Wow, that kind of came out of nowhere. Ladies, please take it to PM. And I strongly suggest that the person who overreacted cool it and be a little bit more respectful.
I haven't read the above, and I can't remove my post (I don't think), but yeah, I had no reason to get personal and mean...strike my post and my apologies (and if some mod somewhere could remove my post, please do so). Too much time on the internet makes for bad juju. Everyone's wedding should be what they want and most of all, be joyful and wonderful. Best of luck Mr. F.
What she said. For fucks' sake, KIMaster, quit overreacting and being all disrespectful. Back to period talk! Spoiler I am taking the accupuncture suggestion to heart. My periods are irregular in timing and...um...consistency. I've googled accupuncture for period irregularity, and I am seeing good things about how it can fix the...chunky...part, which will then fix the frequency issue. Hopefully. I'll keep y'all updated. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.
It's sexy when you get all feminist.* I'm less interested in this wedding talk, and more interested in seeing a woman who is presumably at least in her 50's deadlift a whole bunch of weight. *(I happen to think that the wedding industry is the logical conclusion of a society that suggests that a females prime value is in her ability to look good and nest properly, and that your disagreement about it dovetails, somewhere, with some of the goals of modern feminism.)
I'm sorry, this is unrelated, and I'm not laughing at your situation at all (and I do recommend acupuncture, because Chinese medicine FTW)... but your "chunky" description reminds me of a guy I knew in university running out of a girl's room in the middle of the night, buck ass naked, ranting about having "uterus leavings" on his dick. I laughed my ass off then, and I'm laughing my ass off now at the memory of it. Have you just tried one kind of HBC? I know the hormonal mirena was a piece of crap for me, but the nuva ring is kicking serious butt. With hormones, it's all about incremental differences.
The only thing I have to add is that if I ever get tied down I'm having my reception at Dave & Buster's.
I thoroughly enjoyed this wedding discussion. My friend Jessica was getting married to my other friend Mike and was freaking out about her dress. I decided to fuck with her for my own entertainment. Spoiler "Wear sweatpants and a T-shirt to your wedding, fuck the dress, spend the money on higher quality booze at the bar." "Are you kidding me? Its my wedding, I have to be the prettiest girl ever." "Oh no, terrible idea." *Blank stare* "Look if that one day, the first day of your marriage is the prettiest you've ever been you just set the bar high and you gotta live up to that bar. Ever day you don't look like that, he's going to look at you and think 'Fuck, she looks like shit compared to what she did when we got married.' Every day is just going to be a disappointment to him, you're going to have to wear a wedding dress with professional hair and make-up every day just so he doesn't go beat off the wedding photos to get back to that high you set him at. Sweatpants and T-shirt at the wedding, then every day you put on jeans, you're fucking winning. It only gets better, as opposed to just going downhill from there." *Combination of confused/angry/pensive staring* "It's supposed to be the happiest day of my life Parker." "What's the next day going to be? Not as happy? Once again, more downhill." *Makes airplane crash hand gesture* "You're fucked up."
A bit late to the wedding talk, but when I got married, I worked on the theory, "We're going to piss someone off, no matter what we do, so I may as well do what I want" If you can afford it, it doesn't matter what you spend. If you need to take out a massive loan to pay for your wedding, you're a fucking idiot. If it's what you both want, go for it. And re: no kids...we didn't invite any, I made it abundantly clear. If someone wants to whinge because they can't bring their child...that's fine...thats another $100 I can add to my drinking fund. I was lenient for a friend who had a young baby she was breastfeeding, but she didn't want to bring the baby anyway!
I, too, enjoyed the wedding talk, and thought it ended far to early just when it was starting to get good for the voyeur in me. But miss_c said it perfectly. There are certain events in your life will people, for whatever reason, will have stronger opinions about what should be done then what then opinions that you have. A wedding is certainly one of those events. We got a little taste of that here, the spectrum from you are a fucking idiot for how you spend your money to not being good enough. Why is it anybody else's business how you want to celebrate (of course if the parents are footing the bill you must take their choices into account too)? The answer is, it is not, so take the time to discuss what YOU (as a couple) want. I have been to casual weddings done on a budget to black tie ones well into the 6 figures, some were fun, some weren't, and it wasn't necessarily dependent on how much money was spent. You are going to get more advice than you know what to do with, and not all of it is going to be useful, so keep going back to what YOU had decided that you want and try to stick to your guns. Weddings tend to snowball pretty quickly and it is easy to get tied up into the "event" and forget about the reason for it. You are probably hearing a bit of sour grapes from some people who have been there, done that, and wish that they could have done things a bit differently in hindsight. Other thing to mention about kids, it is really hard (if not impossible) to invite certain kids, so at some point you need to just make that big decision. Personally, I am in the no kids camp. They can be loud, disruptive, can add significant cost, and necessary size for venue location. One way that a couple of my friends have managed this, they hired a few babysitters to watch the children of their guests, particularly nice for out of towners. Even if people don't take you up on that, I think it makes the message loud and clear. Yes we know you have kids, no we don't want them there. Of course there will always be the few who don't get the fucking point and write in their RSVP for 6, but another time when you need to stick to your guns. (edit - did anybody else get a giggle because of the irony that spending big bucks on a wedding is insane, but buying $700 Louboutins is perfectly reasonable - not that I have a strong opinion, mind you, just that it was so contradictory in nature that it made me laugh at 7am)
My point was really that there are all sort of ways to spend your money for things that other people may not see the value of. And for the poster who red dotted me because I didn't respond to them specifically, I was really responding to the poster getting married asking for advice by offering yet another probably worthless opinion. When you get married and ask for advice, we'll make it all about you then, ok?
I really want to just flat out say 'no kids', and I think my Fiancee would as well, but we need to talk about it more. She had mentioned the idea of providing a baby sitter to make it easier, which may work. However, for instance my cousins daughter is going to be the flower girl during the ceremony and I don't see how we could ask them to do that and then tell them she can't be at the reception. The kicker to that is that they actually discipline their kids so they are the ones I'm least worried about, but of course it's either all kids or no kids. It's my other cousins and step cousins who apparently don't understand the concept of discipline and seem to never put pants on their toddlers.
I think a loophole exists for children who are actually a part of the wedding party. You could phrase it that way, the venue only holds a certain number of people, so if all children were included it would significantly increase the headcount and the venue wouldn't be able to accommodate those numbers, obviously if a child is a part of the wedding party, they will already be there. Certainly sounds reasonable to me, but you will probably ruffle a few feathers. People get nutty about their kids. But I would hope that they get over it.
Then do it. Seriously. We did. I looked straight at her father and said that all of her little cousins (it's like a baby making factory with these people) are not coming. In fact, the only people under 21 who are invited are two of my first cousins who will be 17 and 20 next year. Sell it to them as a night off for the parents. You want the people coming to the wedding to have a great time without having to worry about little Johnny putting your personalized M&M's up his nose.
You can totally be discriminatory here. Our wedding was no kids, but we made an exception for my nephew. The reason? Because I said so. You just tell everyone no kids and then tell the person you're making an exception for they can bring theirs. If anyone whines (and no one did), you can simply tell them why.