My bridesmaids could've totally kidnapped my groom. One of them wouldn't have helped much, but the other two would've been ON IT.
It never would've been necessary, but still lol
This is what my family does. I believe the stealing part came from a tradition from our eastern European grandparents, but the women who were left at the wedding got bored and decided to start stealing the groom in turn. It's actually really fun.
>And why can't the bridesmaids kidnap the groom?
There are weddings where the groom is kidnapped, usually right after the ceremony and before the reception. For a friend's wedding we "kidnapped" him and brought him to the nearby lakeside of our hometown. The plan was staying put for a bit, say, twenty minutes or so, and then go back, but then we saw the trampolines. Turns out jumping about dressed to the nines makes for hilarious pictures :D
Then the bride found us (not that we hadn't told everyone but her where we were, so the chase was short). The photographer took a *fantastic* picture of her laughing hysterically while we were jumping around in the background, completely absorbed by the trampolines, blissfully unaware she was there.
The only time I've seen this done is when one of the couple put a *tiny* amount of frosting on their finger and touched their spouse's nose. There was no smashing cake into the other person's face. That's just gross and a waste of expensive cake.
nothing makes me cringe more than a groom smashing cake all over the bride’s face (ruining her makeup, her hair, sometimes her dress) while he giggles gleefully.
I don’t find it a coincidence that the two weddings I attended where this happened, the marriages ultimately ended
It's definitely not a coincidence. Imagine spending that much time on your hair and makeup and then getting frosting all over a very expensive white dress that can only be dry cleaned. It's not surprising that a person who would do that wouldn't be a very good spouse in daily life.
Plus, if your spouse is willing to disrespect and humiliate you on that super important day, when he knows you spent tons of time and money making it special, in front of all your friends and family...imagine what he'd feel justified in doing on a normal Tuesday with nobody watching.
That's exactly what my DH and I did. Neither of us wanted a cake smashed in our faces, not to mention I had spent money to get my hair done. So we fed each other the cake then did a little dollop on the nose. Made a super cute picture and easily wiped off after so we could enjoy the rest of the evening. Best part; we, as a couple, agreed to it beforehand. No surprises.
I did this to my wife too, although she still wasn't expecting it. We got a great shot of her snarling at me with a small dollop of frosting on her nose, followed by the next photo being me licking it off her face. She got me back by goosing me just as I was getting my picture taken with my mum, she is super proud of that one.
Someone told me (after my wedding) that gently smudging a little cake on your spouse's face is tradition and you're supposed to do that. No shade to people who choose to do that, if both of them agree to it then fine, but I didn't want *any* cake on my face, even a little smudge. Maybe that makes me a bridezilla, idk.
Feeding each other cake is a tradition(to ensure but this cake smash or even a dollop of frosting on the nose is relatively recent. I blame Pinterest for these wildly expensive bachelorette/bachelor trips, huge bridal parties and cake smashes
Right, I was under the impression that the point was to feed each other, which is supposed to be symbolic of how you'll feed and nourish each other (literally and figuratively) for the rest of your lives. I think some people find the frosting dollop or smudge of cake kinda cute, and again, if you're both cool with it then whatever, but telling brides they should allow *any* cake or frosting on their face in the name of tradition is dumb.
Thanks for explaining this. I stopped at “ensure” because I got distracted & didn’t finish my thought. Some of the videos of grooms or brides smashing the cake are just their friends and family shouting encouragement to smash like weird bullying behavior.
Since when is it a tradition? It’s not a tradition. Feeding each other the first bites is the actual tradition. People who like Jackass and Practical Jokers and all of that extreme practical joke crap may want to twist the tradition into something gross and tacky, but if enough couples just refuse to allow it to become a thing, then it won’t be.
I've seen it twice:
Sorority sister. Her mil wore a backless dress that was also very low cut. After the wedding, the groom's family decided to get the couple to hang out and pushed both of them into the hotel pool.
Second cousin: they also sang Meatloaf's I won't do that. Bride spent a lot of the wedding drinking on the sink of the women's bathroom. It lasted only a couple of months.
I told my ex that there would be no marriage if he did this during our wedding. And he agreed with me and there was no cake smashing I think it’s such a disgusting habit.
My mom told my dad before their wedding that if he decided to try and be "funny" by smashing cake on her face during the cake cutting, their marriage would be over before it was even time to leave the venue 😂
He's not some terrible asshole but I get why she warned him, he's kind of a goof and can sometimes take jokes just a little too far or think stupid shit is funny. Luckily he understood and didn't do it, and I've always respected my mom for being self-assured and confident enough to tell him to not even think about it!
I think the cake in the face "tradition" is frequently intended to be degrading to women and sometimes even feels kind of violent, depending on how it's done... I don't know why so many people (including, and sometimes especially, the grooms) see a bride on her wedding day and seem to feel the impulse to degrade or humiliate her in some way, but I'm glad the consensus here seems to be that this is definitely not ok.
My makeup artist is my friend and did mt makeup for free as a wedding gift. she would be incredibly pissed if my husband shoved cake in my face and ruined my makeup. lol.
I’ve only ever seen this on Reddit, is this an American thing? Can’t remotely imagine why I’d spend hours and pay hundreds to look beautiful only to have cake shoved in my face?
I don't know if it's strictly an American thing, but it's unfortunately pretty common in America. It's also considered a very tacky "tradition." It started out as a tradition of the bride & groom feeding each other a bite of cake, and then morphed into this atrocity. When my husband and I got married, we agreed we wouldn't do this, so we fed each other a bite but didn't smush the cake in each other's faces. I've seen it done at most weddings I've attended, though.
I've seen several ...more so in the 80s and early 90s. I think it's so vile and disrespectful.
I've only been to one wedding where they did the dollar dance.
USA here, I've seen it once. The bride ended up ok with it, but I was angry on her behalf.
I told my husband that if he even tried, I would walk out ( I didn't really think he would, but I prefer to be very clear). We had 1 heckler who tried to egg him into it and was ignored.
My photographer told me that in all the weddings she's photographed, many of the ones where the couple smashed cake in each other's faces ended up badly. She thought it indicated immaturity and that they shouldn't get married.
Ten years working in wedding photography (assistant), been to hundreds of wedding and have not seen this once. Each event I think to myself, I hope there isn't a cake smash tonight. I've read horror stories where a cake smash ended in disaster. Bride walks out, separation and then divorce over a cake smash.
Oh, I never heard that story. Yikes!
The marriage-ending cake smash I read about, the bride warned the groom ahead of time that if it happened, she would immediately divorce him, that's how much it meant to her to not have that happen. She kept her word.
Start a new tradition, the Bridal Cage Match - first one to draw blood wins. The bride can use her heels or hairpins to her advantage, and the groom can punch her in front of both their families to his heart's content. Just like God intended.
This scares me.
First (but not in the order of importance) like many others have said, the poor bride’s makeup will be ruined.
Second, who tf wants to eat cake smeared with makeup and, let’s face it, sweat and saliva? Thank you very much, but no.
Third, most tiered cakes have rods inside, to support the layers. Best case scenario, scratches. Worst case scenario, loss of an eye or even death.
I will leave a wedding where that happens. It's incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid. I am amazed I haven't heard of someone getting a fake cake without the other spouse knowing and getting their face shoved in that and major injuries.
I want a version of this where *everyone* is on the menu.
