Why I Hate Weddings

On New Year’s Eve, my cousin was married, and I attended the wedding.  She had giant balls of moss on the pews (?), but other than that, it wasn’t a bad wedding.  But, as I ate my overly lemoned peppered chicken and I observed everyone at the reception, I realized, that I may be the only girl on this earth who really doesn’t like weddings.  In fact, I kind of hate them.  And you know what that means: To the blog!

My first encounter I can remember with a wedding, and the root of all my feelings towards them, was when I was about 8.  I was a stubborn child, who, when forced to something she really didn’t want to do, would sulk her opinion and make life miserable.  It wasn’t so much that I thought I would get my way; it was more so that if you were making me miserable, then I was going to make you miserable in the process. 

This wedding was of some hygienist my mom worked with, and my mom was forcing me to go.   She had her reasons.  I had to go because Abigail was going and she might get lonely or something.  (Give me a break.)  She wanted everyone to see me, because I was her daughter or something and I was worth presenting (?).  And I knew Crystal, so I was obligated to go.  An eight year old obligated to go to a wedding.  Please.

I begged her to let me stay with grandma and play with my toys, but she insisted that I go.

The wedding was up in Bryson City, so I had to wake up early.  I was hostile and distant that morning and everything from eating my food to having my hair fixed was done with a scowl.  My mother said I better cheer up before the wedding, and I just shrugged.  I hated her for this.  Why did I have to go?

My Aunt Dale and Abigail were going, and as they all spent the entire car trip goggling over weddings and I spent the entire car trip over to Bryson City saying how much I DID NOT want to go.

Eventually, my mom said, “Rachel, if you complain anymore, I am going to set you out and you can walk home.”  I begged for this.  I asked her please, please, let me go home.  Please.  I whined some more, I think I reached a point where I was crying for freedom.  Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and told Aunt Dale to pull over.  “Get out.” 

And I did.  I was surprised at this action, but as I watched that van drive off, and as I heard Abigail squalling for my soul, I began walking in the direction home.  I was around Mirror Lake, so, although it would be a journey, I knew the way.

But, I also knew very well that my mom was bluffing and that van would show up in just a moment.  Sure enough, after walking a few feet, I saw the van ambling up and stopping in the middle of the road.  My mom growled “get in.”  Being the intuitive child I was, I told her, “ugh, I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”

Of course, I hated the wedding just as much as I anticipated, and although I appeared cheery, I wanted nothing more than to die.  I think ever since that wedding I’ve harbored a secret hatred for them because they represent the enslavement that my mother had trapped me in.

So from then on, every time a wedding crops up and I become rather grumpy.  People always plan them at the most inconvenient times for you, and you have to cancel everything from the New Year’s Eve parties you were attending to the PLAY you were going to be in.  To this day, I whine about going and, now, at a ripe 20, my mother says, “well I’m certainly not forcing you to go.”  Well, thank you for that now.

Why I Hate Weddings

1.     The Cheese Factor

Weddings are infamous for being long and very boring.  But that’s only a scratch on the surface.  They are also very cheesy.  Don’t get me wrong; I like romance just as much as the next girl, and I get angry if there isn’t any in my books and movies, but I also like it to be countered with awesome things; like wizards and death and stuff that’s awesome.

Weddings have none of this.  They are cheesy romances with people cheesily saying “I love you,” and countering with “No, I love you.”  Call me grumpy, but I have never been able to stand seeing two people making silly fools out of themselves over each other, and ‘the wedding,’ is often the pinnacle of this.

But sometimes, the people actually genuinely love each other and they have a reverence for themselves and for the wedding, and this are the weddings I actually enjoy.  When I feel convinced that the people actually love and care for one another, then, I can feel genuinely happy for them, and it causes me to unwittingly participate in the next reason.

2.     Endless Parade of Tears

At weddings, everyone is constantly crying; for something that is supposed to be so joyful it is an awful endless parade of sad.  The bridesmaids usually weep because they are alone and they want this happiness.  The bride cries because she is “just so happy,” and her vows become impossible, and then the groom’s voice even starts to crack.  The mothers were in  tears hours ago and even daddy can’t get his speeches out.  So, much crying.

