Honestly...some times I just don't know about you people.
My new word for writing a comment on someone's blog longer than the post to which you're commenting is "blogjacking." Feel free to use it in your daily conversations. Maybe its not that creative, but you think "tweeting" is? Who the hell are you, Shakespeare?
Getting back to the point, I was rude enough to blogjack my friend, the littleturkishgirl (a/k/a "Ashley #1") the other day, at She's Come Undone. She posted a very provocative piece about her frustration with weddings, replete with interesting pictures and thoughtful insights. Unfortunately for her, she allows comments and I was in a piling-on mood. What resulted was the hack writer's equivalent of a Lost Weekend. The usual drone.
Lacking for content, I thought I'd put it here, where it belonged originally. With just a bit of sprucing.
Now, really, this idea that I'm anti-marriage, where did it ever come from? I guess it doesn't matter. Its utterly wrong. Can't someone go 47 years and not get married without people drawing the wrong conclusions? Its not like I'm George Clooney or David Souter or something. Besides, this post isn't about marriage.
Its about weddings.
Good people, when it comes to weddings, some things just are not acceptable. I'm not talking about women wearing white, or black, to the ceremony. Or little snot-nosed kids running around shrieking and sticking their fingers all over the hors' d'oeurves trays.
Weddings often are very special events. They can give not only the couple but also their friends and family a treasured experience. Some of my most prized memories came from weddings.
Weddings can also be ghastly, Bataan Death March-style nightmares, where the few survivors endure a scarred, post-apocalyptic existence during their remaining days. I blame a couple of factors.
One is the couple's friends and family (mainly family) who know best how the couple should conduct a wedding. These people go into "full steam ahead" mode pressuring the couple to do things "their" way. Aunt Lilly HAS to sit at the main table. George HAS to be a groomsman (and not be paired with Jessica, whom he can't stand). Mom, who INSISTS on a separate, sit down "salad course" (because only "riff raff" serve fewer than three courses). The wedding becomes an exercise in keeping certain people from pouting, instead of celebrating the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The wedding "industry" is the other culprit. No other economic endeavor imposes so much rip off. A $50 cake goes for $2,000 because it has more curly-Q's than what you buy at Central Market. And a bride and groom figurine. Stupid flowers require a mortgage because they're "arranged." Tuxedos, caterers, rehearsal dinners, reception halls, churches, musicians/DJs, bridal salons...all at prices the Defense Department would consider gouging. The two biggest screw jobs in life are the prices of weddings and funerals. At least with the latter someone else picks up the tab. If you're lucky, you can stick one of your punk kids who never was grateful for ANYTHING you ever did with the bill. Or your loser son-in-law.
Some people cleverly manage to avoid this romance-suppressing slog through the ingenious device of the "wedding trip." You know. Rather than devoting a year's worth of mortgage payments to fill a bunch of critical, condescending freeloaders (also known as "friends and family") full of crab cakes and champagne, you invite them all to some exotic destination to attend your "dream wedding." Sort of a combination wedding/honeymoon. Everyone's free to join you on the trip (of course, you have to make sure they know once the wedding reception finishes, they need to disappear). Generally its on some remote island somewhere. Like the Falklands. Or Elba. Or Survivor Island. Or Ibiza. Hell, even a Disney theme cruise. You, your beloved, 500 Upper Peninsula Kiwanis club members and their families, and some fading, alcoholic Juilliard graduate wearing a Mickey Mouse costume out at sea ruing the day he left med school to chase his acting dream. Ah, rapture! Oh well, some people go to Disney World for their vacation. Personally, I'll just stay single for another 47 years at that rate. But, now look...this is the linchpin of the strategy...you can't cover anyone's travel expenses. Not even your worthless groomsmen. Pick up the bar and crab cakes and petit fours tab for anyone who RSVPs, but they've got to get their own bloated carcasses to where you're doing it. So Uncle Joseph, you disgusting old perv, you are more than welcome to attend our wedding. You just have to plunk down three large to do it. How does that taste? An expensive strategy, yes, but probably less painful than dropping the three tax brackets that it would take to entertain all those people in your hometown. And you avoid the repeated mental injury from planning such a wedding.
But I digress.
Oh, I left out something else intolerable about weddings: couples who write their own vows. Once out of a million weddings have I heard self-written vows that didn't prompt crazy, Loony Tunes eye-rolling. "I love you and think you're awesome" is not a vow. Nor is the poem you thought up the night before while doing shots at Hooter's with the fellas on your wild suburban bachelor party (espresso at Starbuck's, dinner at Hooter's, go to best man's house for poker, cheap cigars, and drinking from Bud Light keg til the fellas have to leave so they can take their sitters home by their curfew).
Otherwise, I totally love weddings. Cake, champagne, dancing, women looking good and in a good mood, reeling off sarcastic comments about people wearing tacky clothes and dancing ridiculously. Say no more.
Next-a letter to 1979 Chris Reeder.
3 comments:
You can always do what one of my best friends did. Last year, he finally decides to marry his girlfriend and gives all of his friends three days notice.
That limited the number of guests instantly, saving them thousands of dollars. They married at a very swank hotel, The Peninsula in Chicago. With the money they saved, they are adding an extra three rooms to their home.
Better than the 15 per cent savings you get with that stupid gecko.
Oh, dear God, I hope that once out of a million weddings with self-written vows was ours. Yikes. You are so funny. I wish you'd write a book, or go on the stage or something. For those who don't know here, Chris was one of my Bridesmen at my wedding. I shoulda made him wear the lavender dress,too, but I did not. And he was so handsome. One of my favorite memories of the whole day is dancing with Chris to Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy." 13 years later, every time I hear it, I remember facing with him that night. Love you, baby.
Don't you always blog jack? ha.
I appreciate long comments because I love the debating process, as well as hearing other opinions on the subject at hand. So bring it on!
Now, in regards to weddings, I see the good in them. But I'm at that age where people (also my age) are becoming obsessed with them...and it's making me wanna run the other way! :)
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