Ask Amy: the bridal shower from hell

"gift-grab" - that's a good way to describe it.

Is the greedy cunt also expecting wedding gifts? I imagine that she is.

Tacky fucking bitch, and her tacky fucking mother.

Good luck with that marrying into your family, ladies.

Like old school Wheel of Fortune!

And YOU get to give me an expensive gift, and YOU get me an expensive gift, and YOU get to get me a great gift ...

This didn't happen

It's basically just making sure that guests buy gifts from the bride's registry / wish list. It's all distasteful, unless you are really close friends or family. AND if the friends and family ask the bride for a list of things she needs.

Is the bride's name Karen?

Ok - I understand you don't want gifts that you can't use, but it's crazy how some women will somehow justify this in their mind. If they're REALLY my friends, they'll make this the most special day in the world!

EVERYONE is tired of this wedding shit. Who needs a $2000 coffee maker???

Something snaps in some women's heads when they get engaged. It's really weird.

But, do I think some of these articles are made up for clicks? Absolutely.

I just looked it up, and fuck me I'd no idea there are so many $2000 cappuccino machines out there. For that price you may as well buy just buy a brick of Columbia's other finest export to perk you up in the morning.

I would ditch friends over something like this.

Most weddings I've been to, the couple openly state a wish for cash on the invitation

R9, Colombia. Please.

Amy always gives the worst advice.

Advising LW to throw greedy bridezilla a modest shower? Oh, yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

She’ll open a gift…a rolling pin… and start pummeling the guests with it. “I WANTED THE FUCKING TENNIS BRACELET, YOU CHEAP CUNTS!”

[quote]For that price you may as well buy just buy a brick of Columbia's other finest export to perk you up in the morning.

Ivy League graduates?

I stuck a post-it note on her cooter...

'cause I wanted her to know, she's a cunt!

Why does the OP keep trying to make this woman a thing here?

People are so greedy. Classless. They'll end up with stuff they never needed in exchange for every friend they ever had. They will be left with the very few people who will invite them in turn and expect the same. Serves them right.

[quote] My mother and I were invited to her wedding shower.

Whose wedding shower? Your mother’s?

[Quote]Amy always gives the worst advice.

She really does. I stopped reading her because her "advice" was always idiotic.

Ann Landers or Dear Abby would have put that bridezilla and her mother in their place.

So how does this work? Does a company truck in these expensive items to showcase and then take them all back? Or is the bridal shower held in a seller's showroom? Why not just pass around catalogs of the desired gifts?

[quote]Why not just pass around catalogs of the desired gifts?

Nevermind. It just dawned on me that the objective was for the bride to be to go home with the gifts in tow.

I hate weddings and wish one of the bridal shower guests had taken a dump on the table full of merchandise

The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life.

[quote]Who needs a $2000 coffee maker???

Clearly someone who doesn't think they'll have to pay for it R8.

We'll be discussing the gay version of this in a month or two, I guarantee!

This is the 2nd Ask Amy column that seems dubious in nature, somehow always involving some greedy bride & her equally clueless family/mother. Not that a lot of people like that don't exist in real life, but I'm getting these sense we're being trolled to elicit the most amount of rage.

Did anyone read the second letter, from the concerned mother who fears that her lesbian daughter is being controlled by her (the daughter's) wife? The lesbians are both ex-military.

A wonderful idea for innovative funerals as well!

How does one organize a shower like this? Where did those gifts, err, "merchandise," come from? A "$4,000 tennis bracelet?" Did the hosts lay out the cash expecting to be reimbursed by the "gifter?" Was there a markup? Was a local jeweler on site for the bridal shower to manage the transaction? And all of the other items for sale? We're supposed to believe some tasteless in-laws assembled a high-end boutique stocked with expensive items like a pop-up Hammacher Schlemmer showroom, because this was somehow MORE lucrative than a standard bridal shower gift grab with a registry?

None or this makes any sense.

I'm as confused and horny as R29.

Did someone actually buy the gifts first, set them on tables, and expect others to agree to purchase them from this third party? Was there a markup?

Register at Target like all the other stretch-pants, Heather!

Hetero drama.

Count me in as somebody who thinks this was fabricated for clicks. Not because there aren't very greedy people in the world, but because the logistics don't make any sense.

[quote]Ann Landers or Dear Abby would have put that bridezilla and her mother in their place.

Fifty lashes to them with a wet noodle, toots!

