It's June now, which means much like the slow drifts of cat hair seen floating in the warm summer light streaming through my windows: wedding season is upon us. I'm 28, prime marryin' age, which means weddings have dominated my summers for the last three or four years. For the last two summers every vacation was actually a trip somewhere to watch people pledge their eternal love to one another before we all ate cocktail shrimp. (Ok, I've never actually been to a wedding that had cocktail shrimp, but it seems like a thing that should be at weddings.) I actually love weddings, they are like parties made perfectly to my specifications: they start at like 5pm, end by 10, there's free food, free wine, dancing to music that isn't so loud you can't hear anyone talk, and you usually get to hang out with people you haven't seen in awhile with no pressure to make future plans that you will inevitably never get around to doing. Also there's cake. It's also, I guess, nice to see two people pledge their love to each other in front of everyone they know and even though I'm generally avoid earnestness, I've even cried real human tears of positive emotion at a few weddings. Weddings are nice. I've even been to one that has a s'mores flavored cake.
But this year other peoples' weddings are stressing me out. Our wedding is approaching faster and faster each day, like when you're playing Tetris and all those slowly falling blocks seem totally manageable and you're putting them in the right place and the lines are disappearing and you've booked a caterer and a DJ and it seems totally fine and then all the sudden they start coming really fast and piling up and those stupid long ones won't fit anywhere and you realize there is no possible way all 8 of your bridesmaids can all make flower crowns the day of the wedding because making flowers crowns is actually an impossible human feat which nobody besides Martha Stewart, the chows she trained to make flower crowns, and fancy ladies circa the Renaissance on May Day have ever actually done. The thought of going to other peoples' weddings, which are likely going to be lovely and full of perfect touches I never even considered, and less completely on fire and collapsing as guests flee the reception hall because we forgot to get candle covers, is a little like when you didn't study for a test in school and then the teacher was like "okay let's just go over the answers right now" as soon as you were done. You just don't want to know.
But it's going to be okay. Wedding jealousy, like Pinterest jealousy or Instagram jealously, or any jealously really, is just a made up feeling that you aren't good enough when really, we're all terrible. When you go to a wedding, you only see the end result. As much stress goes into wedding planning, if anything has ever gone wrong at any of the weddings I've attended, I've never even noticed because the truth is: I was drunk. I'm sure there are people who are better than me at planning a wedding, like people who can remember which bank account they paid the caterer with, or people who sent their brothers Save the Dates because they didn't lose them and are very sorry, and people who have never screamed at their fiance about the very specific difference between charcoal and grey suits and are also very sorry. But those people, even though they will have perfect weddings where nobody dies in a fire and/or poisonous cocktail shrimp incident, are probably boring people in real life who have nothing else to do BUT plan a wedding, whereas I have lots of other important things to do like finish watching Orange is the New Black because it went back to being good this season or folding half of this basket of laundry before forgetting what I'm doing and online shopping for pajama shorts. (Side note: Does Hollister still exist? Because my terrycloth pajamas shorts from 2004 are finally falling apart and I need the exact same pair.) The point is in terms of weddings, and life, comparison is the the thief of joy and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was a movie we forgot to return from Blockbuster for a few years as kids and as I recall Maid Marian had a very cool flower crown with straw in it and can someone make that for me?
