Weddings
I Dislike Weddings
Hate is too strong an emotion from someone who loves life, but I do dislike weddings.It’s odd to be writing this after the much hyped Valentines Day but that’s just the point. Where is the romance in Weddings?Where is the romance in sharing your intimate moment of declaration with 150 people, mostly strangers?Where is the romance in having to make compromises to accommodate everyone else’s needs rather than your own on what’s billed as ‘your day’?Where is the romance in what’s known as one of the most stressful moments in a person’s lifeI have tried to analyse my odd aversion to weddings, odd for a woman anyway. I don’t mind seeing a wedding on TV because I like frock watching. But for someone with this interest in clothes, it may surprise you to know I have been known to be violently ill on more than one occasion when caught by surprise upon passing a bridal shop.I am grateful that I don’t have the same allergic reaction at a friend’s wedding or indeed at my own, which is still the best wedding I have ever been part of. We put our own twist on everything as what I really get bored of is the format of weddings. The theme is love or everything is in twos. The colours, yuck. The table layout, the norm. The music, trite.Worst of all, the dreaded bridesmaid dress. Just because the bride spends 3 months rent on a meringue dress that she is going to wear once, why do her supposed closest friends have to suffer in her plight? If they are giving up their weekend and no doubt a whole lot more, shouldn’t they at least be given a fabulous dress in a flattering colour that they will wear forever and then remember this as a good day?What’s worse is the waiting around – for the bride, for the photography, for the cake cutting. How is that celebrating the couple’s big day?I used to think it was just churches that made me feel queasy but my attitude to holy buildings matured after a trip to Italy. It’s just the clique of the wedding.Having said that, last week I unwittingly witnessed a wonderful wedding. It was an intimate private wedding and yet it was in the most public of places. The most glamorous transportation building in the world, Grand Central. 10 or 15 people had gathered to watch, who could have just been passers-by. The bride looked resplendent in her gown standing with her back to everyone to say her vows; there may as well have been no one else around except for her groom. They were in their own world in a place that so obviously meant something to them.Now that’s romantic. February 18th 2009