Getting married soon? Thinking about getting married? Never planning to get married? What ever the case may be I’m pretty sure you’ll find this entertaining. If you’re one of the first two: prepare to be bombarded. People tend to ask a lot of questions around wedding time, some genuine, some humorous, and some not so polite. Even people you barely know will come up and ask these questions when they find out you’re getting married or were recently married.
In the short weeks leading up to my own wedding I was bombarded with questions like “Are you nervous? Are you ready?” My fiance was constantly reminded that he had “X days to run!” It got old fast. And I bet you everyone thought that they were the first to ask or tell us that! We were both ready to punch people’s faces in after a while. I did get one comment from only two people. Once our engagement picture ran in the paper two different people told me that they had “found a new picture for their garden.” I was baffled at first but then some one told me they meant to use it as a scarecrow. It was a pretty bad joke (as in corny) but at least it was something different.
Once the wedding was over the questions and comments didn’t stop; far from it, actually. When we returned from our honeymoon every person we met would ask “So how’s married life?” How could we possibly give an answer to that question? We had been married for mere days! Did they expect us to discover that we absolutely couldn’t stand each other? Did they want to know if we were fighting? Or are they asking just to make small talk and it’s just as insincere as a “How are you doing?” kind of question. Of course they all asked it as if they were the first person to say it. It got old. People continued to ask me this for quite some time after the wedding. Sometimes I had the urge to just flat out lie and start making horror stories up. I never did, though.
What was worse, though, were those who asked “How was the honeymoon?” I mean really. What is it that people really want to know when they ask that kind of question? I’ve always thought it was a little more than rude. Are they just asking about the trip or do they want to know more? Even if they aren’t wanting to delve into your personal affairs they’re asking about your honeymoon for cryin’ out loud. Then again I’m a rather private person when it comes things that are that personal. (That reminds me: I have a draft about discretion, especially on the internet, that I’ve been sitting on for a while. One of these days I’ll finish it.)
Thankfully we’ve managed to avoid (for the most part) the next question: So when are you having kids? Not that it hasn’t been asked. I’m sure it was right after some people’s “So how is married life?” It’s just not come up as frequently as the others seemed to have. (For the record, the answer is “Not for a while.”)
Anyone else have a similar experience with people asking the same questions over and over again?