Then, you have the people who have come to see the wedding.  Some sit there checking their watches and playing ‘Tetris’ on their phones.  You also have the teary lovestruck girlfriends gazing into their boyfriend’s face daydreaming of their wedding together, while the boyfriends think, “Oh.  No.”  All the other relatives are going through a Kleenex a minute, remembering how dear little April used to play house, and now she’s married, and you just know at any second Great Aunt Eunice is going to come in to hug you clutching her 82 Kleenexes, her crusty eyeliner running down her face with exclamations on how beautiful the wedding was.

But once in a while she is right, and those weddings are the worse.  And at the end, all you want to do is make a fortress out of Kleenexes, but you definitely can’t cry at a wedding of all things, because your heart is black and you don’t feel things and you don’t really like for people to see you cry.

Now, I’m someone who cries a lot, but I really don’t like for people to see me cry over serious things like love, death or hurt.  I know Chris is reading this and thinking, “Gah, Rachel, you are lying, because I see you cry all the time.”  And I do – on you.  But you’re my best friend and kind of the only person I feel comfortable getting authentically weepy around, and ew, yucky emotions are yucky and may we move on?

See even blogging about weddings make me all icky.  Ew.

3.      “No, I love you more…”

Marriage is a big, big step.  And during weddings you are miserably forced to watch the bride and groom, and there are two types of couples:

a., A bride and a groom who really love each other, and you can see how much they love each other and as they get all choky in their vows, you feel awkward for looking at them and seeing their feelings, although that’s kind of the concept of a wedding.

-or-

b., A bride and a groom who don’t really love each other at all and either think they do or are just doing this because they’ve dated so long that it’s sort of an obligation at this point.  These two are either silly giddy in a way that makes you vomit, or they are stoic and accept one another with a nod.

The first couple produces a wedding that makes me want to cry (ugh, tears).  The second couple produces a wedding that makes me want to gag.  Not everyone is as intuitive as I am, so regardless of if it marriage was a good idea or not, they’ll be making a big teary hoopla out of it regardless.  Usually, I just wasted a good 30 minutes watching idiots making goo-goo eyes at one another, and I’m supposed to be happy for these yahoos when I really wished I could have stayed with grandma.  Why do I have to go to boring weddings?

4.      Receptions ≠ Good Food

So after you have the wedding you have to go mingle with people at the reception.  Regardless of having to explain to 254 different family members what I’m doing at college, I could endure receptions if they had good food.  After all, I am a girl that enjoys a good [free] meal more than anyone and dozens of people can agree to this.

Unfortunately, receptions rarely ever equal a good meal.  To every wedding I’ve been to, the reception instantly equals a buffet.  And how I despise buffets, for the food is always cold, the lines always insufferable, and you see your awkward ‘cousin’ Lenny reaching out his cubby, sweaty hands and taking the tongs to grab his piece of chicken. He puts the tongs down, and as you reach out for them, you feel the greasy residues of his hand, and you just pray to God that you can get to a bottle of Purell soon.

There are usually two types of receptions (in my experience.)  There are the ones where the bride and groom are ‘proud to be southern,’ and as they cut the ‘George Bulldogs’ grooms cake, you can see a rebel flag fluttering behind them, red and menacing.  These receptions usually have ‘home-style’ food with endless bowls of macaroni and cheese and rolls from Ingles.  And dear me, how I hate macaroni and cheese.*

Then there are the weddings of college graduates, where everyone's a doctor who sips wine.  These are ‘Fancy Food Weddings.’  It’s supposed to be good food, but inevitably, it’s a buffet, so that gives it a -8 score right off.  The caterers usually try to make their food *unique*, so they slather your chicken in the weirdest combinations of spices and you’re forced rake it off.  Then you have the other caterers who like to make things bland, so then you sit there eating the most boring meal of your life.  Either way, by the time you are halfway into your cold chicken breast, you really don’t want it.  But if you’re me, you keep eating it, because, well, you’re me.  And then your mom gives you hers because she really doesn’t like it, and you eat it too.

Sometimes, Fancy Food Weddings have a salad bar, and they put all these ‘fun and unique’ toppings for your salad, but by the time you get to looking the toppings either don’t go together or you’re not sure why you’d want it to begin with.  So your salad ends up being: lettuce, tomatoes and cranberries.  Then there are the dressings.  If someone would just put me out a thing with Paul Newman’s smiling face and the title ‘Balsamic Vinaigrette,’  I would die happy.  BUT.  No, the caterers are unique, they’re fun, no, we make our own dressing!  So, what happens (as with the past wedding,) is that I stand in the salad bar line, resorting to sniffing the dressing to guarantee that it is a vinaigrette.  As I look up I realize that my relatives are giggling at me, so I drench my salad and go on my way. But, my poor family has come to expect this for one of them sniffed his chicken in agreement and said, “look, I’m like you Rachel, I’m sniffing it to see if I want it.”  Glad someone agrees with me.

