I have drunk champagne while getting ready, but honestly, of the 5 weddings I have been an attendant in, 3 of them involved getting the bride discreetly high before the wedding, and 1, my mom offered my h.s. bestie (the bride) and Xanax because she was so nervous.
Granted, the high-as-fuck weddings, one was my eco-caver friends, the two most competent people I know, to whom I will fight in case of a zombie apocalypse (and the wedding was at a cave site) and the other, the same year, 1995, was a year after we graduated college and we were all still huge potheads.
They were LOVELY weddings!
I admit I haven't paid too much attention to when the alcohol started being available, except for the one where the bridal party was an hour late, and the mother of the bride got
hammered
waiting for us, and heckled throughout the ceremony.
I think the couple separated less than six months in, but still, feel free to have open bars if you're not related to me.
With alcoholic family members at the wedding, I'd seriously consider giving the reception partyers drink chits rather than open bar, with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.
Ugh, drinking can be so fraught.
With alcoholic family members at the wedding, I'd seriously consider giving the reception partyers drink chits rather than open bar, with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.
I don't think drinking is inherently non-virtuous. Even if it's alcoholics doing it.
I have been to dry weddings because of (non-reformed) alcoholic parents, and one of the many reasons Tom and I eloped was to avoid having to deal with that stuff. It was just too hard and I knew that I didn't want to deal with it at all.
At my cousins' b'nai mitzvah a few months ago, I got carded. It was ridiculous. I didn't have my license with me, since I was in a fancy dress with no pockets and a little tiny purse, so I just put in the purse the things I thought I'd need. I told the bartender that I was 32 and had been legal to drink for over a decade, and I even went and found my mom and several other older relatives who would vouch for me, including the mother of the b'nai mitzvah kids, but no good. I looked too young, so no ID, no drink.
with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.
I don't think drinking is inherently non-virtuous. Even if it's alcoholics doing it.
Yeah, I have a serious problem with "rewarding virtue" in this context.
I think Theo meant that it's virtuous to abstain if you're purposely trying to. Just like it would be virtuous to abstain if you were trying to stop smoking, or eating a lot of refined sugar. Virtue can mean "a commendable quality or trait," and in that instance it would be willpower or perseverance.
I meant rewarding virtue as in giving the recovering alcoholics a nice present if the drink chips are useless to them. (And it might as well also be offered to anyone who'd rather have a gift certificate than a drink.)
I rarely drink alcohol, most of it tastes awful to me -- I don't refrain from any sense of 'virtue.'
