the ask@AAR: What do you think about the modern wedding?
Recently, a close friend of mine’s step-daughter eloped which did not make her parents happy. Her mother and father felt it was disrespectful to not have them as a part of the ceremony. This surprised me–I’d be thrilled if my children eloped because, to me, the modern American wedding is, well, insane.
According to the wedding planning site The Knot, the average cost of a wedding in the US is around $30,000. My kids’ friends are starting to get hitched and several of those weddings have cost well over $100,000. Given that I have four kids and I believe in wedding parity–I am giving each kid the same amount to go towards their wedding and if they never marry, I’ll give them that amount when they turn 35 or so–elopement works for me.
It’s not just the cost although that seems preposterous to me. It’s the cost benefit analysis. Of all the things young people could spend 30K or more on, a one day celebration doesn’t seem like the best bet. How about paying off student loans or going to grad school or buying a home?
But maybe I’m just a wedding Dabney Downer. What do you think? If you were getting married today, would you want a big celebration? Or would you take the money and run?
For my wedding we cut costs by having a lunch instead of a dinner (with beer and wine). Our wedding cost about $10k in total with 150 guests The best part by far was having all my friends from different parts of my life, and far away family all together in one place. I got married at 29 so while my parents paid for a portion of the wedding, we covered a lot of the costs ourselves. I expect to aid my kids if they get married but that they will bear the majority of the costs themselves. ( I’d have to take out a second mortgage to pay all the costs of a wedding).
It sounds like it was a lovely wedding and very responsibly handled.
I am always kind of amazed at how grown women who are established in their careers for many years still expect their parents to pay for elaborate weddings.
When I first watched the movie “Bridesmaids” in between laughing myself silly, I kept wondering why a woman who seemed like she was approaching 40 was demanding this lavish wedding be paid for by her father. I think I was the only one sympathizing with Annie about expecting people to lay out huge sums of money for wedding costs when the bride knew one was in financial difficulty.
I agree with what many have said here about not spending more than you can afford and focusing on the marriage, not just the wedding. But also, I must admit (as an unmarried American woman in my mid-30s) that if I do get married someday, I’d like to have a big wedding. Not a lavish wedding necessarily, but I want my friends and family to be there! I live far away from most of my family, so my wedding will likely be the only occasion in my life where everyone I love will be gathered in the same place at the same time. And to host that number of people (especially if it involves a full meal and/or alcohol) is realistically going to cost a chunk of money. I don’t think it’s foolish to spend that money on an event that celebrates love — not only the love of the spouses, but the love of the communities that raised them and the community they’ve built together. And let’s be honest — in many US cities, $30k is not going to be enough for a down payment on a house anyway!
I think that sounds lovely. I think spending money on food, drink, and music to bind people together is almost always a worthwhile endeavor! And, what people choose to spend is their call–only you know what you can afford. I hope you get your wedding someday! <3
Having just returned from a family wedding that everyone travelled for, I have to say that I really enjoyed a weekend of time visiting with extended family in a way that a few hours over one meal ala Thanksgiving or Easter dinner doesn’t. That is not to say that I think people have to spend wads of money to do it. I know many people have family vacations/reunions where this happens at least occasionally. And in addition to weddings, what people are spending for their kids high school graduations – particularly proms – is beyond obscene. It makes “fully participating” in prom commonly out of reach and/or not fun for far too many kids.
And as our family historian, I have to say that wedding portraits are some of the most important historical documents in many peoples’ lives. Personally, I love the opportunity for family portraits that weddings seem to capture in a way that many other life events do not (everyone is dressed up, people are happy). I know that with smartphones, people are taking way more photos than ever before. But posed family portrait groups can be hit and miss when taken casually.
OTOH, at the wedding I just attended, the couple opted to have photos taken after the ceremony. They spent every moment between ceremony end about 3 p.m. and dinner start at 5:30 being photographed. I felt like they missed much of their own day. The rest of us had a great time, however.
