Weddings

Weddings. There are several parts to a wedding: the bride, the groom, the other people, the clothes, the food, the flowers, and the place to name a few. These are the issues I’m going to address today.

The Bride: This is the lady that is getting married. Hopefully by the time she begins referring to herself as “bride,” she has actually been proposed to by another consenting adult, though this is not always the case. This woman usually undergoes some drastic changes once the ring is placed on her finger; for one, suddenly every other person in her life exists solely to help her plan her wedding. They have no other life other than to see that EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of the Bride’s wedding day is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT OR ELSE. Also, even if she is six-foot-four and weighs only 87 pounds, it is a wedding commandment that the Bride Must Lose Weight. Everyone involved in the wedding is expected to a) tell her that she is crazy, she is not fat and she should NOT lose weight but also b) be supportive of her efforts, because otherwise they are just Being Mean. After all, the wedding is all about HER; she just happens to have a guy standing beside her, hopefully the consenting adult who gave her the ring, but again this is not always the case.

The Groom: This guy decided that he loves his female counterpart enough to spend too much money on a present that will become more important than he is. At least we hope he decided this, sometimes the female (now called the Bride, see above) uses tactics such as threats or blackmail to make this happen. Once the proposal is over, any control the Groom has had in this relationship is gone, so he might as well get used to it.

The Other People: These people, as stated previously, exist only to Make the Bride’s Day Perfect. They do this by staying quiet, taking extensive notes, and drinking a lot of adult beverages.

The Clothes: These include the groom’s and groomsmen’s attire (which will be a black tuxedo), the bridesmaids’ dresses (which will be a lurid color that does not exist in the natural world, is not appropriate for any season, and does not go with any neutral color so shoes are impossible to find. Also these dresses must have some bizarre detail, like a green-and-orange leopard-print peacock feather on the butt), and the Bride’s Wedding Dress. The Wedding Dress’s job is to make the Bride look like a cross between a wedding cake and the world’s most holy prostitute, because it must be white, it must be poofy, it must be elegant, but it also must be sexy. We will not go into what the Bride must wear UNDER the dress, because it might make some readers feel faint.

The Food: The type and amount of food offered at a wedding reception varies according to the Bride’s taste and the formality of the event. Caterers will tell you that at the bare minimum, though, your menu should include Cocktails, Appetizers, Soup, Salad, Main Course, Dessert, and After-Dinner Drinks. Oh, and your Wedding Cake which must be a minimum of four tiers, each being frosted with at least 2 inches of buttercream underneath a half-inch of fondant, which tastes disgusting but is a Must for an Elegant Cake, which will not taste as good as the Duncan Hines boxed mix despite the fact that it cost more than your college education.

The Flowers: All of the bridesmaids will be allergic to them, and Aunt Bertha will have an asthma attack because of the fumes.

The Place: This is one of the first things the Bride and Groom must secure in planning a wedding, because in the United States there are approximately fourteen venues appropriate for weddings, and eight of them are beaches in Hawaii. The remaining six have been booked since the Reagan administration, so you need to get your name on the list as soon as possible, unless you are getting married in a month other than January, February, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, or December. In that case you should probably call the morning of, just to be sure.


So far, this has been my experience with weddings, or at least this is what TLC tells me. Quite honestly, if I had my way, we’d elope and then spend two weeks in Switzerland. We aren’t, but I think we’ll make do.