Submitted by Pinterest fan. Not one but TWO tacky wedding “traditions” combined in one! From the photo, the idea is that you set out two glasses and indicate that the one with the greater amount of money gets cake smashed. Cake smashing has become pay-per-view entertainment with the loser not really losing but rather gaining money at the sake of his or her dignity.
I’ve decided that the HellsBells Pinterest site needs a new board, “Tacky, Rude, Ill-Mannered Wedding Ideas”. If you see any, send them my way for inclusion. Didn’t know HellsBells had a Pinterest site? Here it is!
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They should also be cited for improper use of an apostrophe! “wears” not “wear’s”!!!
I was just going to say I think my favorite part of this is the poor use of the apostrophe!
Me too!
First thing I noticed.
The “icing” on the tacky cake – a superfluous apostrophe in “wear’s” ……
I was about to point that out myself. It grates on my English-teacher nerves.
Did anyone else notice the grammatical error on the displayed card?
“Who Wear’s The Cake?” Right now that apostrophe is bugging me more than the etiquette faux pas here…
Ugh!!!! Ugh an extra time as well for the rogue apostrophe in ‘Who Wears the Cake’. This is hideous.
If the card is any indication, the newlywed couple’s grammar skills are on par with their etiquette savvy.
“Wear’s”? Really? What’s with the apostrophe….
…oh yeah, and I don’t think the bribe will pay for the dress or tux drycleaning.
Wow. Why does “wear’s” need an apostrophe? That’s what got me more than anything. Such a finely printed card and such a dumb mistake.
Can I also point out that not only is cake smashing revolting, but that sign ‘Who wear’s the cake’ is grammatically incorrect as well – it should be ‘Who wears the cake’. Minus the ‘
I H-A-T-E HATE this “tradition” and I have warned the boyfriend that if he does this at our reception, I’ll leave immediately to file the papers for an annulment. I don’t understand spending hundreds of dollars on professionally done wedding makeup to ruin it with food at the beginning of the reception.
Plus it’s a passive-aggressive move against the person your marrying. Not a good sign for things to come.
Or ruining clothes. Or hair. Or ruining the table top/floor. Or ruining the cake. Or just plain making a mess. In fact, I don’t see an upside at all. You can make your wedding “fun” in other ways.
My mom was thrilled to hear there was so much opposition to it on this website the last time this topic came up. She’s railed against it for years, using similar arguments: stupid, passive-aggressive waste of money, etc.
What actually irks me most about it is its utter lack of originality. I’m guessing this started as sort of a semi-clever reversal of expectations type gag. And I bet it was hilarious the first few times before the 1970s equivalent of something “going viral.” Now, just like the key gag, and the record scratching in the middle of the saccharine first dance song to be replaced by “Baby Got Back” or something similar, it’s just played out and tired. No one is seeing this for the first time at your wedding, unless it’s the first wedding they’ve ever been to. It’s just dippy. Squirt each other with squirt guns or something if you feel you must do something of this nature. At least be semi-original. And yeah, don’t use it to beg for money.
My sister and her now-husband made it clear this wouldn’t happen at their reception for all these reasons, but mostly because they find it a disgusting waste of baked goodies.
My fiance and I just had that conversation – that we both hate the cake smashing and will not be doing it.
I saw somewhere (don’t remember if it was here or somewhere else) where a groom was holding his wife in his arms for a picture of them on the beach and then tossed her into the ocean in her dress, shoes, everything as a “joke.” I didn’t know passive-aggressiveness was a “joke” nowdays. 🙁
That’s horrible. He must have though “hurr, durr, it’s funny cause she’ll get wet”, but he had to either drop her in shallow water at the shore, which is pretty much just like tossing someone to the ground, or off a dock into deeper water where she could easily have drowned because of the weight of the dress and unknown currents. If your partner can be seriously injured, it’s not a freakin’ joke!
I’m picturing being dumped in the shallows, and unless she had a reeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy big butt-bow on that wedding dress, I’ll bet she didn’t feel like sitting down any time soon.
If I were the bride, I’d get it annulled right away.
I’m with you!
I love the idea of a bride and groom feeding each other cake, because it’s symbolic of how they’re going to nurture each other in their life together; so to smash the cake in the other’s face just seems like a horrible violation of the trust and consideration-for-the-other that is required of a successful marriage.
And to do something so terrible not an hour after giving their vows…! Not. Good.
I know that some couples avoid the potential for cake smashing by feeding themselves, but quite frankly, it looks really awkward and sad to have them just standing next to each other eating cake from their own plates.
InNM, I hope that your fiance takes you seriously on this one. I suppose that one way to avoid a cake-smash would be to feed each other with forks – he’s much less likely to smash cake in your face if doing so come with a risk of you being lacerated or blinded.
I think it’s a bit stupid… but potentially “cute” provided both parties are 100% on board with the idea. I personally don’t get why anyone would be, but then I also don’t get why someone would want to be married while sky-diving, or dressed as a clown.
I told my husband before our wedding that there was no way he was going to smash cake in my face, and he gave me a Look and said “I wouldn’t do that!”
I hate cake smashing. Even when I was little and went to my first wedding and saw it happening, I remember thinking how just…idk, unneeded it was. So the fact that this combines cake smashing AND money grubbing….ugh.
Tacky and no grammar skills. Awesome.
I’d say the money grab aspect sends them to etiquette hell, but if the bride and groom who are looking forward to the cake smash, I think it is a good idea. You just have to replace the money with candy or ping pong balls.
I like this idea, especially if the person with the cake smashed on their face goes for retribution, regardless of the amounts in the glasses. Food fight!
