Doll - Save the Date

I Bought You a KitchenAid

A llow me to begin by saying, I am very, very happy for you. Allow me to begin by saying, Once upon a time there was a girl who met a boy, and they fell in love and wanted to be together forever, and she wore white, and he wore a tux, and they walked down an aisle strewn with rose petals into their bright, shining future. That girl was not me. Congratulations! Or is it best wishes? Here is your KitchenAid. Le Creuset Dutch oven. Kate Spade stemware. Crate&Barrel flatware. Highball glasses. Crystal paperweight shaped like a heart. Hundred-dollar gift card to that furniture store you like. Informal pasta, whatever that is; you had it on your registry, so it must be good! Four tea towels, a stainless-steel garlic press, a Love coaster set, a pack of organic coffee filters, and a butter knife, because I didnt have a moment until just before this grand event to go online and buy you anything and that was all that was left. Your family sure is proactive. How can you stand them? Oh, here is your bowl. Yes, I bought you a bowl. I realize it wasnt on your registry, but I got it for free when I bought the same bowl for myself. I guess that doesnt mean I bought it so much as acquired it, but, wait, Im talking too much, arent I? You look amazing! Cheers to the gorgeous couple! Yes, please, a refill would be excellent.

But lets backtrack.

Weddings.

Sometimes they come once a year and seem like a good excuse to go on a vacation to a predetermined destination, a place with built-in friends and a legitimate purpose and even a prepared schedule of activities, a wedding gift basket waiting for you in the hotel room, packed with granola bars and locally derived tchotchkes and miniature bottles of sunscreen. Sometimes they come like migrating birds or wolves, in flocks or packs. When you glance behind your shoulder, theres another one gaining ground, and you cant seem to stay ahead of them no matter what you do. Theyve got their eye on you. Sometimes it seems every weekend is a wedding. On the odd occasion, one weekend brings two, forcing the invited into a perilous decision-making scenario that has grave, long-lasting consequences: Which couple will be anointed friends forever, and which will descend slowly but surely into the status of mere acquaintances, their big day having been forsaken? Intrepid guests who dont want to choose will go to both, driving for miles, taking red-eye flights, swapping out dresses and shoes and jewelry and handbags and itineraries as if actors in a play or models in a fashion show, which is a not entirely inaccurate depiction of a particular State of Wedding Guesthood. This is just whats happening to us right now, the wedding guest of a certain age will think, gasping for breath but shrugging it off, going along. Weve reached that stage in life. Its only temporary. This, too, will pass! At some point, surely, the perpetual wedding dance will cease, and we will be able to sit back in the comfort of our wedding guest retirement and possibly even save a little money by not going to so many weddings. But while were going to weddings, we should try to have fun at weddings. They only happen how many times a year? Well, we really have no other choice.

And oh, there is fun! There is plenty of fun. Theres fun even before you get to the chapel or the reception hall or the rented suite of the fancy hotel or the country club or your best friends parents backyard. The weeks and months preceding each wedding will inevitably involve secondary partiesbachelorettes and bachelors and showers and engagement celebrations and whatever else is deemed necessary to get the crowd pumped for the headliner. Do not be fooled by these seemingly casual add-ons: They are the octopus tentacles of the ultimate party, stretching farther in all directions, part and parcel of an event that in most cases, when all is said and done, guests will have shelled out rather a lot of time and energy and cash to attend. We do this willingly, even joyfully, because not only are we often actually quite happy to be there but also this is an algorithm weve been brought up to believe in. Tit for wedding tat; eventually it will be our turn, too, and well get back everything weve given and possibly more. You go to my wedding; Ill go to yours. Ill buy you a heart-shaped waffle maker (in stainless steel, per your request); youll eventually return the favor with an enameled stockpot in Marseille blue. Theres little time to consider whether this formula will resolve as promised, whos getting a better deal, or if we even want our turn in the wedding lineup of the agesand if we do, how and when and whybecause were already on to the after-party! The fun never stops.

To a single woman, a lifetime of weddings can begin to seem like a nuptial-themed Groundhog Day; we guests behaving slightly differently each time within the same basic framework as we strive for the ending that will put a stop to the unremitting weddings, or at least to the way weve been methodically acting our way through them. The story of a serial wedding goer is rarely the impeccable scenario depicted in the brochures and magazines or promised by the wedding planner, nor does it align with the aspirations of a pushy mother of the bride, an entitled groom, or one of those so-called bridezillas (such an awful word). The dream-wedding-in-the-bubble, the perfect day meticulously constructed to suit the whims or long-held fantasies of the marrying couple or their kin, is all too easily punctured by wedding guests who dont share quite those same goals and aspirations. Or who get drunk and then decide they dont. A perfect day becomes an entirely unrealistic concept when you start to let in the riffraff, not least because perfect is a matter of opinion. There is no perfect day. There is only the day upon which two people are married, for better or worse.