You're paying off the Wedding reception in the divorce settlement

Weddings. I will say that as a chubby little red head, I never put much effort or thought into something that unbeknownst to me, could potentially cost in the 50 000 bracket and then become the only happy memory after a messy and draining divorce ten years down the line.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the unity of two people who believe they can stand the sight of each other until the day they have joint rooms in an old age home with nurses changing their bed sheets every hour. I just think I would do it differently, like I do in a general sense, with the one who happens to be my bingo partner at the Nerina old age home.

I am watching the movie Bride Wars. One of those typical chick flicks that glamorizes everything, giving women total unrealistic expectations about their big day and maxing their fiancé’s credit card for a wedding that costs more than his annual income. Of course Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway are two very successful business women, with very successful husbands, living in New York city and the word ‘budget’ doesn’t exist in their wedding ventures. That’s total reality right there.

So, watching how painfully crucial a wedding day is to most women, I ask myself: Is there something wrong with me? I don’t want a huge white wedding with a band that caused me to take out a small loan and family members I may or may not know, attending. Neither do I want the stress of family politics, since the parents are divorced….awkward. “Dad, I’ve reserved a separate section for you and your side of the family” – to avoid my parents paths actually crossing at any stage, which is highly unlikely. Knowing my luck, the seating will probably have a glitch in it and my mother could be finding herself sitting directly opposite her ex-mother in law during dinner. Enough to cause me extreme heart palpitations and one of my bridesmaids finding me passed out in the toilet cubicle, with my white dress over my head, after drinking nearly half of the cash bar before the speeches and embarrassing not only myself, but my husband. 

Besides the family politics, I don’t think I could face trying to organise a group of women a.k.a my bridal party, if you can imagine politics at a wedding reception, imagine the politics bestowed on me when I fatefully choose the best dress for one girl and the others don’t understand why. I would rather have my sister as my Maid of Honour and the odd little one as a bridesmaid to add cuteness to the aisle stroll. Something like that. As I have said, I haven’t put much thought into it, really. 

I never actually thought I would get married, considering the previous encounters I have had and their heavy influence on me to disregard and lose complete faith in a life-time commitment. But, since I am with someone who has finally changed my thought processes, I guess it’s changed. We were talking about weddings recently, casually. Don’t stress, we aren’t planning to tie ourselves down anytime soon. We both agree that we don’t want to spend thousands and thousands of rands on a wedding. Instead, we’d rather have a really small and inexpensive ceremony with a party afterwards, spending more time and money on the actual honeymoon, since this is about the two of us in the end, am I not right? Instead of sitting a week after the wedding with bills we have to pay instalments on for the next year, I would rather go somewhere overseas that we both want to visit and spend more time and money together, alone. A bit of an anti-climax when you have the credit card company phoning you to ask why you haven’t paid an instalment on the big purchase you made at the florist six months ago. 

And as most people know, I wouldn’t have the typical traditional wedding anyway. Ask anyone who knows me well enough: A black wedding dress, skull cutlery and a tattooed wedding ring. (The wedding ring idea yeah, not the rest of it. Close enough).  

My perfect idea would be to get married on the beach, with my closest family and friends, cocktails in tow and then heading out for a huge party, with no set menu and ridiculously expensive wedding cake. Instead, I’d like to plan a two week excursion with my new husband to go to Thailand. Sounds good to me. 

Maybe I will change one day, maybe I will max that credit card out and sit with endless bills that I and my husband struggle to pay off or maybe I’ll go the simple route and end up on some tropical beach having honeymoon sex in a vacant area, thinking that I couldn’t have done it any better. I believe that weddings are taken out of context nowadays and all the focus is on how great it should turn out instead of just getting married and then enjoying the time afterwards, stress free and relaxed with the person you chose to tie yourself too. If divorce ever does come into play down the road, you’ll still remember the tropical holiday and not wonder what you could have spent that 30 000 you forked out for the wedding, on instead. Some food for some thought.