Wedding Pips

Fans of the blog (yeah, I'm referring to all three of you) know how skittish I am about weddings. In the past, you've likely read this or this. If you haven't, you should do so and return when you're better prepared.

The most overlooked reason weddings leave a gassy feeling in my tummy is that it forces the bride and groom to commit to social hierarchies that are uncomfortable to admit.

When we were all younger, way younger, like when mustaches were more manly than ironic, we used to use our personal friendship rankings as a power play. "If you trade me those Dunkaroos for this apple, I'll be your best friend." We've all been a part of the if-you-do-_____-I'll-be-your-best-friend trade-off before. It takes balls to pull this off and little kids have balls, mostly because they haven't got brains.

Clearly they haven't got any brains because the deals went through. They happened. I didn't have Dunkaroos until I was 15 because I kept trading them away to people so they'd become my friends. They were already sitting next to me in school and at lunch and probably already liked me before the transaction, but what did I know?

If I was interested in making my own tee shirts, I'd make one that said "I was a stupider child than you were." I'm not into making my own tee shirts though, so the point is moot.

Using your friendship to manipulate certain situations ran rampant throughout my childhood. Kids my age wrote out invitations according to who was most liked. The cool kids were established by the sheer number of other kids that hung around them. If you sucked at dodgeball, but your friend was a captain, you'd always be picked third.*

* You couldn't be picked first or second because the team had to compete and the captain would get ridiculed for choosing some lame dodgeballer first. The fix would totally be in, the captain's status would plunge and both he and you would be screwed.

It should also be noted that this rule only applies to boys. Girls had no interest in competing or really, being good at anything. Girls only picked their friends and chatted while holding onto the dodgeballs. Thinking back, girls were a total waste until they hit puberty. They're fine now, but I have no regrets wanting nothing to do with them when I was eight.

When I was little, I secretly ranked my friends. I did. I had to. I was always scared I was going to actually be thrown in the hypothetical situations people dream up (drowning boat with time enough only to save one, a dive bombing airplane with only one other parachute, an invitation to a supermodel orgy for you and only one guest**). It seemed imperative that if any of these situations were to arise, that I should not waste time rashly deciding things I should have settled in my head long ago.

** That last hypothetical came a little later in life.

So, for the bulk of my life, at any given moment, I knew who my best friend on Earth was. I also knew the silver medal winner, the bronze and the guys who I didn't really care for, but whose moms were hot.

For most people, this way of thinking shifts and locks onto other things, leaving your friendships in a shapeless glob of history, geography and circumstance. This isn't to say that all friends are equal. Far from it. But the relationships become more organic and comfortable. Eventually, most of us stop associating with people whose friendship can be purchased for the price of a pack of Dunkaroos.

And right about this time is when most people get engaged.

Weddings ask us, once again, to organize where everyone stands in our individual lives. Who's my best man? Which five of my friends and relatives deserve to purchase heinous taffeta bridesmaids dresses? Who's a friend, but still owes me $100 bucks and therefore will be relegated to usher?

Weddings make everyone's social standing frighteningly clear.

And God help you if you don't have a) one (1) sibling or b) someone who saved your life in one way or another.

If my sister Emily was my brother it would be so much easier.*** She'd automatically be my best man. Why? Because we share the same blood. It's not a question of "like" it's a question of family and of "right-ness."

*** For me, not for my sister. If Emily was a boy, she'd take a lot of shit for looking and acting like such a wuss.

It's the same idea if a friend of mine pulled me from a burning wreck, lifted my near-drowned body from the bottom of a pool or spent six years as my AA sponsor. "Hey fellas, your feelings can't be hurt, George here saved my life. I literally couldn't have gotten married without him. I owed him one. I mean, c'mon, his best man speech is practiclaly already written!"

Those two options make everything easy. But I have neither option. One day - I don't know when - I'm going to have to not only choose who will be my Gladys Knight, but also the Pips. I'll also have to show everyone whom I don't like enough to be either Gldys or the Pips clear-cut evidence of this. I'm not jazzed about this process.

The funny thing is, the decision itself isn't hard. I know who it'll be. Actually, I've got both Gladys and all the Pips chosen in my head. The hard part will be revealing to the Pips that they're not Gladys Knight and revealing to the audience that they won't be one of the Pips.

I believe that most people would honestly rather not be a main part of the wedding, but I bet they'd like to be asked. I'd be happy to ask if I somehow knew they would decline. But I don't know that and I'd hate to have the fat guy I bunked with for four years of basketball camp inexplicably become my best man.

The weird thing is, weddings are supposed to be a joyous occasion and yet, to some degree someone's feelings almost certainly have to get hurt at least a little. Someone is going to think they play a bigger part in my life than they do. In fact, it's possible some people don't realize how important they actually are.

Man, I hate weddings.

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.