Bad Manners and Brimstone

We're back from the wedding, which was on Saturday, and I just thought I'd provide an update on the various interpretations of "dressy casual" by the guests.

First, I foolishly used a new product with retinol that (despite my having tested in a small patch elsewhere) cause a severe rash on my neck and decolletage.  I ended up, a week before the wedding, buying another dress that did not have a vee-neck so as to cover the worst of it.  Be very careful with retinol, ladies.  A link to the dress I bought is here on the vendor's website: https://www.macys.com/shop/product/anne-klein-plus-size-animal-print-tie-waist-midi-dress?ID=16583785.  I don't think you can tell from the pictures, but it has metallic threads running thru it.  It went with the sandals I was planning to wear and the evening bag I'd purchased.  I have some very nice smoky quartz earrings that would like nice with it.  I thought it was perfect as a last-minute substitution -- at least I didn't have to buy anything else. It will be going to every Christmas/New Year's Eve event I have to attend in the next six weeks.

Then, the next day, I was working in our yard, which has a wooded slope, when I rolled my ankle over a branch that had dropped on the ground.  The ultimate verdict, after a trip to the ER and then a follow-up the next morning with an orthopedist, was that I had fractured a bone in my ankle, along with spraining it, and was put into a boot.  Sitting on the gurney in ER when I was in a lot of pain, I was genuinely not sure if I'd be able to go to the wedding, but my ortho said I could if I stayed off my feet as much as possible, including using a wheelchair to traverse the airports.  The advice when wearing one of those boots is to wear a shoe on the other foot with a heel height that matches the boot so you don't throw out your back and everything else walking in an uneven gait, so my nice sandals were left behind and I wore a black Skechers slip-on sneaker on my good foot.  Oh well....  the family was just happy that I made it down there after all.  DH wore gray dress pants, a blue shirt, and a blue patterned tie.  It was very hot and humid on the day of the wedding.  He would have melted wearing a jacket.  I felt sorry for the men who did.

So, dressy casual apparently means everything from shorts, tee shirt, and a trucker hat to three piece suits for men.  The men wearing suits were those in the bridal party, the fathers and grandfathers of the bride and groom, and officiant.  There were a bunch of men dressed liked DH in a dress shirt and tie.  There were a lot of men wearing jeans and a dress shirt along with cowboy hats.  And then there was the guy in shorts and a trucker hat, who I initially took to be someone working for the venue.  The mothers, grandmothers, and aunts of the bride and groom all wore formal, floor-length gowns.  There were several women dressed like me in cocktail dresses.  There were other women in casual sundresses, and there were women in their going-out jeans and a nice top.  In other words, dress casual apparently is all over the place.

In the end, I'm not sure how much it mattered.  It was a lovely wedding with lots of personal touches, good food, and time spent with family and friends. 

Thanks! My sandals have a low block heel (not very high) so I'm not too worried about sinking into the ground, but I was planning to pack a pair of flats just in case.  I haven't worn heels since before the pandemic started, and I don't think I could if I wanted to now because I'm so out of practice.  A friend who's lived in Florida told me that I could wear my flipflops with rhinestones on them, but I think my mother would come back from the beyond to haunt me if I did that.

Maybe I'll get DH a new shirt in a nice bright color with a tie to match.  He works from home part of the time now, and his office went to office casual during the pandemic so he wears polo shirts when he goes in.  I'm not sure he has a decent dress shirt that fits anymore, LOL.

I don't know if this has segued into "fun family lore" territory yet, but here goes.

