One aspect of the 2020 COVID lockdown I found distressing was the complete shutdown of my usual spin classes.
Most of us regulars were on a first-name basis, but did not meet outside the gym: it sufficed to see each other at class. This casual sociability didn't return when the gym restarted the classes. The new attendees aren't as friendly with each other.
The 1991 film _Danzon_ has a poignant narrative about trying to find an acquaintance who has vanished.[1]
The worst, most bad-faith case I've seen of "advertising" an H1B job was of the job posting printed out, taped to the back of an interior office door, and covered by the recruiter's hanging overcoat.
About me:
I am a web developer now enlarging my skills beyond the front end. I graduate with a B.S., Computer Science in September 2024. I've worked remotely on successful projects with aggressive deadlines for over twenty years. My experience includes working with startups, the public sector, medium-sized companies, and large multinational corporations.
I'm a considerate, reliable, valued co-worker to Design, Product, and QA. I'm often the one to initiate documentation and code quality standards. I am well suited to teams that emphasize user research and testing with prototypes. I am open to both contract and full-time roles.
Yes. Here in the western U.S., some public lands near populated areas close during the summer, because of extreme fire danger. Having larger crowds camping in the woods raises the danger for everyone, even with the supervision of the forest service. It'd be insanity to ignore trespassers on private lands in summer.
My courthouse wedding over 20 years ago cost $75, had no showers, no attendants, no reception, and was memorialized only by a snapshot taken by one of the affable court clerks. I've never regretted it. The only way my spouse and I pulled it off was to keep our plans secret from our families. My mother-in-law resents me for that to this day.
My wife and I did city hall, but with the encouragement of my mother-in-law who thought it was it was smart and sensible. (And, it was, in fact, what she had herself done.)
I managed to persuade my wife and mother-in-law that could be fun to have a small celebratory reception for a close group of immediate family members, which we did three months later. Small and intimate, with 20 people, it was easy to pull off, and the official marriage details were already complete, so that was less pressure, and we could just focus on being present with our guests.
And three months after that, we had a small reception with friends, because I persuaded my wife that her close friends would enjoy a chance to celebrate and see her in "the dress". Which they did.
Splitting what would normally could be an overwhelming thing into three small parts removed a lot of stress, was cost effective, and also meant that the wedding gown got to be used three times, not once and then stored. Maybe not the best choice for everyone, but it can be a fun option.
Definitely support the "rolling thunder" approach to weddings vs "big bang" - our wedding years ago was in 3 different locations with 3 different groups (our kids are very multi-ethnic/national) over the course of a year and it would have been impossible to merge the 3 groups or expectations (we joked about "extending the tour" to other locations/groups but life intervened).
It's not for everyone, but getting the formal process over and done with and having a less formal party at a later date will probably save you a lot of stress and money.
Especially if you don't tell the venue that it's a special occasion...
There's a comment right above yours from a woman who seems to disagree with the brush you're trying to paint her with. Maybe the generalization isn't particularly appropriate?
I think this is easier said than done. You can certainly save enormously by skipping a lot of the traditional stuff (nice meal, music, cake, attire, photographer, etc.) altogether. But there's a reason those things are popular. A nice meal, music, and dancing make a great way to include multiple generations (toddlers to elderly) and people who don't necessarily know each other well (and don't share interests) but are nonetheless important to you. Throw in a photographer because these events are often a treasured (and rare) source of extended family photos and you've accounted for most of the cost of my own wedding, which was about average.
We looked for options to save by having a 20% "less nice" meal or a 40% "less good" photographer, but broadly speaking, those aren't really levers that we found. I guess you could try to lie to vendors and tell them that the music is for a retirement party and that they're going to be photographing a family reunion and hope they charge you less? I'm not sure the extra cost is as unreasonable as it sounds though. We were far from trying to "get every detail right", but we did want the stuff we paid for to show up. Just "showing up" with high probability is a substantially higher level of service than I get from most contractors/vendors/etc. that I've worked with more broadly in my life and I'm not surprised it would cost something.
you can have a party with roses, cake, dancing, food, photographer, and as long as it is introduced as a party (and not a wedding) there's research that suggests that on average, you will pay much less to all the contractors.
So start your bid with the word party, and see what happens!
The wedding tax is basically insurance - you're paying through the nose to ensure absolutely nothing goes wrong. From the contractor's side, at least; the behaviour of your guests is a different matter.
In some cases, yes. In others... my wife tells me a bride will get overcharged less for the same hair styling if she says she's going to a wedding as a bridesmaid. Doesn't avoid the wedding tax, but at least gets a discount.
Debating with men that a minimalist wedding will suffice is pretty humorous; these aren't the people that need convincing or dominating the demand for extravagant weddings.
Weddings (and any other tradition/ritual that requires sacrifice) are also an opportunity to display a level of commitment to a broader tribe.
Regardless of one’s philosophies, playing along with the broader group’s traditions and spending something (time/money/effort) to do it is a signal to the others for how invested you are in a particular group of people.
Obviously, like anything else, it can be overdone. But it is not without value, and there is a reason wedding celebrations came into being in cultures around the world.
