Rule # 1 Marriage is not a race.
I want to talk about something here…but before you freak out…allow me a disclaimer. This isn’t an endorsement on the subject…. and I don’t want to frighten you. Now that I’ve established that, here we go. Weddings. Marriage. Holy Matrimony.
This nonsense has got to stop.
I mean seriously. We’re almost 25 years old, and people are getting married like it’s some sort of race. Except at the end of this race, do you know what you win? You win a wife. The thing old men joke about and sit at the golf course country club trying to avoid, drinking their Chivas on the rocks. Yeah, that is what you win. Sounds nice, right? If you’re lucky, it’s a two-fer and your inlaws live close by. Free babysitter - jackpot! Yeah, right.
Here is the mindset of a 25 year old who thinks getting married is a dynamite idea: They’re saying, “well this was fun…but it’s about time for my shenanigans to be over with. I’ve been a little rambunctious over the years, and it’s high time this nonsense ends…immediately. I’m buying a tuxedo, parting my hair on the side, and cashing this motherfucker in. Hopefully in a year or so she’ll be pregnant and we can stop traveling and having fun. I’m exhausted. When she’s pregnant she’ll get moody and get wacky cravings. We can make fun, exotic meals together. Like Kiwi and Chili. Delicious. Maybe make a cook book, profit off this experience, I don’t know. It’s gonna be exciting.”
You know what weddings are? They’re church on Saturday. Old people wander in confused: they’re wearing nice clothes instead of mowing the lawn. It’s 2 in the afternoon and they can’t take a nap because they’re sitting a damn wooden pew. Grandma’s pinching the cheeks of ushers, grandpa is modeling the square-bottom tie, it’s fun for the whole family.
I’m going to take this a step futher. Follow me as I delve into the audience. Travel with me on this fantastical journey. Lets examine the four groups that attend weddings:
The first is family members. They are easy to spot because they are the ones with the “I flew from Colorado for this?” look on their face. Congratulations newlyweds…thanks to you Uncle Hank and Aunt Shirley are skipping their Hoover Dam vacation extravaganza so they could come to sunny South Carolina and see you two cut cake and dance to Neil Diamond. If you’re lucky, then your family is like mine, and there’s tension. Your parents will get a hold of the guest list and invite all relatives who are still alive. On all sides of the family. You know the ones, you’ve never met them, but t! hey’re important because their surnames date back to the Mayflower, and they take up spots previously given to “friends of the bride and groom”; a group we’ll get too in a minute. If your family is anything like mine, neither side likes the other. The groom’s side is Irish and does the back stroke on the dance floor smelling like half a bottle of Cutty Sark, while the other side, the Italian side, samples all the fine “reds” the bartender has, then goes home early, making rude Braveheart comparisons to the groom’s family lineage.
The second group – children. They are the ones who are up way past their bed time b/c their father is pounding Chardonnay and their Mother is doing the electric slide. They have NOTHING to occupy their time so you know what they do? They find mischief. At a wedding of all places – they find mischief. Those little gift bags made of lace on the center of the table, filled with Hershey kisses and M&M’s with your names on them? Congratulations. They eat the kisses off of every table in the place and throw the M&M’s into their apple-juice filled Champagne glasses. They make a mess. And again, nothing is more frightening for these children then having drunk Uncle Earl steal their hula hoop so he can hang out with their father on the dance floor, who may or may not be eyeing bridesmaids at this point. Mom may be in the coatroom with your old fraternity president – no one knows. If a kid is at the right age, around 9 years old, the behavior his parents exhibit at a wedding reception may lead directly to heroin use in his or her teens, I’m not sure.
The third group is really special. This is the “People you don’t really care about, i.e “coworkers” group. You’ve known these people a few months, so it’s only right they occupy valuable guest list space. They stand around, bringing no entertainment value whatsoever to the event…they are too shy to dance, too sober to have any fun, and they stick around for twenty minutes, see the only people they need to so their presence can be accounted for, and then they bolt to Applebee’s to meet their comfort circle. They’ll tell everyone at the office your wedding was “so nice” but they now secretly hate you forever because they’ve only known you two months and had to drop thirty-five dollars on a soup ladle from Williams & Sonoma.
