Weddings - Final

A bride’s behaviour on the day of the weddings I have been in has been very varied. They seriously change. They become neurotic; hung up on shades of nail polish, “what do you think of my Santorini sunset?” precious, fixated on panty hose and look a little disturbed throughout the morning of the wedding day.


Usually I am bowled over at the performance of the bride on the day. They suddenly turn into people I don’t know very well. They are like Charlotte from Sex and the City. Sometimes I think I just don’t get it. I know it is all very important and that all the carefully planned pieces need to come together on the day like a carefully crafted jigsaw, but really who gives a fuck if there is one flower out of a whole bouquet that is orange instead of yellow. How is that going to matter? Who will even notice? Will this impair the future happiness of the marriage? Something like this actually happened prior to a wedding ceremony that again I was bridesmaid in. I had no idea what was going on (not unusual), just that there were tears.

Let me set the scene.

Bride naturally, four bridesmaids, faces made up, dressed, hair bouffon pomped, glasses of French champagne in our hands (thank bloody God), wedding ready to go. Flowers arrived; we all did the obligatory, “wow aren’t they gorgeous,” and each took our posies. Right then there was a shriek of horror I had never heard before, even spilled my Champers. The frocked up bride in waiting was quivering over a box of flowers with mascara tears commencing their flow.

“Make-up,” someone called, could have been me I don’t know. It’s something I’d do. Something was apparently wrong with the bride’s floral arrangement.

“Jesus, is that all,” I mumbled reaching for the champagne bottle and re-filling my glass very carefully. It would have been suicide at that point to spill any on my dress.

“Top up?” I asked the others.

The thing is, and this is where I’m confused, the other three bridesmaids were all peering over the flower box too, shaking their heads and patting the weepy bride on her back in commiseration. They got it. They understood. Then I remembered two of these were married women too and another planning to take that amble down the aisle themselves very shortly. Imagine if something really serious happened? I still do not know to this day, what the hell was amiss with those flowers. I felt at that point it was best to fag up and go outside with the dog and my glass of bubbles.

After months of wedding talk, most of which I have tuned off from because hours upon hours of wedding talk drives me a bit fucking nuts and really I am more interested in the honeymoon destination than anything else, means that on the day I am just as surprised as anyone else at how everything has turned out.

“We’re going in a what?” I asked once loudly, dressed in my apricot bridesmaid dress.

“A horse and buggy to the church,” the bride said exasperatedly to me.

“Well why didn’t you say so?”

“I did. A million times.”

“Oh. Whoops a fucking daisy.”

While looking like cloned princesses on the day (the bridesmaids that is, the bride is clearly the Queen), it’s a bloody effort getting to that place. There’s the four am rise no matter what time you got to bed the night before or what time the wedding is that day, and lots of sitting around with weird shit in your hair. For some reason being engaged makes someone an expert on other people’s best hairstyles and optimum fingernail length. The bride tells you months before the wedding day how long your hair length will be and exactly what will happen to it.

“I want all you girls to have your hair up so you’ll all need to grow it out.”

“Oh right, well I was just thinking about going short actually.”

“Naa uttt. Not til after my wedding, Noooooo way.”

“Right of course, what was I thinking? Your day and all.” And it always seems to be the girls wedding. Never ‘our wedding.’ For months it has been, ‘at my wedding this, at my wedding that’.

“What does that other person think?” I ask.

“Who?”

“You know that guy who will be standing next to you at the end of the aisle? The one you’ll be spending the rest of your natural life with? What does he think?”

“I don’t know. I never asked or “He’s glad I’m doing it all.” Yeah, sure he is. But there’s that dawning on them right then and there look like, Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s actually the purpose of all this fan fare. I’m going to be with another person forever. Wow -

Oh my God.

Truth be known he probably really doesn’t care. He just wants to get through the whole thing so he can drink beers at the end of it with his mates and cuss about his life with his ball and chain (that he secretly loves).

A close friend of mine’s constant worry on her wedding day was that people would be looking at her. While many brides seem to indulge in that idea, this friend of mine was very anxious about it. In the end I don’t know why she worried, she was gorgeous and it was all very natural but I kinda see what she means. It’s a big focus.

