The Horrible Wedding
Saturday, April 3, 2004-9:00 a.m.
The horrible wedding.
I was in an irritable mood today. I did not wish to attend my cousin's neighbors' wedding this weekend wit my parents.
Losing my only free time all weekend is not appealling. ( I have a lot of housework to do and I just want to stay home and NOT do it and go to sleep) Watching "the couple" transitioning from "engaged" to "married" was a waste of my time.
Call me a traditionalist but in days of old, an engagement was a rite of passage, a time for a young lady to leave the insouciant days of girlhood and segue into the role being a wife.
That was until the "insouciance of girlhood" came to include:
A baby (that is nearly 2 years old at the time of the wedding, and is about to be registering for Catholic pre-school),
a summer spent hitchhiking across the country following a rock band tour,
a stint in a $3500.00 per week drug rehab clinic
3 large tatoos and a tongue piercing
2 abortions
and a Chapter 7 bankruptcy for a $18,000.00 credit card debt.
For a while now, the father of the blushing bride, has done his best at the country club events to show middle aged batchelors how rich he is, in the hopes of tricking one of them into taking that maniac daughter off his hands. That never worked.
So now she and her boyfriend were to tie the knot in a garish showy expensive event, including the traditional long white $4500.00 gown ,that was so large and intricate that she almost had to be removed from the limosine with a block and tackle rig!!!
There were 8 women in ridiculous bridesmaids dresses,with bows on the backsides and the public sideshow of wheeling the baby down the aisle in a gardenia-covered pram, just before the Catholic Mass began. (my step mother's comment : "What!? Black tires with a white pram at a wedding?? They have no taste!")
The priest said Mass and didn't seem concerned about the baby, which was modern and unusual for the priests I used to know. The reception for 400 guests followed.
The sight of 400 wedding guests milling about, in various rooms, in buffet lines or at the bar was disturbing. More disturbing was hearing a drunken bridesmaid getting into the elevator and talking to a male guest.
SHE:" Going down?"
HIM: Hey Baby,You get right to the point."
SHE: [ thinks for a minute] "I LIKE you!"
I cynically wonder if the only reason for this wedding is beacause the groom's palimony lawyer has given a bad prognosis? Or for the sheer delight the couple take in making a mockery of traditional values?
... or maybe the couple have lived together for so long they have run of of things to fight about.
Tradition dictates that brides are given away by the father . In my cousin's case, the bride is given away ,because selling her is illegal and you cant get anything for her on the open market in trade except an out of work son in law.
In days of old, there was a trousseau and it was traditionally made up of the bride's personal items to bring to the marriage to help set up the home, such as towels, fine linens, stemware, etc.
My cousin's trousseau consisted of ;
2 cats
1 cat hair covered rug
1 child
1 8x11 abstract painting by her ex boyfriend's gay lover ,
3 framed paintings of unicorns
258 cute refrigerator magnets
1 6 -year old Dodge Neon, with payments still outstanding
1 half dead Ficus tree
30 valium
an unpaid bill for $ 1,000.00 from her bankruptcy attorney ,
1 pair of $800.00 Maud Frizon shoes
32 mismatched pieces of melmac dishes
a box of loose cassette tapes (George Michael, Janet Jackson, The Eurymthmics)
The grooms motivation, (besides love, of course... ) resides in the illusion that his bride , 11 years his junior, will sincerely want to have sex him more than 25 times in the future, after the union is legal.
It would not be for her skills as a homemaker, as the only appliances in the kitchen she has used is the phone ( for takeout) and the fire extinguisher. The inside of the oven had the factory paper on it for 6 months after they moved in to thier new home. "She will learn to cook, but she won't learn to be "good in bed" , he may be rationalizing . This is a most pathetic form of self-delusion.
I got a bad feeling when, after the meal, she said her waist band on her gown was tight, and she said " Well, I am married now. Who cares if I get fat. He HAS TO love me." I watched his expression change . The muscles in his jaw tightened. He unconsciously tried to loosen the noose...ooops, sorry...necktie...
Yes, she looks great now, but that is through unusual devotion to grueling exercise programs and dangerous diets. Now she is married, and as she said, it's O.K. to let go and become what she really is ---a "potential fat girl" who will feel no compunction about packing on weight and spend summers wearing black slacks and blouse to the beach. Women like this never lose this weight and will add another twenty or thirty pounds with each child. They go right from the wedding to home mortgage and furniture investment, so that when the metamorphosis from slender to zeppelin is complete, the husband is too heavily invested, emotionally and financially.
Of course, I hope I am wrong.
I was probably not alone .
There was a gaggle of relatives who had driven miles with obligatory gifts of blenders and lettuce spinners. The Al Duchin Trio played on.... and on. I can't tell you how many times I was tapped on the shoulder and asked to do ritual dances with physically repulsive relatives of the groom. They delivered this smooth invitation while breathing gin fumes on my neck. (What did they think this was? A singles bar?) I said "no, thanks", and they moved on to ask someone else.
I watched. The only dances they half remembered were the ones they knew 25 years ago: Stiff overweight versions of the "Jerk" the "Watusi" and the "Twist"....
As I looked around the room at the single men, I saw men in white dinner jackets that made them look like plump waiters, men in white pants that made them look like male nurses, and men in spring-hued attire that made them look like the assistant stock boy at a second rate country club in Ohio.
We toasted the bride and groom, and it was to be the last time we would get a chance to do so .......until maybe the divorce...
But of course , I am out of line. Maybe I can manage to be in a more pleasant mood when I write again.
go to the prior entry * +
