11 Honest "Vows" We Secretly Make at Other People's Weddings

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Weddings are beautiful. Weddings are fun. Weddings are joyous celebrations of love, family, friends and food.

At least ours are going to be. Other people's weddings, on the other hand? Yeah, we have thoughts.

It's about to be Memorial Day weekend, which in America doubles as an All-You-Can-Wed Extravaganza carried out over three days. Cars will be rented and driven upstate, open bars will be swarmed, reunion photos will be taken, catered food will be devoured — and much judgement will be passed. 

Because as much as we love celebrating our loved ones' happiness, we also love smugly tilting our heads along with our half-filled champagne glasses and noting how we would have never gone with the chicken kiev. Hey, it's easy to make all sorts of pronouncements when the wedding isn't our own. (Once we get married, of course, we realize how naive we were.) 

So we asked around — and here are the vows we expect we'll be making at this weekend's weddings.

1. "I'll plan a wedding that isn't entirely cribbed from Pinterest."

A Mashable survey of brides found that a whopping 70% were already Pinning before they got engaged. Mason jars, twinkly lights, chalkboard signs, cupcake towers — these things a wedding do not make. (That said, as Lauren Rodrigue wrote on Jezebel, "I will probably end up with a DIY flower garland.")

Pinterest

2. "I won't throw an entire wedding weekend my friends can't afford."

Simply attending a wedding as a guest these days will cost you $637 at least, and we're betting that's without the Vegas bachelor party or the bridesmaid dress. We won't let ourselves have those weddings.

3. "I will serve food that doesn't taste like cliched caterer grub."

Hot chocolate cake, chicken kiev, wilted green salads and anything molded into edible roses can march back into the kitchen where it came from. We'll be by the bar, waiting for it to turn into burritos and froyo.

5. "I will let my bridesmaids wear what they want to wear and not pay a fortune."

Being a modern woman brings a plethora of challenges, but none may be as painful as dressing up in identical dresses with other self-respecting adult women — and having to pay for it out of our own pockets. Making your 'maids spend money, possibly upwards of $1,700? With headlines like "Being a bridesmaid is driving me into bankruptcy," we put our feet down.

6. "I won't ever let the booze supply run dry."

If anyone thinks we go to weddings to celebrate the happy couple, they are sorely mistaken. In fact, 5% of readers surveyed by CNN said they wouldn't show if a wedding reception didn't have free booze. This does not sound extreme to us.

Buzzfed

7. "I will interpret 'destination wedding' as 'traveling from the dance floor to the bar.'"

At this point, the Knot estimates that 24% of weddings are destination weddings — or, as most people think of them, vacation ruiners. But you don't need a tropical island to have a kickass wedding (nor do you need to burn three vacation days).

8. "I will never allow my guests to dance to Hanson."

This is why "Brown Eyed Girl" and Maroon 5 exist, everyone: to give us things to dance to at weddings. We swear we'll keep things classy. (At least, we say that now.) 

9. "I will avoid any dessert that comes with a stupid, sexist cake topper."

We love marriage and big parties and all, but if we can avoid the retrograde, gender-unequal vibes, that would be nice. Who ever decided wedding cakes needed to have mini humans on top, anyway?

10. "I won't lose sight of the fact that the wedding's just the start of something great — a marriage."

After all, the wedding is just the kickoff party to what's hopefully the best relationship you've ever had. That's worth celebrating, no matter what kind of food/dress/band/party favors you have.

11. "I will never be bridezilla."

God forbid! (On second thought, we doubt anyone ever sets out to be a bridezilla... erm...)

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