This weekend I attended a wedding of a relative I see very rarely. Less than once a year, generally. We don't speak in between, either. By blood we're close, but obviously we do not have a close relationship. I mostly keep up with his doings via my grandma or my mom.
When I arrived at the wedding, I saw him and he already had his wedding ring on. I remarked on it and his dad said "well, technically they are already married..." So that's how I found out it was a wedding redo. You know me, I was irritated. Those don't sit well with me.
The story is that they "had" to get married two months ago. Her lease was up and it was time for them to find a place to live together. However, she didn't want to live alone and but they also didn't want to live together before they got married. So they had a small, family only ceremony and kept the original wedding plans for the redo.
Here's where the "WWED" part comes in. We got our invitation really late due to a wrong address. Since we didn't get the invitation until a couple of weeks before the wedding, I assumed we weren't invited and didn't get a gift. Once we got the invitation, I was so busy that I didn't have time to take care of it. I figured I'd do it next week when work calms down and I have some time.
Now that I know it was a redo and I didn't get invited to the actual wedding, I don't really want to give a gift. Had I known ahead of time I would have just brought a card. Would it be strange to mail a card now, after the fact, that is just a card? Or do I need to suck it up and send a small gift anyway?
As an aside, the redo was exactly like a wedding. "Who gives this woman," "Today I take you to be my wife," the whole nine yards. I'll be honest, it really bugged. The bride and groom also looked extremely bored - during the vows, the bride was looking everywhere but at the groom and the look on her face said "get this over with, please." It was honestly the most boring "wedding" i've ever attended. It lacked the tension and anticipation that a real wedding has.
Oh, and to further piss me off, the dinner was not vegetarian friendly. We ended up leaving without eating and stopping for dinner on the way home.