Weddings

Weddings are supposed to be a joy-filled celebration of the joining of two lives together. Instead, they've turned into an excuse for mother-in-laws to show the bride exactly who is the woman in the groom's life, family to air their dirty laundry and use attendance or non-attendance for power grabs, and friends to be hurt over not being chosen to play a special role in the celebration. Of course the drama goes on and on...

I have nothing against marriage. I am very much in favour of two people committing their lives together. But as I've sat in wedding after wedding over the past decade, I wonder why we pour so much money into one day and watch as the divorce rate creeps steadily upward. As I sat and had a heart-to-heart with my friend who is getting married on Friday (Disclaimer: None of the things I listed in the first paragraph apply to her wedding; they are just general trends that I've seen over the years.), she said "if you ever get married, just elope." This was nothing earth-shattering to me. In fact, I decided that would be the plan long ago: find a beach somewhere and make the vows there.

There is so much expense and stress that goes into a wedding. Even with the amount of money that I've put into this wedding, I could have probably just bought a ticket for a week at a resort in Mexico (though I wouldn't have my cute bridesmaid dress, which is actually cute and can and will be worn again). And if that's the case, I can't imagine how much infinitely more it is true for the bride and groom, who have very graciously been hosting us since we got here. On top of having to pay for wedding dresses, tux rentals, hall rentals, catering, flowers, hair appointments, decorations and on and on, they've been feeding us, driving two hours to pick us up from the airport and giving up their own personal space to have us around.

Anyway, a bridesmaid's job is to be supportive of the bride. This bride, being a teacher, is already very organized and has little left for us to do this week. But even she wonders why it is necessary to tie ribbons around all the little tiny bottles of bubbles...