Wedding Question
 

I miss true receiving lines. I appreciate the ability to congratulate the bride and the groom and their parents immediately after the ceremony.

Now, picture taking between the ceremony and reception seems to have become far more important than being gracious to your guests.

OK, I call BS. I've never in my bloody life seen this in actual practice, and I've been to a fair selection of what can only politely be termed "white trash" weddings (in such exotic locales as, off the top of my head, MT, KS, CO, VT, VA, NC, CA, IA, NV, NY, NJ) where there was much garter snatching, electric sliding, beer-and-tequila-only bars, virginity jokes in the best man's speech, Macarena, men claiming damp and messy kisses from the bride (and bridesmaids) by "right" and all other manner of potential offense. (And that's just the examples from weddings in my family.)

I think this dollar dance wedding tradition doesn't actually exist - it's an urban (rural?) legend created to make everyone feel like their own wedding was the height of taste and restraint. A few may have it seriously and tried to reenact it, but that doesn't change my general conviction.

I've seen money trees at anniversary parties, and a money bag at a few weddings (including one Jewish, which was weird because I thought, to the extent it was a tradition, it was an Italian one), and had some Chinese guests (from China, not ethnic chinese westerners) at my reception bring cash in really pretty red envelopes. But I've never seen the money dance.

And if I can't see it it doesn't exist.

BR(Balt is in MD)C

TITS
 

Shit, you reminded me, I need to get out the camera. Tkx.

Wedding Question
 

Concur - B/G and parents (groom's parents, if they aren't hosting, are optional), and that's it. Send those gaggles of attendents off to do something useful, like move people along who are blocking the bar, or pick up strays who need someone to dance with them, or harass the caterer about why there are only 2 waiters with trays of cocktail weenies circulating in a room of 200.

Wedding Question
 

Steal This Book.

Wedding Question
 

And always make sure that you address the tipping issue with the bar folks before the reception and let them know you will be providing the tip. Hopefully, this will ensure that you avoid the "why are there tip jars on the bar at my reception" conversation. WTF I say, what the fuck is with that shit? This ain't the local watering hole, this is a reception so who was the first spineless idiot to permit their bar folk to put out a tip jar and why doesn't anyone put a stop to this practice once and for all? Or is it just the receptions that I have been at where this happens?

Wedding Question
 

You'll see it a lot at Asian weddings. Almost all of them have the dollar dance. However, the MIL usually hands out pins and you pin the money to the dress/tuxedo. The groom usually ends up with $20's and $50's and the bride gets the small bills. I guess older horny women will pay a lot for a slow dance. The trick is to see how much $ you get to take on the honeymoon. It's kind of tacky, but I've never been to a wedding thrown by asian relatives that didn't have the money dance.

Just Chillin' at the Ole Folks Home
 

Me too and me too. I'm going to be one of ten bridesmaids (not including the 17 kids) in one coming up in October. Just getting us all in and out of the church is going to take 15 minutes. I predict a very long wedding.

Fortunately, I come from a long line of elopers. Great grandparents (though they actually had three weddings, the elopement, the Catholic one and whatever WASP one my great grandmother's family insisted on), grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle. I'm under orders to carry on the tradition should anyone be crazy enough to want to marry me.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Ru...Ephedrine
 

Did you see "Beckham", smartassmuffin? She weighed 80 pounds in "Beckham". I'm guessing she weighed a still-emaciated 100 in "Pirates"

not7yS

Wedding Question
 

Not to continue to bitch and moan about this, but we ended up tipping the "bartender" who tapped the kegs we bought. I should have skipped the monetary tip and "tipped" him off that having a cooler with a spigot with a masking tape label that reads "RED WINE" is simply not right.

Wedding Question
 

No, I was at one just a couple weeks ago. I felt so sorry for the two bar guys, working like hell for 6 hours behind this 4 foot long portable bar trying to whittle down a massive line of hard drinkers all ordering 3-5 drinks apiece that never got under 35 people long, that I tipped them. Generously.

Drink More Pinot
 

Sure, E/O. Enjoy your "red wine."

