The Wedding Planner?
May 13th, 2004 | Posted by Shannon
I have to go to a wedding this weekend. I hate weddings. Well, I hate bad weddings. Sometimes, someone manages to throw a good one, but that is pretty rare. A couple of years ago I went to a wedding and reception that was held at the home of a once-famous 1980’s rocker, and that was a pretty good one. All the guys still had “the hair.” You know, 1980’s rock band hair. All the wives were 1980’s groupies, all grown up and married but still a Size One and obviously, they also still had “the hair.” There was a band (of course) and they played Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” At a wedding! I’ll never forget that.
Sadly, weddings like this are few and far between. Brides, and mothers, put way too much confidence in hotel catering managers and DJ’s. Why is the DJ dictating the events of the wedding? I HATE that. “And Nowwwa, the whole wedding party will dance.” To some gawdawful Whitney ballad. I don’t believe the DJ should be in charge of the party – we, the guests should be in charge of the party. Well, really, the bride should be, but usually the bride is too nervous, too uptight, or too drunk to be in charge.
Of course, there is always that random wedding where people get up and dance to Kool and the Gang early on, like before their 9th cocktail. Usually though, there are about two hours of everyone sitting around, eating their dry prime rib, soggy caeser salad, and Stouffers lasagna and looking at each other. This is way too long.
I hate the dollar dance, the garter thing, and especially, the bouquet throwing. I’ve been scolded to never use the word “hate” in my writing, but I hate those things! Hate them! How come people are always trying to get me to go up to catch that stupid bouquet? I’ve already been married, twice and I don’t want to get married anytime soon again. (One marriage was annulled and doesn’t count, but still I don’t want to do that bouquet thing.)
So. When I got married – it’s been eleven years now – I threw a party that people still talk about. I planned the whole thing myself, with not much help from my party-loving, gorgeous ex-husband (not that I would have accepted any help.) I heard a cool jazz band at the Fillmore Street Festival in San Francisco, and looked them up and hired them. I talked to this crazy fashion photographer, that the band turned me on to. He said stuff like “do you want pictures with people with boogers in their noses? I think not.” Of course I hired him. He set up a sort of backdrop where everyone had their picture taken “prom style” – the line for this was always long. I have pictures of people airborne at my wedding, pictures of people in all sorts of crazy airborne twists, three feet off the ground. We had the whole thing at a killer place where they have jazz concerts, right on the Pacific. The sunset was fantastic, I had a thousand cases of wine and two kegs, all kinds of food that I never ate, and everyone had a good time but me.
I hated it! I was so stressed out. I think me, and weddings, just don’t mix. Perhaps I’ll go into wedding planning, a la J Lo in that movie “The Wedding Planner” – a control freak type job cut out well for me, except that I hate to wear nylons and beige business suit dress thingys. I’d do it just for the gazillion suffering wedding guests out there. I’d do it for you, people.
