notes from a wedding

Saturday night. MB and I at his friend’s wedding. I know only the groom and two other people. I haven’t been to a wedding in a long time and I’d forgotten, really, how — if it’s not your wedding — they are pretty much torture. All that forced socializing with strangers at your assigned table. That long long wait for a piece of cake, the only thing you really want. No margaritas to be found. Torture.

Listen up, engaged people: You must go faster. Get married FASTER. FASTER. FASTER. I know what I’m talking about. I was once engaged people — a dozen plus years ago. Our engagement was long and hideous and the worst part of our relationship. Our wedding day was long and hideous and the second-worst part of our relationship. I’ll tell you about it all sometime. Just know this: People hate long and hideous weddings. I mean, does that even need to be stated here?

Okay. So — my scribbled notes on M and A’s wedding, complete with random wedding tips.

— The wedding is outside. It is cold, windy. There is the poofy green grass and then there is the poofy white aisle runner sitting atop the poofy green grass. The harp (yuck) music begins. The bridesmaid starts her walk down the poofy white aisle runner but she has to literally mince along. One step takes eons and eons and eons. People are whispering urgently at her to just take her shoes off. I cannot even watch as the mincing eons go by. It is too much for me, that leaden discomfort, the forced smile. The bride and her dad are next. Mincey, mincey, wincey, wincey. I glance only once at her as she passes. She looks ill and unsure, like she wants to scream or cry at this cruel joke some bitter old wedding planner has played on her. TIP: No poofy white runners on poofy green grass. Trust me, girls. You will actually look physically challenged in what should be your most triumphant perfect moment. No mincey. No wincey. Please.

— Harp music is lame. LAME, I TELLS YA! Save it for heaven. But keep it on your acre of paradise, please. Amen.

— The pastor starts the ceremony. Says he has “things to say about marriage.” Oh, Lord. He has “things to say.” The pastor who married us had “things to say” as well and had cloudy day not turned to blessed night, he might have had no end of these very important things to say. Later on at the reception when he approached me to express concern over how paper white my face had gone at one point during his nuptial filibuster, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, well, I nearly passed out, you annoyingly nice blowhard, from having to stand for so damn long. But back to M and A and their problems here. So the preacherino gets going. He’s being homey. Hammy. Kinda icky. Then suddenly, he’s preaching a 3-point sermon complete with a heavy evangelistic message. Things like “You all got an invitation to this wedding and you RSVP’d. Well, Jesus is sending you an invitation, too, and you’re the only one who can RSVP to it.” “Someone’s paid the price for this wedding and Jesus paid the price for you. Remember, it’s Easter, etc.” Gross. So gross. I’m sorry. As a Christian, I protest on so many levels here, but mainly, let’s go with: It’s unfair. Rude, even. Look. People who accept an invitation to church go knowing, most likely, that they’re going to hear about Jesus. The Gospel. Salvation. They make that choice. On some level, they are interested in hearing it or they wouldn’t go. People who accept an invitation to a wedding go to see a WEDDING. The vows, the I do’s, the rings, the kiss, the whole glorious ritual. They don’t go to be preached at or evangelized. So TIP: Stop it, pastors, with your egotistical get-off at the expense of other people’s time and money. Don’t exploit this captive audience to make nice with God or ratchet up your righteous points. Shut up and cut to the chase. Really. Save that particular message for Sunday. At church. On YOUR time.

— Okaaay. Then, after that, I breathe real deep and calm my wild ass down.

— Oh, they’re married. But, alas, no one raises their hand to indicate they’ve just accepted Jesus.

— The reception. Our assigned table. We sit with the only two people we know here, G and his wife A. I don’t know them well at all; MB knows them better through work and such. I, therefore, have this pre-existing deal with MB: I will try to be good and social and non-anxious with strangers until a mutually-agreed-upon X o’clock. Then, if the perfect pretty cake has not yet morphed into a sliced and easily portable form, I will decamp hastily to our car where I will do one of these three lovely things: 1) read, 2) work on a crossword, or 3) fall into a deep deep stupor of sleep. G and A, though, are kinda fun and I’m having a relatively anxiety-free time so far. The four people across the table, howevah, are one big giant scowl. Particularly BAWB and his scrunchy wife MARRTHA. She scowls at me the entire night. When we meet and everyone is shaking hands all willy-nilly, left and right, and I just throw my seat assignment card into the fray and say, “Oh, here’s my card,” MARRTHA scowls. When we rhapsodize over the meatballs, she scowls. When the four of us take the table camera and start photographing weird tabletop tableaus, she scowls. When we memorialize our fabulous shoes on camera, she scowls. When we dance freakishly to Mambo No. 5, she scowls. But really, deep inside, she is a big butterball of sunshine and we all love her.

— A piece of hair at the side of my face keeps brazenly poking out of the lineup there. I cannot fix it, so it becomes, somehow in the course of the evening, after a little bit of wine, and quite stupidly, too, “The Hair Mic” and we all practice wishing the newlyweds heartfelt greetings into it. I mean, it’s so convenient. It’s right there. We also photograph this hair phenomenon, for the bride and groom, of course. Whilst we do this, MARRTHA spreads MORE joy!

— A little boy in a dapper suit stuffs himself continuously with food. Literally, food is hanging out of his mouth whenever I see him. It’s hilarious to me. I take a picture for M and A.

— G and I discuss why vegans don’t eat honey. Rather, he is trying to explain this to me. Finally, he admits, “Well, it’s something to do with the way the honey is gathered. It’s unnatural.” “Okay. Hm. So if the bees could all just get together and jar their own honey, would you eat it then?”

— Did I mention I drank a little bit of wine?

— The toasts are long and arduous and spontaneously read from large sheets of paper. The 75-year-old DJ then opens the floor to RANDOM toasting. Open mic toasting! Ack! ACK! Where is the cake? WHERE is the cake? We are approaching X-o’clock and the hasty cakeless decampment and I sense a gathering tizzy! ACK! A girl gets up and reads her rhyming toast to the bride and groom. It’s a tradition, she says. The toast is lonnng, but doesn’t actually rhyme, at least as far as I can hear. Maybe if she spoke into The Hair Mic.

— TIP: To expedite matters, brides should walk down the aisle, not with a frou-frou bouquet, but with wedding cake and booze. Flower girls should pass these out. This is a revelation from God, I’m pretty sure, because it’s clearly freakin’ brilliant.

— It is X-o’clock. (TIP: Always have an X o’clock) I hastily decamp, as planned. Sadly, sans cake, and in my gathering tizzy! I dash out to the car in the darkness, checking over my shoulder for rapists and bums and feral dogs and MARRTHA. In the car, I do three crosswords, start to doze. Finally, a knock on the window. It’s MB! With CAKE! Blessed, happy cake!! He climbs in the car with me and we eat cake in momentary silence under the lights of the parking lot. Finally:

“This cake ….. isn’t very good.”

“I know. I’m so bummed. It’s …. just not good.”

“All that waiting.”

“Let’s go home, okay?”

“Okay.”