A. Can anything actually be "politely termed" white trash?

B. The DD usually happens late in the reception. I have heard about you at parties, and that you don't remember dollar dances seems believable.

:hide: <----- (my first attempt at substantive emoticing.)

Emoticons
 

:die: :hide: :bang:

Is "white trash" more or less polite than "cracker"? Or do they have crackers in the north? What other terms are there? I would love to learn some new denigrating terms for groups of people I wish to distance myself from because those groups include relatives.

Wedding Question
 

[quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by ThrashersFan
Anyone else have a dramatic life changing book in their lives? [/QUOTE]

Confederacy of Dunces helped me identify certain personality traits I had that needed to be worked on.

I think Jeff Foxworthy has established that "redneck" is the acceptable and polite form for what you are trying to convey. "White trash" is bad, "cracker" seems to be worse, and asking "is that your wife, or your sister . . . or both?" is right out.

Denigrate me, baby
 

There seems to be a woeful lack of names here. Interesting.

Emoticons
 

It's been almost ten minutes and you still haven't hit me.

Ha.

Not to be confused with Texan...

:lurk2:

White trash
 

To my ear, Cracker has racist overtones that white trash doesn't. Hence, white trash is found indigenously everywhere, while crackers are a subset of white trash (also a subset of "redneck," which isn't synonymous with either) which, if found outside of the south, can usually be traced back to a former Jim Crow state.

The funny thing is, there are so many things you might have heard which would result in that conclusion, and I really have no clue which ones you mean.

BR(I'd worked a really long week that time the Mr. and Slave had to carry me out of the club asleep at 11 pm)C

Is the mention of Jeff Foxworthy the official jumping of the shark of the FB?

I had a good laugh when he was found in a random closet on "The Family Guy"...

White trash
 

Best description I've seen:

"In his poem, West refers to himself and White southerners as "crackers." The term is generally of a derogatory nature, and seems to be resident to the South. Despite its negative connotations, it is sometimes seen as a term of endearment, especially among White Georgians, although many Southern whites do not use nor do they approve of the term. "Cracker" has specific ethnic connotations, directed towards White Southerners, and more frequently, poor ones. Of its peculiar dual nature, Irving Allen writes, "'Cracker' is a positive or at least a humorous self-label for many Georgians. But in and beyond Georgia it was and remains a class epithet, and is more recently a black term for any white, Southerner or Northerner, who is thought to be a racist" (59). Peculiarly, in the book Black Jargon in White America by David Claerbaut, the latter, more negative racist definition of cracker is listed first (Claerbaut 61).

The origins of the term are uncertain, though there are a few conjectures. Dave Wilton, who studies etymology as a hobby, presents the idea that the term may have come from the word corncracker, which describes someone who cracks corn for liquor, a common practice especially in early Appalachia. Wilton writes, "The song lyric 'Jimmy Crack Corn' is a reference to this. In the song, a slave sings about how his master got drunk, fell, hit his head, and died. And the slave 'don't care.' (This was a pretty subversive song for its day.) This usage, however, is probably not the origin of the ethnic term cracker" (Wilton, par. 1). Wilton also suggests that the term may have come from 16th century Old English, where "to crack" meant to boast. There isn't much to reinforce this belief, however.

Going along with the cracked corn theory, Delma Presley, a noted scholar, believes that "cracker" came from as far back as the 18th Century, where cracked corn was actually consumed by the Scots-Irish (Allen 50). As those settlers came to Appalachia, the practice of cracking corn to produce liquor became popular, and the term thus followed them. Then, while the Scots-Irish and several other ethnic groups populated Appalachia, cracker was applied to all of the white inhabitants.

Clarence Major, in his Dictionary of Afro-American Slang, lists two rather interesting ideas about the origin of the term. The first is that a "cracker" was a slang term used by 19th Century Georgian slaves to refer to the slavemasters. If this were in fact, true, then the term would come directly from the cracking of the slavemaster's whip. This is quite a peculiar theory, because it would immediately explain the negative connotation that the word has taken. However, there seems to be little or no support for this theory, and no other source that was studied mentions it.

