Anyone who has ever had a bestie get married knows at least one thing is true: the wedding website is a den of lies. And it’s not just the photos of the couple looking happy on a beach, when you know for a fact they’ve spent every spring break for the past five years screaming at each other, that are bullshit. The most insane lies come when reading the “couple’s story,” wherein the bride and groom (or groom and groom, it’s 2017 after all) tell some fake-ass Disney-fied version of their relationship that their grandmothers can read and feel good about their grandchild’s life choices. And honestly, who can blame them? Do you really want to tell your nana that you met your future husband three times in a blacked out state before you ever remembered his name? Does Uncle Joe really need to know that you’re mostly getting married because this dude gave you mouth herpes from a bong and now you’re marked for life? Probs not. But for those of us who are less concerned about seeming respectable, there are always ways to tell what a wedding website says vs. what a wedding website means.
So in order to help you decode your best friend’s new The Knot page, we’ve built this helpful guide. You know, so you can more easily get drunk and call them on their shit during speeches.
Wedding Website Says: We were college sweethearts!
Wedding Website Means: We met in freshman year and spent the next four years drunkenly hooking up and then not talking to each other. During that time we broke up approximately 450 times, had over one thousand drunken bar fights, and made passes at at least two of each other’s closest friends. We finally decided to get married after graduation once we realized we’d gained 25 pounds in beer weight and nobody else would have us.
Wedding Website Says: We were high school sweethearts!
Wedding Website Means: We are anxiety prone monsters who are too afraid to ever even try hooking up with someone else. We lost our virginities to each other, and then one of us followed the other to a big university despite getting into a much better school because we are clingy AF. Now we are getting married and will probably pop out a baby within a year. We are deeply, deeply unhappy, and our wedding will not have an open bar because we are actually under 21.
Wedding Website Says: We met on study abroad!
Wedding Website Means: Neither of us bothered to learn another language, so our Italian hookup options were fairly limited. We spent the entire six months talking only to each other and sneaking into each other’s homestays wherever possible. We keep saying we’re going to move to Italy after the honeymoon, but we def will just end up buying a house in Jersey and making an “Italy” Pinterest board.
Wedding Website Says: We met randomly on the train! It was a total meet cute!
Wedding Website Means: We met on Tinder after he sent me a picture of his penis and I was too desp not to respond.
Wedding Website Says: We met because we were actually dating each other’s friends! Lol so funny!
Wedding Website Means: We’re still in love with each other’s best friends and are only in this relationship to get back at them for dumping us.
Wedding Website Says: pursued for months before she’d give him her number!
Wedding Website Means: Bride kept groom in the friend zone for years until she realized that her hotness does not outweigh her terrible personality, and he may be the only person who will ever love her. There is a 90% chance Bride will start up an affair with one of the groomsmen at the reception, and call Groom by the wrong name at least once during the honeymoon.
Wedding Website Says: I thought he was gay!
Wedding Website Means: He is gay.
Wedding Website Says: We met at another wedding!
Wedding Website Means: We were both going so hard at the open bar in an attempt to drink away our loneliness that we blacked out and woke up in each other’s hotel rooms. We stayed together because we are both the loneliest people in our friend groups, respectively. Now we’re getting married because we think it’s our best shot at not being alone forever.
Wedding Website Says: We were set up through mutual friends!
Wedding Website Means: Our mutual friend’s name is “Bumble” and they had to set us up like 25 times before anything worked out.
Wedding Website Says: No gifts please! Your presence is all we need.
Wedding Website Means: If you don’t donate at least $200 to our honeymoon fund we’re never talking to your cheap ass again.
Head Pro sincerely holds the belief that a marriage is only valid if it’s between him and an open bar. Email him at [email protected], and follow him on the social medias at @betchesheadpro.
Look, all wedding websites are terrible. Yes, even yours. Your “how we met” story is only cute to you, the bios for your bridesmaids/groomsmen are excruciating and no one gives a fuck that the third cousin of the wife of the Assistant Secretary of The Treasury lived in Slaves Built This Place Plantation in 1842.
But they’re also functional, providing actual useful information to your guests—things like the location, that there won’t be a shuttle to the reception venue 40 miles away, and links to your registry. They’re typically hosted by TheKnot, basically the Halliburton of the wedding industrial complex. But for better or worse it’s their thing, which makes it odd that they would give this dumbfuck advice for registry shopping:
Spend what you think is appropriate to your relationship to the couple, and also consider what’s reasonable in your city. While a co-worker or friend may expect a gift in the $50-75 range, someone in an urban market may have double the expectations. Here’s the ballpark you should be aiming for:
– Coworker and/or a distant family friend or relative: $50-$75
– Relative or friend: $75-$100
– Close relative or close friend: $100-$150
– Urbanite: $150-200+
I’m sorry, what? What the fuck precisely constitutes an “urbanite,” and why the fuck am I expected to kowtow to their precious expectations to spend double? How does someone even arrive at that conclusion? “Well, I know Jeanne and Ronnie are just starting out and don’t have much, but I just HAD to buy Zaydynn the Kitchenaid. She lives in a city, you know.”
Fuck that. I’m not adjusting my spending just because an acquaintance I don’t like that much chooses to pay upwards of $3/sq foot in rent. Besides that, how much does TheKnot think the price of consumer goods vary by geography? Are they based in a remote Laotian village? Unless the happy couple registered at Whole Foods, I’m pretty sure a set of ugly bathroom towels from Macy’s costs pretty much the same everywhere.
Do you want to know how much you should actually spend on a wedding gift? Here’s an easy formula: whatever the fuck you feel like spending. Seriously, though. If it’s on their registry, it means they want it. It’s not your problem if Becka registered for a bunch of mixing bowls and napkin rings. I would say as long as you hit the $25 mark, you’re absolutely fine. Let their older family members splurge for the $500 Dyson vacuum.
Congratulations on your nuptials, I only got you a plate because convention dictated that I buy my urbanite friends a Lexus.
Head Pro sincerely holds the belief that a marriage is only valid if it’s between him and an open bar. Email him at [email protected], and follow him on the social medias at @betchesheadpro.