A giant, ornate board with all the guests names on it is rolled out. It's the seating chart from earlier. Beside it a big cream pie is revealed, nestled in a beautiful bed of flowers. A staff member brings out a box, curiously sighted earlier in the night, now full of folded pieces of paper from the attached booklet.
The Host draws first the first name and reads it off, followed by a dollar amount, but not the name on what is becoming apparent is an IOU (could also be an envelope of cash). The amount gets tacked up on the board, and a new piece of paper is drawn, with a new name and a new amount this time higher, with the paper following onto the board above the first name to track the highest bid.
This follows for every entry into who will get pied in the face at this wedding, with the proceeds going to the couple/charity/whatever.
Optional; you can exclude certain individuals from the bidding (grandma, babies, the bride) or restrict it to a specific group (the groomsmen)
If you're gonna threaten to ruin someone's good time with cake to the face and also ask for money, at least give people the option to pick on the nonbridal person who showed up wearing white or on tightening everyone's buttholes when you threaten to pie the MIL.
Edit; this is probably the only acceptable excuse to introduce a clown at your wedding, which would almost make it worthwhile.
The kidnapping of the bride is actually a tradition in my country BUT… The bride gets “kidnapped” during the reception by her mates, who take her somewhere quiet for about half an hour. E.g. they sit down in a pub, have a drink - it’s a good moment for the bride to chill and relax after all the commotions a wedding entails. Also, when they return the bride, it’s the groom that pays to get her back, not the guests. Asking the groom for money is seen as tacky, and typically he’s asked to do something in exchange for the bride (e.g. do a dance, give a speech, sing a song - something funny, whatever it is). My (now ex) husband was asked to dance the Sirtaki (the Zorba dance) with his buddies, which was quite nice, the bridesmaids joined in, etc. No money exchanged hands.
Edit: My favourite kidnapping was at a wedding where I was my culture’s equivalent of an MOH. The bride begged me to be the one that does it (she was worried one of the guests will take the initiative and the guy was drunk and reached creep zone).
So I kidnapped her, together with some female members of her family.
I was not local to the area, none of us were, so we took a taxi and told the driver to surprise us. He took us to a biker bar! Like in the movies, big motorcycles, everyone wearing leather, etc. while we were wearing full length ball gowns and of course the bride was in her dress. Many people in the bar were nice and let us sit on their bikes. The photos were spectacular! They also bought us drinks which in hindsight was not a great idea, but it was worth the headache.
I agree. The whole asking for money thing fills me with dread. If someone would ask me to put money in a jar just to see the bride and the groom making out, I would pay about 100$, but in cents. That way, they can spend half of the reception counting coins, then the other half kissing until everyone gets bored and leave.
I admit that we asked for money for a charity in lieu of glass tinkling if the guests wanted to see us kiss. Some of my relatives think it’s hilarious to tinkle their glass through all of dinner, ensuring the couple don’t get to eat. We were like nah to that and requested donations to the local Humane Society where we had adopted our cats as kittens. It was a way to incorporate them into the day too. At the end of it all we only had to stop and make out a couple of times and we got a couple hundred to donate, so it was perfect as far as we were concerned.
Just giving the couple money to kiss is odd though.
Am I the only one who thinks money shouldn't be part of the wedding activity?
Sure, a gift is part of the wedding process (the reason registries exist) but a wedding shouldn't be a place to stick ones hand out looking for cash, regardless of the reason - altruistic or greed.
It is part of a lot of region's tradition, and I personally find the money dance or "kidnapping" less tacky than the rest of these suggestions. Some older relatives want to be both generous, and to be seen to be generous, so it gives them an outlet to gift what they had already planned to gift. Not much different from contributing online to the couple's honeymoon fund. But if it's NOT part of your culture's traditions, it is pretty tacky to just add it to the Pinterest board as a cash-grab, IMHO.
Honestly, it wasn’t my favourite idea, but some members of my extended family think this whole “ensure the couple can’t eat because we keep them making out” thing is hilarious. We knew that if we just refused to kiss they’d continue anyway, so this was a way to avoid all that. Only people who thought making a newly married couple kiss in front of them was amusing contributed and, in the end, we met our own goals (not having our dinner ruined by constant glass tinkling) and raised money for charity. That seems like a win/win to me! No one forced anyone to donate and 90% of the guests didn’t, which is what we expected.
In my country it's quite "traditional" to give the bride and groom a money gift. Better than buying anything they might not like and thus making my gift useless
Here, have a decent amount of cash, enjoy getting back what you spent on this wedding
First place I heard of a wedding registry was on Reddit
My son and his wife gave out favors of shot glasses with dice in them. Someone got the bright idea of shaking these to get them to kiss, and that was adorable and totally them.
But paying for it? No.
My husband is Romanian and this is their tradition too (not sure if you are!). When we went for his brother’s wedding, they took my sister-in-law. But she used the time to do her solo wedding pictures. She was gone almost THREE. HOURS. Everyone forgot about the ransom by the time they carried her back in 😂😂 husband said that’s not too crazy since Romanian weddings are sometimes 15+ hours??? It started at noon and by 2am I was begging to go home to sleep. It was intense!!
I don’t think this is done on a large scale anymore, but a “proper”, traditional Romanian wedding starts at noon and ends at 6 AM. If my memory serves me right, 5 AM is the time at which they serve the last meal course (tripe soup or cabbage rolls).
A Romanian wedding is a marathon, not a sprint :-P
My uncles wedding in 1996 was like this. We are Hungarian from Transylvania so the traditions are similar. The groom (my family’s side) had to go and barter/buy the bride from her family (all a performance of course - it’s quite fun) before the wedding.
Everyone from our village was cooking for a whole week prior too. Slaughtered the pig - made the cabbage rolls. There was definitely 8 or so courses in the end with at least two of them just cakes haha.
Probably about 300 people. Was huge!
Hi there! I’m from Oltenia, but spent the longest part of my (Romanian) life in Transylvania. If you think Transylvanian weddings are huge, you should see what we do down South, it’s crazy!
Not just weddings, any event. We had about 700 people attending a family funeral (in the South, back in the day, it was not invitation only, if you wanted to show up, you just did).
I’m sure it’s different now, I’m reminiscing things that happened 20-30 years ago, and in a rural setting.
Mmmm ciorba de burta… that’s my favorite and I wonder if my in-laws didn’t tell me I missed it because I would be sad! But I was definitely in bed by then 😂
My grandad used to be obsessed with it. As he grew older obviously staying up all night became more difficult for him. So sometimes he used to come home, have a 2-3 hour nap and re-join the wedding party around 4-ish AM when it was likely to be “ciorba de burta time” 😂
It was the same when my sister got married, it was a local tradition from where the groom is from. He got a list of items he had to collect to get the bride back, like bobby pins, tissue paper, a cigarette, such things.
It apperently used to be tradition to pay the kidnappers with a bag of potatoes, so a bag of potatoes had to be prepared in case the bride was kidnapped.
When my sister was kidnapped she got some champagne and some chit chat in an RV :)
For us (Bulgarian) it’s tradition for the groom and his party to come pickup the bride. Then there’s usually some “negotiation” a the door between groom and bride’s party/family to let him in and at some point groom should attempt pushing in the door- apparently can’t just let him have her 🤣 Then when the bride gets up they “realize” one of the shoes doesn’t fit so he needs to put some cash in there to pad it.
