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Today’s Wall Street Journal Marketplace section has a very interesting article about a rude behavior you could have predicted would result from the hit movie, “Wedding Crashers“: wedding crashing. (We wish we could link to this, but alas, you must subscribe to the WSJ to access it.)
The movie has inspired so much wedding crashing that it’s become very costly to non-celebrity brides and grooms who must shell out big bucks for decidedly celebrity accoutrements, including guards/extra security and the extra money the caterer charges for extra plates (food served to the crashers who are not caught). It also now includes the tacky, but necessary: Wedding parties must now resort to sending tickets for admission in the wedding invitation. Enjoy seeing total strangers in your wedding photos? Those pics cost money, too.

It was funny in the movie–which was hilarious, if very raunchy–but come on . . . in real life, this behavior is just plain obnoxious. And, oh, the effort it takes. One set of wedding crashers accessed the groom’s on-line resume to bluff their way through conversations with relatives at the wedding. Another couple crashed a wedding, then invited the bride and groom to crash theirs. How cute . . . NOT.
Too bad the movie has emboldened this behavior, but didn’t you kind of expect that? This latest decline in manners and common courtesy is yet more evidence of the dumbing down of American society. Like this movie, we liked “Animal House,” “Back to School” (which is now 20 YEARS OLD!–circa 1986–and, unfortunately, being remade with Cedric the Entertainer, in Spanish; ‘Nuff said), etc. But that doesn’t mean we want all of America to emulate these movies. “Wedding Crashers” is a movie, not an instruction manual on how to behave in real-life.