Wedding Fever

I love weddings – The free food, the merriment and gaiety, the exhilaration. (Did I mention the free food?) I believe that a person would have to be dreadfully prosaic to not be delighted to attend weddings. The sight of a resplendent wedding invitation card makes me absolutely jovial.

However, most of the time I am met with chagrin because when I flip the card over to see who it has been adressed to, I seldom read the words “…And Family”. The despondency of knowing that my parents have been invited to a wedding and I have not wreaks havoc on my puny little heart. My immediate reaction to this is, “I don’t care, I’m going uninvited!” But then of course, Mother dearest conveniently rides roughshod over my plans and I am left quibbling.

But oh, when I am invited to a wedding, my jubilation is a sight to see! Actually, I get a kick out of luxuriating in the process of getting all dolled up. However, the snag is that since I am a hairsplitter, if I do not look absolutely paradisaic, it makes my blood boil. *Sigh* Only the true fuss-budgets can be au fait with my can of worms.

As much as I hanker for weddings, there is one part I consider the absolute bête noire of the entire occasion; Running smack into the Aunties. Although I do not dislike being hugged, it’s hard not to complain when I am being squished like a bug and gasping for breath.  And as if this torture wasn’t enough to scar me for life, then comes the attack of the slobbery wet kisses. Truth be told, if it weren’t for the fear of being chewed out by my Mom, I would carry a pack of sanitary napkins with me and would conveniently wipe the saliva off my cheeks every time I got kissed. But since we do not dwell in a utopian world, I believe I shall have to learn to stop fretting over how fast the bacteria is multiplying on my cheeks and how many nanoseconds away I am from an acne breakout.

I was once at a wedding, sitting pretty when my cousin strutted over to me, raked me over the coals for not having covered my head and sternly ordered me to “Cover it immediately.” I would not have been rendered so utterly speechless if this cousin of mine was not so despotic, tyrannical and … Six years old. Yes, you read that right. I got castigated by a six year old child. It probably doesn’t get worse than that, right? Trust me, it does.

I have this record of always screwing up at a wedding one way or another. Every time I attend a wedding, something goes wrong. Like the last time I attended a cousin’s wedding, I got the worst Urinary Tract Infection ever. So, basically, while people were having themselves a jolly good time, I was running like the wind to the bathroom every ten to fifteen minutes. To say that it was agonizing would be an understatement. The same thing happened at my Uncle’s wedding, too. I got the infection yet again but instead of running to the bathroom, I had to drink gallons of water because that’s the fastest treatment for the infection.So, this time people were helping themselves to bottles of Pepsi, Fanta and whatnot and I was just sitting there, sipping “Aqua Purificata”.

But since I am a Pollyanna, these bantam episodes fail to put a damper on my attendance and love of weddings. Now, pardon me while I do my happy dance because I’ve just been invited to another wedding.