From This Day Forward

This past weekend I attended the wedding of one of Rob's colleagues from the Phillies. Jocelyn is a lovely young woman who began her time with the team as a ball girl and has moved up to sales and marketing. Rob says she's very bright (a Penn State honors program grad) and good at her job. She also happens to be stunning and incredibly fit, and therefore immensely unlikeable a lovely catch for her boyfriend, now husband, whom she dated for nine years before tying the knot.

Weddings are tricky things, particularly when you're not personally close to the bride or groom. Your whole experience, especially at the ceremony, can be colored by the current state of your own union. If your spouse tells you how wonderful you look, squeezes your hand, looks lovingly into your eyes during the vows, and whispers "I would marry you all over again," then you're likely to be moved by the ceremony, possibly to tears. You may find yourself recalling your special day and the vows you wrote (because you're a writer, after all), and thanking God for this special someone you're blessed to be spending your life with.

On the other hand, if your better other half says nothing about your appearance, avoids looking at you during the ceremony, and can't wait to hightail it outta the church, then you may be screaming inside "Don't do it! Run like the wind!" and "You've still got your youth." You may even be secretly hoping for the true love/scorned lover to start banging on the church doors, screaming "ELAINE!!!" (see "The Graduate"). And if that doesn't happen you may settle for taking bets on how long the marriage will last.

Barring a bolting bride at the church, the reception is where things can get really interesting. And not just because the Phanatic makes an appearance, as he did at these festivities. The reception is where you decide:

• You hate Phillies former ball girls in their obscenely short skirts with their obscenely shapely legs
• You hate strappy shoes that keep slipping off your heels
• You hate strapless dresses that you're not well endowed enough to hold up
• You hate the band leader who keeps chiding people into moving on to the dance floor
• You hate whomever is drunk enough to start the "train" dance
• You hate whomever is delaying the cutting of the cake
• You hate that you're 40-something with two kids and a mortgage surrounded by 1) Young, beautiful people with not a care in the world, and 2) Older couples whose kids have moved out and whose mortgages are paid for and who now spend their time at the country club or traveling through the south of France
• You hate knowing that you're never going to eat and drink enough to justify the size of the check that you put in that damn over-priced greeting card which you know the bride and groom are never going to read anyway cause all they want to see is how much money they made by inviting you

Now lest I leave you thinking that I really hated this whole evening, I must applaud the happy couple on several excellent decisions:

1. No receiving line. If you don't already know the mother and father of the bride or groom, meeting them on this particular day is really not necessary. They don't care who you are and won't remember you anyway, unless you fail to write a big check to make this ridiculously expensive affair worthwhile. 
2. A donation to Phillies charities in lieu of wedding favors. Does anyone ever eat those little boxes or chocolates or keep those trinkets anyway? Rob and I gave out monogrammed ice scrapers. It was January, and I am nothing if not practical.
3. Skipping the champagne toast. People are already drinking what they want to drink by the time your maid/matron of honor and best man get up to stumble their way through a toast. They don't need champagne, just a glass to click with their neighbor.
4. Nixing the Chicken Dance. Really, the Chicken Dance is only a hair classier than the Dollar Dance. Rob and I probably had the Chicken Dance, but he forbade me to have the Dollar Dance. Which is too bad, cause I could have framed my first dollar, like it was my first day in the business of being married.
5. Banishing the garter and bouquet toss. I guess the bouquet toss isn't that bad, though I personally had no sense how hard to chuck it. But the garter deal is just asking for trouble. Just ask my sister's boyfriend at the time of my wedding. He had to remove my garter from the thigh of an 80+ year-old distant relative who had recently suffered a stroke and was blind in one eye. She It was ugly. Though the looks on the faces of the guys who didn't catch the garter was priceless.

Whew! Who knew I had so much to get off my chest about weddings? Lest I seem like the ultimate wedding grinch, please share your memories, issues, complaints about weddings. Your own or someone else's!