What is it with Women and Weddings?

The object of my scorn? The movie Bride Wars, starring Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson. Nice, over-the-top, cheesy chick flick about competitive bffs who stay as bffs. Cry me a river.

The premise of the movie is that these two best friends have this shared childhood dream of having a June wedding at the Plaza Hotel. As luck would have it, they both get engaged and are accidentally booked to get married at the Plaza in June on the same day. The HORROR. And neither will change their date. So hilarious and vicious pranks ensue. Are most women really that obsessed with their wedding day? Like, you have a dream and YOU MUST FULFILL IT or your whole marriage will collapse if you don’t have the exact shade of lavender plum or whatever bouquet? Is lavender plum even a color? Seriously, WHO CARES? Am I seriously lacking as a person, as a woman, to NOT GIVE A HOOT?

Oddly enough, I was watching this movie with my bff and we laughed and snarked throughout the entire movie but at the end of it, I just had to ask if she has a “dream wedding”. She snorted and said she’d sign the papers and bounce and invited me to be one of her witnesses. That response explains why she’s my bff. I don’t think I’ve ever envisioned my “big day”. I’ve always had trouble thinking about what I’d look like as a bride, what my groom would look like and how the EVENT would happen, so my ideal would just to have everyone over at the mosque and hand out some pizza and call it a day. I do admit to wanting to wear a red sari on my wedding day, which I don’t even have to worry about because my parents have already purchased a red wedding sari for me in the PERFECT RED and some wedding jewelry and people keep giving me red clothes, hoping it’ll impart some GET MARRIED NOW germs on me. Shrug. Me and bff agreed to have a double wedding at a mosque, it’d be so easy, FREE, and plus, it only takes like 5 min for each of us to get married. Maybe we’ll give out cupcakes.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get married but I have to say, the thought of the wedding really stresses me out. To have a gender-separated or mixed wedding, invite coworkers or not, to play music or not (as conservative Muslims consider music to be not permissible due to content and distracting Muslims from the remembrance of God), how to keep my hair covered while wearing head jewelry, how much of my neck and arms am I okay with exposing to display my jewelry, do I wear and turtleneck and boil to death on my wedding day, my parents’ 80 gazillion friends that MUST come as I am the Eldest Child, etc, etc, etc. In my head, I’m all EFF THAT (pardon my French), let’s  just have a mosque wedding, keep it simple, issue an open invitation to everyone, Muslim or not, and whoever cares will show up. The End. Mosques are already gender separated, there’s plenty of room and I can score food on the cheap. It’ll suck for my male coworkers (which is like 90% of my coworkers) and friends but OH WELLS. C’est la vie and tough noogies.

As this is a total non-issue due to my perpetual single status, I’m off the hook. For now. But this is something that needs to be discussed with the guy and if he can stand firm with his family, that’ll be awesome. My sister is pushing for me to get married in a castle, eyeroll, and my parents are under the impression that I’m saving all of my money for my magnificient wedding day, double eyeroll. However, I understand that there is now also a new breed of men known as groomzillas, and Lord help me if that’s who I wind up with.

Wedding favors

Once upon a while, when I was a wee engineering student hiding from my numerical methods or differential equations homework/project/exam approximately 5-7 years ago, I use to cruise the internets for diverting distractions. One such internets cruising sessions led me to look up wedding favors. Why? I don’t know, I didn’t have a boyfriend or fiancee or husband (although what would the point of wedding favors be if I had a husband but anywayz), I just liked looking at the random kitschy stuff people were selling online for chumps like me to purchase with my monopoly money.

And then I found it, the perfect wedding favor for an engineering chick like me – utilitarian but room for sappy love stuff to be imprinted or stuck on with a sticker (SCORE! I LOVE stickers). No jordan almonds in useless lace bags for me, no sir. Or wedding cake shaped candles or ceramic figurines – what are you supposed to do with those? Moving along, for some insane reason, I thought it was a good idea to share my idea with my younger sister. Sigh, younger sisters. No, this isn’t a whiny story about how my younger sister stole my wedding favor idea. She looked at me like I was nuts, like a good younger sister can do, and then promptly forgot about it, trotting out the info to embarrass me during choice occassions.

Now, I’m not married. “Still?????” is the question I get from many, as I recently turned 26 and have now expired on the desi/muslim marriage market [muah ha ha ha ha ha ha]. There is no groom nor prospect in sight. However, my sister starts hassling me yesterday because the wedding favor I wanted is now on sale. For less than $1/item. I don’t know how or why she knows this but she does. So she wants to order 200 wedding favors pronto because they’re on sale. Yessssssssssssssss….that look of puzzlement, horror and hilarity was my exact reaction as well.

“Tell me again, why are we ordering wedding favors for a wedding that’s not occurring?”

“Becuz they’re $0.89/item now, they’re normally $1.35/item.”

“Um, no.”

“Come on, there’s three options and they’re all the same sale price! Do you want A, B or C?”

“Neither, cuz I’m NOT GETTING MARRIED.”

“Come onnnn, just tell me what you’d prefer.”

“No way, I ain’t paying for this. This is ridiculous.”

“Just tell meeeeeeeeeeeeee….”

“Ugh, just ask Mommy and Daddy. Hopefully they’ll tell you that you’re being ridiculous also.” I’m now all smug, waiting for my sister to get shot down. She comes prancing into my room a little later, with a confused look on her face. And yes, we still refer to our parents as “Mommy” and “Daddy”. Shut up.

“So, Mommy said to get half of A and half of B because women would prefer A and men would prefer B. And she wants to order 200 of each to get 400 in total.”

“WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!” I’m so flabbergasted by the fact that my sister managed to get our mother to buy-in to her ridonkulous idea. Not only that, but to DOUBLE THE ORDER. Reacting like any eldest child will, I slowly but surely meander my way into my parents bedroom and find my mom sorting through what seems like a thousand sari blouses, weeding them out by color and fit. I stroll in there, madd chill, and watch my mom pull out a red corset and thong and ask me to explain the function of those garments. Fun times. Especially the disgust when I explained how a thong is to be worn. Preciousness. We still have no clue where the corset or thong came from but going back TO THE POINT OF THE STORY, I casually say, “So Mom, 400 thingamajigs, huh?” “Yeah, well your sister told me to think about how many people we’re going to invite to your wedding so 400 sounds good.”

FACEPALM. Like, how does this stuff happen? To me? Quite often?

And thus this blog was born, because I have to share this preciousness with the world and my sister would kill me if I told people. So now I can share with all the strangers on the internets instead of our friends. Lolz.