Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Words of wisdom, if that's what you want to call it

There’s giving advice and then there’s knocking you over the head with it.

If you’re married, you know what I’m talking about. We married folk are inundated with words of "wisdom" throughout the engagement, the big event and the first year of wedded bliss.

Don’t get me wrong – advice is good, and where would we be if we didn’t learn from other’s mistakes and experiences?

However, some “advice” is silly, outdated and just plain stupid. If you take a few minutes to look back on what your family and friends said before you got married, you would laugh at some of the absurdity, too.

For the sake of this blog, I went through the hundreds of cards my husband and I received pre-and post-wedding, and I’d like to share a few. Card writer’s names have been withheld to protect the innocent and ignorant – including my single girlfriend who wrote in a wedding shower card that she hoped my husband and I have sex every night for as long as we’re married. Ha! That’s some funny stuff!

Five that stood out:

Card 1: “Happy Engagement! Now you get to plan: the dress, shoes, tuxes, flowers, churches, dinners … or you could just elope!
Me: Not sure if you know my parents, but eloping after I just paid a couple thousand for the photographer was NOT an option.

Card 2: “You’re wedding is gonna rock. We can’t wait!”
Me: Um, you didn’t even bother to show up! And what, exactly, is your idea of “gonna rock?” Last I checked, Lynyrd Skynyrd wasn’t booked as the wedding band.

Card 3: “Best of luck.”
Me: Hey honey, help me remember – did we get married at the Bellagio in Vegas? She might as well have added “break a leg.”

Card 4: “I chose Target instead of Dick’s Sporting Goods in selecting your shower gift. We hope that’s OK, and you can find use for this.”
Me: Yeah, because there’s a big difference between a dart board from Target and a dart board from a sporting goods shop? We’ll take it.

Card 5: “Richard, after this big recipe shower, Alisha has no excuses for not putting a home-cooked meal on the table every night! (Alisha – just kidding!)”
Me: I don’t believe Richard ever saw the “just kidding” part. Thanks … thanks a lot!

Readers, did you receive any words of wisdom that seemed silly at the time – or heck, just dumb?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

People care enough about you and your spouse to send a card and/or a gift, and then you make fun of them on a Web site???? How classy! Talk about ignorance.

Anonymous said...

A high school graduation card from an aunt had a long lecture in it about how wrong I was to decide to go to a good university that was 9 hours away from home when there was a perfectly good, "terrific" she said, community college in my hometown. It continued with how selfish I was to put my family through that separation. Oh, and it contained a $5 bill. Talk about a congratulations...

Anonymous said...

Totally agree with anon. Not very classy at all. Tsk Tsk.

You can't demand tact from others but not demonstrate it yourself. These people were trying to be kind or generous, maybe they missed the mark a little, but you missed an even bigger mark by making fun of them.

If you're willing to put this out there, even with the names witheld, how could anyone trust you?

No wonder they didn't show. Can you really blame them?