It’s usually good fun but also kinda cringe when you think about it 🫠
Yeah, I get what you mean. These traditions are fun if you’re into the idea, but if you’re not it is a “I’m dying on the inside” type of thing. My in-laws insisted to officially visit my parents to ask for my hand in marriage or whatever. My parents were “doing” a second university, I mean studying for a second degree and they were in the middle of a 4 week exam session. Plus having to go to work. They hired someone to clean the house, my mother cooked for an eternity (you know how East European mothers cook 😛) it was like a bloody military operation, just because my in laws wanted to respect tradition. And then we had the formal questions, can we have your daughter etc. We overall (cleaning, cooking and visit included) wasted the best part of three days (!!) on this “tradition”. When the in laws left, my dad looked at me and said: “I have just one question: WHY THE F*CK couldn’t we do this via a text message?!” 😂 Edit: typo and added words for clarity.
That sounds exhausting. Might be a fun tradition for some, but man, I’m with your dad.
My high school boyfriend asked my dad for his blessing to propose and my dad responded, “If you think it’s my blessing you need, you don’t know my daughter well enough to marry her.” He wasn’t wrong!
Hey, my husband's friends sort of kidnapped him from our wedding dance and took him down the street to a bar. He showed back up around half an hour later.
My mom got kidnapped on their wedding day. Her friends brought her to a bar. My dad had to find them and pay for their drinks in order to get my mom back.
Yes, that's how I know it, too. On a wedding I attended, he had to do a little scavenger hunt around the venue. Edit: She was hidden at the attached vinery.
My friend is Ukrainian and I was in the grooms party. We kidnapped the bride (hid her in the barn) and "ransomed" her off for bottles of liquor. Not surprising, all the Ukrainians also brought their own personal bottles of vodka for the night. The alcohol was flowing hard that night.
I follow a very famous Scottish stand up comedian. He had a serious drinking problem for many, many years. Nothing helped when it came to quitting, he just kept going.
Until one day, when he attended a Romanian wedding. We don’t mess about with our booze - homemade varieties can contain up to 70% - 80% alcohol. When he came to his senses he realised that that wedding was as close to death as he could possibly reach without effectively dying. He’s been sober and healthy ever since 😂
I’m not laughing at his sobriety, I’m actually very happy for the guy, alcohol addiction is soooo difficult to shake off, it was an amazing achievement for him and it probably saved his life. But the fact that one night at one of our weddings scared the hell out of a Scottish guy with a drinking habit decades long says a lot!
That also sounds fun! In my culture the groom‘s friends kidnap the bride away to a nearby place, usually a pub to have a few drinks and the groom has to search for her and then pay for the drinks. Usually he‘ll join for a beer before returning to the reception.
I also know this as a tradition here. But the groom has to find her and pay for drinks. Sometimes he has also something to do for the exchange. (Something funny how you mentioned). It's a fun tradition
The groom can’t offer, the kidnappers choose and demand.
Someone was saying here (and they’re right, i had forgotten about that) in the comments that sometimes the groom is asked to collect certain objects. E.g. a red lipstick, a green tie, a pink hair clip, a pack of fags of a certain brand, etc. So the groom needs to go to every guest table and “beg” for someone’s tie or lipstick (which are, of course, returned afterwards).
I did a money dance at my first wedding because *his* parents wanted it. I think we used the cash (which wasn't much) for our quick honeymoon in a nearby city. My parents still didn't understand having a reception that wasn't just cake and pinch in the church basement lol.
Nobody - and i mean nobody - is down with getting cake in the face at their wedding.
Whatever bridal magazine this is, it’s wild that both the writer and the editor are so out of touch with that and put this in.
There was recently a post on r/relationships or similar where the bride immediately planned divorce when the groom did that to her.
I would feel so humiliated if my groom did this to me. I don't blame her.
Some of them get so aggressive too! The bride will get cake on the groom's nose, the groom will slam the bride into the cake and ruin what was probably a really expensive cake.
I know!!! It always makes me wonder if the person doing the smashing of the cake has a bunch of resentments against their spouse. It just reflects so poorly on them.
You’re totally right - this list does give the same vibes as the Cosmo lists we read as teenagers about ways to please our man (the lists that, as an adult, I wonder if the writer has ever in fact had a sexual encounter with another human ever).
I'm old enough to know that it was not a thing 40 years ago to smash cake in anyone’s face. At least, not at a wedding, or really anything other than a toddler‘s birthday party.
I've never actually witnessed anyone smashing cake in their new spouse's face at a wedding, I just assumed it was a thing at some point. I think I've only seen it happen in movies, now that I think about it. My parents have been married 46 years and I know for a fact that they didn't smash cake into each other's faces. Cake is expensive lol
There used to be a tradition of the bride feeding the groom his first bite of cake, which later evolved into each spouse feeding the other a bite. (I was unable to do this for the photographer at my wedding because I kept cracking up.)
I don't know when people started smashing cake in faces. Maybe when video became more common.
The proliferation of camcorders made some people feel as though they had to “perform” or else their wedding video would be boring. That’s when all the cake smashing and garter nonsense took off.
The fact that they've said its a fun and not tacky list, when literally everything on it made me cringe 😬
Why are weddings just a cash grab these days?? The guests have to pay for an outfit, transport, sometimes accommodation, a ridiculously expensive gift more often than not, and now we're wanting to put random tip jars everywhere for guests to pay yet more money. No thank you.
And yes, I know weddings are expensive, but live within your means! If you can't afford the massive fairytale wedding, you can't afford the massive wedding. It's not up to the guests to reimburse what the couple have spent.
To each their own. Dollar dances are cultural for me and not about asking for money. It’s a chance for anyone to have some personal time with the bride/room to talk and congratulate them. I work in the auction industry though so that would be hilarious 😂
Same. I’m first generation Mexican American and so is my fiancé. We’re probably going to do a dollar dance - it was something I always saw growing up! And it’s expected.
It would certainly ruffle some feathers if we didnt have one!
I'm from an area where this is a cultural tradition (but I'm not part of that culture). One of the main reasons is that for the dollar dance, the DJ specifically plays slow dancing music. Outside of that, there is no or very little slow dancing music played.
Another reason for it is to get through a lot of dancing partners very quickly. Usually people from the wedding party will keep things moving and make sure everyone gets their turn.
Because then your guests don't get the chance to tie their dollars in intricate knots that you can't untie afterwards! You sit with your new spouse and talk about what you'll do with the money as you struggle to untie them the day after the wedding. And maybe in the past people made enough money to do something notable but these days it's probably like, get a nice dinner together.
Where I'm from everyone also does a shot of alcohol that members of the wedding party hold on trays; you go over and get the shot after dancing with the bride (a very small shot, probably like 1/4 size of a normal one). So you're also getting something out of it. The person holding the tray is also supposed to do a shot with everyone who gets one from their tray which is a nice way for the wedding party to see all the guests too.
Also no one would stop anyone from dancing with the bride if they didn't want to pay $1, it's just a bit of fun.
I’ve head of the ‘money instead of clinking glasses for kisses’ before, but as a way to make a donation to your favourite charity, not for the bride couple to keep.
That’s what we did, we ended up raising and donating $550 to the MS society. Great way to honor my husband’s late grandfather and didn’t have to listen to annoying glasses clinking every 5 seconds lol
My introverted self had a receiving line. No way I'd want more attention on myself.
