Thanksgiving + Wedding Planning

Its been a while since I posted, I was away from my computer due to Thanksgiving activities and travel for work. My wife and I went to see her parents and sister in Chicago over the holiday weekend. Despite the usual media storm of travel horrors this time of year our travel was uneventful. The trip was a fun time, but discussions on my sister-in-law's upcoming wedding were a little heavy at times.

Why is it that wedding planning seems to bring out the worst in families be they Hindu, Christian or Muslim? A lot of our friends have gotten married in the past year or two and it seems that there was always conflict when it came to the details of the wedding. And there is plenty of blame to go around, from the bride and the groom, parents of the bride, parents of the groom to aunts, uncles, and friends. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what the event should look like, the menu, the location, the date. Its crazy. Can't we all just get along and have a good time? As a wedding attendee I only ask for two things, 1) Feed me, and ensure its good, nothing ruins a wedding like bad food and 2) Keep it short and relatively on time. No one wants to wait 3 hours sitting on a rented folding chair.

As for Thanksgiving, it gets more and more out of control every year. Must every national holiday be associated with shopping? Now I think capitalism is a good thing. But as a nation we seem to take each holiday as an excuse to star in our own versions of 'Shopping Gone Wild'. Honestly, standing in line at an ungodly hour of 5am to save $20 on some electronic gizmo that's outdated the minute you cross the store's threshold on your way out, seems a tad overboard. Scenes of Black Friday shoppers trampling, punching, shoving and yelling at each other to save a buck seem out of place for a nation at war and while the rest of the world languishes in perpetual poverty. Now we also have Cyber Monday, when everyone goes back to work on Monday after Thanksgiving to shop online. I wonder if corporate IT staffs see a significant increase in traffic on their networks from all of the bargain shopping.

Is it the bargains that drives people to extreme shopping? Is it some sort of shared experience that we all seek and find only in shopping, football or the weather? Is it that there is a story behind the object they seek? "Honey, you won't imagine the hordes of people I had to fight through, to get you the new PS3." Sometimes, telling the story is more interesting to the gift giver than the actual act of giving. Whatever it is, I hope all those shoppers found what their loved ones wanted.