Weddings - Part II

I was supposed to be a bridesmaid in a wedding once where the event could have been compared with Lady Diana and Prince Charles’ wedding. The wedding cake alone took over four hours to choose, I mean come on it’s a cake for God’s sake, no-one ever really remembers the cake. They are too drunk by then. Most people don’t even want to eat it by the time it comes out. Usually the dear old aunts wander around with trays and pieces of cake at the end of the evening and ask,


“Piece of cake dear?”

“Gee no, thanks ever so much but I’ll take some bubbles.”

“Perhaps a piece to put under your pillow tonight?”

Jesus, what is going on there? Don’t they understand that it’s messy to put your head on top of a piece of cake for eight hours?

“Does my bum look big in this?” I ask them. That usually sends them on their way while I sit smugly cakeless and down my bubbles.

I can honestly say that in all the weddings I have been to and in, I cannot describe one wedding cake. All I know is that they’re white with plastic people on top. What more is there to know?

This same wedding was so full on that we each had to buy a pair of white court shoes (Mmm… beautiful) and have them covered with peach satin and lace. Very handy for the future I must say. I imagine I’d wear them again to plenty of places. Besides peach is a fruit not a colour. It’s only marginally better than mauve.

After spending 400 meticulous hours over each minute wedding item including wedding pew decorations and five million individual flowers and being set for launch, she cancelled. Yes, thanks very fucking much for that. How unbelievably rude!

A close friend of mine, Cianna cancelled her wedding too but it was a good idea I think. I remember going to her impromptu engagement party still shocked at the quick engagement and things just didn’t feel right. I asked her that night if she loved the guy, I barely knew him at all. She avoided the question a couple of times by telling me they were great mates and I only really got an answer to that question a few months down the track when she pulled out of it all. You can see how that can happen sometimes. She had been in big relationships before that, which had been intense, full of love and passion that had eventually worn off for whatever reason, followed by a ‘met the guy while on holiday lover’ and then a relationship that had turned bad and almost possibly emotionally abusive, as is my understanding. She was (what she thought) doing the sensible thing, assuming that those sorts of intense relationships of the past were possibly historical and never to be repeated. This particular bloke she had agreed to marry had a good resume, good family background and who on paper would impress many, including her family. Except unlike the other men in her life there was no spark and if there was no spark at that point then she was going to be in real trouble. She is not one to ‘learn to love.’ It just wasn’t her.

I think it’s intriguing talking to friends who have made the choice to say ‘yes’ when he’s asked. They have this invisible checklist and they tell you why he is the ‘one’ to marry. They say, I thought he’d be a good husband, father, and breadwinner; I don’t want anyone else to have him; he’s sensitive; he’s religious; he’s nice to me; he’s good looking; he’s here. And I sit there listening and nodding and saying,” What else?” and they look at me blankly like what else could there be and I say, “And I can’t live without him; I’m so in love with him, blah blah, blah”

“Oh that,” they say. Then I know I’ve had enough of that conversation. Maybe I’m far too idealistic. Maybe that’s why I was single for so long.

Some of these seem to be the marriages I have watched slowly falling apart not that many years into the partnership. True they often mend themselves again over time for whatever reason; kids, finance, owning a house, habit, fear of being out there again, whatever, but I often wonder if these people had actually married really for the right reasons, whether the break down would have happened at all. Sometimes its youth, which has led to infidelity, sometimes it seems that they just didn’t love and respect each other enough in the first place. Once there has been cheating involved though and the other person finds out, it seems a colossal effort to pull the whole thing back together again. The trust has gone you see and once that has gone you might as well write off the next 5 years. It’s just so much better not to do it. Or at least not get caught at it!

I have had friends who have married after short and passionate relationships and noticed that these people appear to hold it together longer. It hasn’t just become routine and the marriage part isn’t because it was the thing to do at the time or because it was simply the next logical step in the relationship and expected. It was because they couldn’t live without each other and they adored and respected each other. These are the people that others say, “haven’t they got a good marriage,” about and mean it.

Til Death us do part! Why celebrities renew vows. I think it's because they can't believe they got this far.