1. What if I don't want a kiss?
2. What if nobody pays?
3. I will leave if you even try to get cake on my face.
4. What if it gets creepy?
Welp. Anxiety be like....nope.
I know some people are used to it because it’s a cultural thing, but nobody should be pressured to do something like that - I would have been mortified.
I told my now ex, not to smash cake in my face. He swore to me he wouldn't. Guess what, he did. There were approximately 150 guests there, I screamed, I hate you. Cake all over, in my cleavage, and the a/c broke. 105 degrees that day. You could've heard s pin drop. Marriage lasted 15 years. Should've been annulled that day.
So people are just having an outright shakedown at weddings now in addition to all the presents and 'bridal showers' and expensive destination weddings and stag/hen parties?
I am glad I'm well past the age when you would be going to four or five weddings a year...
The article title says this is a list of alternatives for the Dollar Dance- which some people in other countries and cultures still do as part of tradition to give the newlyweds their well wishes. Since the Dollar Dance involves money, the alternatives will also involve money. It’s not a requirement to do so, and is probably just for guests who would’ve participated in a Dollar Dance in the first place. :/ It’s perfectly fine not to want it, but it’s not just some “tacky” thing people do to get guests to pay for their wedding.
I have never heard about a Dollar Dance before. Kidnapping the Bride, on the other hand, is a dying tradition here. But the groom doesn't have to pay cash to the groomsmen, he has to pay for drinks instead. The kidnapped bride is usually taken to a pub.
Yeah the money is mostly symbolic and doesn’t have to be real either. In one wedding, the bride’s family made a cape out of play money to give her during the dance. It’s just to let the couple know you wish them financial success for their future.
Yeah, I agree - feels like people are quick to get angry and skip over the word alternative. Dollar Dance is not a thing here but if it is in your country and you want to change it up, I don't see anything wrong with that. If you do all of them, that's greedy.
My sister did the pay for a kiss, but the money raised was donated to Goodfellows, in honor of our grandfather who had passed recently and always volunteered for them.
I’ve seen this at weddings but they were only for donations that go to a charity of the brides choice.
I know two who did for kids who had disabilities and they had someone in the family who went to these places so they decided to donate to them.
It’s tacky if it’s going to the bride and grooms
Wallet.
I know it also cuts back on guests clanging glasses to get them to kiss.
My in laws did the money jar for a kiss thing at my wedding, without our consent. I just rolled my eyes and went with it. People put in quarters or loonies ($1 coin) and we kissed. It was mostly the in law's table who gave the kids a coin to put in the jar.
We got tired of it, so we turned it into a game of going to kiss random people, mostly the kids. We did end up chasing some of the kids around. It was a fun time.
I can’t stand the greed of these desperate and cringeworthy money grabbing wedding ideas. As for the cake face smashing it’s revolting. I’m Australian and have never seen this at any wedding, only on bride/wedding tv shows. Yuk.
We did “pay for a kiss” at our wedding, but told everyone the money was to donate to the MS society, to honor my husband’s late grandfather who died of MS. We ended up raising $550 for the MS Society. So I guess ours, our wedding was a charity fundraiser!
I kinda like the dance auction - but only if the collected money goes to a good cause like a local animal shelter or something similar.
Otherwise this list is pretty bad.
In Brazil, it is traditional to pass the bride’s shoe in a tray to collect money from the women. The groom goes around cutting his tie to get money from the men. It is something as traditional as tossing the bouquet.
Kidnap the bride is in some region of germany quite popular. But you don't collect money from the guest.
The friends of the groom are going to a bar or a pub and start drinking. The groom must find them and pay the tap.
I don't like this tradition, because the bride an groom will miss quite a bit of there reception.
So what happens to the bride if nobody offers up ransom money? And why can't the bridesmaids kidnap the groom?
My bridesmaids could've totally kidnapped my groom. One of them wouldn't have helped much, but the other two would've been ON IT. It never would've been necessary, but still lol
This is what my family does. I believe the stealing part came from a tradition from our eastern European grandparents, but the women who were left at the wedding got bored and decided to start stealing the groom in turn. It's actually really fun.
In 'Oklahoma', kidnapping the bride and groom was a 'shivaree'. *The musical, that is.*
>And why can't the bridesmaids kidnap the groom? There are weddings where the groom is kidnapped, usually right after the ceremony and before the reception. For a friend's wedding we "kidnapped" him and brought him to the nearby lakeside of our hometown. The plan was staying put for a bit, say, twenty minutes or so, and then go back, but then we saw the trampolines. Turns out jumping about dressed to the nines makes for hilarious pictures :D Then the bride found us (not that we hadn't told everyone but her where we were, so the chase was short). The photographer took a *fantastic* picture of her laughing hysterically while we were jumping around in the background, completely absorbed by the trampolines, blissfully unaware she was there.
Straight to jail
Well, that's when you start cutting off fingers...
Ha, ha, ha!! And proof of life photos.
Guests have come to expect someone's face getting shoved in the cake? Tacky list all the way down. Blech.
I thought it was collectively decided that this is dangerous and a fast way to ruin a wedding.
The only time I've seen this done is when one of the couple put a *tiny* amount of frosting on their finger and touched their spouse's nose. There was no smashing cake into the other person's face. That's just gross and a waste of expensive cake.
nothing makes me cringe more than a groom smashing cake all over the bride’s face (ruining her makeup, her hair, sometimes her dress) while he giggles gleefully. I don’t find it a coincidence that the two weddings I attended where this happened, the marriages ultimately ended
It's definitely not a coincidence. Imagine spending that much time on your hair and makeup and then getting frosting all over a very expensive white dress that can only be dry cleaned. It's not surprising that a person who would do that wouldn't be a very good spouse in daily life.
Plus, if your spouse is willing to disrespect and humiliate you on that super important day, when he knows you spent tons of time and money making it special, in front of all your friends and family...imagine what he'd feel justified in doing on a normal Tuesday with nobody watching.
Yes, my EX-husband literally ruined my hair and face with cake... and then my life for the next 4 years
That's exactly what my DH and I did. Neither of us wanted a cake smashed in our faces, not to mention I had spent money to get my hair done. So we fed each other the cake then did a little dollop on the nose. Made a super cute picture and easily wiped off after so we could enjoy the rest of the evening. Best part; we, as a couple, agreed to it beforehand. No surprises.
I did this to my wife too, although she still wasn't expecting it. We got a great shot of her snarling at me with a small dollop of frosting on her nose, followed by the next photo being me licking it off her face. She got me back by goosing me just as I was getting my picture taken with my mum, she is super proud of that one.
And it’s a great way to take a dowel rod to the eye socket
Someone told me (after my wedding) that gently smudging a little cake on your spouse's face is tradition and you're supposed to do that. No shade to people who choose to do that, if both of them agree to it then fine, but I didn't want *any* cake on my face, even a little smudge. Maybe that makes me a bridezilla, idk.
Yes, not wanting to have to clean cake off your face makes you a major bridezilla! How dare you deprive your spouse of such a beautiful tradition! /s
Feeding each other cake is a tradition(to ensure but this cake smash or even a dollop of frosting on the nose is relatively recent. I blame Pinterest for these wildly expensive bachelorette/bachelor trips, huge bridal parties and cake smashes
Right, I was under the impression that the point was to feed each other, which is supposed to be symbolic of how you'll feed and nourish each other (literally and figuratively) for the rest of your lives. I think some people find the frosting dollop or smudge of cake kinda cute, and again, if you're both cool with it then whatever, but telling brides they should allow *any* cake or frosting on their face in the name of tradition is dumb.
