Going up the aisle and to the dogs

.

73 percent of the 1,029 respondents from across the United States who participated in the study believed that couples should walk down the aisle and exchange wedding vows before having a child.

I realised the other day that I’ve become a little wedding jaded. For me, if you’ve been to one wedding you’ve been to them all and no matter how “special” the bride or groom may be to you the occasion itself is never as compelling as you might have hyped it up in your mind to be.

I know a lot of people who absolutely love weddings, I meet them all the time. They’re either raging alcoholics who love the idea of an open bar or they’re hopeless romantics who see weddings as a live re-enactment of their favourite fairy tale.

What leaves me at a particular loss for words is the amount of cash some people blow on weddings, just so that the DVD (which they probably won’t watch more than once) looks good.

I think people who spend a fortune on weddings are idiots for entertaining guests who will eat and drink until they can’t walk, leave without lifting a finger to help – and then still have the gall to complain about something or the other on the way home. We’ve all been that guest. You know, the one who ran up the biggest booze tab, stuffed as much Lindt chocolate into her handbag as would fit or stole all the bouquets from the table and then still said: “It was a nice wedding but I didn’t like the colour of the serviettes”.

You can spend all the money in the world or go out of your way to stage the ultimate wedding, but people will still complain. So why bother?

I am not even sure why people get married in the first place. There are women out there who are eager to book the wedding date without necessarily being keen on the idea of being married. Half of all the brides these days live on Planet Kardashian and just want the wedding, the show, the spectacle and are oblivious to the fact once the fairy tale is over they’re going to actually do things like cook and clean. The other half believe that they have a social expiry date and wed because that’s what people expect them to do. Men marry, well, because that’s what women want.

But I digress.

Going back to the reason why I don’t particularly like attending weddings, the main reason is because they’re generally an absolute bore and are terribly predictable. For one, they all pretty much never start on time, which means you end up making mindless chit-chat with some relative you haven’t seen since the last wedding.

And if you have the misfortune of attending the traditional service then you have to listen to the priest/rabbi/imam go on for ages about how God wanted us all to get married, the holiness of the occasion and Adam’s crooked rib.

Yeah sure, I know the priest has to do what he has to do, but why can’t he spice it up a little? I heard a story the other day about how a priest spoke the lyrics of the Beatles hit song “I want to hold your hand” during a wedding service. More of the same please.

Another reason I find weddings boring is because they never play out the way they do in romantic comedies. I long for the day some dude comes storming in through the door of the church/hall, interrupts the priest and declares his undying love for the bride. Why doesn’t that happen?

Where is the wedding drama we see in movies? Where are scenes from Julia Roberts romcoms? One of my cousins married a real asshole recently. I remember sitting through the service secretly hoping some pregnant chick would show up and boldly announce the kid was his. Now that would be a wedding to remember.

There was an uncle we used to be able to depend on to stir up controversy at just about any family gathering, like one occasion where he stood up at the reception and bellowed that the bride was having an affair. And then there was the time he climbed on to the stage, grabbed the microphone from the wedding singer in the middle of the couple’s first dance song, (which was Etta James’At Last) and announced that he was divorcing his wife.

I think that was the first time she found out about it. The family has since reined in on him and he sadly doesn’t make the guest list for many family functions anymore. I miss Uncle “Psycho” Sol. He hated weddings just must as much as me. Except he had the guts to say it out loud, to stand up and say, “enough with the speeches. This is boring as hell. No one gives a s*** about how you met!”

He has a point. Unless the groom met his bride in a brothel, there is no need to tell the story. After all it’s the usual mundane crap people have heard over and over again. I want to send around a petition to get wedding speeches banned.

No clichéd wedding is complete without the amateur MC, usually some relative who loves the sound of his own voice, who bombards the guests with those stale wedding gags that they’ve been hearing at wedding receptions since the beginning of time. You know what I’m talking about here. There is one that goes, “first comes the engagement ring, next comes the wedding ring and then comes the suffering”. If I hear that one more time I am going do a Psycho Sol and shoot the MC. Not that Psycho Sol has actually done that. But I know he’d be proud of me.

And then nothing is more clichéd than the music that couples choose for their first dance. I literally throw up every time I hear A Whole New World or Kenny G played at a wedding. Seriously, I do.

Here are some more interesting song choices for couples to walk in to:

* Who let the dogs out – Bahamen

* Like a Virgin – Madonna

* Highway to Hell – AC/DC

* Bitch, please – Snoop Dogg and Exhibit

* Said I loved you but I lied – Michael Bolton. - Sunday Tribune