I LOVE wedding photos. In our dining room, we have wedding photos from our wedding, the weddings of all my siblings, as well as the wedding of two other close family members. In my office, I have an 8×10 black and white of my parents’ wedding. They make me happy!
I’m the same. My most prized collection of family photos are the 4-generation photos we periodically took when my son was little. All four grandparents and 7 of 8 great-grandparents were alive when he was born. (He’s 26 now and many are no longer with us.) I love those four portraits every time I walk by them.
My own wedding had 11 people, including my husband and myself. But when my oldest son got married a few years ago, his wife’s family is from India, and they don’t do small weddings. I know the wedding wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t extravagant. Vibrant, full of life and color, it was amazingly joyous and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Indian weddings are the best although they are a real problem for many in India who feel forced to spend far more than they have.
I think there’s something in between elopement and a wedding that costs five or six figures.
I can understand immediate family (especially parents) being sad about not being a part of a very joyous day when they probably helped foot the bill for a lot of their kids lives. It could have been as simple as going to the courthouse or wherever together and having a meal out at a restaurant with just immediate family.
I knew a bride back in the mid 2000’s who asked if her parents would give her and the fiancé the $30K they were going to pour into the big wedding (she didn’t really care about) to put toward the house they were buying. It sounded really sensible to me, but the Mom said no way because she didn’t have a fancy wedding and was basically living through the daughter. That 30K would have meant years off of their mortgage payments.
“I think there’s something in between elopement and a wedding that costs five or six figures.”
This is key. Our daughter had a lovely wedding for about 50 people for under $5000. The largest part of that was the food, which was important to us. When we looked catering options,one small Tapas restaurant offered the venue for free for the wedding and the reception when we used them for catering, plus it cost less because they didn’t have to transport the food.
The venue was done in wonderful Spanish red with wrought iron and pottery fixtures and artwork. The food was amazing and people talked about it for years as the best wedding food they’d every had. My daughter made the table centerpieces and jewelry for herself and her bridesmaids (sisters). Her lovely tea length dress was $500. A dear friend of our’s daughter was working for a wedding photographer part time and did all the photos. The photographer she worked with was great and allowed her to use her equipment for the photo book and prints. She did an amazing job and it was about $350.
Another friend spent even less money when her son married at their home with good friends and family and then they had a traditional “pig picking,” or southern BBQ of whole or half slow smoked pork, in their backyard. That was amazing food and a fun party!
Other people may have different budgets and networking options, but it’s possible to have lovely weddings without breaking the bank.
Yes, I have heard of some very creative ways friends of friends have done weddings recently, up to and including one bride and groom without much money to spend having an alfresco reception in a park with kind of a potluck supper.
I think the key is to fit your budget and enjoy your day.
I know a lot of people with money who feel they have to pay for an elaborate wedding for their kids because their friends did, or because they have spent years shelling out a lot in cash wedding gifts and figure their kids should get the chance to have their day and collect as well.
Exactly. I think we did ours for less than 500 quid! Including flowers, fees, food, booze and other bits and pieces.
I am all for having the type of wedding that comfortably fits your budget and your personality. No one should go into debt for a party.
I have been to everything from large, extravagant weddings to small, intimate ones. As a guest, I prefer the smaller weddings. The bigger the wedding, the less time the bride, groom and parents have to visit with their guests. We’ve flown across the ocean to a wedding in England and barely had a chance to say hello to the bride and groom, and we were seated so far back in the church we could barely see them.
The wedding industry and social media keep making a bigger deal out of the proposal, the engagement party, the showers, the bachelor/bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, the brunch….
I think of all that money spent, not just by the hosts but by the guests as well, and I wonder if there would have been better ways to spend it.
I eloped in 2012 with my husband. My parents were thrilled (they had also eloped), my MIL was less thrilled… but I was happy to have a private ceremony and then a small catered dinner in a park for family a few days later. We spent our savings on a fabulous European honeymoon and a down payment on a house.
