Thursday, July 7, 2011

Wedding Thrashers


It's that time of year again. It's that time of year where you are forced to waste perfectly good lake weekends spending your Saturday nights in churches and hotel ballrooms. Saturday mornings scrambling to get something off the Bed, Bath and Beyond registry, spending the entire month of July listening to whatever Black Eyed Peas Song is at the top of the charts, yes my friends it's wedding season.

I have come to the conclusion that some people are just idiots. In a world with a 50% divorce rate, growing life expectancy and pop culture society saying that marriage will not make you happy; why a bunch of early twentysomethings rush in to this is beyond me. Is it so they can stay in the same hotel rooms on family trips and have sex without bothering Grandma and her old school morals? Is it so they can move in together and split bills? Fuck that, get roommates. Whatever, who am I to pass judgment, I'm just a single lonely guy maybe I just "don't get it."

Back in college we had a wonderful alternative to the wedding. A wedding party. In this we would establish a bride, groom, best man, maid of honor, the entire wedding party, rent limos, have a fake ceremony and rage all night. It was likely that there were many scandalous hook ups that night. In fact the groom may have taken home the bride. But at the end of the day, when the dust cleared that "groom" could drop her back off at her sorority and then go eat Chipotle with his buddies, while some pledges cleaned up the venue that we destroyed. NOT THE CASE with a real wedding. That shit is real, like really real and it doesn't end until you give away half your wealth to her and half of your remaining welath to an attorney...or you have her killed. I'm over exaggerating a bit obviously. I mean I believe in love. I watch those sappy rom coms and I believe in happy endings, but seriously why the rush?

I get it, girls fantasize about their wedding day and how beautiful their dress is going to be, how exotic their honeymoon trip will turn out. What they don't seem to consider is bringing their husband a roll of toilet paper or dealing with his sleep apnea machine at night. Why don't girls fantasize about how sexy they can dress up and go down to river north bars and have professional hockey players buy them bottles of Grey Goose and give them opportunities for a celebrity hook up. Doesn't that sound better than calling it quits? Imagine the following conversation:

Single Girl (age 24): How was your weekend?
Married Girl (Age 24): Not too bad. Dale and I went to our neighbor's house for euchre club, I hosted a bridal shower Saturday, and Sunday night we did our couples' counseling. How about you?
Single Girl: Oh, I went to a concert at Ravinia Friday night and blacked out and Saturday...well have you seen those pictures of Patrick Kane naked in some chicks bed?
Married Girl: Um, yes.
Single Girl: It's mine.


I mean who just won that exchange? Not hating on the institution of marriage or anything, just saying it can wait a couple years homie.

Enough hate, let's talk about the wedding itself. Weddings are actually quite badass, because if you grew up in the same circles as me you are getting surf n turf and open bar. Usually if I see cash bar, I respond with a 5 dollar Starbucks gift card and an excuse that I've already made plans to go sailing in Nantucket. In any event, there are 2 certainties to inviting me to a wedding. 1.) I will give you a George Foreman Grill for a gift. 2.) I will black out and be inappropriate.

Before you get on your high horse about, blah blah that's why we can't take you to nice places, people invite the wild cards for a reason. If there weren't a few people that got out of control and danced too suggestively with Aunt Marge, the wedding would probably be boring and unmemorable, just saying. Why the Foreman you ask? That's just a retarded question. It's only the most versatile cooking tool in the history of food. You go march out to the grill to cook a teriyaki glazed chicken breast in mid January with 2 feet of snow. Ya, no fucking thanks.

Onto more important matters, to bring a date or not to. Well if you are single, I would advise to just hope that you aren't given the option so you can really roll the dice. If you do get a +1 you better fucking find somebody or it will be like that time you and your boys tried to roll stag to the Christmas formal and quickly realized that there weren't any unaccompanied chicks there. Bring a girlfriend, or someone that got snubbed of a date that will feel at ease in the company of the wedding, or a hooker would suffice as well.

On the topic of the actual wedding, I would like to throw out that if you are planning on getting married prematurely, have some fun with it. A destination wedding would be bad ass, and before you fret about flights and whether people can make it, go ahead and assume that every destination wedding is on the parents' dime until age 26. My parents wouldn't not send me to Hawaii to see a dear friend get married, so please feel free to take advantage of their love. To a lesser extent the same might go for Bachelor parties, so feel free to Vegas it up, even if you and all your friends are still making 30k with entry level sales jobs.

So that's it, thinking about getting married right now? Don't. You can wait until you're 30 and still have a solid 50 years together. Thinking about doing a choreographed dance entry? Don't. It's lame. Thinking about quickly having kids together and blogging about your baby's progress? Don't unless you want to live in constant fear of me sneaking up behind you and kicking the back of your knee.

But, if you are going to do any of this shit, at least make sure your wedding is a bad ass. Because remember, it's not only about you, it's about celebrating the end of your friendships with all the people you invited, so you might as well go out on a good note. Tell the hotel that things will be rowdy, scout out some good bars nearby, and remember if you are a wedding invitee and you take down a bridesmaid, when the dust clears, it's like hitting bail baby, you're free to go.

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