It's Never a Nice Day for One

Why do weddings have to turn into just seven separate events?!

The Planning Party
The Shower
The Getting to Know People You Will Instantly Forget Party
The Bachelorette Party
The Rehearsal Dinner
The Actual Wedding (total elapsed ceremony time: 15-20 min.)
The Morning After Brunch

And each requires a gift!

JUST FUCKING NAME A TIME AND PLACE TO BIND YOUR LIVES TOGETHER, TELL ANYONE YOU WANT TO WITNESS IT WHERE AND WHEN, DO IT, AND HAVE PEOPLE GO HOME.

Weddings used to be a mechanism for an older generation to bestow wealth on a younger generation for the perpetuation of the community. Now there is absolutely no way that the gifts you recieve from your guests will come close to equaling the cost of the shitty steamtable food that they shovel into their mouths while waiting for the DJ to cue up "The Electric Slide." Stop it. Just fucking stop it. Take your average of $19,000 (!) and make it the downpayment on your house, or kid's college fund, or van load of cocaine. But don't flush it down the toilet through the intermediary step of near-strangers' digestive systems and call it "your special day."

You will not be a princess for a day; you will be a stressed-out, trussed-up, white-clad (and who are you kidding?) pinata to be batted about between people you've never met before and people you'll never talk to again. And those photo-documentary-style pictures you and your parents just dropped eight grand on? You'll look at them exactly twice. Once, when you pick them up, and once more when your kid or dog drags them out of the cupboard in which they've been mouldering since you picked them up. "But my parents were so happy to see me get married in front of all of their friends!" you say. "The tears shining in my mother's eyes were worth it all!" You know what else would've made mom tear up? If you'd slapped her across the face and called the wedding off when she suggested that you put miniture bottles of Tabasco sauce at each place setting to commemorate your Grandpa Ed. And believe me, those tears would have been just as poignant and not nearly as costly.

In the end analysis, there will be no 'memories to treasure for a lifetime' at any event surrounding the five, count 'em, five minutes in which you actually committ spiritually and financially to another person. Here's something for the young lovers to try: use the 12 months you set aside for planning a shitty party to think about those five minutes when you will become someone else's family for the rest of your lives.

I hate weddings.