Bridget Loves Bernie

It was coming like the dawn. A big, pink, frothy, meringue of a dawn. With the sickening perfumey stench of wedding madness.

The Bachelorette Party a safe distance behind us, and sufficient time having passed for all hangovers, twisted stiletto-clad ankles and red faces to have healed, there is very little standing between Em and Chuck and holy matrimony.

First up, the rehearsal.

I look at it like a pregame show. It is probably the first time Em and Chuck will actually devote a single synapse to the thought that this is really happening. This is their life about to change. The trolley is leaving the Land of Make Believe (next stop Hellacious Acres?)

So they’ll rehearse for the wedding. Has anyone bothered to rehearse for the marriage? I am sure they’ve discussed who will cook (Chuck) and who will clean (Chuck, again) and who will do laundry (Chuck, one more time) but what about the rest of it? The things that I am sure they have subconscious expectations about that may or may not be met? What happens when that train jumps the tracks? Who prepared Bridget and Bernie for all the guff they'd deal with? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie)

What will happen when she finds that, let’s just say, his collection of videos includes a few that Mommom must never find that arrived in brown paper? Or her frantic desire to have kids right this minute is met with adamant NFW opposition? Or he continues to eat like a Viking and begins to look like the Big Fig? (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyI3IL46yq4) Or she cuts her hair short and butchy a la Demi Moore in Ghost now that the wedding up-do is no longer on the checklist? (www.movieactors.com/.../demi_moore_photos.htm) How about the clicking sound his jaw makes when he eats that drives her batty enough to envision jamming one of the pickle forks she received as a shower gift into his carotid? What if her inability to re-cap anything – toothpaste, olive oil, nail polish, aspirin (for all those headaches) makes him want to snap her little manicured fingers off? I am sorry, Pre Cana doesn’t cover this material.

Em and Chuck will be saying their I Dos in the same church where Lars and I said ours. It is a beautiful, marble-filled church with a very long aisle, perfect for a bride’s entrance. It is humbling in its grandness – in a way I’ve always thought you should feel when entering a house of God. Humbled before Him.

The rehearsal could be a very humbling experience for Em. As she stands in the back of the church wearing her pink dress and holding her bouquet of shower gift ribbons, she will face the overwhelming reality that for all the anticipation and excitement, with all the planning finally coming to fruition, the next day, as it is that night, it is still just Chuck at the end of the aisle…with his overly long pursuit of an academic degree, his unwarranted smugness, and his alarming resemblance to Morocco Mole. (uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Morocco-mole.gif )

It is still just Chuck. And this is as good as it will ever get.