Living Retired #203- July 10, 2017
IT’S WEDDING SEASON, SO ALL TOGETHER NOW: LET’S CRY!
Spoiler alert! NOT!
At first I was going to advise readers who have been painstakingly planning their daughter’s wedding for the past 12 months not to read this column.
Then it hit me!
Anyone who has spent the past year handholding an anxious bride-to-be AND putting up with an overbearing wedding planner has been institutionalized by now– with no access to glossy wedding magazines or sharp objects.
For men, weddings take all the fun out of summer.
During summer men are supposed to be on a golf course; not in a quaint stone chapel that’s not air-conditioned.
It’s alright for men to sweat wearing polo shorts with a cigar in their hand on the golf course. It’s not alright for a guy to be sitting on a stiff wooden pew sweating in a suit and long sleeve shirt and matching tie his wife picked out.
In the summer, men are supposed to enjoy whacking golf balls into the woods and water traps. And driving golf carts through condominium complexes, across residential streets to retrieve golf clubs that were thrown in a fit of anger!
Summer weddings, well, they force men to give up valuable male bonding time!
Now don’t get me wrong. Men don’t have anything against going to their best buddies daughters wedding– and having to drink free booze. Why it’s even worthwhile having your wife roll her eyes at you for slopping shrimp sauce down your dress shirt during the banquet.
It’s just that a wedding brings out every guys worst fear– having to dance at the reception! It’s even worse these days with women wearing those feathery fascinator hats precariously perched on a 45-degree angle on the side of their head!
Now before you accuse men of being ‘anti wedding’ please realize that men do have feelings when it comes to weddings. We feel real bad for the father of the bride.
Here’s what I mean…
For explanation purposes, let’s give our father-of-the-bride a name: Fred Fray.
For the past year, Fred Fray has been has been relegated to the sideline. Getting a word in edgewise has been impossible. It’s been ‘all wedding, all the time.’ It’s like an all-news cable television channel…
“I’m Wolf Blitzer reporting live outside the change room at a bridal boutique.”
“We’ve got BREAKING NEWS! Wedding caterers have developed gluten-free canapés featuring sweet and savoury phyllo pastry. Early reports from wedding planning shows indicate that brides-to-be are gulping down these tasty edibles by the fistful!”
Wolf turns towards Camera 2 and musters all he has…
“Susie Sizemore from Elephant Butte, New Mexico has eaten so many of the canapés that she now has only 6 days to lose 5 pounds– or she won’t fit into her flowing, off-the-shoulder haute couture wedding gown.”
“Susie says she’s saddened so she says she’ll send someone (sorry I’ve run out of ‘s’ words!) to stand in for the wedding photos!”
Back to our father-of-the-bride–Fred Fray…
Fred Fray is fairly familiar with the fact that he focus on his fitting at Freeman Formal– enough ‘f’ words?
Fred also has to endure spats with his wife over the cost of the wedding planner, the cost of their daughter’s wedding gown, paying for an ice sculpture to melt at the reception, and the cost to rent 300 chiavari chairs for the reception that match their daughter’s wedding gown!
The other key participants in a wedding are the photographer, the mother-of-the-bride, and the most important person: the wedding planner.
The photographer is responsible for capturing photographs of the bride on her big day. It’s the happiest day of her life, so the photographer takes pictures of the bride crying about what her hair looks like, crying about what her nails look like, crying about her bouquet, crying because her dog slobbered all over her makeup… AND crying because she can’t stop crying!!
The mother-of-the-bride has a major role preparing for the wedding: to run interference with the father-of-the-bride about all the plans. This includes agreeing with everything the wedding planner recommends; and calming the father of the bride when the monthly invoice from the wedding planner arrives!
The mother-of-the-bride also has to cry– when her daughter walks down the aisle, when the groom comments that he’ll take good care of her daughter, AND when the best man and the ushers drink doubles and do a group face plant in the guacamole dip on the buffet table!
That leaves us with the wedding planner.
The wedding planner doesn’t cry– she laughs all the way to the bank!
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Gary Chalk, a Canadian baby boomer is a writer for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop blog and a member of Humor Writers of America. Each 3,000 people across a North America read Living Retired. To unsubscribe or to book Gary’s keynote presentation ‘I Don’t Have Wrinkles, I Have Laugh Lines’ visit https://livingretired.press
