When did you last go to a wedding? I seem to be more in a funeral phase myself. Fortunately they don’t hold divorce ceremonies, otherwise I’d be going to a fair few of those too.
Oh, I tell a lie, a dear friend got married a few years ago. It was a casual affair, being a later-in-life union. A lovely ceremony beside the water followed by a barbie on their back deck.
Tomorrow I’m going to a full-on, traditional wedding. Bride wearing white frock, canapes, seating arrangements, speeches, cake, dancing, the whole kit and caboodle.
I started planning what the Sprogs would wear months ago (around the same time as I started on their Santa sacks). Sprog 1 is not the dress type, but she does have a strappy chambray number shoved away for special occasions, so I bought her navy cardie to go with it, just in case the weather turns chilly. Sprog 2’s favourite dress is a rose-covered, red-sashed number. So she got a reddish cardie for that. Done, I thought.
A few days ago, my sister-in-law asked what I was wearing and I went … oh … bugger … that’s right … I need a frock too. It literally hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to dress myself. Fortunately I have a $16-on-sale Gap dress I’ve been dying to crack out. It’s made from T-shirty material, but flows to the floor and has lovely coloured stripes – very on-trend – plus a matching $16-on-sale Gap cardie. I just need to buff the mould off a pair of heels and I’m good to go.
I’m hoping that will do the trick. I’ve lost track of what one should and shouldn’t wear to a wedding these days.
Oh gawd, and I’ve just realised we don’t have a wedding present. I think they have some wishing tree thingy where you can just deposit money. I wonder if those things take credit cards? Because we’re skint. Sprog 2’s bloody keyboard teacher doesn’t take credit cards, only cheques. Fat lot of good that is when you’re skint. And he’s getting increasingly tetchy, three weeks into term. I am also avoiding calls/emails/letters from my skin cancer pathologist, Sprog 1’s art teacher and the school band.
Back to the wedding … I will be taking lots of tissues, despite not being terribly close to the happy couple (the groom is Husband’s cousin and we only see him once a year). Whether I know the people getting married or not, nuptials invariably make me blub. So do funerals, but that’s a bit more understandable. Being emotionally constrained (retarded not being the PC word to use these days), when I seeing outpourings of feeling from others I go a bit loco. My head starts to throb with the tension of trying not to cry and my mouth contorts in a very unattractive fashion until eventually I can’t hold it in any longer and start to weep.
Call me an emotion leech. Sounds ick, but I’ve heard worse. I’m a former weekly magazine editor, after all.
DO YOU CRY AT WEDDINGS EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE HAPPY COUPLE?
housegoeshome 
Feel your pain with the money situation. And I’m with you on the crying, although I seem to cry at anything, school assemblies can send me off (and that’s embarrassing), tv commercials, songs on the radio, I’m a sobbing emotional wreck most of the time. Good I hope it’s not menopause.
I’m pretty resigned to peri-menopause.
There’s always something that needs paying, isn’t it? I know exactly how you feel. We had two weddings earlier this year, after years of no weddings at all. I didn’t buy a new dress for either, just wore something I already had in the wardrobe that hadn’t had an outing for a while. (Most evening dresses I have fall into that category – they’re not the sort of thing you pop on to go down to the grocery store.)
I usually have an ‘Awwww’ moment during the ceremony and the tears normally arrive not long after that. Thank God for waterproof mascara is all I can say!!
I got my lashes tinted to avoid panda eyes … Not that I could afford that either …
Don’t cry or you will start me off! That dress doesn’t sound over dressy so I’m relieved with my choice – which is also one from the cupboard. I’ve bought new shoes to try and dress it up a little :). Kicking myself for those few extra kilos though, perhaps I should have OctSobered too 😦
Oct-Sober didn’t go so well for me …
Kid2’s teacher recently married another teacher from school (the one he had last year). We all went to watch. They’d even allocated spots on either side for all the kids on haybales! It was beautiful and romantic and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house (garden)!
Kaz, that sounds so lovely.
The last wedding we attended was Dadabulous’ cousins’. P2 was only 11 months at the time which meant I had to stay sober whilst the whole of the extended family partied til they puked. The puking began at around 9pm and continued well into the next day. Not pretty.
Oh Mumabulous, that is too funny!