Of course my family thinks that when I do weird things they’re enduring; then again, I think they kind of look at me like I’m the lovable, but retarded pet.

So many dressings.

5.     Dances Make People Awful Gutsy

There are two types of receptions too.  Ones with DJ’s who play bad 90s country songs, but you kind of enjoy them.  And live music.  :|  These people are usually ‘folk singers’ of some sort who enjoy playing very loudly, and as my mom will not shut up and get us in the car so we can go I sit there and listen to them strum out folk songs as I push my half-eaten, over drenched, funky vinaigrette covered salad.

But if it’s a DJ, I’ll either sit in my seat and dance with my arms, or if it’s a families wedding, then I’ll get on the dance floor and tear it up.  My family members who I see at Thanksgiving and Christmas think I’m sort of enduring and they film me without my knowledge and we have to play it for everyone at the next family gathering.  “Look at Rachel dance.  Gosh, she can go.”  Then I find out that the wedding photographer took it upon himself to capture my moves, and there are blurry photos of me dancing all of Facebook.

*sighhhh*

Then there is this.  Unbeknownst to you, ‘cousin’ Lenny has been staring at you in your bridesmaid dress ever since you walked down the aisle, and you can bet that when the DJ starts playing Open Arms he’ll be there with his wide open.

Twice I have been asked to dance at a wedding.  First was a boy who was rather good looking.  I would have said ‘yes,’ but boys were kind of scary and although I was a freshmen in college the thought of dancing with a boy and having his arms on my waist was very frightening.  After he had asked, my mom chastised me for being Captain Chastity, because it took a lot of guts to ask a girl dance, and at something like this, I should at least dance with him.

So then, later that night, my cousin’s husband’s brother asked me.  For as long as I can remember he has had a crush on me, and with my mother’s words in mind, I agreed.  It was to some sappy Diamond Rio song and I made him dance with me as if we were waltzing (hand on my waist; hand on shoulder; hands together).  His brothers laughed at him for keeping so much distance between us, and I told them that was because he was a gentleman unlike them, and this is how gentlemen and ladies dance.

This was the same wedding as the Georgia Bulldogs cake so I felt confident in my comments.

All the same, dancing with high school freshmen doesn’t have many appeals, and although he wasn’t bad as say an ‘cousin’ Lenny, wedding dances are there to make life everything awkward and almost instantly lead into my 6^th reason as to why I hate weddings.

6.     This isn’t Noah’s ark and there is no need for pairs

Ugh.  When people go to weddings, everyone is in a love sick mood.  According to them, everyone should be in love; and if not, we should give the façade of love.  My first experience with this in regards to weddings was around the time Abigail and I were about 10 or so.  We had been in one other wedding (Our Aunt Carolyn’s) and we were flower girls who threw peddles and basically stole the show by being cute.  But the next wedding, we were a little older so we had graduated to ‘Junior Bridesmaids.’  It was our cousin Jacqueline’s wedding, and all the cousins were to be in it.  (On my mom’s side there are 5 granddaughters).  Abigail and I were the youngest, and at this point in our lives boys were really scary.  Look back at our repressed childhood, and now relate it to our understanding of boys.  Yeah.

So, of course they played the ‘pair off’ game with us, and Abigail and I were stuck walking back at the end with two 25-23 year olds.  To a ten year old this is effing creepy.  We cried through the entire rehearsal because we were going to have to link arms with these guys.  Eventually they settled on us holding hands, which on reflection, is kind of worse; Abigail’s fellow had canary yellow hair.  And our hotel didn’t even have a pool, and then mom made the power go out by plugging in two hairdryers, and it was a bad trip.

The moral of this is though (although it relates in no way) is when at weddings, people are obsessed with couples.  They just finished a wedding and they want another one.  I cannot tell you how many people ask me at weddings, “So, when are you gonna get a boyfriend?”  To which I reply that I am 20 years old and the matter of boyfriends and otherwise is not very important at the moment to me, where as an education is valuable and is something I’ll have for the rest of my life and I do not need a man to define me and I’ll get a boyfriend when I’m good and ready and when one asks me out, if I find him desirable.

