Wedding Toasted
Okay.
I guess my last post was a little more rancorous in tone than I had thought. I don’t really hate weddings that much. And I failed to mention that once engaged in a wedding, I always find myself enjoying myself. I think that what I dislike the most is the amount of time/energy that goes into fighting with family members/caterers/clergy over the preparations. You can see it often on the faces of brides and families that they are not enjoying themselves and are rather just panicking and freaking out.
That said, I had a great time at the wedding yesterday, unsurprisingly, as I have so often done in the past. It also helped that the bride was the sister of one of my best friends, who was the maid of honor for this particular festival of freakouts. However, she delivered the following toast, which had me on the floor. Sometimes all it takes is a few well chosen words and I melt like butter.
Now that you’ve found happiness and love with each other, there remains one question: how will you make love stay?
Here are some ideas [with some help from Tom Robbins]:
1) Tell love you are going to Hinkle’s Bakery in Otsego to pick up a cheesecake. If love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
2) Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin-yang symbols on 3 sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell them you are someone new. It will stay.
3) Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything will be alright. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.
And with that I’d like us to raise our glasses in a toast to making love stay…
So, after that, I woke up this morning hung over, but smiling. I just need to read this the next time I get a wedding invitation to remind me of why we do these things.
2007–2010 John D. Martin III
1
Well, I gotta tell ya: I went back to try and delete my comment and couldn’t. You know what? I remembered I hate weddings too. I really do. It isn’t the fact of the wedding itself; it is the terrible music, pathetic ceremonies, too much makeup, people making me want to puke without the aid of alcohol, etc. etc. etc. You know I’ve had a terrible week and am overly touchy; the memory of my wedding is so intact and so perfect at making me happy because it was the most fun and best day of my life, and I am sentimentally overattached to it. I am also so self-centered as to believe that mine WAS actually fun, mainly because I worked pretty hard at making it as painless for the guests as possible. 6000 degree heat and rats in rotting cabins notwithstanding, after I read your post, I was just terrified that maybe it wasn’t as fun as I thought it was – my main priority was that everyone have a good time. So…my balloon has popped. The dishes are done, man. I love you and reading your dish, you know? I’m just a huge crybaby this week. Hate on, hater!
2
Well, after I read your last comment, I wanted to delete the post. But, that’s not how we do things around here. In the end, though, I am glad that I didn’t. Mostly I am glad because you identified the one major thing that set you apart from other brides: you did everything in your power to make it as painless as possible for your guests, which is something that I think is often left overlooked. Thereby, your main objective—that everyone have a good time—was completely fulfilled. At least, I had a really good time, and it wasn’t for lack of trying on your part.
I suppose that I could have clarified that a bit more. But I didn’t.
That was a hell of a toast that Tara gave, eh? I loved it.
Kisses.
3
The toast was taken from one of my favorite books – Still Life with Woodpecker. If you want to learn how to make love stay, or if you want to learn to make a bomb from bat shit and fruit loops, or maybe you have an inexplicable love for red hair, the moon, and pyramids, you have to read this book.
Glad it made you feel a little happier John John.
4
It totally worked. I think that it is the finest wedding toast I have ever heard.