The other theory Major suggests is that, in light of the extreme racial tension of the 19th Century, "cracker" came straight from "the white soda cracker as opposed to say, ginger cookies" (Major 42). Again, this would explain where the derogatory undertones could originate. But as with Major's first explanation, there seems to be no reinforcement for this, and this was the only source that made any mention of such an origin. The former of Major's etymologies does seem to somewhat hint back to the popular cracked corn theory, but it is the only theory investigated that gave such an assertion. Major's definition of cracker is simple: "a white person" (Allen 42). One particular thing to note is that Major's Dictionary was published in 1970, towards the end of the civil rights era, which, along with years of Reconstruction, mark arguably the two most tense ages with concern to relations between Blacks and Whites.

Why Georgia is listed so many times as an assumed origin for "cracker" is not known.

As one can see, there are many possible origins for cracker, and no one seems to have a definitive idea as to where it exactly received its current meaning. As stated before, despite the fact that it was once and still is used as an insult, white Southerners, to however small an extent, have embraced the term, and use it even jokingly among themselves, much like nigger, chink, spic, and redneck have been inverted. As another example of this, Irving Allen tells us that "the term redneck was... applied to any working-class Southerner in the genteel view" (Allen 58). George Wallace and Jeff Foxworthy are two people who were instrumental in this reversal of redneck's connotations."

White trash
 

Why is it "white" trash then? I always assumed white trash was racist becuase it tacitly implies that white people, unlike other races, are not typically trash.

White trash
 

TMI.

I will just defer to Chef's reference to Stan and Kyle as "my little crackers".

White trash
 

Concur. IMHO, I think "Cracker" is also one of those terms being lost to the fog of history, as those generations who actually used it in spoken conversation die off. Good riddance.

"Redneck" is certainly a superset of the above, but then again it's become a superset of everything these days. Once a title firmly held in the grubby hands of the unwashed Southern masses, the Jeff Foxworthys of the world have genericized it such that it means little more than the absence of good manners or upbringing, and now it connotes no more character than that of a fast-food chain.

White trash
 

That's what I thought as well.

It occurs to me that someone could have taken what I typed seriously, and so I hasten to add (can you use the word "hasten" when you are fifteen posts late? Sort of like "to make a long story short", it seems to be just . . . wrong) that I was kidding.

White trash
 

Wow, and to think it was just by chance that I asked if they have crackers in the north and then it goes and turns out that it's a southern thing. Us uns learns sumptin new ever day.

White trash
 

Well, trash isn't the nicest thing to be called by a person.

Perhaps the etymology is more clearly understood when you consider that "white trash" is a shortened version of "poor, white trash" which is clearly a double hit on a person.

White trash
 

God, man. We need to get you out more.

May I suggest a kayak ride?

About the dollar dance? But I knew you were kidding about that.

About the rest, fear not, I am ever curious about any amusing tales about me spreading around out there, but unlikely to be ticked off. Unless a bootlegged copy of "DebtSlave's Spelunking Adventures" turns up.

You allz' po-wayt trash.

Now go git yo selvz to the dolla dance. Bitch.

Supporting Law Talkers
 

Please discuss the Amazon link. If I click on it for access to the site and buy something on that trip, do you get credit? Do you get the credit if I just click on it?

Bitch please. You are clearly an imposter. Next time remember to use "all y'all's."

Is the dollar dance a southern thing as well as a midwestern thing? I don't know that I've encountered the concept in the south as much as in the midwest, but I might not be in the right milieu now.

Supporting Law Talkers
 

According to Leagl, if you click through here and make a purchase, lawtalkers gets a bit of $$ from amazon. no money for just clicking the link. and no money if you buy withou clicking the link first.

Dollar Dancing
 

I don't think so. Most of the ones I've attended have no dollar dance ritual, and this board is the first I've heard of it.

(Of course, many of them didn't permit dancing, either, so it's a bit of a moot point.)


Edited to satisfy inner grammar Timmy.

if you are in a "milieu", or even just with people who know what "milieu" means you probably won't see a dollar dance

Is that Volume II after "DebtSlave's Shrimping Adventures"?