No One Wants to Go to Your Wedding
By: Pam Gaslow
Tags: Humor, Relationships, Funny, Marriage, Weddings

HUMOR

No One Wants to Go to Your Wedding

Where’s the lie?

Photo:Unsplash

If you think anyone is as excited about your wedding as you are I have news for you — they’re not. Most of your friends, relatives, co-workers, employees, or members of your glam squad don’t want to go to your wedding. Out-of-towner’s really don’t want to go. Also, no one wants to be in your wedding party.

No one wants to go to your bridal shower or your cheesy three-day bachelorette drunk fest in disgusting Las Vegas. No one is interested in your annoying rehearsal dinner the night before, or your auxiliary brunch the day after. Stop the fucking insanity.

Being asked to be in a wedding party is like being picked in a game of Duck Duck Goose — do kids still play that? Everyone prays they don’t get picked.

Sure it’s an honor, but not a great one. It’s also a thankless job that begins the day they ask you and doesn’t end until the wedding day. Welcome to purgatory. They own you now and they are entitled and you are obligated. It’s an obnoxious, presumptuous tradition and you’re a shitty friend if you don’t partake in it.

It’s also grossly expensive.

“Buy me an engagement gift, throw me a bridal shower, plan my bachelorette party, buy tickets to Vegas, get a hotel room, pay for the alcohol and entertainment, then go buy this dress and those shoes that you will never wear again, have your hair and makeup professionally done, stand in a row like a picture-perfect nuptial soldier smiling like a fucking Stepford wife. Thank you so much and here’s a too tight bubblegum pink “bridesmaid” tank top with rhinestones dotting the i’s. You’re welcome.”

The icing on the cake is that you also have to get that bitch a gift, so add that to your tab. And if you bring a date make it a double.

Seriously though, why do we torture people like this? Why is all of this still in vogue, let alone legal? I’ve never heard anyone say, I have a wedding this weekend — I’m so excited! I’m in the wedding party — I’m so excited! It’s more like a droll I have a wedding Saturday night. Ugh. Who the hell wants the obligation, the financial burden, the social pressure, or the responsibility to be involved in all that crap? No one.

Forget about the fact that she’s probably marrying the wrong guy for all the wrong reasons and will most likely be divorced two years down the line. It’s not your job to tell her that. It’s your job to wear the stupid tank top, suck vodka from the penis straws at the debaucherous bachelorette soiree, keep your mouth shut and two years later roll your eyes and humbly gloat as you say “I told you so,” even though you didn’t.

I do speak from experience. Years ago my male best friend asked me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding. I was friendly enough with his wife and she had no problem with me being in the wedding party.

Everything was fine until one night when we were hanging out and she told me that I “would get my makeup done” by her makeup person. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to do that, she told me. I responded saying thank you but I prefer to do it myself. She proceeded to lock herself in the bathroom for the rest of the night and didn’t come out until after I left.

Psycho.

A few days later she had her mother — yes, her mother — call me while she whined and I’m sure pouted in the background. There was more discussion of the makeup and then her mother said to me, “You know, you always wear your hair down — could you maybe put it up or something?”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you hire a fucking model? Then you can dress her up and have her makeup done and she will look exactly the way you want and everyone will live happily ever after.”

Needless to say, that didn’t go over well, and my friend’s fiancé had a fit and started screaming in the background, “THE BRIDE’S ALWAYS RIGHT!”

Ummm, is it bad that I laughed out loud at that? And that I had her on speakerphone in my office and my assistant laughed out loud too?

I mean, I’m sorry, but didn’t we lose sight of what this was supposed to be about? Isn’t this the celebration of a once-in-a-lifetime declaration of your love for the person you’re committing to spending eternity with? Or is it about the perfect presentation of your bridesmaid models? A few days later I was politely asked by my friend to not be part of the wedding party and to just come as a regular guest. The relief I felt was monumental — like I dodged the draft or something.

The bottom line is this whole tradition is ridiculous and needs to be done away with. If I had gotten married I would have asked one or two women to stand up for me and tell them to wear whatever they wanted. I would trust them because they are my friends and I know that they would look nice and not embarrass me.

I wouldn’t have a wedding party or a bachelorette party or any of that stupid nonsense. I would hopefully be grateful that I found the love of my life and focus on us rather than controlling everyone else around me and making them miserable in the process, and quite possibly alienating them for life.

And by the way, my friend and his succubus wife had one of the worst divorces I’ve heard of to date. That was over ten years ago and she’s still psychotic, and controlling. That experience taught me a lot about relationships, weddings, and priorities, but the most glaring bit of wisdom I gleaned from the whole ordeal is that the bride is not always right.