The tryanny of other peoples weddings

Just got an E-Mail from my friend Liz the phone psychic, she wants me to escort her to yet another one of her sisters weddings. This will be the fourth in as many years. She’s near despair–just when she thought she was out of single sisters and friends for whom she’d have to attend the showers and weddings of, now there are second marriages to contend with.

Sidebar:
I have a nutty aunt millie. Everybody on my mom’s side of the family is a bit on the nutty side, but aunt millie is a full-out filbert. Aunt millie once spent an entire afternoon explaining her theory about slot machines to me. She’s one of those old ladies who makes a yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas in a charter bus full of septuagenarians and plunks some of her pension into the nickel slots over a long weekend and has kitchen cabinets chock-full of those plastic cups casinos stack by the slot machines for people to hold their change in. So anyway, I’m sipping kool aid from one of those big casino tumblers (I’m nine at the time) and aunt Millies telling me how to read the slots. She’s like one of those mystics who toss bones and rocks in a circle and try to see meaning in the patterns they fall in:

“Well, you have to keep to the machines nearest the isles, the casinos know which machines pay and which don’t, and they keep the loose ones nearest the isles so when they do pay off it’s in a real visible area, so folks get the impression more people are winning than really are. Oh, and keep an eye out for these patterns, lemons and bars, bells and stars, stars and sevens, but no cherries! Cherries are the kiss of death, honey…”

I bring this up because, along with a fuzzy toilet seat cover that was so fuzzy it prevented the seat from staying up, Aunt Millie’s bathroom had this doll that covered a spare roll of toilet paper, it had a long flowing, layered gossamer dress in the ugliest aqua-greenie-blue color…

Exactly the same dress poor Liz had to wear when she was a bridesmaid last year!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. I’m engaged! Yep, Liz and I are getting hitched.

Seems like I’m always the last to find out about these things. Apparently Liz told her mother the wonderful news a good six months before she got around to telling me (probably slipped her mind, what with having to reserve the church and the seating plans to make and all).

I’m not kidding. The very last line of the E-mail said “P.S. Forgot to mention, were engaged now.”

If it turns out she isn’t a joking expect it to be a loooong engagement…

“tyranny of weddings”? That’s it, you’re off my guest list.

Careful. Miss Manners says engaged couples have to be invited to weddings together. So if you really are engaged you’ll have no excuse at all.

What is it about putting on a diamond ring that makes your best friends taste go all to hell? People with normal sensibilities pick the most Godawful bridesmaids dresses!!! Seafoam green,peach,parasols,blecch!!


Always remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.

I’m no expert - but it sounds like she really would like to marry you.

Worst dress I ever heard of: Turquoise with a lime green chiffon overlay. My friend was going to have to wear this and bowed out instead.

I’ve never been invited to a wedding, so I’ve never had to wear a horrendous dress. Yet. The really good friends from college are slowly pairing off, so I might get stuck in seafoam yet!


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It’s possible I suppose, but I’m not sure I’d survive the courtship. We’ve been friends for about eight years now and so far shes:

  • Thrown a bottle at me

  • Left my arm numb and bruised playing “Two for flinching” because she knows I won’t slug a girl.

  • Arranged six of her girl friends to all be standing outside my bathroom door after I had been showering.

  • Gotten the local newspaper to publish my obituaray.

  • Sent flowers to my (male) guidence councelor in my name along with a note saying God-only-knows-what.

And those are just the things I remember off the top of my head.

You must marry this woman. Hell, if I were single and oriented differently, I’d marry this woman.


Gamera is really neat, he is full of turtle meat, we’ve been eating Gam-er-aaaa…

You definitely should marry this girl–the prank with the obituary is priceless. At least you’re a guy and don’t have to attend the horrifying event known as “the shower,” which typically includes the following cast of characters:

  1. The Bride: thirty year old woman browbeaten by her mother or future mother-in-law into shameless plea for household basics that she’s apparently too cheap or stupid to buy for herself

  2. The Sister-in-law: typically pregnant and bossy; angry she’s not thin and not the center of attention; usually wears godawful maternity/sailer outfit;

  3. The Married Friend: had baby within last year; thinks it’s the cutest, most adorable, smartest child ever, thus ignoring the fact that, actually, its face is squashed and it perpetually looks like its taking a massive crap in its diaper; carries photo album of 20 baby pictures, which are indistinguishable from each other; unable to converse about anything other than child;

  4. The Mother/Mother-in-law’s Friend: bleached blonde hair, flowing white outfit, perfect manicure, gold lame slippers encrusted with fake jewels; gives racy teddy as shower gift.

OK, that’s enough venting for now. Can you tell what I did this past weekend???

No bridal party is complete without the woman who plucks out her eyebrows, and then draws false ones with that high curve. Oh, yes, she will also put gobs of lipstick on, keeping her mouth wide open as she does so, then blot it on a napkin.

She will have hair that’s been dyed black so many times it will look like shoe polish.

The party is complete when these losers start yapping about the 40 or 50 hours they were in labour.


lindsay

Yeesh! You two make it sound pretty grim.

I wonder how many “Revenge Weddings” there have been, where the opportunity to inflict the same ordeal on married sisters and friends kinda’ cinched the deal.