Monday, March 14, 2011

Does he really want to barf at his wedding?

Dear ESB,

I'm getting married next month, and my fiance is just now getting around to planning his bachelor party. His latest idea is to go out drinking on Friday night after the rehearsal dinner, and then get up on Saturday morning to go skeet shooting. Our wedding is at 5:00pm on Saturday.

It's going to be a really busy weekend, and I am worried he's going to be dead and exhausted by the time we're at the reception. He's the type of guy who's ready to go to sleep at 9 or 10 on a normal day. Of course he parties really hard when his buddies and his alcoholic father are around, so I am doubting his ability to resist their pressure to stay up late. I don't want his lack of sleep to catch up to him at the wrong time (i.e. on our wedding night). Plus, we're flying to Ireland for our honeymoon and I can't imagine how shitty he'll feel when he's battling jet lag combined with no sleep for days.

His best man is flying into Houston and staying with us for the entire week before the wedding. We're driving to Austin on Thursday. And Friday afternoon we're decorating the banquet hall, doing our rehearsal, then having a huge fajita cookout in the park with 60-70 people. The earliest he'll get to sneak off for his beer-drinking hooplah would be 8:00pm, and it's a thirty minute drive into town. Let's pretend that they have a super-calm evening of drinking beers and go to bed by midnight. He's talking about getting up at 7:30am on Saturday to eat breakfast, get dressed, and go skeet shooting. He would only have one hour to be able to skeet shoot before he needs to drive back to town, eat lunch, then go out to the venue to get the chairs (being delivered on Saturday), and set up a few other items. Then he needs to get a shower, get dressed, and be ready for pre-ceremony pictures.

My question is, 1) Am I being unreasonable to think he shouldn't go skeet shooting on our wedding day? 2) How do I get him to understand the hugeness of our wedding day and the importance of him being well-rested?


Hasn't your fiancé seen Bachelor Party? Or The Hangover?

A bachelor party the night before the wedding is A VERY BAD IDEA. A few beers with his buddies: no problem. A full-on bachelor party (anything, really, involving the words "bachelor" or "party"): no way. He needs to get that shit out of his system at least a month in advance.

But. Dude wants to get up at dawn to go skeet shooting on his wedding day, fucking let him go skeet shooting.

You seem to have him scheduled within an inch of his life. Couldn't someone else pick up the chairs to give him a little breathing room?

Photo by Meg Wachter (thanks Amy!) via YIMMY'S YAYO and Happenstance


  1. Oh, totally. My brother had a bachelor party two night before his wedding. The day before the wedding he was wrecked, and the day of he was still feeling it. It didn't seem to faze him or his wife much though, and that's maybe where you situation is different. It does sound like the concern is more on your end than his though. Does he know how you feel about the post-rehearsal partying? I think you can probably reach a compromise that you're both comfortable with along the lines of what ESB said. Maybe explain to him your concerns about fatigue and see if you can get him to downgrade the bachelor party to a couple of beers. Then of course he gets to go shooting.

  2. I check my rss feeds and there's my good friend Yasmin from college covered in goo! I know the girl in pic and think I know who took it. Will get back to you if I can find or I'll email her...

  3. Totally agree with the ESB. Get the party out of the way at least a week before the wedding and let the rehearsal dinner but the fun of that night. And who cares about the skeet shooting... lots of guys do that or go golfing or whatever that morning.

  4. hmmm, sounds like you need to loosen up the reins a little bit. first of all, the chances of your fiance, or you for that matter, getting a full night of sleep the day before your wedding is slim and none. don't plan on getting much sleep the night of your wedding either. it's just the way it goes; you'll have way too much adrenaline pumping through your body to get a chance at an adequate amount of shuteye.

    also, it sounds like he's just in a celebratory mood. how awesome is that?! from your description, his bachelor "party" seems like drinks with friends and his dad... that's not really a party. you being concerned about "his ability to resist" pressure from his friends sounds more like you being concerned about him not doing what you want. you're about to be his wife, not his mom. i think expressing your thoughts is fine, but asking him not to partake in these activities is not. it's his wedding too, and if he wants to go out and have some fun with his friends (either the night before, the day of, or both), then by all means he should.

  5. i'm 100% with ESB: let the man have his special time the morning of the wedding, but discourage the hell out of a bachelor party the night before. if the best man is going to be in town for a week before the wedding, can't the carousing happen on thursday, if not before? we're all grownups and can make our own choices here, but a well-placed and fervent "i want you to feel free to go all out for your bachelor party and to feel like a human being the day we get hitched" is fully appropriate. homegirl deserves a groom who's struggling not to cry, not struggling not to barf.

  6. i'd be more upset that he thought of the skeet shooting idea first! shooting guns brings down ANY stress. what a smart idea!

    i say, as long as he doesn't full-on party, who cares? i drank with my bridesmaids the night before and morning of the wedding and none of us fell flat on our face while walking down the aisle. and rest, seriously? NO ONE gets much rest on wedding weekends.

  7. I vote yes on skeet-shooting. No to the friday night bachelor party. Let him have a bachelor party on Thursday night after the drive and let him sleep in until Friday afternoon set-up. I am assuming most of his buddies will be around by then.

  8. I agree with ESB.

    My then-fiance and his friends did the official bachelor party thing on the weekend BEFORE our wedding-weekend.

    The night of our rehearsal dinner, he invited all of his groomsmen to spend the night at a hunting lodge on the property of our wedding site. They stayed up all night drinking moonshine, but they managed to make it to our 2 p.m. ceremony looking fabulous; they tied-one-on at our reception AND our after-party. So, they may just be a rare breed of drinking machines.