The bride apparently should look her best ever. People are looking at everything, taking detailed notes of it all like journalists at some trial, especially the dress. The bride should look happy and radiant. Well at least happy, radiant can wait til pregnancy. It’s too much pressure otherwise and too much rouge.

Another wedding I was in was very cool because the bride was cool and unruffled about anything. She was relaxed and laid back. She told me up front I would not have to wear an upside down bowl of spaghetti on my head (traditional wedding hair) which I was incredibly pleased about because I don’t see the point in sitting for hours with heated rollers in my hair when I have naturally curly hair. I don’t feel the need to conform just because every other bridesmaid on the day has them. The point is I don’t need them. At the end of the day, to have hair that gives the impression of having an upside down bowl of spaghetti on your head is just not natural, at all.

She amused me greatly because she was so chilled out and frequently mumbled during photographs and between stubbies of VB, “Oh God, where’s my hat gone now?”

She meant her veil. I just loved that day.

Probably the most trying wedding, even though I think the world of the bride, was when we, as bridesmaids were told every few minutes to ‘fluff’ the brides dress. I didn’t even know what that meant and just followed what the maid of honour (her best friend) did a couple of times, making sure I kept the cig that was hanging from my mouth well away from the flammable tulle. It was bad enough when the horse stepped on her dress before the reception. I got sick of that fluffing early in and simply made myself scarce, along with my best friend who was also in the wedding, as soon as fluffing time neared.

“Quick,” I’d say, “It’s nearly time to fluff, let’s nick off.”

“Absolutely,” she’d say, “I’ll get the supplies,” and grabbed the alcohol and cigarettes. Besides if you need fluffing at anytime and your best friend is there, it’s her job and after the ceremony it is clearly the husbands. It is a tough job being bridesmaid. It is air traffic controller pressure.

Most people though look very happy on the day of their wedding and for the days, months and even years that follow and this is lovely. It gives me hope. I’m a great believer in love and finding ‘the one’ and spending your life with someone that ‘rocks your world.’ It’s what life is about. When people are in love they care about everyone else. They are nice to be with and want others to be in love too, which is where the classic blind date set ups come in. Ugh!

Happily marrieds set up house, plan children, do domestic stuff together hand in hand like gardening, wandering around home shows at pavilions and eat picnics in parks. They don’t even care if a bird shits on their head while eating a picnic in a park because they are so in love.

And then years down the track or sometimes it is just a few years, you sit in the same happy couple’s house while they are angrily heaving furniture at each other and you protectively hold your rum and coke to your chest and glance to the mantle piece where the mandatory wedding portrait sits and you say to yourself (rather than to them because you don’t want to break up their fight, it’s the most entertaining thing a single girl has seen in a while) “Ahh, aint marriage grand.”

Anyway, after careful consideration of all of this I knew I just couldn’t say yes about being bridesmaid again to my new friend. I would rather eat razor blades on Jatz. The one only incentive I came up with for being bridesmaid at all was perhaps I might meet somebody nice, being single and all back then. I even considered getting out my wrinkled partner checklist to remind me that I was single and I looking. Life is tricky shit.

Oops a fucking daisy!

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.

Weddings - Part I

It came straight at my face. A flash of colour, an ocular effect. My instinct was to duck and do it fast. Not to miss the article heading my way but rather to avoid at all costs, the screaming mass of female victims surrounding me – hungry for it like wild animals after their measly quarry. Knowing it could be the end of singleness for one of them. That they could finally, be taken from the shelf. It was the wedding bouquet.


As luck would have it, it landed in my arms. How typical. I didn’t want it or ask for it. I was just standing there with the rest of the unmarried’s because I had been (shoved) ushered out there by the bride who was my close friend. Everyone knew it was rigged, that she deliberately threw it my way. I felt guilt and pity as I saw the others minus the bride spray, amble away their eyes downcast. They were forlorn looking creatures who seemed to believe that the catching of a bride’s bunch really did mean they would be next.

‘Come the fuck on’, I wanted to say to them while simultaneously stuffing the caught bouquet down their desperate bulging cleavages, but I knew when it came to weddings and the mammoth connotations behind all the something olds, something blues, these bitches really believed this shit.

I have to say the weddings I have been to and been in have added up to both the best days of my life and the worst. A friend I kinda, barely really knew asked me recently to be in her wedding.

Uh huh, bridesmaid. Yay.