We’ve been happily married since then, and I’ve never regretted the way we chose to celebrate… and to spend our money.
I think everyone gets to spend money the way they wish. But sometimes, other people’s choices are baffling to me. Your choices sound like they worked! And, they make sense to me!
That sounds very much like my experience – we eloped, had a wedding that was lovely with 6 people including the minister for $50 and then got home and my MIL informed me we would have a reception. We had a nice afternoon cake and punch reception when family was available and it was great. I think the focus on family is more important than checking the boxes of a wedding industry expense list.
Oy.
Around 2002, the son of a work colleague was preparing to get married.
I’m not sure about the bride, but this young man (in his early 20s) had just started an entry-level job, and he wasn’t making a lot. (Prior to that, he was a student.) Moreover, during the most recent 2 years, he had incurred some major debt, thanks to undisciplined spending using credit cards.
So this young man–though advised by a debt counselor to work a deal to reduce the total amount owed and then find a way to pay it off–decided to charge an expensive tuxedo and numerous other wedding costs so he could have a fancy wedding. He did this knowing that shortly after the wedding, he was going to declare bankruptcy. (Which he did.)
The marriage didn’t last long.
Elopement makes me sad, leaving out close family and friends on such a joyous occasion. Better to have a small wedding for your near ones and maybe later a small party for your friends and less close family. No need for extravaganzas, but don’t cheat people of the chance to share your happiness.
I have been married twice, two small weddings that we could easily afford. My dress for each wedding cost less than $200. For the first wedding I got married at home and people brought the food. For the second, my Mom decided the bulk of the money for the wedding would be spent on good food. The whole wedding was just over $1000 in 1984. In order to keep the wedding small, my in-laws (bless them) decided not to invite anyone but immediate family to the wedding. Their families both go back 4 or 5 generations in their small VA town, so no way to make the guest list small. They gave us a catered open house at their large home 4 weeks after the wedding and invited my Mom as well. It was lots of fun and very relaxed.
I personally think spending $30,000 on a wedding is foolish, and the pressure to do so in our society is toxic. I don’t know how many women I’ve talked to who can’t even remember their weddings (or their son’s/daughter’s),and the months leading up to them were full of angry exchanges between family members, lots of hurt feelings, and big time stress. With the divorce rate what it is, this focus on the BIG EVENT is like some weird fantasy.
On a personal note, I think it’s also selfish to want parents to go into debt to pay for an expensive wedding and shows disregard for others. Even when people have plenty of money for extravagant weddings, it feels like a lot of showing-off wealth and privilege.
We paid for one lovely small wedding (under $5000, and the marriage ended in divorce), but will probably be retired by the time anyone else gets married. I’m not jeopardizing our retirement for weddings. We’ll contribute something, but they’ll have to make their own decisions about how much they want to spend on their weddings. I’ll vote for skipping the wedding and taking a nice trip or saving the money.
For my second wedding in 1999, I think we spent around £200 on new clothes (a suit for him, skirt and jacket for me) between us. We had a meal for 12 after the ceremony which we had catered at home, then we had about 40 people over in the evening – me and my mum prepared all the food (which cost us round £60!) and we probably spent a bit more on booze, but not much, my brother (who is a designer and photographer) took some photos, and drove us to the registry office in his posh car that’d he’d decorated with a ribbon for the occasion! We planned it in less than 5 weeks. (Because it was a “if we leave it too long, I’ll be huge and I’d rather we were married when the baby’s born” situation!)
I just don’t understand how anyone can justify spending £20,000 on a wedding, unless they come from a background where they’ve got money to burn. We couldn’t afford a honeymoon as such at that time, although we had a holiday booked for a few months after (while I could still travel) which was fine. We’d been living together for coming up for 8 years by the time we got married, we had a home and a mortgage… there was no need for a big fuss we couldn’t afford. I agree that the pressure to spend a fortune on ONE DAY of your life – and I don’t care what anyone says about memories, I can’t remember much about either of mine! – is ridiculous.
