Ah, the sounds of summer. The splashes of kids in swimming pools. The crack of a baseball off a bat. Lawnmowers in the early evenings. The dull thud of wedding invitations landing in the mailbox.
This summer my sister-in-law is getting married. After that we are done. Husband and I have made a pledge. No more weddings for us. We will send lovely gifts and best wishes. But we won’t be going to your wedding. Sorry.
It’s not that we don’t enjoy the commercial sentimentality, the family in-fighting, the huge inconvenience, exorbitant out-of-town expenses, drunk Uncle Charlie, dancing to "Celebrate Good Times C’mon", expensive cash bars, watered down free bars, rubber chicken, and Baked Alaska. I mean who doesn’t?
We don’t mind having to rearrange the schedules of all our key staff at the restaurant to ensure continued operation while we take time off during the busiest days of our week. (Weekends are when we in the restaurant business make our money - how come nobody gets married on Mondays anyway?)
It’s just that I have this strange theory about weddings. Once we attend a wedding, within one year, we never see the couple again. Really. It’s true.
Sometimes it’s because they have kids. Once that happens they’re gone. Oh, you know, we all make an effort at first. But eventually we go our separate ways. They don’t understand why we haven’t chosen to experience the miracle of life. And we aren’t all that interested in hearing about their kids’ bowel movements. They start to get judgmental about us spending our money on travel and food, instead of making the ultimate sacrifice. And we can’t figure out what these parent creatures have done with our formerly fun devil-may-care chums.
Oftentimes, we lose touch because we were never really good friends to begin with. It seems to me that people often become more friendly and social in the year leading up to their nuptials. I have been to many weddings of people I only met in the year prior. Are they subconsciously expanding their circle of friends to boost their gift haul? Sort of a repulsive notion, I agree. But I do know that within six months of their wedding they stop calling.
It works both ways too. I rarely talk to anybody who was at my first wedding. Admittedly my ex got custody of some of these friends, but even those guests who were my friends to begin with seem to have vanished. Charlotte? Christine?
So if I am to have any friends left, I must stop going to weddings.
We recently attended the wedding of two good friends (new friends, but since they specifically requested no gifts, I don’t think they fall into that previously mentioned group). I told them we didn’t want to go because we both really like them. They didn’t believe my theory. So now I am just waiting to see what happens. We might still be friends. It’s hard to tell though. You see, we haven’t actually gone out with them since the wedding.
Reading: Elements of Style by Wendy Wasserstein
