I’ve been to four weddings this year. That’s right, FOUR.
The last time that I had to do that many hours in uncomfortable shoes, I was in
my twenties. That was the first rash of weddings. All those young things
convinced they wouldn’t fall foul of the 1:3 divorce rate. Their nuptials were
expensive affairs where the boat was really pushed out; especially at those
weddings where the parents had cashed in their British Gas shares or blown
their redundancy money to make sure that there little darlings had the very
best start to married life.
Those were weddings full of hope, optimism and they usually
had a free bar. They were preceded by increasingly extravagant hen nights to
exotic locations like Dublin, Tenerife or Birmingham. T-shirts were printed;
nicknames assigned and embarrassing drinking games were played.
However, the night always ended the same way; with the same
conversation. There’d be a discussion about how everyone knew that the bride
would be first down the aisle. Followed by predictions about who would be next.
Of course, that would be pretty easy to predict. The prime candidates for early
marriage would be, in quick succession…
1.
The girl whose parents had had the most
acrimonious divorce.
2.
The girl with the most lax attitude to
contraception.
3.
The girl who had got a disappointing 2:2 in
English Literature because she’d been too busy shagging whichever posh boy had
bought her a cider and black in the student bar during in Fresher’s week.
I’m not sure whether similar discussions took place on the
stag nights. Do let me know.
Fast forward fifteen years later and the tone of the
weddings have changed. Three of this year’s weddings were second marriages.
This meant two things. Firstly, no free bar – second marriages are usually
budget affairs. Secondly, most of the conversations away from the top table
were about the first wedding and how everyone just KNEW that marriage wasn’t
going to last. There was still the ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the bride and groom
said their vows, had the first kiss and took to the floor for their first dance
to the inevitable Bruno Mars track, but the mood wasn’t optimistic – it was one
of grim determination. For God’s sake, someone ‘s got to make this marriage
thing bloody work.
As someone who has avoided marriage (or perhaps more
accurately has been avoided by marriage) this second wave of marriages has done
little to convince me to shovel myself in an unflattering white dress and pay
over the odds for a chicken dinner and a mobile disco for a hundred of my
closest friends. It’s not just the statistical improbability of it working.
It’s the mess that it leaves behind when it doesn’t work. I just can’t
understand how that wide-eyed, hope against hope can turn into utter contempt
and hatred. How you can go from standing in front of all your friends and
declaring your undying love to ringing all your friends and telling them how
your beloved is lower than worm sperm and twice as repulsive. Perhaps the
scariest thing is that your spouse is the person you entrust all your darkest
secrets and habits to only for them make them public knowledge once it all goes
tits up.
Obviously, that part of the divorce is awfully entertaining
for those not directly involved, but still…
But you can take all this misery and times it by a million
if there are children involved. I never thought that as a single, childless
woman I would become so au fait with the ins and outs of child custody law.
However, this seems to be the main dinner table conversation for my generation.
Indeed it goes like this…
The Dinner Party
Conversation/Age Matrix
18 – 23: University,
travelling to exotic countries, crap jobs.
24 – 28: House
prices, city breaks, slightly less crappy jobs.
29 – 32: Cracked nipples, sleepless
nights, epidurals etc (this is the age when everybody has their fucking tedious
offspring)
33 – 36: School places, Nostalgia for a
ruined sex life/career/house, Jamie Oliver recipes.
37 – 40: CAFCAS reports, Family Court
Appearances, Access Visits, CSA payments. Jamie Oliver Recipes.
In those final years, the only
conversational contribution that is required from the singleton is as follows…
“He/She is such a bastard/bitch.
Can’t he/she see what he/she is doing to the children? If you ask me the law is
totally biased against mothers/fathers.”
However, deep down inside, I am
thanking my lucky stars that I never had the bad fortune to procreate with
someone who would later come to hate me. Because it strikes me that marriage
weaponises children until they can be used to rip your soul out through eyes. And
yet, with all this bubbling in my mind, I still attended those four weddings. I
booked hotel rooms, took time off work, bought M&S gift cards and I raised
a glass and toasted the bride and groom. I’m a fucking hypocrite.
And do I wish those couple’s
well? Hmm, I would have done were it not for two little words: plus one. These
were people who wanted me to share in their illusion of happiness. And still,
they wounded me by adding those two words to sugar pink invites. Now, they know
me. They know that I am terminally single and yet they still placed that
pressure on me. The pressure to find a member of the opposite sex who was
prepared to also take time off work, pull on uncomfortable formal clothing and eat lukewarm food in a soulless function room.
If I could do that, I’d be the
one inviting you to a wedding, you thoughtless bastards.
And so, I RSVPed to each invite
with the following request: I won’t be using the plus one, sit me next to
someone sexy. And did they? Well, this year I’ve made polite wedding table
conversation with a very lovely gay couple, a nice Muslim lady in a niquab, the
bride’s alcoholic sister and a four year old child. A plague on all their
houses.