I went to a wedding almost 20 years ago in Greenwich where I was positive they spent at least $400/person on food and there were 300 guests. There were multiple caviar bars in ice carved stations. There were 20 different passed hors d'oeuvres and another 30 or 40 at stations that included chefs making fresh sushi rolls, shucking oysters, and cooking and deep frying parts of dishes a la minute. And all of this was just the cocktail hour that was in 4 different rooms in the venue and each room had a culinary theme. Then we had a 5 course dinner, which included a couple of palate cleansers. I have never been to anything so over the top and I've been to some truly pricy weddings in NY and DC. This took the cake. The bride and groom paid for much of it. The groom's family also contributed. The father is a fairly well known author.
Though weirdly, the bride and groom insisted on not having flower arrangements or centerpieces at the dinner tables. The groom's mother called up my mom and aunt the morning of the wedding to complain about the lack of flowers at the tables and how janky it looked. My mom, my aunt, and I found ourselves driving around Stamford buying vases, crystals, tea lights, and mirrors from dollar stores and buying white flowers from nearly every store that sold flowers to hastily assemble some flower arrangements at the venue. Later the bride and groom would explain to my aunt that the florist their wedding planner recommended and they use only showed them enormous flower arrangements for centerpieces that would have obscured half of the table from the other side. She did all of the other flowers. Somehow they ended up at this weird impasse that resulted in no centerpieces. I told my aunt to let them know that this was my wedding gift, anniversary gift, Christmas present, and every birthday present they could ever expect from me because this was some bullshit especially after I had flown in. They had flowers in the church. They had flowers for the wedding party. They even had flowers throughout the reception venue, but those flowers were never intended to be repurposed for the tables.
Spend probably more than a hundred thousand on food, but somehow not have the wherewithal to tell the florist to make smaller lower profile flower arrangements. Such dopes.
Anna and Mursel enrage me. Mursel is on the record about wanting Anna to stay in Turkey with him and abandon her children in the US. He is on the record about hiding her children from his family. He is on the record about mostly caring about Anna and not so much about her kids. Plus he doesn't really speak or understand English. How does Anna expect her children to compromise with Mursel? Mursel would prefer that he have nothing to do with her family or that they blink out of existence. What kind of compromise is possible? Is Anna trying to Schrodinger's cat this debacle? As long as she closes her eyes and sticks her fingers in her ears, maybe they get along and maybe my kids don't exist. Mursel is an asshole through and through, but Anna is the worst because these are her fucking children.