Little candies would be adorable and makes the glasses look really colourful depending on the ones you use. 🙂
You could replace a lot of tacky money-things with little candies. Money dance? Pin delicious candy onto the bride&groom they can eat later. Or the people can write little personal notes to the person that they can read when they get home.
It’s so easy to make some tacky things sweet, I really don’t see why more people don’t do so.
Ooooh, a note dance! That would be sweet.
Face. Palm.
I clicked through from my feed all fired up, ready to comment about the apostrophe and burst into laughter. Apparently I’m in good grammatical company. The first ten comments here made my day!
Hahahaha! Me too. I didn’t even notice the card until I was ready to comment on the gobsmacking example of gimme piggishness. I’ve got a real thing about grammar and punctuation and am glad I’m in good company.
Cake smashing sounds nasty – shoving cake in your new spouses face? In other circumstances it would be called domestic violence. I love my cake. for me cake is for eating – not smearing over any future husband’s face.
Me, too Amanda! 🙂
Miss Jeanne, if you repin it, the offender will also see it was put on a tackiness board. Ha! Nice subtle reprimand.
I weep for society.
Eugh, this is ghastly
Besides the apostrophe I have to comment that the entire concept is just a bad one on multiple levels. The level that disturbs me the most is starting out your life together with an act of violence and humiliation. Someone might argue that it was all in good fun but sorry, I don’t see the good fun in this. I can not envision looking back fondly as my new husband had a golly good time rubbing cake in my face once I lost the intial popularity contest.
I once went to a wedding where I watched as the bride and groom smashed the cake in each other’s faces and I couldn’t help but think there was a underlying hostility there. 6 months later that couple divorced.
I can think of no occasion in which I would feel it necessary to smash anything into anyone’s face. I think the first pieces of the cut cake should be presented to the parents of the bride and groom as a symbolic gesture of a newly joined family.
Oh I can think of a couple occasions in which cake smashing is a fantastic idea.
Weddings just aren’t one of them.
Yeah, like in the hotel room on the honeymoon, and the “clean-up” is the best part.
But not in public, no.
I went to one of these two weeks ago and was going to submit the photo. It was an awful thing to watch and I left soon after.
Eeeeek!
Oh man, I love popularity contests! Surely the loser won’t feel the tiniest bit bad, and having cake in their nostrils and hair will really make them shine!
Ugh, I hate it when the sarcasm button on my keyboard gets stuck.
But you guys! Not only did this couple find out who was more popular with their friends, but they made, like twelve whole dollars to spend on their honeymoon! /snark
This is seriously the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll take honeymoon registry information printed on the invitation over this any day!
I don’t understand this tradition either but to each their own. I had a cousin who did a slight variation on the cake smash; she and her husband fed each other their cake and then very cutely lightly smeared the icing on their fingers across each others’ noses (I think they cleaned each other up too but it’s been a year and a half so I don’t remember). Also, when my brother got married there was no cake; SIL doesn’t like it however, they instead fed each other their favorite cookie. SIL had a rum ball (lots of rum was used in the making of those) and my brother had a “lemon meringue” cookie. There was no violence anywhere and it ended up being really cute for both weddings.
Ugh, tacky squared!
I was reading a financial advice column in my local newspaper over the weekend and they had an article on saving money on your wedding. Sadly, one of the tips was ‘ask your friends to contribute to the wedding by making food, taking photos, etc’. It might save you money, but am I right in believing it’s in poor taste, etiquette-wise?
It sure is in poor taste to ask your friends to contribute their labor, resources and time for festivities where you’re supposedly offering hospitality to them. Guests are guests, not event staff, no matter how good friends you are with them.
However, there is one potential workaround. If you have friends who spontaneously OFFER to help with wedding tasks, you can take them up on their offer. It is even possible to do a little polite and discreet fishing for possible offers.
How you do that is to say, during a conversation about wedding plans, “Fiance(e) and I think it would be so much more special and fun to do most of the wedding preparations ourselves instead of just outsourcing them to commercial vendors, but there are so many tasks I know we’d never manage all of it.” (Notice that the emphasis is on “we would LIKE to do it that way if we could because it would mean more to us”, rather than the coldly practical “we would save money doing it that way”.) Then if your friends say “Oh, that sounds great, we’d love to help!”, you can (after a proper amount of hesitation and “oh are you sure, we don’t want to burden you with work, we’re just so happy that you’re going to be there as our guest”-ing) gratefully accept and start allocating tasks.
But since they are still friends doing you favors rather than staff members working for you, you always have to be appreciative and grateful rather than demanding and critical. Even if somebody completely falls down on their promised contribution or you realize you have to give up on expecting anything from them, you have to stay sympathetic (“oh it was so sweet of you to want to do this but it’s just way too much work, don’t worry about it another second, we’ll do it this way instead”) and not reproach them for letting you down. And the friends who do come through with their promised assistance must be lavishly thanked (including in a real thank-you note), praised and noted in your mental address book as people you owe a favor to. A small gift as a token of your appreciation is also a good idea.
So yes, having an etiquette-compliant “group-collaboration” wedding is possible, and it can be great fun (I’ve participated in several myself, everything from addressing invitations to making the wedding cake, and a good time was had by all), and it can even save some money. But if properly done it involves a LOT of work and tact and good planning and good management on the part of the wedding hosts, and not everybody can pull that off successfully.
So what happens if nobody puts money in the glasses?
My husbands cousin just pinned this on Pinterest on her wedding board. I wish there was a way I could tell her it’s tacky!