Why spend money on a wedding. Save it for the honeymoon (or down payment on a house). I’ve never married but the older I get the less a big blowout wedding appeals. None of my six siblings had blowout weddings. One was married in my parent’s living room, another in the party room at their condo, two eloped, and my younger brother (age 60) is living a bachelor’s paradise. The one sister who had the biggest wedding held the ceremony and reception at her Father-in-Law’s church. She did the flowers and decorating herself, borrowed brides maids dresses from a friend whose sister had recently married, and the food was potluck. There was no alcohol as the FIL was Mormon, so drinks were water, non caffeinated soft drinks, and lemonade. Music was a mix tape. I do have several cousins who had blowout weddings. One Uncle offered his daughter $8,000 if she would elope (this was 20 years ago). Unfortunately, she turned him down. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful wedding and I’ve been to some weddings that were really fun. But I don’t think you need to spend a lot to have a beautiful, meaningful, and hopefully fun wedding.
One day not long ago I was in the vegetable store and a young woman was telling the owner she had just gotten married. They had enough money saved up for a big wedding but they decided to elope and use the money for a down payment on a house. Now that was sensible!
I didn’t have a big wedding when I got married half a century ago, and neither did my kids (more recently). One had the reception in the back yard, the other opted for a restaurant, and I got to bake the cake in each case. But all of us are still happily married.
Add me to the list of people who think elopements are the way to go- if you even want to get legally married. Beyond the extravagant costs everybody has mentioned, there’s also the whole family politics issue. If you’ve ever been to one of those highfalutin shindigs, you’ll know that a lot of the wedding gets treated as a networking opportunity for the high-powered guests instead of a celebration of the couple. It reminds me of that line in the original Father of the Bride where the bride-to-be complains to her parents about their proposed guest list and how they can’t leave off any of their colleagues for fear of them feeling snubbed. She says something like, “This is supposed to be a wedding, not a business convention!”
Incidentally, at one point in the movie, the father (played by Spencer Tracy) offers to give his daughter a wad of cash if she and the groom will forget this whole convoluted wedding business and go elope. Of course, she is mortally insulted. But I thought, “Girl, you should have taken the money and enjoyed a nice honeymoon!”
P.S. I think the Las Vegas drive thru wedding or commitment ceremony is an awesome idea.
I can’t really relate to big modern weddings or the desire to have one. Weddings are so often about the culture we’re raised in, family traditions and expectations. I am not a romantic when it comes to finances. I’m very utilitarian and pragmatic and a minimalist to my very core. I was raised by parents who were born during the Great Depression, were young teens during WW2, and married in the early 50s. They raised their children (there were five us) to be thrifty and never wasteful with money because you never knew when hard times would come. While we had what we needed, we usually didn’t have more than that. We were also a lower middle class, blue-collar household in a small town. Most people were like us, didn’t live beyond their means, and credit cards weren’t yet easy to get. The rich people in town weren’t really rich by today’s standards. They were comfortable or upper middle class, usually doctors and small business owners, but most of them–though they had nice homes and cars and belonged to the local country club–still lived modestly most of the time. The average person in town had a church wedding with friends and family in attendance, but back then (80s when my older siblings married and I was in high school and college) that kind of wedding wasn’t financially out of reach. The richer people in town had country club weddings that probably were extravagant for the time, but nothing like you’d see today. Most people had their rehearsal dinners at the local Sizzler (one of the few options outside the local lodge or the country club).