She came over to see me all excited and so forth and laid it on me as if it was the biggest privilege I would ever get in my lifetime. I was still thinking she’d won lotto and was in a state of unpreparedness for her proposal. She was very confused when I merely stared back at her looking incredibly disinterested. She was a relatively new friend at the time and didn’t know that I had been to plenty of weddings and worse still had been in plenty of them, always the bridesmaid never the... and why don’t new friends understand the Memorandum Of Understanding on wedding party etiquette? You have to be mates and I mean good mates for at least 10 years or at least family before asking someone to be in your wedding. It is just good wedding business to me.

Weddings are interesting events. Pretty, emotional and often one big old reunion. Women get to goo and gah over the bride’s attire, hair and makeup and say stuff like, “You look so damn beautiful.” Men get to wear a classy suit and tie. It really is their day. In addition, the already ‘marrieds’ get to say, “Remember our wedding dear,” - as if they’d ever forget.

You get to chuck stuff at the happy couple when they come out of the church and you keep Photo Shop in business. However, as a friend of mine put it once, really they are just very expensive dinners with plenty of alcohol.

It is quite interesting watching couples do the wedding planning stuff after the excitement of the engagement has settled. Some go at it as if they’re planning the Olympic Games for the whole world to watch and others, like my best friend, sat back casually even just two months before the wedding day, spoke about it now and then while leafing slowly and very infrequently through reception venue brochures and hadn’t planned a piece of clothing. Although I have to say that, that made even me nervous.

I’ve watched friends carry wedding books under their arms for months before ‘the big day’, continually jotting bits and pieces down as an idea comes to mind or after watching for the tenth time, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and noting, no meringues. I had a look at a Brides magazine in a newsagent the other day, $22.95. What is that about? Does that come with a free wedding cake?

Getting Hitched? Check this out!

OMG it’s Txt Talk LMAO

SMS, or short message standard. It’s not the brand new communication method but it is here to stay. My phone beeps the standard I just got a text message beep and my 2 year old says, “Mummy, te-ext”. Now that’s sad isn’t it?


It’s handy, it’s annoying, it saves time, is quicker than e-mail and it saves talking to people on the phone if you are not a phone person, like me. I h8 the phone but I <3 to txt, it’s g8. I was and on occasion still am, (much to my complete horror), one of those people who calls the world while drunk. I get bored chatting on the phone so I avoid it and instead text, Facebook or e-mail or do it while I am intoxicated. It is even easier to text than dial and chat while tipsy and I have been guilty of waking up with hangover and grabbing the mobile which is for some reason not 5 cms away from me and check the sent messages...very gingerly and in colossal fear.


Is texting wrecking our language? Well there’s a question. My opinion is that as long as it isn’t acceptable to use in school papers or in any other vehicle other than text via mobile or chat, it shouldn’t matter. Slang in one form or another has been used since the dawn of time. People are always going to take short cuts or embellish language in one mode or another. I guess the difficulty is that parents are unable to decipher the codes their kids are using when they are checking to make sure they are safe online or on mobile from the possible evils of society. There are forums however for parents to keep up with language used.


Texting while driving is so common. I see it every day. Looking to the left or right of me while on the road, I often see someone clutching their phone one handed pressing buttons and glancing every now and then at the road. I have even been pushed off the road by a texter while he swerved across my white line holding up a hand in apology only to present the culprit in question. I have performed the same myself at traffic lights, never while driving. The reason I haven’t is probably only because I saw a show on Oprah (embarrassing to admit and while clearly not myself, lol) once where a 19 year old girl was now a quadriplegic simply because she was texting and driving and had an accident. She had never admitted it until the Oprah show.


Recently there has been research released after a ten year study declaring that speaking on mobile phones without a hearing device can lead to brain tumours, particularly with younger people. Kids are now being encouraged to text for that very reason.


Texting etiquette. I can’t stand the person who doesn’t text back. It’s just plain rude. Even an ‘ok’ will do, even if it isn’t immediate. I mean how freaking hard is that? The other thing I can’t stand is being telephoned after I have texted. I text someone, I want a text reply. Not a bloody call...that’s why I texted. If I wanted to chat I would have phoned mo fo.


So with that said, get on the bndwgn, say wtf, I’ll b in it 2.

BRB with my next post!

Text is best, this is why!

sms and abbreviations