This afternoon, the Folk Choir sang for the first of three weddings on our schedule between now and the end of the school year. Normally, I spend the entirety of these basilica weddings staring over the choir loft banister and gushing with my friends about how cute everything is. While I certainly did that a few times today, I also did a lot of peculiar-face making and "Wait, what?" exclaiming. It got me thinking quite a lot about weddings in general, and I figured it was only appropriate to write a brief diatribe on all the horrendous things you will never, under any circumstances, find at my wedding.
The first and most important thing that will be absolutely absent from my nuptials is small children. For those of you unaware of my nuanced relationship with the littl'uns, I like cute kids as much as the next person. More, even! My tolerance for small children who are loud, annoying, tantrum-prone, or otherwise distracting, on the other hand, is shockingly low. I fully intend to put a note on my wedding invitations instructing my guests to leave the kids at home. With the exception of flower girls and ring bearers, there's no explicit need for kids at a wedding. They won't remember it, they probably won't enjoy it (given that it forces them to sit relatively still and be quiet for too long for most adults to handle), and they'll make sure their parents don't enjoy it, either. You can't appreciate a wedding if you spend the whole thing wrangling a herd of ankle-biters and escorting crying babies to a foyer where yes, everyone can still hear the screaming. This "no-kids" rule gets tricky when it comes to close family members and, as mentioned, those necessary and adorable miniature members of the wedding party. As usual, though, I have a perfect solution in mind! For ring bearers and flower girls, I plan to hold auditions (kids four and under need not apply) and/or kidnap Suri Cruise. For family members too close to leave the kids with a babysitter and still be socially acceptable, my answer is thus: hire out a slightly older cousin - 15 years old would be perfect - to sit in a sacristy or parish hall somewhere and babysit. It's a win-win. Moody teenager doesn't feel like sitting through some mushy wedding, I don't feel like dealing with small children, it's perfect. I'll leave it to you, readers, to decide how much of what I just said was a joke. Hint: it wasn't much.
Without any kids for my guests to worry about, then, they will be left to worry extensively about the appearance of me and my wedding party - and I do not intend to disappoint them. If there's anything more distracting at a wedding than small children, it's wedding-party wardrobe foolishness. In preparing for my wedding, there will be no silly rule giving my bridesmaids free rein in choosing their dresses. They can offer opinions, certainly. As to whether I'll honor them, well...we'll see. I do know that they will all wear the same color. They will all wear, at the very least, similar shoes of essentially the same color. Their flowers will all be the same. Probably, they will all wear identical dresses. If I end up with a slew of bridesmaids that are fairly diverse in their body types, I may change my mind on that. At the moment, though, all of my friends more or less resemble each other (thin, at least decent-looking...I hate you people), so I see matching dresses in your future. As far as color scheme is concerned, my vision is basically "anything that isn't stupid." Based on the weddings I've been to, it seems that this goal is harder to achieve than one might guess. In my wedding, there will be no hot pink. There will obviously be no camo, in any form, in a fifty-mile radius of my wedding. My bridesmaids will not wear print (see my last post). It will be classy and lovely and you will all hate me for coming up with that color scheme before you could use it without looking like a copycat. And my dress? I intend for it to be, eh..perfect. If I invite you someday to go wedding dress shopping, you should take it very seriously, because it is your job to make sure I don't look like an idiot/cow. It is your responsibility to correct me if, by some strange chance, I try on something hideous and think I look like the second coming of one-year-ago-tomorrow Kate Middleton. If there's one thing that is certain about my wedding, it is that I will be the most fabulous person there. Anyone who even verges on looking better than me will be quietly disposed of (I'm looking at you, model girl at wedding today wearing obnoxious shimmery maxi dress).
Last but not least, my wedding will be 100% free of the general category of things I like to call "dumb crap." This includes but is not limited to: unity objects/ceremonies, contemporary Christian rock music, mid-ceremony love songs, and subpar photography. You'd think that the unity candle trend would have gone away after, I don't know, the 1970s. Based on my experience, though, it's still alive and well. There are of course, the other iterations - unity sand art, unity wine, unity flower arrangements, unity finger-painting, the list goes on. None of these options, though, are acceptable. I like to think that the undying love of the couple should be indicated by the fact that you're at their wedding, not by their inability to split a flame in half. Dumb crap. The music at my wedding will be thoroughly free of both Celine Dion (I'll save her for the reception, because, I mean, I'm not gonna not) and music by any band who derives their name from a biblical reference. And as far as my wedding photographer is concerned, I've got some rules in mind. If your editing and filtering choices are too hipstery and generally on trend, I probably will not hire you. I'd like for my wedding photos to not look outdated in five months, thanks. You're also unlikely to get hired if you plan to take any of the following photos: my bridesmaids and I in poses even vaguely reminiscent of the Powerpuff Girls, my husband's groomsmen playing sports, any circle of shoes, or our wedding rings arranged "artistically" on a random, insignificant object.
In summation, then, I basically want my wedding to not be stupid. That's all I ask. It won't be annoying, or corny, or poorly designed, or idiotic in any way. It will be the party of the year. [Note: at my current rate of boyfriend-getting, it will probably be the party of the year 2060.] You better start bargaining now for your spot on the invite list, because you will not want to miss it.
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