Though I lived in the bible belt, my parents weren’t church goers and eschewed organized religion. They had Christian values, believed in god, but felt it was a private matter between themselves and god. They married rather hastily in city hall when my father was drafted for the Korean War and had to leave for basic training. I grew up thinking of myself as agnostic, but realized as I got older that I am an atheist, so a church wedding was never anything I wanted or grew up to expect. I’m also a rather self-conscious person and standing up in front of a bunch of people for a ceremony will never feel right for me. When I got married my mother was deceased and my father was retired and living on a tight, fixed income. No one in my family was going to be disappointed by how or whether I chose to marry. My husband and I were together four years before we married and lived together two years before marriage. We got married at city hall and had a small reception afterwards for relatives before going on a honeymoon that fit our budget, which was a five-day getaway in a small city near a ski area that we’d both never been to before. Most of my friends have had weddings (most in chuch, but some not) that have ranged from modest to somewhat expensive. I’ve enjoyed them for their sake, but that kind of ceremony was never something I wanted for myself.
I’ve been married twice. The first time we were married in my husband’s parent’s home by a judge who was a family friend. There were a total of 8 guests plus us and the judge. Cost? Not a lot – just the required civil admin for a licence and a lunch for 12 afterwards. The second time, in England, was in a Registry Office (e.g. City Hall) because at the time the Church of England would not marry divorced persons in church. There were 4 guests at that one; cost? Almost nothing. Today the costs for this starts at £57 ($78) for the use of the room including the civil officiant. None of my family were willing to fly to England from the USA for my second wedding so it was just the two of us, really, and for me it was perfect. I had a career organising big events and am strictly a back-office girl so something small, personal and private suited us though we would have preferred to be married in church. The money saved was the down payment for a home.
I now help with the administration of weddings for my local church (Church of England) and the total costs for using the church, banns, etc. is £464 ($638) in the 2021 Table of Parochial Fees.
Here’s what does bother me, though. Our church is in a tiny, ancient Cotswold village, dates from 1160 and is incredibly beautiful. Several of us help to clean it for the ceremony, do the flowers, find bell ringers (£10 per bell – there are 3), light the candles, make sure everything is in place, etc. A couple (almost never from the village, who have never attended a service but permitted to wed in the church due to family or other ties) will come in with their 100+ guests and the guests leave behind a trail of detritus, used kleenex, face masks, water bottles, chewing gum papers, candy wrappers, service sheets, you name it, I’ve picked it up after a service including tracking down those who leave behind cameras, phones or even purses. The collection plate (left discreetly on a table near the exit door, not passed around) for one wedding for the daughter of an extremely wealthy family was a grand total of £12. Really. They have their pictures taken in our beautiful churchyard filled with ancient and historically important Civil War graves (1642), walk down the path, through the lychgate and we never see them again. All of that uber-photogenic “country wedding” venue for £464. No thanks given to the helpers, flower arrangers, etc. Personally I find it hypocritical. Of course they have saved themselves a minimum of the £5,000 (£6,900) for room hire at a stately home about 20 miles from where I live.
Aside from the (substantial) cost, it’s always struck me that if people put the time, effort and thought into the marriage that they do into the wedding, they might well end up happier. The stress of planning a wedding and the level of expectations often seem to start the marriage on an unhappy note.
For those who can easily spend the $30,000-plus, that’s a different matter; they’ll probably pay people to take care of the arrangements, which at least should cut down on the stress. And they won’t start married life with a huge debt hanging over their head.
(NB: I’m not married, never have been, so all this is from observation rather than personal experience.)
There’s a great line in GONE WITH THE WIND (the book, not the movie) where Scarlett O’Hara, at a big country barbecue and hopelessly in love with Ashley Wilkes, is trying to think up ways to make Ashley marry her. She glances over at the married women who are all sitting in a group, gossiping and wearing dull-colored clothes and she thinks how boring their lives must be. It doesn’t occur to her that, if she marries Ashley, she’ll become one of those matrons and have to wear dull colors and never have fun. “Like most young women,” the line reads, “her imagination took her to the altar and no further.” That often seems to sum up the prevailing attitude today: couples want big extravagant weddings, but they don’t realize the next step is figuring out how to make a marriage work; all their focus has been on the big celebration, not what comes after.
