Let Down and Hanging Around

I went to a wedding on Saturday, and the only question I have is why in the world would anyone want to get married?

I'm all for marriage. I'm all for devoting your life to another person. I'm all for commitment. Marriage as an institution is something that I can support. If you love someone enough to want to be with them forever, then go ahead and get married. Straight or gay, marriage is a union of two people who care about each other. I hope to be married some day.

There is something that comes over people when they approach their 30s. They look at their lives and they look at everything that they thought they would be. Some feel an odd obligation to be somewhere by the time they've reached an arbitrary date in their life. They tick accomplishments off as though they are completing a set of O-Pee-Chee baseball cards. They need to be married, have a home, a car, a job, a backyard, and a baby. If they don't they think that they are a failure. Happiness doesn't matter as long as you've got your Panini Hockey sticker album filled.

This weekend's wedding seemed to be just one of the steps towards an idealised life. The lasting impression that I had of the whole thing was how let down everyone was. As if everyone looked around and said to themselves, "This is what I've been preparing for for all this time?"

The wedding itself was typical religious fare with ritual and expectations wrapped up in hypocrisy and topped with a bow of boredom. What always astounds me about churches is that no one actually listens to what's happening. If they did, they would understand that the whole thing, for one, makes no sense; and two, is not applied to real-life. What's the point of a religion that forgives you of all sin if you ask for it? I'm going to be a scumbag my whole life. I'm going to pretend to be pious by dozing off in a church on Sundays. Then when I feel bad, or think that I am about to die, I will ask for absolution. Bing bang boom... eternal life on clouds with all the Philadelphia cream cheese I can eat (speaking of which, has anyone noticed that the woman in those ads has gained a lot of weight?).

I didn't get struck by lightning when I entered God's house, which some would interpret as God's compassion and willingness to love me, but really is a better indication that there is no such thing. The whole place really creeped me out. I found myself just looking at people's bald spots and tried to get a gauge on the percentage of men who suffer from hair loss.

So, no church wedding for me.

The reception was fine. The food was excellent, and I ate like a total pig. The bar was open and so I had a lot of drinks. I was quite surprised that my date and I were the most attractive people there. I thought that weddings were famous for having lots of interesting and hot people. There were about 8 single girls (and 1400 pounds of flesh) elbowing each other for the bouquet, and 5 of us single men standing around in feigned boredom for the garter. The only thing that I was trying to catch was the drunken fools that were tackling each other as if this garter was a lottery ticket caught in the wind. The bride's brother got it, probably because he was the loudest and most obnoxious one. I thought it was a little gross that he wanted his sister's garter belt so badly.

I've been to a few weddings and the music has been quite poor. I can understand the difficulty of finding music that appeals to a wide variety of people with different tastes from different generations, but I don't know if there's much of a trick to it. My wedding reception will have all our favourite songs on an iPod. Period. That's it. Simple. It's our wedding; our music. Throw in a few songs for the ladies and a few songs for the lovers, with some Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Tom Waits, and Yo La Tengo and I'll be happy. We might have to play some Poison and Two Live Crew for good measure, but that can be easily arranged. If they can get people jumping around at Neutral, we can get people on the dancefloor at a wedding with an open bar.

I did have fun at the wedding, partly because we realized quite quickly that we had to make our own fun. I won the centrepiece, because I was the only one brave enough to try for it. We pilfered a ton of pastries from surrounding tables, and then hid them under our chairs. We were totally bummed out that they were uncovered and removed when at the end of the night we tried to recover our bounty. I ate a lot of other people's portions of wedding cake, and said about 27 words to the boring elitists at our table. Basically, we just made smart-assed comments about the bridesmaids, and tried to spot toupees. It doesn't take much to amuse me.

Still, I felt quite bad when it was all said and done. I don't think many people had a good time. Both the bride and groom has a look of regret on their faces. "Crushed like a bug in the ground." I can't take pleasure in that. I can't laugh at their misfortune, because that shit just ain't funny. No one should ever get to a point of their life when they look back and say, "What have I done?" I mainly do that when I'm waking up alone on a Sunday morning and feeling lonely without someone sexy and wonderful beside me. Certainly, a wedding day shouldn't be an occasion for disappointment.

I will get married one day. My beautiful, sexy, adoring, clever, generous girlfriend will take an afternoon away from speaking at international conferences or planting vegetables with underprivileged youth and we'll go down to City Hall with some close friends. We'll rent out a restaurant and bar and just tie one on with everyone we care about. There will be family, sure, but the event will be about having fun with friends and sharing our happiness together. There will be no pretense, no bull. Everyone will be at the same point of drunkenness, and everyone will get home safely in the arms of their lovers. Oh, yeah, and we'll pay for all of it. None of this dowry crap. We'll even cover cabrides!

So, ask me out for drinks and endear yourself to me and you'll get invited to my wedding. You've got lots of time, by the looks of it, but you never know. If there's any lesson that can be learned from weddings, is that you should never let them be about anything else other than your happiness together. No one can have fun when they've spent $4,000 on a dress, and no one can have fun if they are doing something for some storybook version of how things are supposed to be.