Tis’ the season for drinking overflowing glasses of free champagne. Tis’ the season for dancing awkwardly and making awkward conversation. Tis’ the season for fasting for weeks to feast for an hour. Tis’ the season to dodge flowers flying at your face while sporting five-inch heels.
Oh yes addicts, it is wedding season.
I haven’t attended too many nuptials and I’ve only been a bridesmaid once, but for the first time this year, I’ve come to understand what all of my friends have called “wedding season.” Suddenly, Wedding Crashers makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, instead of just being funny. Mr. Possibility and I will attend three weddings together in the next month, located inNew York and in the South. I’m debating if I want to go against my personal belief system and go to a tanning bed since I’m tired of being pasty white, and I’m figuring out how many dresses I should buy or if I like what I have. I’ve been invited to about six weddings this year; one of my best friends is engaged to be married next year, while the other is probably being proposed to by the end of 2011.
Unlike how I probably would have reacted to my gaggle of girls getting hitched a few years ago – now, I’m genuinely happy for them. I’m thankful they met someone who they want to share their life with and more than anything that they are so ridiculously smitten it makes my teeth hurt.
But I also know things will change.
Recently, my friend K and I went to see Bridesmaids. Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and Annie (Kristen Wiig) have been stereotypical friends forever, and while Lillian’s life has taken a nosedive, Annie’s career is excelling and she’s engaged. The movie is the lead-up to the big day, highlighting the bachelorette and engagement parties, dress fittings, and the heart-to-hearts wedding bring up. And of course, because it is Kristen Wiig and a starring cast of comedians, each of these blissful events are chaotic and flat-out hilarious. K and I laughed from the first sound we heard until Wilson Phillips serenaded us out of the theater.
While the selling point of this movie is definitely to laugh – as most things do, it got me thinking: why do weddings make people so crazy?
I haven’t attended my best friend’s wedding yet or held the coveted and dreaded MOH title, and I’m definitely nowhere close to planning my own, but if Bridesmaids portrays anything, it’s that there is something about saying “I do” that can make a bride or her maids say “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I think the reason behind the delusions and the outta-control behavior has nothing to do with being jealous of the blushing bride, but more about change. From long-term cohabitation and the end of boy-scouting at bars, to discussions turning away from Prada sample sales to questions about pregnancy and fertility – marriage brings a new dose of reality to the couple, and also to the pair’s friends.
Will our friends still be the same after they become wives? Will we get along as well? Will they worry about our “poor” single selves? Will we be able to talk as candidly and open? Will we hate the new group of friends their husbands bring with them? Will our friendship be as strong and close-knit?
A few days after the movie, K and I were passing the day Gchatting aimlessly when the conversation of varying roles people play in our lives came up. There are certain things a man can never give that a woman can. There are words your girlfriends say that would never make sense to our boyfriends. And if in the case of K and I, while a man may have connected you, it isn’t the dude that makes you friends.
So while weddings bring on madness and transformation, and often come in bulks at the start and the end of your twenties, they aren’t the end of a friendship. A wedding band may put an end to one-night stands but it doesn’t damper the connection between a woman and her ladies. And if a man tries to come between a duo, even if he is the groom, there isn’t much hope for him. Because we’ve been promising in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, since the day we named our friends our best.
In celebration of wedding season, remember to celebrate something else – your girls. Married or single, engaged or jaded, go see Bridesmaids, sans men. It’s worth the trip, the ticket, and the giggles. Just a word of advice though, don’t eat Brazilian food beforehand.
PS: Have a crazy story from being a bridesmaid? Tell me and you could win a prize pack from Bridesmaids.
loveaddictnyc.com 
Me and my girls are going to see Bridesmaids this weekend! We are in our thirties and have been through what we like to call the “starter marriage”. I finished college, got married, had a child and was divorced by 30. At this point I feel like Carrie Bradshaw’s character. I don’t need the white picket fence and I don’t want anymore children, but I still love the idea of having a partner to share my adventures with. Maybe someday my “Mr. Big” will decide to take me to the courthouse and that will be enough for me.
Have fun at all those wedding parties and drink one for me!
I have to respond to this one. 10 years ago this summer (I know, I’m old!)3 of my best friends got married in June, July and August, and I was in all of the weddings. Then another friend got married in early September, but at least I wasn’t in the wedding! I counted and I think only 2 weekends went by where I didn’t eat any cake between all the showers and actual weddings…it was crazy! I did actually throw away all three of the bridesmaids dresses I wore and decided not to have any bridesmaids in my wedding since I don’t have any sisters. I got married in my parent’s backyard on a lake with only immediate family in attendance and then went to party with friends and the rest of our family at the reception.
P.S. I also didn’t allow games at any of my wedding showers after the summer of endless shower games that almost killed me. And, all of my friends thanked me for not putting them through the fittings and having to buy a dress since they were all either pregnant or chasing after a few kids last summer when I got married.
i can not wait for your wedding day ,it will be a beautiful day.i will be so happy for you.i love you daughter