When we got married, back in 1988, we had to wait six weeks between filing and getting the license. We also, because we got married in a church (for sentimental rather than religious reasons–it was where my parents had gotten married) had to do four marriage counseling session with Fred, the minister.
We’d been living together before we got married but those counseling sessions were a godsend. Perhaps the most important thing we had to sort out was money which, to this day, is something we don’t argue about.
It’s hard for young people, especially brides, because many of them have spent lots of time and money on their friends’ weddings and, when it’s their turn, they feel like they are almost owed a big fete in return. Plus everyone uses wedding planners today and their sense of what the norms are is far more capacious than it was when I was wed. I’ve been struck in recent years by all the save the date cards we get complete with professional photos of the newly engaged pair. That’s a cost that just didn’t exist years ago.
I’ve only ever thought big weddings were fun in fiction – and even there I would be fine with more elopements/city hall ceremonies.
IRL I’ve never understood spending that much money on the event.
A few years ago, I had a coworker (close to 70) who had been retired but had to go back to work (none-too-happily) because they’d taken out a second mortgage in order to give their daughter the wedding of her dreams. Yikes! I try not to be a downer about the wretched excess of contemporary weddings, but I feel that for middle- and working-class couples, there are so many better things they can spend $30,000 on, particularly because someone is going into debt to provide the sort of ceremonies that used to be the province of only the ultra-wealthy and are now de rigueur because of shows like “Four Weddings” and “Say Yes to the Dress” (TLC has a lot to answer for). Perhaps because my husband and I were older when we married (I was 31, he was 28, first marriage for both of us) in 1989, we had the wedding we could afford. I never assumed we’d have financial assistance from our parents—although mine paid for the rehearsal dinner and his gave us money to buy a washer & dryer—so we saved for almost 18 months and had a lovely celebration with family & friends based on our budget, which was $10,000 to cover everything from venue to dress to reception to honeymoon. It was so nice to return from our honeymoon and know that we’d incurred no debt for the wedding. Hubby & I now have three single daughters in their twenties. We’ve told them to have the weddings they can afford, but that our financial contribution will be slim. Sorry, but I’m less than two years away from retirement and our nest egg won’t last long if we’re ponying up for three $30,000+ ceremonies. As an aside, one of my daughters was a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding this past summer (bride 23, groom 21) and just the amount of money my daughter spent (for her dress & accessories, plus her portion of the engagement engagement party & wedding shower, bachelorette road trip & party) to participate was insane…and that was just to be a bridesmaid, I can’t imagine how much the overall wedding cost—or who paid for it as both bride & groom are currently working minimum-wage jobs and, the bride at least, has student loan debt.
TL;DR: I’d advise young couples today: elope or go to City Hall to get married, then spring for a celebratory backyard pot-luck or bbq with family and friends. Save your money for something less ephemeral than an over-the-top wedding that few families can truly afford.
/And now I have to go yell at some neighborhood kids to get off my lawn!
That would basically be my argument. And in the UK, where I can’t see how ANY young couple just starting out can afford to buy any home bigger than a shoe box, the choice for a big wedding is beyond me. I’ve been married twice and a registry office and gathering of friends afterwards was all I (and my husband) wanted.
It’s the same in Australia. Mind-boggling sums being spent and it seems to me that there’s often an inverse relationship between the cost of the wedding and the length of the marriage!
A few years ago my divorced brother invited us all to his engagement party with fiancee No 2. When we arrived it was to learn that they had actually got married on a beach during a recent holiday and we were in fact attending the wedding reception. The wedding to wife No 1 had cost a fortune and by the second time around my brother had an enormous mortgage and more backbone….. Nobody was offended; we still had a great time.
I also think so many of the trappings of the modern wedding are pointless and outdated relics of a previous era. White dresses and brides being given away by a male relative. Wedding presents, when the couple have probably been living together for years and already own all the household goods they need.
