On the pitifulness of traditional wedding media

For ages now all the wedding reading I do is in blogdom, and I’ve gotten so used to it that even when I disagree with stuff, there are still a number of certain mutual understandings among the blogs that turn out not to exist yet in the traditional media of magazines and newspapers., and I fear, therefore the general non-wedding-obsessed public too. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise: wedding magazines are necessarily part of the WIC and their dependence on advertising means they can’t remain bias free; meanwhile, any column about weddings that a newspaper spits out is probably written by someone who has spent, let’s just say, WAY LESS time thinking about weddings than bloggers have.

So perhaps I should forgive the author of this article about the supposed new, 2012, rules of wedding ettiquete. Some of it she gets right, some of it she gets painfully wrong, and some of it she phoned in to buff up the word count.

I mean, just take a look at this stuff:

“If the bride pays for the bridesmaid’s hair, makeup, dresses and shoes, she has every right to make them look as gorgeous or as heinous as she likes.” I think the idea behind this is it’s supposed to be the corrolary to the fact that you shouldn’t force your bridesmaids to pay for an outift that wasn’t of their choosing. But that doesn’t mean that just because you’re paying for it, you get to be totally inconsiderate to your friends that, by the way, you care enough about to have in your wedding.

“If they have a registry, use it. At the very least you know that your gift is wanted.” Nope. Most couples have a registry not because they want to make sure they don’t get any gifts that aren’t good enough, but out of consideration for the guests who aren’t quite sure what to buy otherwise. And that means non-registry gifts are likely to be some of the most welcome of all.

“Asking for money is now not considered rude. In fact, it’s pretty convenient.” No, it’s still fracking rude.

“If you’re on a budget, how much should you spend on a gift or cash? A good rule of thumb is ‘how much would this event cost me if I had bought a ticket?’” AAAAAAAAARGGHHH! NOOO!! You give people presents as a way to show love and affection, and what in the world does that have to do with how much money the couple happened to have available to spend on their wedding? This woman seems to be under the impression that weddings are fundrasiers. Way to go on making an important life event devoid of meaning.

I can’t imagine any of the wedding blogs I read saying this kind of stuff, and if they did, a bunch of people in the comments would call them out. But in the traditional mainstream media, a poorly thought out, top-of-the-mind article like this can be gotten away with. And what’s worse, most likely swallowed whole by most of the readers, and this crap then becomes the received wisdom. When someone you know thinks your wedding is not meeting the guidelines of propriety, this is why.

Thank gods for blogs!