That makes so much sense that if it isn’t the real origin story, it might as well be!
Woman asks Slate's Dear Prudence if she should divorce husband who shoved her face into wedding cake
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I was just holding back, really. I don’t think for a one second this was forgetfulness. It was a deliberately shitty thing to do and he decided to do it anyways.
It’s also very likely not the first time something like this has happened in their relationship. People don’t just suddenly wake up one morning and decide to violate your partner’s trust so violently like that.
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“only hard-and-fast rule was that he would not rub cake in my face at the reception.”
That is one “tradition” I do not get. I think it started with a bit of frosting on the lips and slowly gotten more and more malicious. I don’t like it, and I didn’t do this at my wedding and wouldn’t for any future one.
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Yeah, this is multiple layers of “yes, divorce him, absolutely, do it yesterday.” (Granted, I see the usual “cake-in-face” wedding “tradition” to be grounds for immediate divorce, but this is a thousand times worse.)
Boy, our whole society sure is devoted to excusing the behavior of men and putting the onus on women to ignore their resulting feelings (and trauma) and “laugh it off.” So unfortunately they’re not that unusual. Still assholes, though.
The only answer I’ve come up with to that is “misogyny.” The actual tradition is for the bride and groom to feed each other cake, lovingly. The American cake-smash is a weirdly hostile new variant disguised (sometimes) as “playfulness.” It sometimes results in actual injuries. Doesn’t seem to go back very many years, but it’s taken off.
Given the timing and rapidity of spread, that’s a disturbingly plausible origin for this “tradition,” actually. /shudders
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Sounds like a usual day over on r/AmITheAsshole. My blind reponse to almost any post there could easily be, “WTF is WRONG with people?!?!”
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How the hell did the relationship get that far given his attitude toward her wishes?
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The thing is that over the holidays EVERYONE has gotten together to tell me I should give him a second chance.
They are wrong. You should do no such thing.
That I am overreacting because of my issues …
No, you’re not. Dumping him now is the correct thing to do.
That I love him (even though right now I don’t feel that at all),
Actually, you might. That doesn’t mean you should forgive him or have a marital relationship with him, however.
he loves me, and that means not giving up at the first hurdle.
Taking the hurdle analogy, this isn’t really a hurdle in your path, this is a 15m climbing wall. Such a wall may be acceptable in some situations, but you specifically said “this thing is a hard ‘no’” and he ignored this. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a consent hardliner, but if he’s already violated your consent in this, where is it going to go?
I don’t want to, but everyone is so united and confident in their assurance I am making a terrible mistake that I wonder if they are right.
They are not. Dump him and, if necessary, dump them as well. Yes you can, in fact, dump family members.
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As a partially syncretic culture, we here in the US are great at taking the worst traditions from around the world and making them our own! I’ve heard of the kidnapping thing and have been to numerous weddings with the dollar dance/dress tuck thing.
Howstuffworks indicates that cake-smashing in some form goes back to Ancient Rome as a sign of male dominance, and the current version dates back to at least the 80s as a sign of…well look at that, who’d have guessed? Male dominance. It almost sounds like a lot of wedding traditions are garbage ways of making wives into property!
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Nah… just us wimmins being hysterical again… /s
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the wedding’s off.
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it’s only “recent” if you mean the mid- 20th century is recent – i have seen photo sets from friends who collect thrifted pix of people shoving wedding cake into each other’s faces, and they go back at least as far as the 1960s. it was one of those traditions that was supposed to indicate if the marriage was going to be “sweet” or “tempestuous” or something, depending on how each one fed a bite of cake to the other. i suspect it’s fallen mostly by the wayside and now when it shows up it feels novel again.
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I attended a wedding in the early 80s in Vermont where a similar scenario played out. It was a small gathering at a park, both rural families, and everyone started drinking before the wedding even began. When the cake was cut we all rather expected both to smush cake in each other’s faces (it’d been a concept known for many years) but the groom literally gave the bride a bloody nose when he crammed the cake slice into her face. Once blood hit her wedding dress she lost it, and a massive verbal fight culminated in him peeling his truck out of the parking lot, gravel flying. The reception was…over. They divorced about three years later, and nobody was surprised.
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We also need to stop “teaching” men that this type of behavior is somehow “flirty”.
Many moons ago, my first wife had the same rule (no cake in face). I followed the rule, but I can’t tell you how many people (both men AND women) asked me if I was gonna do it anyway. Always with a smile and a laugh. Again, I didn’t do it, but I sure felt the pressure to do it like it would be a huge funny moment and she would ultimately like it.
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I have given this some thought previously, especially as most of the cake smashing I’ve seen is bride-on-groom.
I’d probably have it written into the prenup.
I have pretty strong feelings about people who ignore the couple’s wishes and take their own agenda into someone else’s wedding. DJ or band that doesn’t follow instructions is OUT. If the DJ/band is bribed by a guest to do something, it had better be significant, because they ain’t getting paid by me. If there were specific people I didn’t want to be there, I’ll have a designated bouncer bounce them.
The wedding day belongs to the wedding couple, especially the bride.
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I’ve been to at least 50 plus weddings, and the shove the other person face into a wedding cake never played out how the Bride/Groom/Other thought it would. Just bad form all the way around…
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I think possibly from the outside looking in hearing just the overall details of “So and so is getting a divorce because the groom shoved the bride’s face in cake” it would sound like the bride was being overly touchy and unreasonable, but listening to her reasoning, that they also previously discussed it gives a broader context where i can definitely sympathize with her.
My suggestion would be to get a professional to mediate and discuss, let the guy know how much he betrayed her trust and if anything can be done to repair things. If its truly past the point of repair then both parties can walk away with the knowledge that they at least tried to patch things up.
On a separate note i dont understand shoving people’s faces in cakes, i’ve never found it fun, funny or cute.
My wife and I’s wedding we skipped the garter throw entirely. I always thought it mildly icky.
We maintained a loose sense of decorum in other ways. Karaoke and Velociraptor cake toppers.
As to the bride here, yeah. Huge red flag. Get it annulled. Better annullment now than a sticky divorce later. Today it is cake shoving, tomorrow who knows? I am also sure this is not the first instance of not respecting boundaries.
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In a word, DTMFA.
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I dunno. If someone’s been in an accident that resulted in trauma so deep they’re making specific requests at their wedding, the family knows about it. They’re just acting like it’s not a big deal (or, worse, they think it’s all in her head). To me, this is just a bunch of people trying to gloss over the fact that the bride made a request and the groom thought it would be “funny” to violate that request in a horrible way. To outsiders, it may look like she’s overreacting, but she clearly stated a boundary and not only was that boundary ignored, it happened in front of all her friends and family. That’s fucking awful. Period.
It’s like @anon61221983 says here.
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But at this point, what is there really to discuss? She clearly set a boundary and he disregarded it. That’s already a red flag. That should be enough, but add on the fact that he did it publicly and on the day when they were supposed to be pledging their intentions to care for each other til death do they part, and it’s a HUGE red flag.
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