Husband of the Future (HOT F) and I made an appointment to go to a major retailer to get a start on our registry.
When we got there, the manager was all smiles and welcomed me to the store. She found out we were there to register for our wedding and hopped on the intercom to call a consultant, “Can I have a registry consultant to the front of the store? We have a BRIDE IN THE BUILDING!” I was a little put off by this; but willing to keep it friendly, so I smiled and said to her, “and BONUS, you get a groom too!” The manager looked me straight in the eye and said, “Oh, he doesn't matter. Grooms don't matter at all! Everyone knows it's the bride's day!”
Flabbergasted, I looked over at my fiance who was clearly uncomfortable. “Um… should we leave?” he asked me. Meanwhile, manager lady was completely oblivious to our exchange because she was still going on about “THE BRIDE'S DAY.” I put on my serious face, looked the woman in the eye and loudly announced, “We're done.”
It would have been so much smoother had we walked straight out; but I tried to go out through the “in” door and then got caught up in one of those awful impulse buy gauntlet mazes. This woman steps around my fiance in an attempt to stop me from leaving by apologizing profusely and spouting some lame bullshit about it all being a joke.
Mind you, in all of this she had yet to acknowledge my fiance's presence. In fact, she just literally treated him like a piece of furniture. HE was the one she should have apologized to, not me.
I told her that WE didn't find the joke funny and that we were taking our business elsewhere. My fiance grabbed my hand, led me to the correct exit, and out into the parking lot where he promptly high-fived me. We could still see the entire sales team staring at us dumbfounded through the windows.
So we went to the retailer next door and registered there. They were very nice to BOTH of us and we had a great experience overall. Then I opened their wedding coupon booklet and was treated to some corporate-sponsored body shaming. Eh. You win some you lose some. Spanx coupons I can deal with. But NOBODY treats Husband of the Future like a non-entity and gets away with it!
Let's talk about groom-inclusion and voting with your dollar when it comes to wedding vendors!