My FIL firmly believed that the only place on earth that Christmas could be celebrated was under his roof.  But, he and MIL were no longer up to cooking the whole big Christmas dinner, so they started ordering pre-made turkey dinners from places like Whole Foods that simply needed to re-heated before serving.  The only problem was that the wiring in my ILs house was old and not up to the task of all the microwaving that entailed, so the fuses would routinely blow.  This meant that holidays entailed intermittent periods of sitting in the dark while listening to my ILs swear at each other in the kitchen whenever a fuse blew.  So, the last year that we ever had Christmas dinner at their house, my FIL made the decision that, as long as the gravy was boiling hot, it didn't matter whether the food was adequately reheated because we could all just pour boiling hot gravy over everything.  Have I mentioned that I hate gravy?  My husband put his foot down after that and we started having Christmas dinner at a hotel near the ILs' house after that.

Yes, DH and I were once at a hotel where many of the guests were in town for a youth soccer tournament, and those kids were out of control.  DH still complains about how he nodded off while we were waiting in the lobby for our room to be ready (we'd been up since 4:00 a.m. for our flight) and the security guards kept telling him he wasn't allowed to sleep in the lobby, while at the same time the security guards did nothing about the young soccer players kicking balls up and down the halls. 

The post on Bad Behavior at the Reception reminded me of a recent experience my husband and I had. 

DH's aunt (and godmother) recently passed away and we traveled out of town to attend the wake (Friday night) and the funeral (Saturday morning). It was in a town without only one decent hotel, which had no availability for Saturday night, so we ended up at a Marriott Courtyard in an office park in a town about 30 minutes from where Aunt J was being remembered.  Our next best choice would have been more like an hour away.  Courtyards are usually very quiet hotels because they don't have large function rooms in them, maybe one small conference room geared to business meetings.

As it turned out, the hotel had two groups of wedding guests staying there, one for a Friday night wedding and the other for a Saturday afternoon wedding.  We realized that when we pulled up to check in before the wake and saw the party bus for the wedding guests for the Friday wedding and then saw the gift bags behind the reception counter for the Saturday wedding guests.  I explained to the desk clerk that we were in town for a funeral and asked if we could get a room away from the wedding blocks, if possible.  Her response was that the hotel has 107 room and more than 90 were booked with wedding guests.  We ended up, at least, on the top floor so we didn't have people above us, but the room across the hall from us had a sign on the door that said it was for groomsmen to get ready in; the bridesmaids were two doors down the hall. We were well and truly stuck there unless we decided to stay another hour away.  I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  (All the wedding events were apparently offsite at nearby banquet halls.)

So, I guess my question/complaint is -- why do wedding guests behave so badly in hotels?  The Friday wedding guests came back to the hotel after the reception had ended and kept the party going till the wee hours of the morning. We called the front desk, but clearly the two [female] desk clerks on duty were outnumbered by inebriated [male] wedding guests.  Most of the noise seemed to be on the floor below us, but we were awakened Saturday morning by the photographer for the Saturday wedding arriving and conferring in the hall, right outside our door, with bridesmaids and groomsmen about the timing and content of pictures.  Saturday night was quieter, but Sunday morning we couldn't get a seat for breakfast because the bride was opening gifts in the cafe. 

I've been to plenty of weddings in my day, but it would never occur to me to be inconsiderate to other guests in the hotel. Yet, it's happened more than once to me that I've been staying at hotel where a wedding is taking place, and some of the guests feel that they can party all night and day regardless of the other guests' need to sleep (which is why we're in a hotel in the first place, right?).

In college I dated a guy who couldn't commit to things "too far in advance," so that meant that buying concert or theater tickets before they sold out was impossible.  At the time, I was young and thought he'd mature and change.  I finally realized that what aggravated me so much was that he couldn't commit to things that were valuable to me, like seeing my favorite band, and I broke up with him.  But, it sounds like people like him never really mature, do they?

One of the things people have brought up is that a driver may need to be in the right lane on the other side of the intersection because they have a right turn coming up quickly and may not be able to get over to the right lane easily if they need to.  Others have pointed out that, even though you can turn right on a red light, it doesn't mean that you'll be able to turn right on red based on traffic conditions. 

The OP did come back and say, "Maybe I should have just thanked the people who stay in the center lane to go straight, huh?"