That usually shuts them up.

And lastly,

7.      The honeymoon

*SIGHHHH*

Although I do not witness the honeymoon, I hear so much about it I as good as well be there.  First you have the wedding that you didn’t want to go to, then you have the reception with the awkward dancing and bad food, and then, then you have to hear everyone go on about the honeymoon.  And it’s not valuable comments and questions like, “Yes, Bermuda is really pretty,” or “You’ll really enjoy the shanty towns in Rio.”

No, because the honeymoon is the time of SEX :} :} and everyone knows it.  So, you have every old man at the wedding making comments such as, “well that weddin’ was nice, but the honeymoon, now he’ll enjoy that *wink wink*.”  And then everyone slaps each other and says things such as, “wonder what they’ll be doin’ tonight *wink wink*.”

And just when you think, “Stop.  This has become awkward enough,” no, let’s get more pervy!  While they’re away on people say things like, “I bet their discovering that those canyons aren’t where the excitement’s at.” *wink wink*

And THEN just to seal the deal on let’s make marriage uncomfortable, when the newlyweds return from seeing exciting mountains or waterfalls or whatever, everyone vultures around with that horrible knowing look in their eye, and with a head nod, they ask “so, how’d you enjoy that honeymoon?”  *wink wink*

CAN WE NOT?  So not only are the newlyweds like, “*nervous chuckle* yeah, the, um, birds in the park, they were really great.”  And then everyone is like, “yeah, birds are great, but how was the SEX :} :}.”

After witnessing this several times, can we please not?  It makes me uncomfortable, it makes them uncomfortable, it makes everyone uncomfortable.  And that’s supposed to private, YES.

Although that it is a part of marriage it isn’t MARRIAGE it’s self, and when Captain Pervy Pants decides it is and makes life uncomfortable for everyone but the other Captain Pervy Pants in the world, I have to say will you please stop?

So it is firmly my plan that on the first night of my honeymoon I am going to bring a boardgame, that way when Captain Pervy Pants shows up and asks me, “so, how’d you like your first night as a married couple? *wink wink*” I can say, “You know what, it was great.  We played Battleship all night.  No, no, not like that, like the boardgame, with the pegs and the ships and…oh, nevermind.”

So Why I Hate Weddings

I am sorry ya’ll, but I hate them.  I’m sure they are magical and wonderful and sealing and whatever else, but they are a boring fest of sappy cheese to me.  I think weddings are absolutely wonderful things in life and I find them to be very, very sacred.  And when it is made sacred between two people who love each other very much, then I find them enjoyable and I cry.  Some.

And Now, A Briefly Boring Story about the Time I Cooked Macaroni and Cheese:

*Over the summer Chris told me I couldn’t take care of myself.  I thought, huh, I’ll show him.  So I found some macaroni and cheese recipe off the internet, and I went to Ingles and bought a bag of ‘Wacky Mac’ and my ingredients.  I was going to show him, I could use a stove and I could take care of myself.  So I got in my kitchen and I called my mom to ask how to do things like turning the stove on and stuff.  I got my pot out and somehow ended up burning the majority to the pot.  But I put what was salvageable in a bowl and I took some to Abigail and she really liked it.  I hate macaroni and cheese but I ate the fruit of my efforts out of pride, and I choked it down.  It wasn’t bad, but I just hate that stuff.

A few days later I took some to Chris (the instigator in my plight of cooking and independence) who picked up the container and looked at it with his nostrils flared.

Chris:  Why does it look so weird?  It’s all sorts of ugly colours.

Me:  It’s that way because I used ‘Wacky Mac.’  It’s coloured noodles.

Chris:  Isn’t that for pasta salads and stuff?

Me: Noodles are noodles!  It’ll use what I want.

Chris:  *puts container down* Okay.

Me:  You have to try it!  I made it just to show you how I could take care of myself.

Chris:  *sigh/eyeroll* Go ahead and heat it up and I’ll try a noodle or two.

Me:  *heats it up; hands it to him*

Chris:  *eats noodle, smacks lips, nostril still flared* Hm, its good.  If you like bland things.

I finished the rest out of pride, but, yet again, I really hated every bite.  Chris later told me just because I could cook noodles it didn’t mean I could cook, and definitely didn’t mean that I could take care of myself.  I told him to shut it

-Me.