21 Aralık 2011 Çarşamba

Wedding Chronicles


"When is your big day?" is the most common question when you decide to get hitched. Big day is really a big day!

The whole organisation is full of clichés. I'm not talking about clichés like the fake cake that you pretend like slicing and offering to your just wed spouse or critisizing eyes that wander around your dress, hair and make-up, curious elderly people who check out the amount of golden gifts you receive etc.

In fact, invitations are the biggest hassle. How many people you will invite? How are you going to classify them? Who is going to sit with whom?

Take a look at the categories:

- Political invites: people who you are supposed to invite even though they won't come
- Mandatory invites: your relatives and some colleagues

- Real invites: People who will make your day and who made your life so far.

No matter how precisely you plan everything you will have two surprises: some people that you think 100% would come won't turn up and some will turn up unexpectedly. When you handle the invitation if the person avoids eye contact and moan this is the first signal that they will improve this excuse-like situation later on.

I should mention the last two day's typical excuses too. Last two days are critical. Prior to the big day rock and roll starts. You will receive theatrical phone calls and messages.

All of a sudden they will have to look after their kids and nanny will be off, married ones will blame the husbands or wives, most popular excuse is sudden back pain or diarhea. Funerals are life-saving too. It will either be anniversary of a death or first month etc. What is awkward is people wait until the last moment to realise that it is the anniversay of a death JUST on your big day. Blimey! Some will be travelling and they just miss your wedding. Oh poor travellers. Bless them.

Apparently no one can dare to say that they just don't feel like coming, they don't want to spend money on a new dress, or a gift, they always fancied you or your spouse to be, they don't like weddings or whatever the real reason is.

Big day is a big day that flies. How about your house? The house that people keep promising to visit one day. There are many clichés in the house as well.

You won't understand women's kitchen stuff fetishism. It's even more dangerous than shoe-holics and shopaholics! You will end up with 5 sets of cups, countless mugs, zillions of forks, spoons and plates, trays, glasses, pans, bits and pieces that you don't even know what to use for?!

How about the style? It's hard to disagree with Allison Pearson:

"Is it coincidence that we spend far more than our parents ever did on the restyling and improvement of our homes - homes in which we spend less and less time because we are out earning the money to pay for Italian kitchen and stripped oak floors? It's as though home had become some kind of stage set for a play in which we one day hope to star."