Last night I had a dream that I was planning my wedding. Let’s be absolutely clear: there was no groom in the picture. In my dream, I met a wedding planner at a beautiful estate and walked through lush gardens and licked my fingers through a cake tasting, just for the hell of it. The dream got awkward when I tried to make up excuses for not having my fiance present, because, of course, there was none. I think she cut the meeting short when she realized that I wasn’t actually going to use her services. I just wanted to play out the wedding planning fantasy for a while. And then I woke up.
I’ve been obsessed with wedding bullcrap for a long time. My college friend and I have spent ten years of friendship going to Barnes & Noble, ordering a venti frappuccino (double blended natch) and sifting through STACKS of bridal magazines. If we were smart (and lived in the same town), we could start our own wedding planning business based solely off these afternoons of rigorous study of bridesmaid couture, invitation fonts, and favor boxes. Let’s make a pact: If we’re still single and 40, let’s become wedding planners together!
Raise your hands if you’re a woman and you’re obsessed with weddings! Not to be confused with “marriage,” weddings are the best thing women can hope for as a girl. Don’t believe me? Think of FIVE DISNEY PRINCESS MOVIES THAT DON’T END IN A WEDDING. Name me a Shakespearean COMEDY whose “happy ending” ISN’T a wedding. Fuckin’ everybody loves weddings. Why? Well, forcing people to dance to your music, for one. I mean, picture a baby girl being born:
“Welcome to the world, little vagina-haver! Your worth will always be tied to your looks, which is something you have almost no control over, you’ll make 77 cents to every dollar your brother earns doing the same work, and there’s a 1 in 6 chance you’ll be sexually assaulted in your lifetime… but for one day, you’ll get to wear an expensive dress, eat cake, and boss people around and NOBODY CAN SAY NO TO YOU. That day is your wedding day, and you’ll always remember it as the ‘best day of your life,’ because it was the day you forced your entire extended family to shuffle awkwardly around a dance floor to “Lovesong” by The Cure. You will remember this day as the happiest day of your life, and then you get old and wrinkly and everyone stops paying attention to you and you die.”
So your wedding sounds like the most perfect day of your life, right?
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Think about it: You’ll be the center of attention that day. An easy fuckin mark, too – the only one wearing white! All your friends in the same room with your family – and not just YOUR family, but your partner’s family as well? That’s like the biggest, most nerve-wracking Thanksgiving dinner ever humanly possible! Hey, does PDA freak you out? How about cute “traditions” like everyone you’ve ever met clinking their knife on their wine glass to encourage you to make out with your new spouse ALL NIGHT LONG?!?
That pretty much sounds like the WORST day of MY life, tbh. Do you want to know what the BEST day of my life would look like?
Daybreak: I roll over and check my phone. No new emails, 52 new Instagram followers? Nice. I pat my duvet and call out, “Come, Millicent, my morning crossword!” Millicent, a wrinkly pug, leaps onto the fluffy white comforter with the Times already open to the puzzle page. “Bet you’ll finish this in no time, Miss!” she barks. “All the clues are Andrew Lloyd Webber lyrics!”
“Thank you, Millicent,” I draw the newspaper toward me. “And my newsprint gloves?”
“At the ready, Miss!” Millicent pulls a pair of gloves up from the floor. “I know how you hate touching newspaper ink with your bare hands! Coffee is on the bedside table with Miss’s purple gel pen. It’s purple but it doesn’t smell like grape, just like Miss requested.”
“Thank you, Millicent. You have done most excellently.” Millicent rolls over and her tongue lolls out in anticipation of belly rubs of gratitude. “Order me some breakfast, I think I’ll be done here in fifteen minutes.”
When my pad thai arrives, Millicent carries it to my bedside and lays on top of me for pats while we watch Battlestar Galactica and –
WHAT? You’re saying a wedding is better than a pug butler who respects my aversion to newspaper ink? You think floral arrangements tops a day in bed with crosswords and reruns? HAH! In your dreams.
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