I don’t know whether I have shared this piece of lovely but
ultimately useless information with you yet but I’m getting married next
year. Don’t worry; I’m not about to
morph into one of those dickheads who constantly rambles on about wedding
dresses, seating plans and table tat. I
wouldn’t be mentioning it now if it didn’t provide me with a context for my
latest rant.
So, today my partner and I went to a wedding fair. I had visions of it being full of
over-enthusiastic business proprietors trying to flog their wares, most of which
are very pretty but largely inconsequential, to a load of overenthusiastic
wannabe princesses and their pushy mothers.
I wasn’t far wrong.
On arrival, we were greeted by the sight of a Bentley and
some other classic vehicle, which were suitably blinged up for the occasion and
flower arrangements that would have made Chelsea Flower Show look woefully
amateurish. There were also the cursory bewildered
looking fathers and boyfriends who had presumably been dragged there against
their will (I felt their pain). All this
was set to a soundtrack of wedding ballads being played by what were,
admittedly, two very talented violinists.
Thus, I was choking back my disdain before even entering the
building. Things didn’t improve any when
we actually entered: we were greeted by a very jaded looking woman who didn’t
seem all that interested either in us or in the event itself (though, to be
fair, by this point she had probably overheard more than enough ridiculous
conversations to last her her entire lifetime), who duly handed us a prize draw
form. My main issue with this was that
it asked for the names of the bride and her partner, which is both
heteronormative and very presumptuous.
For the benefit of any non-British readers: civil partnerships are now a
relatively common occurrence in the UK, which means that the people getting “married”
could be of the same or opposite gender and yet this form appeared to make the
assumption that the couple in question would either be lesbian or heterosexual
without stopping to consider the possibility that two men might be getting
married. EPIC FAIL.
The rest of the event went pretty much as I
anticipated. There were plenty of
businesses present, all touting their services.
There were the novelty juke box people; the wedding dress people and the
photographers. However, my all time favourite
had to be the cake people. Not people
who were made of cake, you understand.
Although this would have made the day that little bit more bearable and
even mildly entertaining. No, these were
local bakeries who had cakes that were so big that they could have made rather
spacious dwellings. Thinking about it,
this could be the answer to Britain’s housing crisis: instead of buying the
couple gifts the guests could all contribute towards a colossal wedding cake
which the couple could then live in. It
might suffer from the odd problem with mould but it would probably last a lot
longer than many of the new builds you see being thrown up all over the place these
days and you probably wouldn’t need planning permission! OK, so it’s technically a stupid idea but it’s
no more stupid than spending a stupid amount on ONE DAY. Seriously, why on Earth would you need stupid
table decorations? Do you seriously
think people will question the validity of your marriage if you don’t have
them? In one hundred years time when
some random descendent is looking back through their family history, do you
actually think that your lack of centrepieces is going to be apparent? Probably not.
All these thoughts were whirling through my little head as I wondered
round the place, dutifully avoiding the hungry eyes of the predatory sales
people.
Then there was the fact that they targeted me rather than my
partner. Even when my partner instigated
conversations with company reps, they aimed their responses at me. Like I am going to know or even care about
how many people to cater for. If I had
my way, they would all be paying for their own lunches or at least being fed
gruel (I desperately wanted a Charles Dickens themed wedding but, alas, my
partner refused on the grounds that it was a stupid idea). Besides, I felt a little uneasy discussing
the merits of cheesy filo pastry thinglets whilst I know that at that present
moment, there would be some poor Ethiopian child dying of hunger or some
Bradfordian pensioner dying of the cold.
In light of such suffering, deciding which overpriced decorative horrors
to inflict upon wedding guests seemed to be a pretty pointless exercise. I was on the brink of asking whether we could
forfeit the buffet and send the cash to Oxfam or something but I’m pretty sure
this would have gone down as well as a turd in a vindaloo. All these thoughts
were occurring to me as the catering rep was talking at me about the various
options available. I wasn’t entirely
sure why you would focus all of your attention and information on somebody who
was blatantly not paying any attention to what was going on. I’m
sure there is a reason for this that does not involve me being a woman who has
dreamed about her perfect day since girlhood but I just can’t think of what
this would be.
Needless to say, we didn’t stay too long. My exasperated partner had to give in
gracefully and concede that I probably wasn’t going to stop being facetious
after I snubbed a poor lady who was trying to sell cake lollies to me. I
think it is fair to say that I will not be accompanying him on his next wedding
related excursion.
