If you have the money, GO!

If you don’t, she’ll understand. After all, she’s asking you to pay $2000 just to watch her get married.

My entire intermediate family all live here in the Portland metro area. About 3 years ago my younger brother announced he was going to be getting married in Las Vegas and wanted all of us to go. I had the money to go but like yourself I would have rather spent the money on other things. (I don’t like flying either) I figured if he wanted me to attend he’d have his wedding here in Portland. In a way I think it’s wrong to have a wedding far away and expect others to show up… but that’s just me.

As for what to say to your friend. Lie, hehe. Tell her that you’re short on funds but if she was willing to pay your way then you’d be more than glad to attend. Problem solved.

and your friend and you live not too far from each other, take her and her spouse out for a nice dinner. This should cost less than the $2000 to go to the wedding and accomplish much of the same goals that going would (minus a vacation in the Carribean of course). Plus it can double as a wedding present too.

on a game day too… hmmm… I know whats going on here and it AINT gonna happen.

how about you’re afraid to fly and even if you could all your money went to the save snowzilla fund.

My wife and I got married this year. All our family was going to need to fly into town (from significant distances) to attend. So we considered a destination wedding. For about 10 seconds.

Then we realized what torture it would be for every other person outside our family. All our local friends would be expected to spend gobs of money (that they may or may not have) just to see us get married, even though they see us regularly already. It’s especially asking a lot during a bad economy, with huge airplane ticket prices.

If we’d done a destination wedding, we’d had personally told every guest that we’d take no offense if they missed the wedding. (We stayed local, our friends had a great time, our family was our family, and all was well with the world.)

It turned out that my wife’s family already had dealt with one destination wedding this year. They hated it; it was demanding of their time (loss of vacation hours) and resources. It was also exhausting. Just to see two people say “I do”. They were very cool if people could not make it, and did not hold it against anyone.

Most people who do a destination wedding understand that this is different, expensive for guests, and time-consuming. If you’re no longer close friends, it’s especially important to keep that in mind. Unless they think they’re the center of the world, they will be very understanding when you tell them it’s just not feasible to go. If they don’t understand, or hold it against you, you’ve learned something very important about them.

Someone noted that a dinner would be nice, and would make a nice present. I’d probably consider one further step. A card and a present (doesn’t have to be expensive, just something on their list), and an offer of a nice dinner. No biggie if the dinner doesn’t happen.

Spend the rest of the money on yourself or something important to you. Or hey, save it for a rainy day.

I don’t begrudge her the destination wedding. She doesn’t really have a home base right now (and was trying to fend of her fiance’s huge family), but . . .

Anyway, boy, people really stayed on topic here, such as it is.

Where’s TIH when you need him!

We lived in Hawaii and thought about getting married here. It would have excluded a bunch of people, and the cheap people that would like to go, would have wanted to sleep on our couch. We went back to Oregon to get married. To be honest, one reason we wanted to have it here was to keep my family from attending.

Destination weddings are a gatekeeper. I wouldn’t go unless you want to see the Caribbean and have someone to hang with. The wedding couple will have other plans.

wait for a year to pass without any contact. At that time, email them and tell them how sorry you are because you thought the date was in 2010. They’ll appreciate this then.

Change wildly every day,Im so confused,what should I do?

I’ve said no to destination weddings before, and the bride and groom were very understanding. Once a few of us got together later for a weekend jaunt closer to home. We had a great time, mostly because we actually got to spend time with the two of them.

Great game tonight.

I like to check out opposing forums. The Raptors forum on Real GM had a lot of cursing at Brian Colangelo for not drafting Roy. And a lot of Roy love, actually. Good read!

http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=865749&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=585

Section 323 is a honest,decent person and picked a good time to take a shot at the title but I am backing the champs play with this meaningless comment

(that’s what she said)

You people are killing me. On behalf of the academy…I would like to thank my family for sticking with all these years

but my dad is paying for it. so….ask your dad i guess.

Allow some other contender…. nay, pretender to step up.

Grandparents and other older family members and friends might be unable to attend on account of the various difficulties encountered in traveling. I am old school (and by some definitions, just plain old), but it seems to me that a wedding is an occasion in which extended families should be represented. Recently I’ve seen a trend toward excluding older folks, even parents, from participation at weddings and events leading up to them. Examples: a bachelor party with only the peer group invited; a wedding shower excluding parents and their close friends. </curmudgeon mode.

but totally forgot …

Nope, don’t go and don’t feel badly. I am assuming that there aren’t others going that you are close to and could play with while you are there. This is a trip that should be made with friend(s).

As to what to tell her, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to attend your wedding. Have a wonderful time.” will do. RSVPs do not require reasons. If she presses you, “It just won’t work for me.” If she presses you further just repeat the last sentence or say “there are a number of personal reasons that I cannot go.” She has no need to know the reasons. If she pushes you for specifics she is extremely rude and you can rejoice that you chose not to go :-)

They have a chat feature on their game days and an open tread.

http://www.celticsblog.com/2008/12/26/702401/on-the-rebound-in-oakland

They’re also not happy about their losing streak. I blame Bill Simmons.

Simply say, it costs to much.

chances like that don’t come around very often

Want to talk about my Eagles stomping the Cryboys.

2,000$ bucks….

If you can justify it I say go ahead, but thats so much money to drop on someone elses wedding when they would likely understand if you couldn’t make it. But It’s a special event, so I dunno how much weight you should really put in all of our opinions on the subject.

Thanks again 323 for hooking me up, and hanging out with me for that game, was a great event even if we couldn’t pull off the win :-/ … I hope you got home alright, my way sucked, I had to wait at the Max stop for 5 trains to go by before being able to board one, and it was still super crammed, then I had to flag a taxi, and the guy wasn’t willing to drive me unless the fair was at least 10 bucks… So we drove around my apartments a few times lol! Thanks again though, made my christmas!