What lazy stupid advice. I once worked with a chick who in addition to her bridesmaids had honorary bridesmaids which was just so they would be obligated I guess to get her more stuff which they did. She was absolute trash and completely ungrateful line these types tend to be.

I saw this column yesterday and thought it sounded insane -- and a little implausible. In this day and age, there's no doubt advice columns sometimes make up the craziest shit they can think of to generate clicks.

Jewelry is a weird gift for a bridal shower. Brides usually receive that from their fiancée or their parents or other older relatives.

First of all, as you know, R34, the whole idea of "honorary bridesmaids" is tacky and also insulting to those who didn't make the cut to be a true bridesmaid.

Secondly, if I ever received an invitation like the one that the OP wrote about, I would ignore the instructions and bring a gift of my choosing.

There is no way I would feel any obligation to purchase a gift (pay for a gift, really) that someone else has bought.

There is so much wrong with this.

The point of shower and wedding gifts is to help the could set up their new household - from a time when people went from their parents' house to their new married home. Most people live away from home before marriage, and don't need to start fresh like that.

Jewelry and other extravagant gifts are not appropriate as wedding and shower gifts - unless it is related to establishing a home.

Fuck this bitch with that tennis bracelet.

I don’t understand the business of people who have dough even being comfortable receiving more gifts.

If the purpose is to help set up the home, and it is, the only acceptable course to me is asking guests to donate to favorite charities in their honor.

If my partner and I married after all these years, that’s what we would do. I don’t want a bread maker or monogrammed ice bucket.

But we gays are alcultured to the wedding industrial complex bullshit.

Before she died giving birth to my 32nd sibling, in her delirium, my mother spoke of the pre-wedding ceremony where the women of the village would gather at the top of a sloped hill and roll balls of dung down toward the betrothed. However much she could hold in her mouth, she was allowed to keep. This helped heat the honeymoon hovel from the frigid nights.

I said, “Nothing made in China! Only the finest! These people will get big box crap and we can’t let them!”

R5 I think it did. I have been to similar and even more ridiculous showers. They are usually control freaks.

R38, it was an understood rule amongst my people that the only people who could, appropriately, five jewelry to a married or engaged woman were the husband, or parents of either.

Jewelry, at least fine jewelry, is not an appropriate gift for a married woman.

If you think was made up, check out one of the Reddit weddings forums…. They are full of stuff like this.

But what I don’t get about this is what’s the point of pressuring someone to put a sticker on something. That doesn’t mean they bought it. There’s no way to make them buy it.

I'd put my name on a sticker and place it on her husband, just to piss her off.

Are any brides still wanting china and crystal these days? I though most of that disappeared in the 90s. This is an EST if ever I heard.

It rings completely false. It makes no sense to have a showroom of merchandise on hand--where did it come from? Was it paid for? This family actually shlepped all over town to brick and mortars to bring this haul home to be bid on by guests? But I'm still just stuck on how they came into possession of it. Was it really paid for out of pocket, or are we to believe this family worked out some sort of arrangement with retailers to pre-obtain "gifts" to be paid for later by their shower guests?

And how did payment work? Guests were writing checks and venmoing the hosts? Was there a cashier on hand? A cash register? Was MoB working the room with one of those old timey money belts with the change dispensers? An iPad with a card reader? It's all so flat-out bizarre to picture, which I guess is the point, but how can anyone believe this is real?

I read that in some cultures giving a wedding gift is discouraged. The bride and groom accept gifts of money. Makes sense, they buy what they want. Anyone know which cultures promote this idea?

No, R48. You "read it," not us.

[quote]Anyone know which cultures promote this idea?

Yeah anyone want to help R48 troll harder? He's just learning the ropes, but if you provide a list of cultures he'll get right to trolling like the big boys do.

[quote] Before she died giving birth to my 32nd sibling, in her delirium, my mother spoke of the pre-wedding ceremony where the women of the village would gather at the top of a sloped hill and roll balls of dung down toward the betrothed. However much she could hold in her mouth, she was allowed to keep. This helped heat the honeymoon hovel from the frigid nights.

Talk about your Bridezillas!

If anyone was going to try this in real life, what they'd have to do was to buy all the stuff at a store that accepted returns, like Nordstrom. Buy the crap on credit, or with the parents' money, return what you can't browbeat someone else into paying for.

And if I were invited to such a horrific event in real life, and figured out what was going on, the temptation to steal the tennis bracelet would be overwhelming!