I recently stumbled on the video of a bride singing Christina Aguilera’s “The Right Man” while she walked down the aisle, and I reacted so strongly that I startled myself. The video opened up a cavern of emotion that, while I knew it was there, went deeper than I realized. And that emotion was repugnance. To me, this serenade was not an act of love, but an act of vanity. I saw a woman in the midst of a performance that had nothing to do with how she felt about the man she was walking towards and everything to do with a fantasy she’d been playing out in her head since she was a little girl–groom TBD.
But self-aggrandizing brides aside, the bottom line of my repugnance was that I hate weddings. I think they have gotten so out of control that they have become intolerable, and I deeply resent being held hostage to their preposterous demands. For years I’ve faked my joy for brides and brides-to-be both out of respect and fear. I have put on a smile and cooed over dresses, shoes, cakes and flowers, partially because I usually do love the person the bride is when she is not a bride, but also because I am afraid that I will be shunned from the sisterhood if my disdain is discovered. Keep reading »
