Why I hate weddings

I dislike weddings. I avoid attending them if I can. Because you have to wear something appropriate, and sit among gaudy and flowery things.

You also have to actually shop for a gift, something that doesn’t include a dinner set, a blender, a bedside lamp, a microwave, a painting or a set of carved wooden cutlery.

But even when you get a really unique gift there are always those people who will upstage everybody else by buying something ridiculous like a 67-inch TV. Or a car. Then all your gifts are quickly forgotten.

I dislike weddings even more when you are in the line-up and you have to attend those photo sessions in the garden for a round of clichéd poses of people jumping in unison, people extending their shod feet for the cameras, lying on the grass and so forth.

Then there is the reception with the speeches and goofy dancing and more pictures until some godforsaken hour.

Honestly I’d rather be elsewhere, far from this blissful charade.

Wedding committee

But nothing takes the cake for my dislike for weddings than being “invited” to be in a wedding committee. It’s even worse if you don’t even know these chaps that well.

Maybe you grew up with them 100 years ago and people grew up and sought their own paths and maybe you only recently reconnected on Facebook and once in a while you “Like” his posts. But he calls you up and says, “Boss, I have a wedding in September and I’d love if you would be a member of my committee…”

You could say no. You could say September is the month you go up the mountain for your annual spiritual intervention.

You could ask, “Why me? I didn’t think we were that close!” But you don’t; instead you act flattered. He tells you that you will be expected to part with Sh35,000 as a committee member.

Of course, that’s no problem; people have to move their finances around to make sure that you get the wedding that you want and that you jet off to Dubai for your honeymoon. Never mind that some of us forking out these amounts haven’t been past Busia.

You want a new white gold ring? Of course, committee members will be asked to add another Sh6,000 from the kindness of their hearts.

Anything for you to have the fanciest rings around  because successful marriages are hinged on the type of ring you wear. Any more requests for the committee?

Because people are just thrilled and happy to accommodate your extravagance to make your day a complete fairy tale.

However, contributing this minimum amount isn’t the worst part; you will learn that you have also been assigned a task should the lovely couple decide not to use the services of a wedding planner.

Often the task is as exciting as finding the right venue for the after-party. This involves making calls to numerous establishments with nice ballrooms and whose prices are just right.

But you can manage that surely, because you have a timeline of eight months.

Then of course the chairman will start a WhatsApp group of all the committee members, some of whom you have never heard of. They will call it something like “Patrick and Susan’s Wedding.”

And there are days you wish they had called it something apt like “Spammers,” because there are days you will step away from your phone and come back to find 200 unread messages in the group and you have to scroll back and read them all in case there is an item that requires your attention.

Of course the group will also be used for memes, Internet jokes, inspirational messages, “mirth-filled” videos, pictures of wedding themes and sometimes a selfie from a member who considers herself a beauty queen. But it’s all good.

Some messages will come in at odd hours. So your phone will be trilling with messages in the middle of the night, because there are two over-enthusiastic committee members who are up late discussing the merits of matching the groom’s tie with the paper-napkins. But that’s fine, why sleep when you can read those stimulating messages at midnight?

And so the wedding will intrude into your life for the next eight months. It will be in your phone and in your email and in your text messages.

And you will be required to show as much enthusiasm as the ones tying the knot. You will hang in there with only one thought in mind: the day you get to the Promised Land, which, in this case, will be the day you finally exit that WhatsApp group.  

After going through this rigmarole, you will expect the couple’s marriage to last, in the very least, longer than three years. Surely!