Get the Wed Out

I went to a friends’ wedding recently. It doesn't matter which friend or the details leading up to the couple's nuptials because I'm 28 and everyone around me is getting married. Fill in your own details, it'll probably be fairly accurate.

I’ve only been to three weddings in my life. The first wedding I attended when I was four and I was the ring bearer. For those of you whom have not yet been a ring bearer at a wedding, I highly recommend it. My understanding of weddings is that you can't get married without rings and therefore, the couple can't get married without you. This adds an entirely new layer of excitement one just can't get from sitting in a church pew.

If you're a woman or over seven-years-old and don't like your chances of becoming a ring bearer, I don't know what to tell you. Michael Jordan never made excuses and neither should you. Play like a champion, make it work.

My first wedding also represented my first tuxedo. It was itty-bitty, which isn't to say the tuxedo was small on me. I was itty-bitty and the tux fit perfectly. I remember little of this experience except for vague and immense feelings of pressure, annoyance that old wrinkled biddies felt it acceptable to pinch my cheeks and that everyone thought it cute to concoct a romantic connection between the flower girl and me.

I never connected with the flower girl because, as I saw it, her only role was to make a mess of the aisle and rip apart flowers that I thought came from the bouquets at the front of the church. Adding those observations with my normal iciness toward all cootie-filled girls at the time, I gave her the cold shoulder most of the night.

That girl turned out to be Kirsten Dunst.

No, I'm just kidding. But wouldn't that be a kick in the ass?

More than two decades later, I’m no better at weddings. Most people don’t think too much about whether they are good at weddings or not. Most people need to know only three things:

1. Is it an open bar?
2. Will there be single, desperate people of similar age and lifestyle at the wedding?
3. Will there be electric or cha-cha sliding? Or both?

I’m a big advocate for cha-cha sliding. I use the term advocate instead of fan because frankly, it seems that the "Cha-Cha Slide" needs defending from general unpopularity.

I think people are turned off by the flurry of clapping that the "Cha-Cha Slide" demands. I cannot properly articulate the amount of guff I get for not only supporting, but requesting and celebrating the existence of the "Cha-Cha Slide." I didn't invent the damn song, nor did I hire any d.j. to play the song, I can't be the only cheerleader for this goddamn thing.

And that is just one example of why I’m no good at weddings.

I'm also a cranky ceremony attendee. Although the mingling and the toasts and the dancing seem celebratory, the mass seems like a preemptive strike against all the fun everyone is preparing to have. When my parents punished me for something they later realized I did not do, they would often let the punishment stand and justify it by assuming there was something I'd done about which they hadn't yet found out. The pastor or priest or reverend, realizing that intercourse between two people is moments away from not only be without sin, but blessed... well, you bet the servants of the Lord are all going to get their last licks in while they can.

I’ve sounded off on churchin' before, so I won’t retrace those steps, but I still think it’s kinda uncool that Catholics slip church processions into wedding ceremonies.

That’s what Sundays and Easters are for.

Sometimes when a television network has the rights to popular sporting events like the Indy 500 or the World Series, that network invites stars from their primetime television lineup to sit (and be seen) in the crowd. The purpose of this is to focus a camera on them as if they just happened to love baseball or Indy cars and perhaps this is a good time to mention that they are also starring on a new sitcom that also happens to be owned by the same network.

What were the odds?

"It’s so nice that this man and this woman are here today to celebrate their promise to love, honor and obey one another and… oh hey, you know what? We just happen to have these wafers and I think we’ve got enough hymn books for everyone, why don’t we just throw ourselves a little Mass while we're at it."

Gotcha bitches.

The wedding Mass itself doesn’t bother me, but it lessens the ceremony. Over the course of one hour, the ceremony lasts like, 10 minutes. Vow, vow. I do, I do. Kiss, kiss. What are we sitting around an extra 50 minutes for?

Now remember, I have very little experience with actual weddings, but my experience with Hollywood weddings is vast. I envision the perfect ceremony consisting of a couple walking down the aisle, saying “I do,” running back up the aisle arm-in-arm to a throng of close friends and relatives tossing rice at the couples' mouth and eyes as they run into a limousine with “just married” written in soap on the rear window. Maybe there are a dozen Pabst Blue Ribbon cans jangling behind the car as it drives off, I don't know. That's not imperative. The couple rides into the sunset, not to return until weeks later after their Honeymoon is over.

There are also caveats to this cliché. Instead of a limo, it is possible to ride off on a public bus, as Benjamin and Elaine did at the end of “The Graduate” or perhaps in a flying ’57 Chevy, as per the end of “Grease.” (I am aware that Danny and Sandy were not married at the end of that film and were probably going to live a heathenish existence of unmarried relations like the street rats they were, but the end of that movie was so magical I dare not think about the rest.)

Whatever happened to those weddings? When did receptions start happening? Hollywood always has the wedded couple sprint out of the church into a limo or convertible not to be heard from for weeks. I like that. There' something very Howard Hughes-ish about that. I wanna have the Amelia Earhart of wedding ceremonies, where people don't hear from me for years afterward. Give 'em something Claude Rains would be proud of.

I want my wedding guests to feel about me the way I feel midway through summer when I wonder whatever happened to my favorite shows and can't remember where the plots left off or even if the show got renewed for another season.

I guess I also want to be the "Heroes" and "Lost" of honeymoons.

I should make it clear that I don't hate marriage, happy dance parties or God. I'm just not all that jazzed about pageantry scornful of anyone with a penis. Let's face it, weddings have nothing to do with the groom. They're just as ornamental as the groom's plastic alter ego standing atop the wedding cake. That's all I ever think about sitting in the church moments before the ceremonies began. Everything is all atwitter behind the big oak doors at the back of the church while the groom stands waiting at the alter in front of two sets of friends and family like the court jester.

I've seen too many grooms standing around as if they were informed they were getting married moments before the start of Pachelbel's "Canon in D." They all had the same look on their faces that I had on pop quiz days during classes in which I had yet to start reading the assigned book.

While the bride's entourage, harum and posse all flutter around like ducks trying to dismantle a bomb, what does the groom do? Make fart noises with his groomsmen? Staple the corners of the red velvet carpet down which his future wife is moments away from walking? Try to remember the vows that his fiance wrote for him to say? Poor bastard.

Weddings for the groom are a crock, which I can only imagine is why the bride's family foots the bill for them. Whenever I get married (and according to other people my age, this is something I should have done five years ago), I'm going to strongly consider demanding a pay-for-play clause to the ceremony. I'll pay for the rehearsal dinner, the clergy and officiant's fees, limousine services and honeymoon services only if I can choose the music (or the d.j. or band that will itself choose the music) and the centerpieces.

That's it. Give me the tunes and the dinner's centerpieces and I'll pay for everything for which I'm supposed to pay. If I get shooed away from all wedding decisions, then the women involved in the planning are on their own in paying for it. Don't say I never warned you.

People don't realize how important the centerpieces are, but they will when they see what I've got planned.

But that's another story for another day.

Again, it's not marriage, but pageantry with which I have the problem. I do't want to be stranded at the front of the church yammering with the priest that my fiance's mother most likely chose. Marrying couples should stroll down the aisle together, right behind the flower girl shredding and littering flower petals in front of us. Don't hold Mass with a ceremony hidden in the middle. It's not like we don't notice that we're no longer talking about the man and woman trying to become ajoined in holy matrimony. For each Psalm mentioned in place of a wedding vow, I swear I'll play the "Cha-Cha Slide" one additional time.

Test me. I dare you.