That makes so much sense. I actually shoot weddings in both countries, and I figured the non-bridesmaid-dress bridesmaid dresses I was seeing were just a matter of taste, but I didn't know that the girls were probably paying for them themselves!

It's definitely not *too* bad here, though. The main costs as a guest are hen night/trip and then whatever you have to spend on the wedding day itself: travel, hotel, dress/hair/whatevs… and then a wedding present.

That's what I'm finding out now! Here the big costs are a) hen night/trip and b) travel to the wedding. Oh, and outfit/beauty if you're *not* a bridesmaid — usually if you're a bridesmaid your dress/shoes/hair/make-up/fake tan, etc, are covered by the bride. (I only had one bridesmaid, thank God.)

Essex girl here… my sister is constantly asked when she and her boyfriend are getting married and having babies. One of her sisters in law actually said that there's no point to life until you have a kid (all the sisters in law have multiple kids with multiple men). There are so many reasons I hate Essex, and that's…

Until coming to this thread today I had seriously never heard of bridesmaids being forced to buy their own dresses. I just assumed she paid for them.

You really don't need to have any! I had just one (my sister) and everyone in the US (I'm foreign) thought I was very odd, but it was so much less stressful and expensive for me to just have to find and pay for an outfit for one person. I'm really glad I did it that way.

We really don't do groomsmen, in general — I'd never heard of the word till I moved to America. And generally the bridemaids just troop in after the bride — there's not usually any of the two-by-two procession that seems to be the norm in the US.

Destination hen dos are definitely a thing here. I've avoided going to them because I can't afford it (I had to stick half of an in-town hen do recently because the events just cost so much, even though I didn't have to travel). It's for rich people, or people who have crazy overdrafts, I suppose.

Yep. There are a lot of medical conditions on their list that I'm sure are also on other countries', too (I've only dealt with US immigration personally, but I do remember there being some medical reasons I could've been barred): http://www.immigration.govt.nz/opsmanual/4563…

I saw her Hysterical Literature video, and she is SO adorable. So smiley.

Exactly! Cab drivers whine to me about "bloody foreigners" and when I tell them I married a bloody foreigner and got him a visa and am actively helping him get a job here they say that it's totally fine because he's American. So very odd. (I heard similar craziness when I was an immigrant in the US — apparently a…

Exactly — there's no concept of "Mexican" here (I'm generalising massively, of course). English friends and family think of Mexico as though it's Spain West, which is hilarious to me after living in Los Angeles for years! I know English people who are wretchedly racist against immigrants (even British-born children of…

This is fascinating to me — I don't have kids yet, but probably will in the next few years. All my husband's grandparents were born in Mexico and I'm English — when we lived in Los Angeles, we were a "mixed-race couple", but now we live in London generally people just consider him white. It's so interesting to me that…

I LOVE BIG FREEDIA SO MUCH!

Ha! Yes! They cut out all the really silly bits, so it wasn't even as sitcom-my as it could be. There's so much groan-worthy bad comedy; I coincidentally saw a stage production of Henry V a few days after the Hollow Crown version was on telly and it was so interesting how different it was.

I forgot how fucking brilliant that whole series was. I haven't seen him in anything else, but I loved everything about those adaptations.

Ah! Yes! He is the best. He's a really good bloke, too.

Yep, I didn't think that one's in-laws siblings could really be your in-laws as well… but I want there to be a word for them! Might have to make one up.

Hurray, a free-for-all!

We ate so much food while getting ready. And drank ALL THE FLAVOURS of André Champagne. It was one of the most fun times I'd ever had.