Even more matrimonial mortification

Finger lickin\'

The best part of reading someone else’s crazy story is thinking, Wow, I’m glad that wasn’t a wedding I was invited to. However, I’ve been to plenty of parties where the host and hostess did not adequately plan, leaving guests to order takeout or hit the local drive through. So I can almost, but not quite, sympathize with reader Karen’s former in laws. She wrote:

Having decided that there wouldn’t be enough food at our reception, my future in-laws produced a large bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken at the table. Yes, it was still in the bucket! Needless to say, the relationship did not last.

Trust family to be the ones to embarrass you most. Carol, of Go Knit Your Hat, shared a rather mean rehearsal dinner prank no doubt meant to amuse the guests and mortify the bride:

When a friend from high school got married in 1991, she had a very large rehearsal dinner at a pretty upscale catering hall. She invited close to a hundred people: in addition to family and the bridal party, she invited pretty much everyone who came to the wedding from out of town. After dinner, a round of toasts to the happy couple began. Guests were invited, nay, encouraged to step up and raise a glass of champagne and offer their own reminiscences or good wishes.

A guest — married to one of the bride’s best friends — rose, raised his glass, and after a quick preliminary word, said in all earnestness, “Now that John is making an honest woman of Mary, I will too. I think I should return this” — and he takes out a key –“the key to Mary’s apartment.” A chuckle, slightly more uneasy from the bride’s family than from the drunken college crowd, passes across the room. The guest walks up to the bride’s table and drops the key in front of her. It makes a loud plunking sound.

The guest turns to face the crowd again and says, “Now I know I’m not the only one here with something to confess. Let’s go, gentlemen; let’s make a truly honest woman out of Mary.” A moment of silence, and then nearly every man in the room stands up, walks over to the bride’s table, and drops his own key. Plunk, plunk, plunk. Thirty or forty keys, plunking one at a time. Half the guests are now laughing and half are squirming.

The move that brought the house down was when the father of the groom — a very gruff and distinguished grey-haired gentleman — slowly got up, walked around to the bride’s seat, and dropped the last key in front of her.

Plunk!

14 Responses to “Even more matrimonial mortification”

  1. Vicky says:

    I’ve seen that done to the groom. Every woman at the reception old, young, fat and skinny put there key in the bowl. To make it even better, one of his male friends returned a key. The crowd fell out in hysterical laughter!

  2. Never teh Bride says:

    Not that it’s right, of course, but I could see such a stunt being more traumatic for a bride than a groom. Society – or at least some parts of it – still put an awful lot of stock in the bride’s wedding night purity. I know that if my friends did that to me in front of my conservative paternal relatives, it’d be talked about (in low, disapproving tones) for months.

  3. Bria says:

    I’m not really a fan of any plans to make any part of the wedding embarassing for either the bride or the groom. It’s their wedding…it’s supposed to be a nice, loving celebration of their union. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but damn…that seems like a really sucky way to behave toward the people who are hosting you as their guest.

  4. Lori says:

    I agree, Bria. I think that the gag involving giving the bride a pile of keys would be just as embarrassing for the groom, since most men don’t like the idea of marrying someone with a, well, long resume.

    Well, OK, I thought the guy giving the groom a key was funny…as long as it’s just among close friends and family and there’s no question as to which way he swings.

  5. Mara says:

    I think it’s pretty funny – but you know, it was at the rehearsal dinner, not the wedding reception. It’d be out of place at the reception. The rehearsal dinner is not quite as serious.

  6. Bria says:

    Eh, I still say it doesn’t have a place at the rehearsal. In my experience (which is decent – I used to coordinate weddings), both brides and grooms are pretty keyed up at their rehearsal dinners…it’s the height of pre-game anticipation and emotions are often running on full volume. It just seems kind of mean to try throwing either of them for a loop.

  7. jenny says:

    I guess it depends on the group.