I like the idea of the party being separate, so many of them the bride and groom aren't at the party too long as they disappear to spend time with each other.
If lots of people are invited to a wedding, it can't realistically all be about 'her', since it's impossible to expect guests to not have their own thoughts and opinions that are not fully identical.
It's pretty common in fact for major family disputes to be resolved, or begin, at big weddings that only involve the bride incidentally.
It depends how much energy you spend giving into all the family dramas. Who wants to sit with whom. Who will have this reaction meeting this one, but not that one, who has what expectations in general ... but who cares. It is our wedding, not theirs.
We so far have postponed the big wedding, but when we do, the idea is to have a place big enough, food, drinks music. Fun place for the kids. Everyone invited. And then people can enjoy it, or not. I plan to be on the dance floor.
> My mother-in-law resents me for that to this day.
While I'm a fan of your approach, and our wedding was also a small, close family + few friends dinner, I think your MiL's reaction may reflect a generational/cultural shift of expectations. Today, weddings are seen (by the young) and advertised as being focused on, and done for, the newlyweds - but traditionally, weddings were done for everyone else. It was celebrating the culmination of efforts of both family branches that brought up those two people and got them to the point of marrying.
Still, even as I sometimes wonder if some family member resents us for denying them the opportunity for a large traditional outing - of which there are so few once you're a working adult - I still don't think it's wise to hold an expensive wedding party, much less take a loan for it. After all, traditionally, weddings were oragnized and funded by the guests, not by the newlyweds.
We told nobody. Booked a ticket to Hawaii, found a non-religous person who could officiate, hired a photographer, and had a little ceremony on the beach just for us two.
10/10, good memories, no regrets.
Still wasn't free though; creating an event even for just the two of us required money.
Our friends did a basic courthouse ceremony in town with a restaurant party afterwards, and they spent less than we did (if you count in the cost of of flight and hotel into it). Me and another friend did their wedding shots though.
My point is that even when you're not doing for others, weddings cost money for the same reasons that vacations do. Setting aside time and space for a group of people to have a good time together is very hard to do without running into expenses.
People in this thread saying they spent next to nothing on their wedding are like those who boast that their staycation cost $12 for the bottle of wine.
Saying that they decided not to celebrate getting married is a more straightforward way to say the same thing, which is fine.
But the "hurr durr you don't need all those expenses, my wedding cost $3.50 in court fees" signaling isn't any better than "We had to cut on everything and had a cheap wedding, in the $30,000-40,000 range". The latter isn't cheap, the former isn't what people would call having a wedding, and in both cases there's a surprise about other people not wanting the same thing as you do (whereas you, of course, did it the right way).
In the end of the day, if you want to spend a day in a certain way, and you spend your money to do it, then it's the right way for you to have a wedding and the right amount to spend on it.
The only important thing to not leave out is to have space, respect, and care for you and your own happiness in your own wedding, and have agency in how it all happens (you as in you AND your partner in all of the above).
And looks like that's exactly what you're doing with your plan. Congratulations on your marriage!
We did just that. Went to Vegas and got a city hall thing done. 25 years later, no one gives a toss about us not blowing $10k on a wedding. We bought a house with that money as a down payment.
>We did just that. Went to Vegas and got a city hall thing done. 25 years later, no one gives a toss about us not blowing $10k on a wedding. We bought a house with that money as a down payment.
Yeah, we had to put 10x as much for a downpayment for a townhouse in the Bay Area two years ago.
Let's say, saving on wedding to buy a house ain't working no more in this economy.
My wife and I did a city wall wedding and invited nobody. We had doubts but conviction to do it. As the years go on we only become more confident about that choice.
Loved his metaphors of the extravagant promises of beginner dance workshops. I had similar realizations when involved in Argentine tango in the late Nineties. There's similarity to the coding bootcamp phenomenon--the workshops generate graduates with overblown ideas of their competence, and the locals retreat from engaging with them, but the workshops can't profit by teaching slow, gradual improvement of a subtle art form over many years of practice.
I was invited to answer one of these, at a company with truly the most hateful manager I've ever had. Oh, was I ever ready to offer my jaundiced, embittered opinion...until the survey required I log in with my company email address.
Yes, there was the usual verbiage about anonymizing, blah, blah, but I lost all confidence that my response wouldn't be tracked to me. I never returned the survey.
I still haven't determined whether this was by incompetent or malicious design.
There was a post on here years ago from somebody who sold software to corporations for "anonymous" employee surveys. He said that executives always wanted to deanonymise the results and, sadly, he was happy to oblige.
"[Jackie Opel] joined forces with the Troubadours, the house band of the Clyde B Jones funeral parlour." There's potential for at least one more newspaper feature, or streaming series, with this backstory.
I doubt any company, especially in SV, takes a PR hit from age discrimination, which seems to be widely accepted and barely punished. Google just wants to swat away the plaintiffs like annoying gnats.
Most of us regulars were on a first-name basis, but did not meet outside the gym: it sufficed to see each other at class. This casual sociability didn't return when the gym restarted the classes. The new attendees aren't as friendly with each other.
The 1991 film _Danzon_ has a poignant narrative about trying to find an acquaintance who has vanished.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danz%C3%B3n_(film)