    This is all to say: Let him do his thing. He will find a way to make it all happen - except the skeet shooting. Ten bucks says they sleep in that morning. All you can do is RELAX; don't worry about the boys. You have other things to think about like spending time with YOUR ladies and trying to get YOUR rest. Good luck! It ALL comes together; somehow, one way or another. PROMISE. xo.

  9. Maybe ask him if he'll compromise: if he'll move the bachelor party to a week or more before the wedding, you will loosen up his schedule so he can go skeet shooting on the morning of.

  10. I agree with Nicole above, I bet the early morning skeet shooting is the thing that gets sacrificed. If he won't budge on moving the official bachelor party date then highly encourage the early morning shooting. He'll either cut the party off early the night before or sleep through the thing the next morning. Either way he'll get more rest at some point.

    I agree that having the bachelor party the night before is a stupid idea. Haven't men evolved enough to realize that it works better to have at least a week buffer? Then again have you ever watched a man load a dishwasher? There's some things you just can't teach them.

  11. @Dawn - I don't let my wife do the dishes. That's my job. :)

    As far as the bachelor party goes, that seems like a no-brainer. Bachelor party =/ wedding weekend. They're two separate activities, and they shouldn't be connected. I didn't even want a bachelor party, so I guess I'm not the best judge of how to do it.

    As far as skeet shooting goes, I can't see the appeal in it, especially on his wedding day, but it doesn't seem like it would do any harm.

  12. i love this photo. if you're lucky dear esb'er, this could be you on your wedding night!

  13. i think the skeet shooting sounds pretty groovy in a Gosford Park kinda way. my honey is really into guns and the like (not in a creepy way, mind you) and would love me FOREVER AND EVER if he had the chance to sneak out and shoot some clays the morning of our wedding. talk about the perfect way to blow off some steam and stress !

    i must say that the whole tone of the letter was passive aggressive, controlling, and generally off-putting. at the risk (or guarantee !) of sounding like a cunt : unclench that tight little asshole of yours before your turn inside out. so he's planning on getting up early in the morning on his wedding day ? worse things have happened !

    that said, i'm totally with you on the pre-wedding bender. BAD IDEA !!!!!

  14. I think photog credit goes to Nicholas Mendise but not 100% certain.

  15. @Celia - yes, yes, yes.

    As an example, I spent most of the few days leading up to the wedding up SUPER late finishing up what little DIY shit we had to so (I hate crafting so effing much, so I put it off), and 2 days before the wedding I got about 4 hours of sleep total. The day before the wedding we drove out to our venue (3+ hours) and made a couple of stops on the way (including lunch), checked in w/ the venue and made deliveries, checked into our B&B, then met my inlaws for dinner.

    I had 2 glasses of wine at dinner.

    After dinner, we met my mom, uncle, BM, and some of my mom's friends at a local pub. I had 3 beers there.

    My normal limit to drink-and-feel-relaxed-but-not-feel-buzzed is 2 drinks. I had 5. I didn't even feel relaxed.

    Slept restlessly the night before the wedding. Ran around all day getting shit done. Had 3 or 4 glasses of wine at the wedding, then switched to water because I was just so damned thirsty from all the dancing/excitement/adrenaline. Got to sleep that night well past midnight. Woke up at the crack and took a long walk through the vineyard with a friend of mine who happened to be staying at our B&B.

    I finally crashed *for real* that night, the day after the wedding, around 7 or 8pm.

    However, having said all that, if I had decided to "let loose" the night before my wedding (or the night of my wedding, for that matter), adrenaline + too much alcohol = baaaaad bad bad.

    Here's my suggestion:
    - Talk to your husband about your worries about the night before and see if they can do something sooner. HOWEVER, if he also wants to have a few the night before, don't stand in his way.
    - Let him go shoot shit and have someone else set up the damned chairs. F'real. My husband set up the chairs at our venue, too, and his (and, now my) nephew (who was 21 at the time) said to us, "Is it really the groom's job to be setting up CHAIRS on his WEDDING DAY?" He and my BM's boyfriend jumped in to help, no questions asked. Do you have someone like that who won't be skeet shooting that day? (For example, a cousin or a boyfriend of a BM, or a young-but-not-too-young, able-bodied nephew?) Take some pressure off of your beau, if you can.
    - He'll get the hugeness of the day, eventually. It probably won't be until the day itself. But he will. You can't force it.

  16. love the goo shot. boys suck with timing. why do i so often feel like a mother of my man. so many of them need lessons in etiquette.

  17. @caseyfriday Ha, well you're obviously an exception. I mean you're posting here for chrissakes. I think sometimes my guy pretends he can't load the dishwasher the same way I pretend I don't know how to take out the garbage. It evens out.

  18. @Dawn - great insight re: the pretending.

  19. @Caseyfriday: dude, no offense, but you don't seem like the type of guy that would shoot a gun in the first place... know what I'm sayin'??? And how the heck did you end up at this blog...seriously?

    I say let him know what your expectations are of your wedding night: for example you expect him to stay alert till midnight, and then rock your socks off until 12:15... kidding

    But seriously - you can't "tell" him what to do... that's ridiculous, but you can suggest that instead of drinking the night before, perhaps he could skeet shoot the night before and take up the partying the day the Best Man comes into town?

  20. @elle @caseyfriday ended up here because I talk about this blog all the time, and I'm his wife. :-)

    Profile pics can be so deceiving; he's worn a suit like five times in the last three years. But he has definitely, definitely shot a gun before. You are right, though, he's not generally that type of guy. :-)

    The only advice I have regarding the post is definitely no extreme alcohol the night before your wedding. It just seems like a really, really bad idea. But I'm a total lightweight, so grain of salt there.

  21. In case you haven't found the photo source, here it is: - Meg Wachter's Dumped! series. Found via: