Wedding belles and feminist hell

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.