, like a pistil and mortar making a fine pumice of our lives. We would argue about details we discovered neither one cared about. We would worry about saving the money up, what would we do if disaster struck? Could we take money from the wedding fund? She was working two jobs, I was working and going to grad school, she starts hers in August. We were juggling a million flaming bowling pins and we really only cared about six of them. Okay, maybe seven. Point is, we weren't planning our wedding; we were planning a wedding for our guests.
Over the 4th of July weekend, one of the family relatives offered twice to basically cater our reception at cost. We shrugged it off politiely not wanting to impose. We got home and discussed the option. It actually came out that doing something like that would be typical 'us.' We're pretty laidback, low-maintenance people when it comes to partying. The stress relief and down home feel was beginning to appeal to us.
Then my parents offered us their house to hold the reception. We were sold. We haven't argued about wedding details in a week, many times the interval we were before. We realize that it's not going to be the standard formal affair, but we know it's going to be hella fun. Besides, neither one of us is really interested in standards anyways. Now we can invite as many people as we want, without having to worry if we can afford another $20 a head to feed them. We don't have to worry about being out of some fancy shmancy reception hall in four hours, we can stay and party until everyone falls out. It's kind of weird, because at first we started out really wanting to do it up, thinking that a good time meant spending lots of money. Now it's going to be something completely different, and completely reflective of who we are.
The best part about it, is if someone doesn't like it, I'll know they never really liked me. Which is okay, because when we start lighting the fireworks, we're gonna need a target.
So, tonight I need to make an appointment for us to meet with a DJ and a baker. The DJ thing I think I can handle. Stereo shit, a masculine feild if there ever was one. Even though picking one out should be pretty straight forward, once the woman throws her monkey wrench of femalogic into the cogs, who knows what'll happen right?
As for the cake thing, I don't even wnat to know. I'm not a big cake person, but apparently that's something that gets you drawn and quartered in the nuptial world; so the fiance has layed down a gag order. I totally want to needle these bakers, but I'm not sure if it will be worth suffering the consequences. I mean, what the hell do I need edible flowers on a cake for? Why can't we just have a regular old cake? Why the hell do you need cake at a wedding? Since we're spending all this dough on food, why spend a lot on cake, when we can spend an equal amount on something like sorbet that's awesomer? Or cheesecake?
"No, those are all options for the grooms cake."
"The groomscake? What the hell is that?"
"It's a smaller cake that's usually chocolate if the wedding cake is vanilla, you know, so there is a choice of flavor."
"Well, it doesn't make sense to have two cakes. Why don't we just get something cool for the same amount we'd spend on this hyped up wedding cake?"
"Because wedding cake is what you're supposed to get, it's what we're getting, no more strange ideas from you okay?"
"Doesn'tmakeanysense."
"Are you done?"
Went and opened a joint account at the bank today. The finacee and I are going to start saving for the wedding expenses, so we figured this would be the best way to do it. Plus, after we get married we can use this account as our shared account to pay bills and all that shit.
Anyways, we've been saving since march, and finally scrapped together enough dough to open a decent account. I went over to the bank with more money in my hands than I think I've ever held, this side of a really big drug deal that is.
What just blows my mind is that we're saving our asses off, funding this wedding to throw for our friends. Really, that's what it is. We want to throw a great party celebrating us. So I said bye bye to a big pile of cash on Friday, but I guess we're assuming it's all worth it in the end. But part of me watched it depart and thought it would easily suffice for a downpayment and/or closing costs on a new home.
You think about weddings and look at the cash you saved and it seems like a small amount. Then you think about homes, cars, investments, and all of a sudden it throws you into a panic. Because here you are sitting on the seed of a nice financial investment that could be easily cultivated, and you're blowing it all on one day of...flowers and shit.
Logic tells me that it really must be a woman's world; or this shit wouldn't be going down. I don't ever want to hear one more word about women's rights. Speak up on the subject and I'll choke you to death with the reciepts.