The Family Wedding

I have long had a theory: Nothing brings out your family weirdness like a wedding or a new baby. From the moment the bride-to-be accepts the ring, the Earth's axis shifts and until the "I dos" are whimpered in front of 300 of her closest family and friends, reality is altered and all that we have known to be true is warped.

I have had a sideline view to this phenomenon for (gasp!) the past 2 years.

J. and I have been together for 3 years...We have 4 kids between us - a high schooler and 3 tweens, and the complexities never stop. But this is not our story, however. Shortly after clearing the last hurdles of our respective divorces and falling madly in love, we received the squealing, high-pitched news that his twenty-something idiotic niece Em was engaged.

And there, friends, is where the Earth crashed into the sun. For two years now, at every BBQ/ birthday party/graduation/retirement party we have been forced to listen, smiling through the mind-numbing detail of all the menu choices, china patterns, ribbon selections, veil lengths, frosting textures, heel heights etc etc while the bride body-checks the host/birthday boy/graduate/retiree off the stage to regale us with another tale of her arduous search for all the taffeta money can buy in the perfect shade of raspberry sherbet. Always, sadly without the benefit of a glass of chardonnay.

I realize I am jaded. And not 22. And self-righteously disinterested. And have the benefit of a 3-digit IQ - but I sit in amazement looking at the rapt faces of at least 14 of the other 16 people at the BBQ/birthday party/graduation/retirement party table (J. and the boyfriend du jour of one of the other nieces excluded) wondering what could possibly STILL be interesting about this gig after all this time, when it was for most of us of marginal importance to begin with?

So, the wedding and all its requisite plans and details are annoying and dominate every moment of every event (a few of which, thanks to my divorce and ensuing custody concerns, I was exempt from attending) but eventually it would all come to its natural end without incident.

Or would it?

Flash forward to the summer before The Big Day - I am on my way out to meet a few girlfriends for our annual canoe trip (lots of gossip and beer and overturned canoes) when I pluck a fancy hand-addressed envelope out of my mailbox. It is addressed just to me. Curious, I open it to find an elaborate Save the Date card - raised script, extra doo-dads attached to the card (cha-ching!). It is for The Big Day. (Excuse me? Save the date? As if anyone could forget the date? Really? It's all we've talked about - listened about? - for the past year! I know it better than my own name!)

I look at the envelope again. I notice again: it is addressed just to me.

I am immediately suspicious that my children are not going to be invited to the wedding...and call J. to inquire about the address on his envelope. He has two girls - the high schooler and one of the tweens - both of whom are in the wedding (wearing raspberry sherbet dresses, natch). Being a man, he has efficiently tossed the envelope (evidence!) into the trash. He is however, uncommonly curious about my curiosity.

I explain that despite the fact that we have been in a committed relationship for over two years and have carefully and slowly introduced our children into eachother's families, and painstakingly inched toward blending the families into one, I suspect that MY kids, the ones he considers his as well, are not going to be invited to The Big Event when The Big Day is finally here.

He, again being a man, does not comprehend bride-speak and thinks I am getting myself worked into a lather for nothing. No way would his dim-witted sister let her vacuous, self-absorbed daughter do such a thing. I explain that there are only two reasons for a Save the Date (well, three if you count just wanting to have one more cutesy pink thing in your wedding scrap book) The first is if you are planning your wedding for some absurd date that people have to plan to be incovenienced for - like Christmas Eve. The other is simply a warning shot across the bow - That is to say "You are invited, and you are not."

So, in the absence of the discarded evidence - an invitation to J. and Family would clinch it - I quietly put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and lay in wait for some clue as to what was truly afoot.

http://tangandcigarettes.blogspot.com/