It's a nice day for a white wedding...
I attended the second or third wedding (depending on whether or not you count my appearance at my aunt’s wedding in 1980) of my life this weekend and I learned some valuable lessons. Wedding bands, no matter how proficient at playing Motown standards, should not play rap songs. There is nothing more hilarious than a bunch of rich, white folks shaking their collective asses (badly, I might add) to a bunch of 40-year-old never wases saying things like “Don’t want to meet your mama, just want to make you come-a.” Though I’m totally over Hey Ya and would be happy to never hear it again, it is especially sad to hear it sung at a wedding where any spontiaity and sexuality has been drained from it like the color from my face when I realized that the wedding band also plays inappropriate songs like Rock the Casbah. If I was ever to have a big, fancy wedding (which I would never do) I would totally have a DJ. No wait, fuck that….I’d be the DJ.
Also- and this is less something that I learned and more a lesson that I hope you, as the general public, will learn and take to heart- when a girl drags herself to a wedding without a date it is not polite to ask why. Needless to say, my sister and I were the only girls present at Sunday’s affair without an escort- which would have been fine if everyone hadn’t felt the need to come up to the poor Raber sisters and find out why were such lepers. I told Leah that I wished I had the balls to answer, “Because my girlfriend couldn’t make it,” but I have a sneaking suspicion that my parents friends already think that, because I haven’t introduced them to some nice Jewish boy from Long Island, I’m a lesbian, so why perpetuate the rumor. So I devised two failsafe answers to the questions, “Where is YOUR date?” that basically shut people up but stop short of saying, “You ridiculous ass, what kind of question is that?” Answer #1: “Dates really get in the way of my drinking agenda.” (This works best if said in between gulps from one of the TWO glasses of booze you are holding) Answer #2: “He’s right here. His name is Captain Morgan.” So basically all of my parents friends think that their daughters, while dateless and sad, are fantastic alcoholics.
This wedding also re-instilled a burning desire in me to start a cable access channel devoted solely to showing videos (wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) of dressed up white people dancing. Come on! That is hilarious. I’d totally watch that channel. Moms, dripping in diamonds, bumping and grinding with their daughters drunk boyfriends. Dads doing the white man’s overbite. Everyone overcompensating for their lack of rhythm by singing along loudly to wildly inappropriate songs. (“Get on the scene, like a sex machine!”) This channel would totally be a hit. Stoners, college kids and black people across the city would pee their pants watching.
The main thing I learned from this wedding though, aside from the fact that most of the girls I went to high school with are major douchebags, is that, if I ever get married, I totally don’t want a wedding. I want to elope to Vegas or some pretty beach somewhere and then come home and throw a big party with all of our friends and family that people could come to in jeans. I don’t give a rat’s ass about a fancy dress or beautiful flowers or caterers. I just want something low-key and fun that is really about celebrating my marriage (and getting ravingly drunk, of course) and not about the nonsense (and EXPENSE) of some frilly, girly party. I don’t want nightmares about table settings. I don’t want groomsmen in ugly white tuxedos. I don’t want to pick out bridesmaids dresses or a ballroom or a cake that looks beautiful but tastes like something you’d get in your high school cafeteria. Fuck that. It’s so not important. Does that make me a traitor to my gender? Every woman (at least the ones on TV) always says, “I’ve been planning my wedding since I was a little girl.” REALLY? I’ve never once stopped to plan my wedding. I was too busy planning my actual life- like what I wanted to do for a career and where I wanted to live. I’ve got better things to do than spend 15 years salivating over some overpriced white dress. If that sounds like bitter, single-girl rhetoric, I’m sorry. But, it’s true.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get married. (I can’t imagine feeling that way about someone- wanting to spend forever with just one person and wanting to be a real grown up with them.) But I am sure that I definitely don’t ever want a wedding.
Also- and this is less something that I learned and more a lesson that I hope you, as the general public, will learn and take to heart- when a girl drags herself to a wedding without a date it is not polite to ask why. Needless to say, my sister and I were the only girls present at Sunday’s affair without an escort- which would have been fine if everyone hadn’t felt the need to come up to the poor Raber sisters and find out why were such lepers. I told Leah that I wished I had the balls to answer, “Because my girlfriend couldn’t make it,” but I have a sneaking suspicion that my parents friends already think that, because I haven’t introduced them to some nice Jewish boy from Long Island, I’m a lesbian, so why perpetuate the rumor. So I devised two failsafe answers to the questions, “Where is YOUR date?” that basically shut people up but stop short of saying, “You ridiculous ass, what kind of question is that?” Answer #1: “Dates really get in the way of my drinking agenda.” (This works best if said in between gulps from one of the TWO glasses of booze you are holding) Answer #2: “He’s right here. His name is Captain Morgan.” So basically all of my parents friends think that their daughters, while dateless and sad, are fantastic alcoholics.
This wedding also re-instilled a burning desire in me to start a cable access channel devoted solely to showing videos (wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) of dressed up white people dancing. Come on! That is hilarious. I’d totally watch that channel. Moms, dripping in diamonds, bumping and grinding with their daughters drunk boyfriends. Dads doing the white man’s overbite. Everyone overcompensating for their lack of rhythm by singing along loudly to wildly inappropriate songs. (“Get on the scene, like a sex machine!”) This channel would totally be a hit. Stoners, college kids and black people across the city would pee their pants watching.
The main thing I learned from this wedding though, aside from the fact that most of the girls I went to high school with are major douchebags, is that, if I ever get married, I totally don’t want a wedding. I want to elope to Vegas or some pretty beach somewhere and then come home and throw a big party with all of our friends and family that people could come to in jeans. I don’t give a rat’s ass about a fancy dress or beautiful flowers or caterers. I just want something low-key and fun that is really about celebrating my marriage (and getting ravingly drunk, of course) and not about the nonsense (and EXPENSE) of some frilly, girly party. I don’t want nightmares about table settings. I don’t want groomsmen in ugly white tuxedos. I don’t want to pick out bridesmaids dresses or a ballroom or a cake that looks beautiful but tastes like something you’d get in your high school cafeteria. Fuck that. It’s so not important. Does that make me a traitor to my gender? Every woman (at least the ones on TV) always says, “I’ve been planning my wedding since I was a little girl.” REALLY? I’ve never once stopped to plan my wedding. I was too busy planning my actual life- like what I wanted to do for a career and where I wanted to live. I’ve got better things to do than spend 15 years salivating over some overpriced white dress. If that sounds like bitter, single-girl rhetoric, I’m sorry. But, it’s true.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get married. (I can’t imagine feeling that way about someone- wanting to spend forever with just one person and wanting to be a real grown up with them.) But I am sure that I definitely don’t ever want a wedding.
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