    My husband and I were asked to sing an incredibly sappy song at his brother’s wedding dinner. I used to act a bit; but my husband would rather have his tonsils removed without anaesthesia than sing in front of a group. Thus we were mortified, particularly when we found out that another brother and his wife were going to sing an even sappier song, and were thrilled about the whole thing! (They brought choreography that included clasping hands, gazing into each others’ eyes, “oooh”-ing and swaying.)

    So we [secretly] changed the words. Bad form, I know, but it was the only way we were going to make it through the song without guffawing or sweating buckets. The groom was quite a bit older than the bride, so we changed the words to things like “I never thought the day I started high school, my fiance’d be in the second grade.” We dressed up like the bride and groom, too: my stocky hubby wore one of my tee-shirts and one of the groom’s chokers so that he could “mirror” his younger muscle-man brother; and I wore a long black wig, jewels and an evening gown to [attempt to] emulate the gorgeous former-beauty-queen bride. We had folks weeping on the floor before we even started singing!

    Needless to say, it was a hoot. But they both have very funny families with very silly senses of humor, so we knew that we wouldn’t be offending anyone. At least, we wouldn’t be offending anyone we’d have to hob-nob with socially later on.

    Now that another brother’s getting married, they’ve requested a farce-ballad too! (That looked like “fart-ballad” at first, didn’t it?)

  8. jj says:

    I’ve heard of that key gag before. Ugh. I’m all for having a little fun, but I don’t really approve of the idea to embarrass the heck out of the bride and groom the day before the wedding. Save that kind of thing for the bachlor(ette) party.

  9. Twistie says:

    Count me in with those who find the key gag tasteless and unfunny. The problem with pulling stuff like that at wedding-related events is that – as others have pointed out – everyone is on edge, plus there are always a few people who are more conservative than the average group the bride and groom hang with. It’s a recipe for grandmother cutting someone out of the will or a bride having a nervous breakdown in public.

    The silly yet affectionate reworking of a romantic song, however, sounds just about the right speed. It’s designed to amuse without humiliating or offending anyone.

    Really, jokes about how many sex partners either the bride or the groom has had are pretty well beyond the pale. I’m glad nobody tried to pull that one on either me or my beloved.

  10. La BellaDonna says:

    (Raises hand) Count me in with the folks who don’t care for the key gag. I’ve always wondered why people think it’s funny to be mean to their friends; it seems like a good recipe for not having any.

  11. Bride1 says:

    The key thing is truly tasteless. My husband’s friends (from a very, very small town) love to do this sort of thing. They have this stupid ball and chain (a real bowling ball and black chain) that they padlock to the groom’s leg for a while at every reception–including ours, of course. Yuck. Even worse, at another friend’s wedding they somehow got the key to the bridal suite their friends were staying in and trashed the room. So the poor bride and groom, in their wedding clothes and exhausted after a long day, get up to the suite to find that their bed had been shortsheeted and filled with packing peanuts, all lightbulbs removed, toothpaste on the toilet seat, shaving cream on the mirror and other horrors. Some “friends.”

  12. Phyllis says:

    I think it depends on the families – maybe these people just loved practical jokes. That was the impression I got when I got to the end and it became obvious that the father of the bride was in on it too.

  13. La BellaDonna says:

    Phyllis, maybe the people who play practical jokes love practical jokes; I don’t know that the victims necessarily do. As far as I can tell, the desired result of a practical joke is to embarrass (1. To cause to feel self-conscious or ill at ease; disconcert; 2. To involve in or hamper with financial difficulties; 3. To hinder with obstacles or difficulties; impede; 4. To complicate; 5. To interfere with or impede the function of.) or discomfort, and I think it’s an unusual person who’d enjoy feeling those things in front of an assemblage of people who are important to them, or on an occasion that’s important to them.

  14. Anonymous says:

    If I was the “victim” of that practical joke, I would probably laugh. But then, I have a weird sense of humor.