It's Just a Stage

Weddings. What a bloody performance.

Completely random graphic, I assure you.

I’ve been to a fair few in my time. Gone are the days when ‘joyful announcement’ meant best chocolate opened after supper. Oh no. These halcyon (lateish) mid-twenties days,  it’s rare to make it through a month without another joyful announcement of an imminent nuptial. (‘nuptial’, to my mind, is a sort of organic word; buddingly earthy, yet with satisfying connotations of foul compost reeking beneath. As such, it seems far more appropriate a descriptive than the frothy ‘wedding’ or grandly regal ‘marriage.’ I wish it’d have a bladdy revival).

So. The second-last nuptial I was at, I went alone. To be fair, I had very little choice about this as my invite said ‘Carla’ not ‘Carla and partner.’ “Oh goodness,” the harassed – and by now certainly blushing - bride gushed, upon seeing me arrive sans hot date. “I didn’t even think to put you with a plus one. I mean…” 

Thoughtfully, however, she had placed me next to the only other person – lets call him Cecil - I knew at the wedding. At least, it would have been thoughtful, if Cecil hadn’t been the person I had conducted my single ill-advised post-breakup/pre-old maidhood affair with, during which I behaved with all the grace, tact and consideration of a baby rhino.

Cecil was looking great. He would be, considering the fact that, two months after unceremoniously ditching him over text message (I’m not proud), he had come into an inheritance, met the love of his life and gone on an epic cross-America roadtrip with her in a Cadillac, during which he proposed (thus, leaving us with the Russian doll effect of talking about a wedding while actually at a wedding). *

We both reached for the wine.

Several hours later, in that dangerous wilderness between the emotional end of the speeches and the godsend of the main course, I turned to Cecil. “Why am I always aloooone?” I slurred. “Is it because I’m cold like, like [I searched for something appropriately chilly]…..like ice cream?”

To Cecil’s eternal credit, he did not panic.

“Ice cream is the perfect complement to a good meal,” he offered, edging his chair slightly toward the floral table decorations on his left. I perked up. “But,” he firmly said, ”it doesn’t go with every meal.” He relented. ”I mean, you’ve got to really appreciate ice cream, save it for those ‘I cannot survive without an ice cream’ moments. Besides, [rising from the table, gesturing vaguely towards his cell phone] lots of guys like ice cream.”

Over dessert, which was chocolate tart and berry coulis, we discussed the finer details of this. Perhaps I should try posing as a student and join the mountain and ski club, he helpfully suggested.

So….weddings. Not, traditionally, my finest hours.

But really, now. Isn’t it true that, delighted as one invariably is for the happy couple (ok, perhaps ‘delighted’ is too strong a word – ‘mildly satisfied’), as much as you want to hang out and make a fuss of your friends, there remains something rather odd about weddings? For a start, the traditional hoopla. While loads of people dream of their big day and its colour scheme, location and invite decoration since pre-pubescence, I get pretty uncomfortable with the whole tradition shebang.

I mean, let’s face it, weddings are weird. Premised on a ‘let’s get everyone we know and a lot of people we don’t together to eat and drink too much and witness us promising to never sleep with anyone else ever again, though of course statistically at least one of us will’ basis, they seem to occupy way too much angst head-space…for both the happy couple and, well, me.

Ultimately, if we’re honest, weddings are useful to the single girl only inasmuch as they are  shameless and much-hyped vehicles to show off your Hot Single Lifestyle. Only no-one ever has a suitable date. Or, in my case, any date at all.

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***SIDEBAR ILLUSTRATION OF NO-DATE SITUATION, AS PERCEIVED BY HAIRDRESSER***

Hairdresser: So, any dates?

Me: Well, there’s one guy. But he’s a charismatic Christian.

Hairdresser [eyes averted and snipping carefully]: Well, dear, it’s not like we have many options, do we?

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This little problem can, of course, be fixed by borrowing a suitable, platonic ‘wedding date.’ I have, once and no doubt entirely through holiday-depletion desperation, been someone’s stand-in wedding date and, I can assure you, it’s the way to go. Though I had never met the couple before, I sucked myself into corsetry and pinched high heels only to be fed on Lindt-ball accessorised wedding cake and prominently whirled around the dance floor  in the general direction of my friend’s ex-girlfriend. Call me opportunistic, but I was very happy with the arrangement.

Admittedly, it had its pitfalls. The skaam/cringe factor was high at several moments. Most notably, this was when I tried to sneak around the back of the group wedding photo to avoid being the random face in the otherwise-delightful wedding album, only for the group to be abruptly  turned 180 degrees “for better lighting.”  This, then, leaving me trapped absolutely front and centre looking for all the world like a grinning Michaele Salahi. (This was, however, soon topped by the moment when, in an alcohol fuelled passive-aggressive face-off, my date tried to win the affection of the 8 year old flower girls away from her ex by dancing with them and, when that failed spectacularly, lecturing them on sexual preference with particular reference to the gay rights movement).

So it was nice, no, refreshing, to go to a wedding yesterday that was unashamedly low fuss. Held at the charming Die Strandloper restaurant, we had a massive fish and mussel braai, eaten on paper plates with mussel shells as cutlery. We squatted at driftwood tables amid fishing netting and orange plastic buoys. It was kak-hot, but the speeches were short. The actual wedding was held round the corner on the beach. As we walked down (conveniently past the bar), perched in the dunes was a guy in battered blue sea captain’s hat, strumming obligingly on a battered folk guitar. Ma sé, , Ma sé,  trou is ’n lekker ding he rung out in clear flats’ accent, toothlessly grinning and ushering us round the rocks.

Trou IS 'n lekker ding

Of course, there were the ubiquitous children sliding and screaming everywhere. Perhaps, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have pointedly suggested the Moses and the Bulrushes bedtime story when asked to mind a particularly fetid bundle in its (eminently floatable) carrying cot. Or, for that matter, threatened to drown three 5 year old hooligans wreaking havoc in the flooded ice case of drinks.

But, still. As weddings go….

So, single ladies! True, the idea of attractive eligible bachelors may be a myth. True, there may be awkward situations and hidden faux pas in every labled place setting at the ’single table’. Almost certainly there will be a poorly-timed switch to a slow dance track when you’re already caught getting down on the dance floor to Vanilla Ice.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.

There’s always the damn dessert trolley.

* Cecil is now beginning his PhD in some sort of botany-related matter at an American University and happily planning his wedding. Cecil will also come across this blog at some point and should feel free to suggest a sexier name-change, should he so wish.