Weddings: Free booze, dinner, smiles and some characters

Weddings by Tom NashThose looking for me to spout a load of bile about watching your mates make a potentially huge mistake or downplaying what a lot of women (and even a couple of men, once) have been looking forward to and planning in their mind for most of their lives, then I’m afraid you will be a bit let down by this piece. I enjoy a wedding as much as the next bloke who likes free food and drink and a day sharing genuine happiness with loads of people whose company doesn’t make you want to assault and maim.

Don’t worry though, there are still plenty of things about wedding guests that I can harp on about. Speaking of which:

The bouquet toss terrorhawk
Fellas in a relationship that haven’t proposed or even suggested the possibility of doing so: want to know how much your missus wants to get married? Stand back and watch her when the bride ceremoniously lobs her bouquet over her shoulder…

Does she treat it like a rugby line-out?

That’s you fucked then, pal.

The drama queen
Apparently unable to spend a day without finding something to be upset/offended/angered/outraged by, this one will try to stomp all the enjoyment out of every poor fucker that happens to notice the tears and not look away in time.

This normally takes place outside, so smokers tend to be the ones subjected to the sob-story. Serves us right, I suppose.

Ignore it all and let them cry it out, they just want people to say nice things to them. It’s hard being an attention seeker on someone else’s special day.

The one bloke that can dance
He’s normally young and physically appealing to young ladies, which automatically makes the older fellas hate him anyway. Then he makes it worse by bussing moves that not only highlight just how dad-esque the older gents’ dancing is, but are far more energetic than they could ever manage without a half hour sit-down afterwards and an oxygen mask.

And he does that ‘ooh-ooh’ thing to songs that don’t warrant it. What. A. Prick.

The guest that must-see-everything
This hyper-aggressive aunt or uncle cannot miss a second of the day, recording every last second of anything that happens on their crappy camera and often getting in the way of the professionals who are being paid a small fortune to document proceedings.

All elbows and tuts, woe betide anyone foolish enough to want to see the cutting of the cake who doesn’t step aside when this arse forces their camera through that gap between the wall and your shoulder. Being barged and shit-stared to death is a given, even when there’s plenty room for them to get by.

All for photos they’ll never look at. Totally worth it.

The DJ who doesn’t get his audience
No one cares what you have to say (who has EVER understood ANYTHING a mobile DJ has said into one of those shitty mics they seem obliged to own anyway?) and no one cares that you can actually mix, just play stuff with choruses we can sing along to, eh? With a sprinkling of songs that have their own dances- the ladies like them for some reason.

Not hard is it?

The shoeless woman
Or… Every woman in attendance by the end of the night.

The pack-horse
Or… Every bloke with a missus at the end of the night. Shoes, jackets, handbags, some balloons she stole; you’ll be carrying all of them. Her too if her feet are sore.

Hope you didn’t puff yourself out screeching along to Livin’ on a Prayer.