I’m all for the quirky, individual wedding that’s memorable for something other than the sheer extravagance.
I am one of four–two brothers and a sister. My parents gave each of us the same budget–10K–and we all spent it in ways that were meaningful to us. In all but one of the marriages, the people we were marrying came from families who couldn’t financially contribute to our weddings. My husband and I spent money on flowers and a huge party for our reception. We hosted our own rehearsal dinner which was really just a cocktail party for out of town guests, I got married in a dress my grandmother had worn, and we paid for our own honeymoon. We had a friend who was a professional photographer take pictures the day of. I didn’t feel deprived in any way!
As a non-american it of course sounds completely insane.
But if you’re a (rich) American you’ll probably think differently.
I dunno–I suspect I qualify as a rich American and it sounds nuts to me! I think it’s really more a question of whether or not you feel pressure to keep up with the proverbial Joneses.
Heh, I have always thought the TV show Friends did a good job reflecting the rather self-centered attitude of American 20-somethings (and maybe early 30-somethings as well?) during its multiple-year run.
So, with regard to weddings… I was reminded of an episode in which Phoebe and her fiancé decide they don’t want to spend a lot of money on a lavish wedding, preferring to give a big donation to a children’s charity instead. But IIRC, Rachel and/or Monica express disappointment about this, reminding Phoebe that it’s her wedding after all, and she deserves something better than just going to City Hall. So Phoebe returns to the children’s charity (to which the donation has just been made) and asks for the money back. Afterward, she feels kind of guilty about taking the money back, but ultimately she keeps it (using at least some of it for her wedding, I believe) and vows to make a large donation “later”.
Hopefully the following transcript posted by someone is accurate; it’s pretty much the way I recall the episode.
Phoebe: The donation we made earlier? Well, we want it back.
Charity Clerk: Excuse me?
Phoebe: Yeah, okay, see, that money was for a big wedding we thought we didn’t want.
But it turns out we do.
Charity Clerk: So you’re asking us to refund your donation to the children?
Mike: Yeah…This feels really good.
Phoebe: Yeah, I’m sorry. I am. But this wedding’s just really important to me.
Charity Clerk: Hey, it’s none of my business. Besides, this is probably a good thing.
We’ve really been spoiling the children, what with all the food and warm clothing.
Phoebe: That’s not fair. A person’s wedding is important. And especially to me. Okay, I didn’t have a graduation party. And I didn’t go to prom. And I spent my sweet 16 being chased around a tire yard by an escaped mental patient who, in his own words, wanted to: “Kill me, or whatever.” So I deserve a real celebration. And I’m not gonna let some sweaty little man make me feel badly about it.
I never watched Friends so I’m curious–was the audience supposed to think this was OK?
Yes.
Friends rarely, if ever, portrayed the characters as anything but self-absorbed, in my opinion. Was there ever a story arc where some of the characters were working at a charity event, volunteering to help the elderly, or anything remotely altruistic? If there was, I missed it.
It took me a while (and, frankly, a few specifically recommended episodes) to decide that the acting and writing were good enough for me to keep watching the show, despite my dislike of the self-centeredness of the characters. I had a similar experience with Seinfeld. Hated the characters, chose not to watch the show for the longest time, but after finally cracking and watching a couple of recommended episodes, I was won over by the writing.
BTW, one of the first red flags that Friends was going to be problematic for me was during an early episode, when Monica et al. couldn’t wrap their minds around the fact that Monica’s new, older boyfriend (played by Tom Selleck) had only ever slept with one woman (his now deceased wife). The characters were taken aback, like, how can you only ever have slept with one woman? What’s that all about? Who does that? Yeah, no, I didn’t relate.
I think the difference between Seinfeld and Friends was that the characters in Seinfeld were never supposed to be sympathetic or role models or people you’d want to meet in Real Life.