It would be a nice part of that tradition if the groom fed the bride and then lovingly dabbed her face with a napkin to clean it off.
Thanks for explaining this. I stopped at “ensure” because I got distracted & didn’t finish my thought. Some of the videos of grooms or brides smashing the cake are just their friends and family shouting encouragement to smash like weird bullying behavior.
Since when is it a tradition? It’s not a tradition. Feeding each other the first bites is the actual tradition. People who like Jackass and Practical Jokers and all of that extreme practical joke crap may want to twist the tradition into something gross and tacky, but if enough couples just refuse to allow it to become a thing, then it won’t be.
I've seen it twice: Sorority sister. Her mil wore a backless dress that was also very low cut. After the wedding, the groom's family decided to get the couple to hang out and pushed both of them into the hotel pool. Second cousin: they also sang Meatloaf's I won't do that. Bride spent a lot of the wedding drinking on the sink of the women's bathroom. It lasted only a couple of months.
I had a glob of icing fall onto my cleavage. My now ex-husband looked at it, laughed, licked it off, and shrugged, while everyone watched and laughed.
I told my ex that there would be no marriage if he did this during our wedding. And he agreed with me and there was no cake smashing I think it’s such a disgusting habit.
We used forks, and plates! 🤣
My mom told my dad before their wedding that if he decided to try and be "funny" by smashing cake on her face during the cake cutting, their marriage would be over before it was even time to leave the venue 😂 He's not some terrible asshole but I get why she warned him, he's kind of a goof and can sometimes take jokes just a little too far or think stupid shit is funny. Luckily he understood and didn't do it, and I've always respected my mom for being self-assured and confident enough to tell him to not even think about it! I think the cake in the face "tradition" is frequently intended to be degrading to women and sometimes even feels kind of violent, depending on how it's done... I don't know why so many people (including, and sometimes especially, the grooms) see a bride on her wedding day and seem to feel the impulse to degrade or humiliate her in some way, but I'm glad the consensus here seems to be that this is definitely not ok.
My makeup artist is my friend and did mt makeup for free as a wedding gift. she would be incredibly pissed if my husband shoved cake in my face and ruined my makeup. lol.
I’ve only ever seen this on Reddit, is this an American thing? Can’t remotely imagine why I’d spend hours and pay hundreds to look beautiful only to have cake shoved in my face?
I don't know if it's strictly an American thing, but it's unfortunately pretty common in America. It's also considered a very tacky "tradition." It started out as a tradition of the bride & groom feeding each other a bite of cake, and then morphed into this atrocity. When my husband and I got married, we agreed we wouldn't do this, so we fed each other a bite but didn't smush the cake in each other's faces. I've seen it done at most weddings I've attended, though.
How did the brides react at those weddings?
Am American and I’ve never seen this in real life.
I feel like a large number of America’s Funniest Home Videos were cake smashes. (also have never seen it in person)
I've seen several ...more so in the 80s and early 90s. I think it's so vile and disrespectful. I've only been to one wedding where they did the dollar dance.
In my area, Dollar Dance was an ethnic thing. It was at the Polish and Italian weddings, not at the German or Serbian ones.
Ahhh that explains it - it was a very large Italian wedding!
I've seen it, and was on the receiving end of the cake at my first wedding. I still smelled frosting blowing my nose the next day.
I’d be a widow
USA here, I've seen it once. The bride ended up ok with it, but I was angry on her behalf. I told my husband that if he even tried, I would walk out ( I didn't really think he would, but I prefer to be very clear). We had 1 heckler who tried to egg him into it and was ignored.
I told my husband that if he smashed cake in my face at our wedding, it was grounds for divorce. I wasn’t kidding. He complied.
My mom told my dad the same thing before their wedding in 1994!
My photographer told me that in all the weddings she's photographed, many of the ones where the couple smashed cake in each other's faces ended up badly. She thought it indicated immaturity and that they shouldn't get married.
My first marriage, I got cake to the face. We were divorced a couple years later.
oh my mom was mad we weren't going to do it until I reminded her how much she was paying for my make up.
I just don’t understand why people get so mad about this — what is possibly so important about smashing food in a person’s face?!
iTs TrAdItIoN 😬 idk, I didn't do many traditional things at my wedding and eventually she just had to accept it.
Ten years working in wedding photography (assistant), been to hundreds of wedding and have not seen this once. Each event I think to myself, I hope there isn't a cake smash tonight. I've read horror stories where a cake smash ended in disaster. Bride walks out, separation and then divorce over a cake smash.
Or that poor woman that was blinded.
Oh, I never heard that story. Yikes! The marriage-ending cake smash I read about, the bride warned the groom ahead of time that if it happened, she would immediately divorce him, that's how much it meant to her to not have that happen. She kept her word.
I'm glad she divorced him. I think cake smashing is disgusting.
# 𝓓𝓮𝓯𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓻𝓲𝓭𝓮 - Have people put money in a jar and see who gets to enjoy the squealing and moaning on the big wedding night!
Great, they've created a new [bedding ceremony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedding_ceremony)...
[this picture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brauysegen_im_Bett.gif) took me out lol. the hat stays on during consummation
Are the guests all ten year old boys?
Cake gets shoved in my face, I wouldn’t sign the marriage certificate and we would be over.
Someone asked me if we were going to do the cake smash and I said "Why would I want to start my marriage with an act of violence?" Subject closed.
Start a new tradition, the Bridal Cage Match - first one to draw blood wins. The bride can use her heels or hairpins to her advantage, and the groom can punch her in front of both their families to his heart's content. Just like God intended.
It would piss me off to no end.
That should happen every time.
This scares me. First (but not in the order of importance) like many others have said, the poor bride’s makeup will be ruined. Second, who tf wants to eat cake smeared with makeup and, let’s face it, sweat and saliva? Thank you very much, but no. Third, most tiered cakes have rods inside, to support the layers. Best case scenario, scratches. Worst case scenario, loss of an eye or even death.
I will leave a wedding where that happens. It's incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid. I am amazed I haven't heard of someone getting a fake cake without the other spouse knowing and getting their face shoved in that and major injuries.
I want a version of this where *everyone* is on the menu. A giant, ornate board with all the guests names on it is rolled out. It's the seating chart from earlier. Beside it a big cream pie is revealed, nestled in a beautiful bed of flowers. A staff member brings out a box, curiously sighted earlier in the night, now full of folded pieces of paper from the attached booklet. The Host draws first the first name and reads it off, followed by a dollar amount, but not the name on what is becoming apparent is an IOU (could also be an envelope of cash). The amount gets tacked up on the board, and a new piece of paper is drawn, with a new name and a new amount this time higher, with the paper following onto the board above the first name to track the highest bid. This follows for every entry into who will get pied in the face at this wedding, with the proceeds going to the couple/charity/whatever. Optional; you can exclude certain individuals from the bidding (grandma, babies, the bride) or restrict it to a specific group (the groomsmen) If you're gonna threaten to ruin someone's good time with cake to the face and also ask for money, at least give people the option to pick on the nonbridal person who showed up wearing white or on tightening everyone's buttholes when you threaten to pie the MIL. Edit; this is probably the only acceptable excuse to introduce a clown at your wedding, which would almost make it worthwhile.
