After a busy week, and today's civic holiday, I finally have time to sit down, finish an opened beer leftover from, God knows, Saturday, and tell you all about my best friend's wedding.
Spoiler: I didn't try and break it up so I could marry the best friend myself. Any similarities between me and Julia Roberts stop at the curly hair. Also, my friend Katie is a great person, and her now-husband Martin is a lovely guy, and they're so perfect together, they finally made me understand why Shakespearean comedies have to end with a wedding.
I left Canada at 9am in the morning on a Thursday, managing to get on a plane with my bridesmaids dress even though my mother was convinced one, or all of the following things would happen: I would forget to wake up, I would forget my passport, I would forget my dress or I would pack it in my checked luggage and the airline would forget to put it on the plane. None of that happened. The flight was all of ten minutes late, and my greatest concern during the time was why Last Tango in Paris was one of the movies you could choose to watch in your seat - did international flights get the Salo: 120 Days of Sodom option?
Katie met me at the airport, like the world's most adorable argument against the accuracy of the Bridezilla stereotype. She was excited for the ceremony, because who doesn't like cake and sparkly shit (raw vegans; the Amish.) But she also didn't approach it like we were storming the beaches of Normandy, and one flubbed toast would mean the fascists won. Though I finally appreciated the idea of a wedding rehearsal. Before, I figured they were just for people who had worked dry ice and live doves into proceedings, and you could just stumble up to the altar otherwise. No. At least not with bridesmaids, and not in a church, where hymns are going to be sung. I appreciated knowing when I was supposed to return to my pew, and when I was supposed to march up the aisle, or else there would have been a lot of awkward grinning.
Though that did come later, at the groom's dinner. Katie and I used to be roommates in university, and our "relationship" was also the most satisfying one I had then, everything else being hilariously, cosmically stunted. Like, crushes-on-profs stunted. I would have gladly been a part of that hookup culture the media is frenzied for, but no one would drunkenly bang me, no matter how much flavoured vodka I drank. The closest I got to anything was with this boy named J, where it was 100% emotional and, now, 100% embarrassing.
And there he was, next to me and the pasta dishes, asking if I wanted a hug. It came with a gingerly administered back pat, courtesy of yours truly. I laughed about it with Katie later, though there was a bitter taste of nostalgia in my mouth. Years years back, when I was running up my phone bill talking to this guy, I was convinced I would run into him and his girlfriend at Katie's wedding. Except at the time I thought it would be a different groom, and I would still be in love with this guy. And here we were. Some of it had come true, but not the essential parts, and we were older, wiser and so much happier.
The next day was a blur of hairstyling and photographs, until the ceremony. Katie looked beautiful, wearing a spectacular beaded dress, a veil from her great-grandmother, and her glasses. I'm not religious, and I'm also probably not the marrying kind, but I almost cried when the priest introduced Martin and Katie as a married couple. The ceremony might not be for you, and the political and sociological freight of a wedding is imposing, but the idea of commitment and growth is still there, under everything. And so I smiled instead, and even danced with J at the reception.
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