Sitting at the kitchen table with my flip-flopped feet stuck to the floor (due to the previous evening’s margarita party), I joined my roommate for our usual Sunday morning hangover breakfast. As the conversation swayed between a discussion of men’s general deficiencies and the deliciousness of the bacon, we suddenly realized that the following weekend would not be filled with our familiar cycle of binge drinking and shame. Why? Because my roommate had to attend the most insidious of late summer rituals: a wedding.
I don’t really hate weddings as a rule. Sure, I may be a cynical, spinster-in-training who often scoffs at the idea of romantic love, but I’m always up for a good party. The problem is that weddings frequently become nightmares. The potential for fun exists, but it depends on so many variables and things often go terribly wrong. First and foremost, the only way to have fun at a wedding is to have the least amount of responsibility possible. That means that you are not in the wedding party.
My friends are all getting to be of a “certain age” and seem to be making a panicky rush for the altar. Last summer I was invited to three weddings, one of which required me to be a bridesmaid. This was to be my third stint as a bridesmaid and I have to admit that the idea of wearing a matching dress with two other women did not thrill me. But I agreed to be an adoring bridesmaid yet again, because the fact is, one can simply not refuse the bridesmaid invitation. Those are the rules.
My role as bridesmaid ended up being incredibly stressful. For starters, the bridesmaid’s dress, which was sent to me in the mail, was lost by Canada Post. This led to a frantic last-minute scrambling to find a sea-foam green, strapless dress smack in the middle of wedding season. This is my idea of hell. After a thorough investigation into the most obscure bridal shops of southern Ontario, I ended up buying a showroom dress that happened to be the exact dress I needed for the wedding. The only problem was that it had the words “SAMPLE DRESS” stamped in big black letters on the back. My solution? To paint over the letters with fabric paint, in an attempt to camouflage this potentially embarrassing detail. Luckily it worked and the wedding guests didn’t notice anything unusual as I walked down the aisle on the big day. But after the amount of stress and anxiety that resulted from the lost dress, I developed a real distaste for the bridesmaid ritual. I dared to ask the question (although not to the bride): “Who the hell really cares about all of this?”