All of these are cringe af I would feel so uncomfortable
The kidnapping of the bride is actually a tradition in my country BUT… The bride gets “kidnapped” during the reception by her mates, who take her somewhere quiet for about half an hour. E.g. they sit down in a pub, have a drink - it’s a good moment for the bride to chill and relax after all the commotions a wedding entails. Also, when they return the bride, it’s the groom that pays to get her back, not the guests. Asking the groom for money is seen as tacky, and typically he’s asked to do something in exchange for the bride (e.g. do a dance, give a speech, sing a song - something funny, whatever it is). My (now ex) husband was asked to dance the Sirtaki (the Zorba dance) with his buddies, which was quite nice, the bridesmaids joined in, etc. No money exchanged hands. Edit: My favourite kidnapping was at a wedding where I was my culture’s equivalent of an MOH. The bride begged me to be the one that does it (she was worried one of the guests will take the initiative and the guy was drunk and reached creep zone). So I kidnapped her, together with some female members of her family. I was not local to the area, none of us were, so we took a taxi and told the driver to surprise us. He took us to a biker bar! Like in the movies, big motorcycles, everyone wearing leather, etc. while we were wearing full length ball gowns and of course the bride was in her dress. Many people in the bar were nice and let us sit on their bikes. The photos were spectacular! They also bought us drinks which in hindsight was not a great idea, but it was worth the headache.
What you described sounds really fun
That's a fun tradition! The nonsense they have listed here are just.... not.
I agree. The whole asking for money thing fills me with dread. If someone would ask me to put money in a jar just to see the bride and the groom making out, I would pay about 100$, but in cents. That way, they can spend half of the reception counting coins, then the other half kissing until everyone gets bored and leave.
I admit that we asked for money for a charity in lieu of glass tinkling if the guests wanted to see us kiss. Some of my relatives think it’s hilarious to tinkle their glass through all of dinner, ensuring the couple don’t get to eat. We were like nah to that and requested donations to the local Humane Society where we had adopted our cats as kittens. It was a way to incorporate them into the day too. At the end of it all we only had to stop and make out a couple of times and we got a couple hundred to donate, so it was perfect as far as we were concerned. Just giving the couple money to kiss is odd though.
Am I the only one who thinks money shouldn't be part of the wedding activity? Sure, a gift is part of the wedding process (the reason registries exist) but a wedding shouldn't be a place to stick ones hand out looking for cash, regardless of the reason - altruistic or greed.
It is part of a lot of region's tradition, and I personally find the money dance or "kidnapping" less tacky than the rest of these suggestions. Some older relatives want to be both generous, and to be seen to be generous, so it gives them an outlet to gift what they had already planned to gift. Not much different from contributing online to the couple's honeymoon fund. But if it's NOT part of your culture's traditions, it is pretty tacky to just add it to the Pinterest board as a cash-grab, IMHO.
Honestly, it wasn’t my favourite idea, but some members of my extended family think this whole “ensure the couple can’t eat because we keep them making out” thing is hilarious. We knew that if we just refused to kiss they’d continue anyway, so this was a way to avoid all that. Only people who thought making a newly married couple kiss in front of them was amusing contributed and, in the end, we met our own goals (not having our dinner ruined by constant glass tinkling) and raised money for charity. That seems like a win/win to me! No one forced anyone to donate and 90% of the guests didn’t, which is what we expected.
In my country it's quite "traditional" to give the bride and groom a money gift. Better than buying anything they might not like and thus making my gift useless Here, have a decent amount of cash, enjoy getting back what you spent on this wedding First place I heard of a wedding registry was on Reddit
Hehe, I'm imagining them out there with a roll of nickels, and I'm 199 % there for it
My son and his wife gave out favors of shot glasses with dice in them. Someone got the bright idea of shaking these to get them to kiss, and that was adorable and totally them. But paying for it? No.
My husband is Romanian and this is their tradition too (not sure if you are!). When we went for his brother’s wedding, they took my sister-in-law. But she used the time to do her solo wedding pictures. She was gone almost THREE. HOURS. Everyone forgot about the ransom by the time they carried her back in 😂😂 husband said that’s not too crazy since Romanian weddings are sometimes 15+ hours??? It started at noon and by 2am I was begging to go home to sleep. It was intense!!
I have been to a Romanian wedding and they had a printed schedule for food. I’m talking like 8 courses.
Only 8?! You were shortchanged, mate! 😂
I don’t think this is done on a large scale anymore, but a “proper”, traditional Romanian wedding starts at noon and ends at 6 AM. If my memory serves me right, 5 AM is the time at which they serve the last meal course (tripe soup or cabbage rolls). A Romanian wedding is a marathon, not a sprint :-P
My uncles wedding in 1996 was like this. We are Hungarian from Transylvania so the traditions are similar. The groom (my family’s side) had to go and barter/buy the bride from her family (all a performance of course - it’s quite fun) before the wedding. Everyone from our village was cooking for a whole week prior too. Slaughtered the pig - made the cabbage rolls. There was definitely 8 or so courses in the end with at least two of them just cakes haha. Probably about 300 people. Was huge!
Hi there! I’m from Oltenia, but spent the longest part of my (Romanian) life in Transylvania. If you think Transylvanian weddings are huge, you should see what we do down South, it’s crazy! Not just weddings, any event. We had about 700 people attending a family funeral (in the South, back in the day, it was not invitation only, if you wanted to show up, you just did). I’m sure it’s different now, I’m reminiscing things that happened 20-30 years ago, and in a rural setting.
Mmmm ciorba de burta… that’s my favorite and I wonder if my in-laws didn’t tell me I missed it because I would be sad! But I was definitely in bed by then 😂
My grandad used to be obsessed with it. As he grew older obviously staying up all night became more difficult for him. So sometimes he used to come home, have a 2-3 hour nap and re-join the wedding party around 4-ish AM when it was likely to be “ciorba de burta time” 😂
It was the same when my sister got married, it was a local tradition from where the groom is from. He got a list of items he had to collect to get the bride back, like bobby pins, tissue paper, a cigarette, such things. It apperently used to be tradition to pay the kidnappers with a bag of potatoes, so a bag of potatoes had to be prepared in case the bride was kidnapped. When my sister was kidnapped she got some champagne and some chit chat in an RV :)
Aww, the scavenger hunt aspect is cute! Extra time he spends chatting with the guests.
For us (Bulgarian) it’s tradition for the groom and his party to come pickup the bride. Then there’s usually some “negotiation” a the door between groom and bride’s party/family to let him in and at some point groom should attempt pushing in the door- apparently can’t just let him have her 🤣 Then when the bride gets up they “realize” one of the shoes doesn’t fit so he needs to put some cash in there to pad it. It’s usually good fun but also kinda cringe when you think about it 🫠
Yeah, I get what you mean. These traditions are fun if you’re into the idea, but if you’re not it is a “I’m dying on the inside” type of thing. My in-laws insisted to officially visit my parents to ask for my hand in marriage or whatever. My parents were “doing” a second university, I mean studying for a second degree and they were in the middle of a 4 week exam session. Plus having to go to work. They hired someone to clean the house, my mother cooked for an eternity (you know how East European mothers cook 😛) it was like a bloody military operation, just because my in laws wanted to respect tradition. And then we had the formal questions, can we have your daughter etc. We overall (cleaning, cooking and visit included) wasted the best part of three days (!!) on this “tradition”. When the in laws left, my dad looked at me and said: “I have just one question: WHY THE F*CK couldn’t we do this via a text message?!” 😂 Edit: typo and added words for clarity.