The fourth group is the meat of the wedding, and you know who I’m talking about. The “Friends of the Bride and Groom.” Known throughout history as the life of the party, the ones who get the party started, and the ones who close the bar down early. You reserve a healthy portion of your guest list to these people for one reason. They will get the reception hopping and every other guest will forgive you for them missing the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on TNT. I’ve been too a lot of weddings. The one constant…the friends of the bride and groom make magic happen. Think of the logisti! cs. The party is free! They didn’t pay to get in, didn’t pay to drink, and didn’t pay to eat. It was all free. It’s like they won a free Spring Break booze cruise for the bare-ass baloney toss at Club Knock Knock. When people are in college, they plan spring breaks around “all inclusive packages” and this is what you’ve just given them. And lets get one thing clear right off the bat. A reception is not an “after party” – it’s the reason we came. You’re both sweet kids, but the booze is free and I’m on the clock. The lampshade in the corner looks like a hat, the 12 year old at the table! next to mine is challenging me to a “how many chicken fingers can you fit in your pants” contest, and your DJ has informed me he has Journey’s greatest hits. You finish off the cake…I’ll finish up this bottle of Merlot. Of the last four weddings I’ve been too…only one top 5 wedding moment has occurred at the actual ceremony. There was a female soloist who was smoking hot, singing for the happy couple. She was 17, a little bit money, and every guy in the place was thinking the same thing: “jackpot.”
The other moments rounding out the top five:
Grandma dances to “Baby Got Back” in what would end up being a moment the family of the bride clearly did not enjoy as much as the rest of us.
A friend of a bride had the longest toes my group of friends had ever seen. I know this because we conferred and talked about it. A few of us took mental measurements and compared this girl’s toes to reception items such as jumbo shrimp, kabob skewers, and the stems of wine glasses. The thing was, this girl was so good looking, that no one could figure out if it was worth trying to hit on her, even though her toes may steal things from your apartment later that night. We later found out she was married, but from what I heard, it didn’t work out because her toes were dipping into the husband's wallet at night and buying things from Sharper Image on his dime.
Marc Lynn skipped his own birthday party his girlfriend threw him in the city b/c we were drinking free Pinot Grigio at a reception in the country. (This reception would later get filmed…and should have been broadcast at Sundance…we put on that good of a show. Mcgee actually went up to a ten year old and his mother, while wearing a miniature cowboy hat, and telling this kid’s mother that her son would turn out “just fine because I looked just like him when I was a kid.” Needless to say, that family left like the building was on fire.
Trey drinking so much free wine that he would “redeposit it” in the Meritage parking lot two hours later. He would end up spending the rest of the night in Mcgee’s truck. The wine was so good; he felt he had to share it with the townsfolk.
Do you get my point now? Slow down with the marriage, folks.
Oh, what will my wedding be like you ask? Simple. It’ll be on a beach. It’ll be casual. People can wander over, see what’s going on. If they like what the see, they can stay awhile. People can toss a seashell or two at the preacher or splash around in the ocean behind us. No big deal to me. I just gotta check with her…
Complimants of, T.P. McWhirter
This nonsense has got to stop.
I mean seriously. We’re almost 25 years old, and people are getting married like it’s some sort of race. Except at the end of this race, do you know what you win? You win a wife. The thing old men joke about and sit at the golf course country club trying to avoid, drinking their Chivas on the rocks. Yeah, that is what you win. Sounds nice, right? If you’re lucky, it’s a two-fer and your inlaws live close by. Free babysitter - jackpot! Yeah, right.
Here is the mindset of a 25 year old who thinks getting married is a dynamite idea: They’re saying, “well this was fun…but it’s about time for my shenanigans to be over with. I’ve been a little rambunctious over the years, and it’s high time this nonsense ends…immediately. I’m buying a tuxedo, parting my hair on the side, and cashing this motherfucker in. Hopefully in a year or so she’ll be pregnant and we can stop traveling and having fun. I’m exhausted. When she’s pregnant she’ll get moody and get wacky cravings. We can make fun, exotic meals together. Like Kiwi and Chili. Delicious. Maybe make a cook book, profit off this experience, I don’t know. It’s gonna be exciting.”
You know what weddings are? They’re church on Saturday. Old people wander in confused: they’re wearing nice clothes instead of mowing the lawn. It’s 2 in the afternoon and they can’t take a nap because they’re sitting a damn wooden pew. Grandma’s pinching the cheeks of ushers, grandpa is modeling the square-bottom tie, it’s fun for the whole family.
I’m going to take this a step futher. Follow me as I delve into the audience. Travel with me on this fantastical journey. Lets examine the four groups that attend weddings:
The first is family members. They are easy to spot because they are the ones with the “I flew from Colorado for this?” look on their face. Congratulations newlyweds…thanks to you Uncle Hank and Aunt Shirley are skipping their Hoover Dam vacation extravaganza so they could come to sunny South Carolina and see you two cut cake and dance to Neil Diamond. If you’re lucky, then your family is like mine, and there’s tension. Your parents will get a hold of the guest list and invite all relatives who are still alive. On all sides of the family. You know the ones, you’ve never met them, but t! hey’re important because their surnames date back to the Mayflower, and they take up spots previously given to “friends of the bride and groom”; a group we’ll get too in a minute. If your family is anything like mine, neither side likes the other. The groom’s side is Irish and does the back stroke on the dance floor smelling like half a bottle of Cutty Sark, while the other side, the Italian side, samples all the fine “reds” the bartender has, then goes home early, making rude Braveheart comparisons to the groom’s family lineage.
