Trouble and Strife

After a few years' hiatus, I have the joy of two friends' weddings coming up in the new year.

At the risk of sounding bitter at my own ongoing singlehood, and also conscious that everything that I say may be used in evidence against me if/when I tie the knot, I have decided to give the odd update on how the lead-up to these weddings is going. What do those weddings have to do with you, you may ask? Well the answer should be obvious. Between engagement and wedding day, the betrothed become for that period the centre of the world. Not just theirs but that of everyone who comes into contact with them, whether they like it or not.

Every minutae of the event and its preparation becomes the most interesting subject around, the couple are suddenly exempt from basic levels of politeness and manners and any other prior arrangements must be dropped if something vaguely related to the happy couple comes up, be it a camerbund fitting or trawling the John Lewis website looking for something on the gift list, slightly more affordable than the £800 plasma TV as an engagement present.

If you are not interested in having to hear the 3-sides-of-A4 proposal poem written to your sister's flatmate's twin, then surely the fault is with you and their anger is justfied; if you do not add much to a lunch invite involving you alone and four recently/soon to be-smug-married couples discussing the flower arrangements, and the auditions for the band then clearly you are guilty of being moody and anti-social and on no account could it be suggested that they are being a little egocentric and non-inclusive.

Anyways, this week I received an email from the designated stag organiser, confirming the date for the do and giving a vague idea of the timetable for the weekend. Happily read the email, short, sweet, approve of the person organising, scanned other names - recognised half and am good friends with those that I recognised. I closed the email, prepared to continue my day and expecting not to have to think about the stag do until the new year.

However, for the rest of the day I was bombarded by various reply-alls, in which certain recipients kindly offered their hilaaaarious comments, in 15 words or less. I am all for a bit of banter in its time and place. And, from prior experience of organising a stag do, all constructive suggestions are gratefully received. But I am not sure that, for example, one person suggesting that because the betrothed is a doctor, we should all spend the weekend dressed as nurses, qualifies as such a constructive suggestion. It sounds to me a lot more like some kind of fetish which someone needs to get off his chest, and what is strange is that that person knows very few of the other recipients and so he chose this reply-all to introduce himself to the group.

Well, let me make it clear at this stage that whilst I am happy for the evening to involve nurses, preferably female and I don't care if the uniform is genuine work clothes or Saturday nightwear, I have no intention of dressing as a nurse, and please also remind me to keep away from said contributor when it comes to the dancing at the wedding itself, as it seems to me that this is one of those people who looks forward to the male-only dancing part of the evening, which is clearly an excuse for people whose sexual preferences are repressed by their religious upbringings to get up close and personal with those of us forced to sweat it out on the dancefloor in between courses, developing chronic indigestion whilst longing for the solace and safety of the bar.

More misanthropic observations to come in the new year no doubt, as the wedding plans begin to gather pace. In the meantime, please feel free to share your stories of wedding woe or better still, any suggestions as to how I can break out of my bah humbug state of mind and learn to love what is, after all, the happiest day of my friends' (not mine though) lives...