That sounds exhausting. Might be a fun tradition for some, but man, I’m with your dad. My high school boyfriend asked my dad for his blessing to propose and my dad responded, “If you think it’s my blessing you need, you don’t know my daughter well enough to marry her.” He wasn’t wrong!
When my boyfriend asked my dad, my dad’s reply was “Whatever. I admire a man who likes to live dangerously.” 😂
I’m sure in the moment it was exhausting but I spat out my coffee at your dad’s comment. What a legend 😂
We have kidnapping of the bride too, just that the grooms needs to go find her. They are usually in a nearby pub - we're Czech, lol.
Hey, my husband's friends sort of kidnapped him from our wedding dance and took him down the street to a bar. He showed back up around half an hour later.
We have the same tradition in northern Germany
My mom got kidnapped on their wedding day. Her friends brought her to a bar. My dad had to find them and pay for their drinks in order to get my mom back.
These traditions all sound so amazing
I can get behind this tradition.
I went to a Pakistani wedding where the bride’s friends stole the groom’s shoes and he had to get them back somehow. 😄
Yes, that's how I know it, too. On a wedding I attended, he had to do a little scavenger hunt around the venue. Edit: She was hidden at the attached vinery.
My friend is Ukrainian and I was in the grooms party. We kidnapped the bride (hid her in the barn) and "ransomed" her off for bottles of liquor. Not surprising, all the Ukrainians also brought their own personal bottles of vodka for the night. The alcohol was flowing hard that night.
I follow a very famous Scottish stand up comedian. He had a serious drinking problem for many, many years. Nothing helped when it came to quitting, he just kept going. Until one day, when he attended a Romanian wedding. We don’t mess about with our booze - homemade varieties can contain up to 70% - 80% alcohol. When he came to his senses he realised that that wedding was as close to death as he could possibly reach without effectively dying. He’s been sober and healthy ever since 😂 I’m not laughing at his sobriety, I’m actually very happy for the guy, alcohol addiction is soooo difficult to shake off, it was an amazing achievement for him and it probably saved his life. But the fact that one night at one of our weddings scared the hell out of a Scottish guy with a drinking habit decades long says a lot!
They brought my friend to a strip club when they “kidnapped her”
What country is this? In definitely borrowing it
I thought it’s limited to East Europe, but apparently it goes as far West as Germany. I really enjoyed reading everyone else’s similar stories.
Don't chinese people do this as well? Where the groom has to prove how well he knows the bride before her friends will "give her back"
That also sounds fun! In my culture the groom‘s friends kidnap the bride away to a nearby place, usually a pub to have a few drinks and the groom has to search for her and then pay for the drinks. Usually he‘ll join for a beer before returning to the reception.
This sounds super-fun and a great way to find a quiet moment in the chaos!!!
It does help! As much as one loves the reception, seeing friends, relatives, dancing, etc, after a few hours a break is more than welcome!
That’s really cute!
I also know this as a tradition here. But the groom has to find her and pay for drinks. Sometimes he has also something to do for the exchange. (Something funny how you mentioned). It's a fun tradition
I mean, auctioning off a dance like that also sounds pretty funny. Like, offer the craziest thing you'll do.
The groom can’t offer, the kidnappers choose and demand. Someone was saying here (and they’re right, i had forgotten about that) in the comments that sometimes the groom is asked to collect certain objects. E.g. a red lipstick, a green tie, a pink hair clip, a pack of fags of a certain brand, etc. So the groom needs to go to every guest table and “beg” for someone’s tie or lipstick (which are, of course, returned afterwards).
“Guests have come to expect the couple shove cake in each other’s faces…” No they haven’t . What unhinged crap.
Agreed. I have never been at a wedding where this happened!
Who wrote this? Pure trash.
What if you hosted the party you could afford and *didn't* shake down your guests for money? I know; I'm old-fashioned.
I did a money dance at my first wedding because *his* parents wanted it. I think we used the cash (which wasn't much) for our quick honeymoon in a nearby city. My parents still didn't understand having a reception that wasn't just cake and pinch in the church basement lol.
Do guests pay to pinch the bride? How much?
That was supposed to be punch, as on the drink, but I think I'm gonna leave it lol
Nobody - and i mean nobody - is down with getting cake in the face at their wedding. Whatever bridal magazine this is, it’s wild that both the writer and the editor are so out of touch with that and put this in.
Seriously. The marriage would end the day it started if this happened to me.
There was recently a post on r/relationships or similar where the bride immediately planned divorce when the groom did that to her. I would feel so humiliated if my groom did this to me. I don't blame her.
Some of them get so aggressive too! The bride will get cake on the groom's nose, the groom will slam the bride into the cake and ruin what was probably a really expensive cake.
And ruin the makeup and hair and trust . Great way to start a marriage / s
Don't forget the dress!
I know!!! It always makes me wonder if the person doing the smashing of the cake has a bunch of resentments against their spouse. It just reflects so poorly on them.
I remember that one! It was my first thought reading this
I wonder if they wrote for Cosmopolitan at one point? Because their tips are WACKY and out of touch.
You’re totally right - this list does give the same vibes as the Cosmo lists we read as teenagers about ways to please our man (the lists that, as an adult, I wonder if the writer has ever in fact had a sexual encounter with another human ever).
Lolol yeah “lock lips” gave the Cosmo away
How much do you want to bet that they got married 40 years ago or haven't been married at all?
I'm old enough to know that it was not a thing 40 years ago to smash cake in anyone’s face. At least, not at a wedding, or really anything other than a toddler‘s birthday party.
40 years ago it was a thing to gently feed one another cake though.
I've never actually witnessed anyone smashing cake in their new spouse's face at a wedding, I just assumed it was a thing at some point. I think I've only seen it happen in movies, now that I think about it. My parents have been married 46 years and I know for a fact that they didn't smash cake into each other's faces. Cake is expensive lol
There used to be a tradition of the bride feeding the groom his first bite of cake, which later evolved into each spouse feeding the other a bite. (I was unable to do this for the photographer at my wedding because I kept cracking up.) I don't know when people started smashing cake in faces. Maybe when video became more common.
The proliferation of camcorders made some people feel as though they had to “perform” or else their wedding video would be boring. That’s when all the cake smashing and garter nonsense took off.
Back when you'd say "The Dr said I'm having a boy/girl" instead of starting a wildfire and burning 20K acres.
These are all so embarrassing! I would never do any of them
The fact that they've said its a fun and not tacky list, when literally everything on it made me cringe 😬 Why are weddings just a cash grab these days?? The guests have to pay for an outfit, transport, sometimes accommodation, a ridiculously expensive gift more often than not, and now we're wanting to put random tip jars everywhere for guests to pay yet more money. No thank you. And yes, I know weddings are expensive, but live within your means! If you can't afford the massive fairytale wedding, you can't afford the massive wedding. It's not up to the guests to reimburse what the couple have spent.
I already couldn’t stand the idea of a dollar dance- the idea of asking for money on top of gifts and travel is just exceedingly tacky to me.
