- The dawn of “The Big Day” usually begins with people who have no traditional inclinations and probably stumbled home drunk and high just 30 minutes earlier, suddenly trying to look like paragons of piety.
- Next comes the engagement party. As if a million pictures and videos of the proposal were not enough, there must be a soirée thrown to celebrate the fact that the girl was insane or inebriated enough to say yes.
As a follow-up to my opining last week on “Bodacious Beastly Brides,” I thought it only apropos that I move on to the arena that offers these “Beastly Brides” a platform for their frightful escapades. On to the grandest of the grand, the pinnacle of parasitic profiteering, the highlight of the heinous, the all-encompassing wedding.
1.The wise and worldly look at marriage as a union, a joining together of kindred spirits, and a melding of two halves that make for the most ideal of combinations. Those days are long gone. Now, marriage simply means that two people (hopefully only two people) are sufficiently attracted to each other, can tolerate each other’s company, have the ability to be in the same space for a few hours (without resorting to murder), and hopefully also have at least a slight amount of affection for one another. There might also be a sprinkling of family members who can stand each other, and a dose of “social compatibility.” If these very basic components are available in some strange and haphazard composition, a wedding is in the making. Enter the “Bodacious Beastly Brides” showcased at the frightfully fanciful “Wanton Wacky Weddings.”
The disturbing dramatics can, and usually do, commence with the “popping the question,” which is a whole production unto itself. The days of simple proposals seem a distant memory, with couples now attempting to live out some fantasy so bizarre in its conceptualization that it ends up being comical. From endangering life and limb while balancing on some slippery slope millimetres away from a precarious icy injury, to diving to the depths of an oceanic plate to challenge the sharks for a photo op, from irritating wildlife while zig-zagging through protected property to involving trains, planes, and (rarely) automobiles, the proposal has become preposterous. When neither member of the couple has any horse-riding skills but decides the proposal should include them pretending to be “home on the range,” or when neither can hold a tune but they imagine themselves as Maria Callas and Pavarotti at
2.La Scala in Milan, the cringe factor begins to rise alarmingly. The most bile-inducing part of the proposal? When the bride-to-be feigns shock and surprise. So, you thought you were in a submarine diving to the Mariana Trench just to see the fish? You thought parachuting into the middle of a horribly shaped heart was just for target practice? None of these gals are winning an Academy Award for acting, and clutching their bosoms while looking like the “Scream” painting by Munch is not fooling anyone.
Next comes the engagement party. As if a million pictures and videos of the proposal were not enough, there must be a soirée thrown to celebrate the fact that the girl was insane or inebriated enough to say yes. These events are often as large as weddings, usually held at exotic locations and sometimes even historical sites, just to ensure the couple and their families not only irritate sensible people via media but also enrage archaeological trusts and historical preservation societies. The colour coordination is usually vile, with everyone looking like a nap-time area in a nursery, dressed in clashing shades of pink, blue, and yellow, topped off with matching flowers, napkins, jewelry, and expressions.
3.Bachelor and bachelorette parties are often a blur of alcohol, drugs, and debauchery. They are the perfect settings for a narcotics raid or an unfortunate last-minute gift of a sexually transmitted disease. The “pre-wedding” festivities are where the couple and their hordes descend on some hotel like Genghis Khan marauding across the plains, leaving everything in their wake decimated. Behaving as if they have never seen a hotel lobby before, the retinue poses at every balustrade, pillar, and post. They may also invade the spa, taking as many pictures as possible re-enacting woolly mammoths wading through the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, or immersing themselves in tubs of turgid water filled with withered flowers and the skin cells of previous guests, turning the “spa part” into a tragedy of hygiene and a health hazard unto itself.
The dawn of “The Big Day” usually begins with people who have no traditional inclinations and probably stumbled home drunk and high just 30 minutes earlier, suddenly trying to look like paragons of piety. They perform poojas and prayers to appease their few sensible senior relatives. With that out of the way, the “painters and whitewashers” take over with the makeup, joined by the stressed-out hair team. Brandishing brushes and palettes of colours that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame, they get to work creating a bride that no one will recognize, with hair teased and tonged, and lashes and lips so overdone they require a separate mode of transport. When they finally make it to the venue, the pretence of faith among the faithless is mind-boggling. Though they may be standing in a cathedral, temple, the Vatican, or even Varanasi, their atheistic minds are focused only on the drinking and dancing to follow. It is a travesty that religious officials allow such nonsense in sacred spaces for profit. Ideally, if they never saw you at that place of worship since your baptism, you have no business getting married there.
The reception is the time for the “party parasites” to emerge, those who only want free food, free alcohol, and anything else that comes with it. The drunken uncles who make lecherous moves on anything with a heartbeat, the tipsy aunties who try to flirt with men younger than their grandchildren, all make these events traumatic for the sensible. Suddenly, everyone is a comedian as they grab the microphone, and worse still, everyone becomes a singer who refuses to stop. The dance floor becomes a countdown to the emergency room and an orthopedic surgeon’s dream. From doing Baila moves to Shakira songs to dancing Salsa to the Gypsy Kings, the night only grows more awkward. Finally, when the couple departs via bullock cart, wheelbarrow, or tricycle, the retinue must follow, throwing confetti, tears, and tantrums to mark the end of this wacky wedding.
In the world of social media influencers, who have the power to set trends followed blindly by the socially blind, it may be asking too much to expect “common sense.” But keeping it simple never goes out of style. Keeping it authentic and genuine never becomes boring. One can still have a lovely wedding where the essence of the union is celebrated with true joy and merriment, without trying to be part of “keeping up with the world.”
