The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Paint the Town Wed"
Last weekend I attended a wedding. And it turns out that weddings are often enjoyable for three reasons: 1) Free Food! The most important part of the wedding, contrary to what the bride or groom might tell you, is the food. There are usually appetizers (or "Horse-dee-overs") on a table and/or being carried around on trays. If the appetizers contain cheese, it is your responsibility to eat as much as you can before it melts. If the appetizers do not contain cheese, you need to choose your friends more carefully. My friends understand the importance of cheese. The wedding I attended last weekend had not only a cheese table, but also trays of different hot cheese appetizers. Another friend had his wedding with literally dozens of gourmet cheeses from a cheese shop. A wedding without cheese is planned by a person who doesn't know jack, and is one I camembert to attend. 2) Entertainment! Know how fun it is to hear an embarrassing story about your friend? And how much more fun it is if other people are there to nod and laugh and provide corroborating details? Well, at a wedding, you have all of the couple's closest friends and family, who can not only provide a wealth of embarrassing stories, but amplify them. Having the bride's sister mention the "Underpants Incident" wouldn't have been nearly as funny if it wasn't in front of her entire extended family. And when the groom's father talked about how the groom did strange things as a young boy, having all of his friends there to join in on the laughter makes it much more entertaining. 3) Reunion! Weddings are a wonderful occasion for you to see people who are not getting married. The bride and groom, while ostensibly the focus of the event, are entirely too busy to talk with you. However, weddings are a great chance to catch up with all your other friends who are friends with the bride and groom. I have a group of friends from college who I only see at weddings of mutual friends. We've often considered forcing people to marry each other just so we can have more reunions. The bride and groom from last weekend were clever. They held their wedding at a small retreat (or possibly, given the circumstance, a large attack), and left lots of time after the ceremony to hang out with their friends. They even donned T-shirts that said "Ask Somebody Else", assuring that details would be managed by other people and that they would be free to actually see their friends. It may be cheating, but it was a great idea. When asked what needed to be improved about the wedding, one guest said, "There should be fewer mosquitos and more nudity." This is probably good general advice for life. And really, if those are the only two things that could have improved the wedding, it was probably a success. Still, weddings aren't just a bowl of cherries. In fact, they usually don't have a bowl of cherries there at all. And if they did, it would probably be in a silver bowl laced with gold that cost $500. Because one of the bad things about weddings is that they are often very expensive. According to a recent survey, the average cost of a wedding is $30,000. That's nearly one dollar for every time your mother-in-law decides she wants to change something about the arrangements. With prices like that, it's no wonder that some couples decide to elope. And it's not just human couples either; I once even saw an ant elope. But some frugal wedding planners are fighting back. Last week, a dollar store in Texas offered a group wedding for only 99 cents to any couples wishing to be married there. Saving the $30,000 usually spent on the ceremony and using it towards down payment on a house seems like a good idea. Some people would bemoan the lack of traditional ceremony, but when it comes down to it, there are only three essential ingredients for a wedding: The bride, the groom, and the cheese. ___________________________________ All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first. |