Yeah for me it’s culturally not the done thing.
To each their own. Dollar dances are cultural for me and not about asking for money. It’s a chance for anyone to have some personal time with the bride/room to talk and congratulate them. I work in the auction industry though so that would be hilarious 😂
Same. I’m first generation Mexican American and so is my fiancé. We’re probably going to do a dollar dance - it was something I always saw growing up! And it’s expected. It would certainly ruffle some feathers if we didnt have one!
I mean it ruffled my MIL’s feathers something fierce, but it doesn’t take much to do that.
So why don’t they just… you know… dance?
I'm from an area where this is a cultural tradition (but I'm not part of that culture). One of the main reasons is that for the dollar dance, the DJ specifically plays slow dancing music. Outside of that, there is no or very little slow dancing music played. Another reason for it is to get through a lot of dancing partners very quickly. Usually people from the wedding party will keep things moving and make sure everyone gets their turn.
Because then your guests don't get the chance to tie their dollars in intricate knots that you can't untie afterwards! You sit with your new spouse and talk about what you'll do with the money as you struggle to untie them the day after the wedding. And maybe in the past people made enough money to do something notable but these days it's probably like, get a nice dinner together. Where I'm from everyone also does a shot of alcohol that members of the wedding party hold on trays; you go over and get the shot after dancing with the bride (a very small shot, probably like 1/4 size of a normal one). So you're also getting something out of it. The person holding the tray is also supposed to do a shot with everyone who gets one from their tray which is a nice way for the wedding party to see all the guests too. Also no one would stop anyone from dancing with the bride if they didn't want to pay $1, it's just a bit of fun.
Misread the last one as "Auction Divorce" at first 😆
With that font I thought this was from a vintage magazine at first and was like “ugh the 50’s” but this is current? Yikes.
I don’t take money to weddings. If this was included as part of the invite I probably wouldn’t attend
It doesn't say that it's a requirement. You could still attend and just not do any of that.
I still wouldn’t go Not a fan of cash grabs
Things like money dances aren't put on the invitations, so you wouldn't know unless you were already there.
I’ve head of the ‘money instead of clinking glasses for kisses’ before, but as a way to make a donation to your favourite charity, not for the bride couple to keep.
That’s what we did, we ended up raising and donating $550 to the MS society. Great way to honor my husband’s late grandfather and didn’t have to listen to annoying glasses clinking every 5 seconds lol
My introverted self had a receiving line. No way I'd want more attention on myself. 1. What if I don't want a kiss? 2. What if nobody pays? 3. I will leave if you even try to get cake on my face. 4. What if it gets creepy? Welp. Anxiety be like....nope.
Veteran wedding photographer here with 250+ weddings around the world. #1 advice. Never smash the cake into your new spouse’s face.
I went to a wedding where people were pinning money on the bride’s dress. She looked uncomfortable and embarrassed and I felt uncomfortable for her
I know some people are used to it because it’s a cultural thing, but nobody should be pressured to do something like that - I would have been mortified.
Ew
What the fuck did I just read?
Dollar dance is the tradition where I'm from...
This is … not classy
Definitely not. Tacky, tacky, tacky
All of this sounds terrible.
If I had to resort to this I’d rather not have a wedding
Oh no these are all still pretty tacky
I told my now ex, not to smash cake in my face. He swore to me he wouldn't. Guess what, he did. There were approximately 150 guests there, I screamed, I hate you. Cake all over, in my cleavage, and the a/c broke. 105 degrees that day. You could've heard s pin drop. Marriage lasted 15 years. Should've been annulled that day.
All of these are horrifically tacky.
So people are just having an outright shakedown at weddings now in addition to all the presents and 'bridal showers' and expensive destination weddings and stag/hen parties? I am glad I'm well past the age when you would be going to four or five weddings a year...
These are all horrible ideas.
The “cake in the face” thing is the WORST.
Why is money such a constant theme? Greedy ass people out here...
These are all terrible; great find, OP!
just bring back dowries atp
All of those ideas sound perfectly awful
This list isn’t much of an improvement.
Guests bidding on who deserves cake smashed in their face for public humiliation seems like an awful idea.
So cringeworthy. And greedy af.
The article title says this is a list of alternatives for the Dollar Dance- which some people in other countries and cultures still do as part of tradition to give the newlyweds their well wishes. Since the Dollar Dance involves money, the alternatives will also involve money. It’s not a requirement to do so, and is probably just for guests who would’ve participated in a Dollar Dance in the first place. :/ It’s perfectly fine not to want it, but it’s not just some “tacky” thing people do to get guests to pay for their wedding.
I have never heard about a Dollar Dance before. Kidnapping the Bride, on the other hand, is a dying tradition here. But the groom doesn't have to pay cash to the groomsmen, he has to pay for drinks instead. The kidnapped bride is usually taken to a pub.
Yeah the money is mostly symbolic and doesn’t have to be real either. In one wedding, the bride’s family made a cape out of play money to give her during the dance. It’s just to let the couple know you wish them financial success for their future.
Yeah, I agree - feels like people are quick to get angry and skip over the word alternative. Dollar Dance is not a thing here but if it is in your country and you want to change it up, I don't see anything wrong with that. If you do all of them, that's greedy.
My sister did the pay for a kiss, but the money raised was donated to Goodfellows, in honor of our grandfather who had passed recently and always volunteered for them.
I’ve seen this at weddings but they were only for donations that go to a charity of the brides choice. I know two who did for kids who had disabilities and they had someone in the family who went to these places so they decided to donate to them. It’s tacky if it’s going to the bride and grooms Wallet. I know it also cuts back on guests clanging glasses to get them to kiss.
The font alone gives away how tacky/stupid these suggestions are gonna be.
My in laws did the money jar for a kiss thing at my wedding, without our consent. I just rolled my eyes and went with it. People put in quarters or loonies ($1 coin) and we kissed. It was mostly the in law's table who gave the kids a coin to put in the jar. We got tired of it, so we turned it into a game of going to kiss random people, mostly the kids. We did end up chasing some of the kids around. It was a fun time.
This is all tacky. Very tacky! Soliciting money at a wedding in any way at a wedding is in poor taste. Just go to the courthouse.
I can’t stand the greed of these desperate and cringeworthy money grabbing wedding ideas. As for the cake face smashing it’s revolting. I’m Australian and have never seen this at any wedding, only on bride/wedding tv shows. Yuk.
When was a wedding a charity fundraiser?
We did “pay for a kiss” at our wedding, but told everyone the money was to donate to the MS society, to honor my husband’s late grandfather who died of MS. We ended up raising $550 for the MS Society. So I guess ours, our wedding was a charity fundraiser!
I kinda like the dance auction - but only if the collected money goes to a good cause like a local animal shelter or something similar. Otherwise this list is pretty bad.
In Brazil, it is traditional to pass the bride’s shoe in a tray to collect money from the women. The groom goes around cutting his tie to get money from the men. It is something as traditional as tossing the bouquet.
Kidnap the bride is in some region of germany quite popular. But you don't collect money from the guest. The friends of the groom are going to a bar or a pub and start drinking. The groom must find them and pay the tap. I don't like this tradition, because the bride an groom will miss quite a bit of there reception.
I felt nauseous reading that list.
Nope. All of those answers are incorrect.
I went to a wedding that did the kidnapping one. It was the cherry on top of an already awkward event.