The second group – children. They are the ones who are up way past their bed time b/c their father is pounding Chardonnay and their Mother is doing the electric slide. They have NOTHING to occupy their time so you know what they do? They find mischief. At a wedding of all places – they find mischief. Those little gift bags made of lace on the center of the table, filled with Hershey kisses and M&M’s with your names on them? Congratulations. They eat the kisses off of every table in the place and throw the M&M’s into their apple-juice filled Champagne glasses. They make a mess. And again, nothing is more frightening for these children then having drunk Uncle Earl steal their hula hoop so he can hang out with their father on the dance floor, who may or may not be eyeing bridesmaids at this point. Mom may be in the coatroom with your old fraternity president – no one knows. If a kid is at the right age, around 9 years old, the behavior his parents exhibit at a wedding reception may lead directly to heroin use in his or her teens, I’m not sure.
The third group is really special. This is the “People you don’t really care about, i.e “coworkers” group. You’ve known these people a few months, so it’s only right they occupy valuable guest list space. They stand around, bringing no entertainment value whatsoever to the event…they are too shy to dance, too sober to have any fun, and they stick around for twenty minutes, see the only people they need to so their presence can be accounted for, and then they bolt to Applebee’s to meet their comfort circle. They’ll tell everyone at the office your wedding was “so nice” but they now secretly hate you forever because they’ve only known you two months and had to drop thirty-five dollars on a soup ladle from Williams & Sonoma.
The fourth group is the meat of the wedding, and you know who I’m talking about. The “Friends of the Bride and Groom.” Known throughout history as the life of the party, the ones who get the party started, and the ones who close the bar down early. You reserve a healthy portion of your guest list to these people for one reason. They will get the reception hopping and every other guest will forgive you for them missing the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on TNT. I’ve been too a lot of weddings. The one constant…the friends of the bride and groom make magic happen. Think of the logisti! cs. The party is free! They didn’t pay to get in, didn’t pay to drink, and didn’t pay to eat. It was all free. It’s like they won a free Spring Break booze cruise for the bare-ass baloney toss at Club Knock Knock. When people are in college, they plan spring breaks around “all inclusive packages” and this is what you’ve just given them. And lets get one thing clear right off the bat. A reception is not an “after party” – it’s the reason we came. You’re both sweet kids, but the booze is free and I’m on the clock. The lampshade in the corner looks like a hat, the 12 year old at the table! next to mine is challenging me to a “how many chicken fingers can you fit in your pants” contest, and your DJ has informed me he has Journey’s greatest hits. You finish off the cake…I’ll finish up this bottle of Merlot. Of the last four weddings I’ve been too…only one top 5 wedding moment has occurred at the actual ceremony. There was a female soloist who was smoking hot, singing for the happy couple. She was 17, a little bit money, and every guy in the place was thinking the same thing: “jackpot.”
The other moments rounding out the top five:
Grandma dances to “Baby Got Back” in what would end up being a moment the family of the bride clearly did not enjoy as much as the rest of us.
A friend of a bride had the longest toes my group of friends had ever seen. I know this because we conferred and talked about it. A few of us took mental measurements and compared this girl’s toes to reception items such as jumbo shrimp, kabob skewers, and the stems of wine glasses. The thing was, this girl was so good looking, that no one could figure out if it was worth trying to hit on her, even though her toes may steal things from your apartment later that night. We later found out she was married, but from what I heard, it didn’t work out because her toes were dipping into the husband's wallet at night and buying things from Sharper Image on his dime.
Marc Lynn skipped his own birthday party his girlfriend threw him in the city b/c we were drinking free Pinot Grigio at a reception in the country. (This reception would later get filmed…and should have been broadcast at Sundance…we put on that good of a show. Mcgee actually went up to a ten year old and his mother, while wearing a miniature cowboy hat, and telling this kid’s mother that her son would turn out “just fine because I looked just like him when I was a kid.” Needless to say, that family left like the building was on fire.
Trey drinking so much free wine that he would “redeposit it” in the Meritage parking lot two hours later. He would end up spending the rest of the night in Mcgee’s truck. The wine was so good; he felt he had to share it with the townsfolk.
Do you get my point now? Slow down with the marriage, folks.
Oh, what will my wedding be like you ask? Simple. It’ll be on a beach. It’ll be casual. People can wander over, see what’s going on. If they like what the see, they can stay awhile. People can toss a seashell or two at the preacher or splash around in the ocean behind us. No big deal to me. I just gotta check with her…
Complimants of, T.P. McWhirter
posted by Pun at 10/31/2005 12:33:00 PM
1 Comments:
Okay, I have go to say that you perfectly recapped our reception. Not sure if the grandma reference was to my wedding or not, because I don't remember Nana dancing to that song, but if she did...wow!
Glad we could entertain you for a few hours...
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