You Can't Make Mistakes.

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.

I’m dyin’ here

I have another wedding to go to today and I’m not overly enthused about it.

I am not attending any more weddings this year, possibly ever.

So, if you’re getting married, don’t send me an invitation. I won’t come. It’s not because I don’t like you. It is because I want my life back.

I may or may not send you a card, or postcard, but I will not show up to sit through an hour-and-a-half ceremony or to drink the booze that your parents paid for.

It’s not that I have anything against marriage—though I do believe it to be an arcane and now purposeless social contract which we hang on to in order to make having sex seem legitimate, which shouldn’t be a problem in the first place—it is that I have a problem with the wedding part of the marriage. There are so many ways to go about it that don’t inconvenience your family and friends and yet so many people choose the way of significant inconvenience.

Plus weddings have become boring and tedious.

Why can’t everyone just go to the courthouse and have the quickie elopement that works so well. I know what you are going to say; “But John, it is a way of affirming our commitment and making our marriage stronger by involving our family and loved ones,” or “You have to have a ceremony with your friends or your marriage will not be as good as other marriages.”

Bull. Shit.

My parents, and many others, went to the courthouse, got married in ten minutes, and are still happily married today. I’m sure that you can still convince your friends and family to send you gifts and cash. Maybe some moron will even send you a silver knife and spatula to cut the wedding cake that you will never have. I would recommend using these as gardening implements.

“Lovely silver garden shovel…”

“Oh, why, thank you.”

I know, I know. I sound like a mean, curmudgeonly bastard. Well, that’s because I am a mean, curmudgeonly bastard. Big surprise that I sound like one.

There are so many more interesting and important things that we could do with the money that we spend on weddings. Is it really necessary to go through all that hassle so that you can claim your tax benefits and file jointly? This mean, curmudgeonly bastard certainly doesn’t think so.

Whatever. If you are reading this and have just gotten married or are thinking about getting married and it made you feel bad or pissed you off: good. That is your right. Good on your for exercising it. However, if you agree—or if you don’t, I don’t care—then watch the video below.

Tedious

I have to officiate wedding today. It’s for a friend and I agreed to it so I can’t really complain, can I?
But now it’s raining, so I can complain.

How tedious.