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...in which we learn how much other people can suck...

It’s almost unfair to write about horrible wedding experiences. It’s like taking a photo of a puppy and saying “Look! I took a cute photo!” No you didn’t, you took a photo of a cute thing. Weddings are, almost by definition, horrible disasters waiting to happen. And for some ungodly reason, the minute you announce that you are having one, everyone in the world seems compelled to tell you a horror story about one.

 So if you’re getting married anytime soon, here’s my advice. Ignore the stories. Ignore the bridal magazines that try to convince you that if you don’t have time to hand-embroider 2000 wedding placemats with seed pearls and a quote from “The Prophet”, your wedding will surely be a disaster. Know only this: You’re going to stand up in front of people who care about you (and some who don’t, but fuck ‘em) and pledge your love to the person you love most in the world. That’s it. That’s all that matters. The clothes and the food and the cake and the music and the 2000 placemats are all just extras, none of them important in the end. 

If you’re NOT getting married anytime soon – read on and marvel at how badly things can go awry at this most festive and sacred of all occasions.

 My husband was recently asked to be in a wedding party when the groom’s two brothers had a big fight and one of them refused to be in the wedding if the other one was. This should have been a big red warning sign to us to keep the hell away, but:

 a) my husband has a very soft heart and no experience with weddings other than our own (which was of course perfect) and,

b) I am obviously a moron.

It was a huge wedding, over 500 people held in one of those “event halls” that exist to make money off nervous brides and grooms. The wedding itself would take place in the ‘Serenity Garden’ (which sounded suspiciously funereal to me, and also I wondered if there was a corresponding ‘Verge of Nervous Breakdown’ garden that might be more appropriate to most weddings), and then the reception would be in the ‘Venetian Room’, which, other than the window blinds, was clearly misnamed. (think about it for a second, it’ll come to you)

The bride’s “colors” were cardinal and gold, the school colors of her alma mater. Her high school alma mater. Another big red flashing warning sign ignored. And speaking of red – ‘cardinal and gold’ sounds quite wonderful, but in real life, ‘cardinal and gold’ is exactly the same thing as ‘red and yellow’, which gives your wedding a truly lovely traffic signal theme – notably missing the green ‘go forward’ element. Unless of course you count the fake greenery in the Serenity Garden. Completely plastic plants and vines in an outdoor setting, which they try to make look dewy and fresh by hosing the whole thing down a half hour before the wedding. Because wet plastic flowers look so much more real. Then, just before the bride comes down the aisle, but for some reason after all the guests are seated, two guys come out with a huge, huge roll of shiny white paper on an equally huge roller-type thing, and begin to unroll this three-foot-wide strip of paper over the Astroturf, down the aisle between the rows of plastic seats. It takes two of them because one, with obvious effort, drags the huge roller thing, while the other one walks  backwards in front of him and makes sure, with a lot of arcane, airplane-landing, flag-signaling hand gestures, that the guy with the roller thing doesn’t go hideously astray and roll over any children or small animals that may have inadvertently wandered into the aisle. All this is watched, with obvious approval and admiration, by all the guests.

 What is the purpose of the white paper? Is it the wedding equivalent of the red carpet? If one of the bride’s “colors” is red, wouldn’t a red carpet be better anyway? If the aisle is supposed to be white, couldn’t they just use the stuff they use to mark football fields to make it white? No, because if the white paper isn’t there, there is nothing for the bride’s heels to get caught in as she walks down the aisle, so her approach is not accompanied by a measured, cadenced tearing noise that all but drowns out the pale, overweight harpist’s limp strumming. And the unnerving effect that the bride is concealing a huge supernatural cat under her hoop skirt would be entirely lost.

So the bride and her cat proceed down the paper aisle. The bride’s father accompanies the bride, looking unaccountably smug. Sitting in the front row is the bride’s mother, whose look of undisguised hatred, we hope, is directed at the father and not at the bride. Right  next to the mother sits the father’s new wife, who throughout the event is continually mistaken for the bride’s sister. But still, so far so good. We have all rehearsed this (well, not me, I have sat around while everyone else rehearsed like mad) and we are all clear on what is supposed to happen next. The minister is supposed to ask “Who gives this woman?” and the father is supposed to respond “Her mother and I do.” We have been over this. It is not difficult. The minister even has it written down, although presumably he has a lot more experience doing this than anyone else in the place.

 The minister asks his question “Who gives this woman?” The father, standing next to his lovely daughter, turns his head and glares at his ex-wife. He pronounces, with great solemnity. “I do.”

 Apparently the father is under the impression that he is the one getting married. Or perhaps he has simply forgotten, in the thrill of the moment, that it takes two to tango. The bride bursts into tears. The mother leaps to her feet, shrieking. The new wife stares off into the middle distance. One of the bridesmaids hustles forward and re-settles the mother. The bride’s tears trail off into sniffles. The minister sternly informs us all (with a special look at the father) that we may be seated. We sit.

 I am midway back from the front. Every time I look at the bride, my eye is irretrievably caught by the bride’s mother, at the front on the aisle.  She is, quite inexplicably, wearing a hat that could only have been created by some horrible collision between the fabric remnants store and the Yo-Ho-Ho Pirates Garb for All Shoppe. It has a vaguely swashbuckling look, with a big swooping brim and not one but several ostrich and peacock feathers trailing from the crown. It also has silk flowers, swags of fabric and lace and fringe, and swathes of veiling from brim to shoulders. Did I mention it was all in cardinal and gold?

And here it comes, that moment in any wedding when things start to go horribly awry, but no one knows it yet. (and you thought we’d already gotten there, didn’t you. Poor naïve fool.) The play-by-play goes like this: Bride’s mother leans across new wife to whisper something to her ex-husband, flipping her enormous poufs of feathers, swags, and veiling into new wife’s face. New wife bats at mother’s hat, in vain. Mother ignores new wife, and then moves to settle back into her seat. But mother’s head cannot move. Mother’s hat is tangled up in the sequins that adorn the bust of new wife’s cashmere sweater. Mother’s head is stuck to new wife’s chest.

 New wife pushes at mother’s hat. Mother slaps new wife’s hands away. Father leans over new wife and says something. New wife now slaps father, who retreats. New wife slaps at mother’s hat. Mother slaps back at new wife. Bitch-slapping contest erupts in front row.  Story ends with two screaming bitch-slapping women, stuck together like conjoined twins from Hell, being dragged down the white paper Aisle of the Damned and out of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Garden. I can’t report what happened after that, because I was the one who dragged them out and afterwards, I skipped the reception in the Venetian Room and got blinded on my own.