How to Have Fun at a Wedding - when You Don't Know Anyone There

Most adults have had the experience of attending weddings out of respect and affection for the bride or the groom, or maybe a bride or groom's family member or maybe you know no one, but your significant other does. You go out of a feeling of obligation, and you know, of the 125 people at the reception, you'll know maybe nine or ten. A wedding filled with strangers can be a real drag. The best man's toast will mean nothing to you. You don't know the people at your table, let alone any of the mob scene of friends and relations shaking it on the dance floor. Everything seems related to a big inside joke you're on the outside of, or an oft-told story you've never heard before and will never hear again. You're in the middle of a stranger's big day. This isn't going to be any fun. Or is it? There are some ways to have fun at a wedding where you don't know anyone. And I don't just mean taking advantage of the open bar or pull a Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson Wedding Crashers Scam.

At the ceremony, you can do a few obvious things: try to guess how different people are connected, consider how the bridesmaids dresses are ugly, listen to baseball through an earpiece you're hiding under your hair. But there are some other things you can do to have fun at this wedding (without getting yourself ejected.) For one thing, everything's more interesting if you have money riding on it, right? So before you go to the ceremony, place bets with your date or any other of the few people you know there, on certain things: which bridesmaid will cry first, will the rabbi or minister be looking for conversions, will grandma already be a little tipsy, will the ceremony clock in under a certain time? This will keep you occupied and interested in how the proceedings go on. Just don't start yelling "Come on, second bridesmaid! Cry already."

Another way to have fun at the actual wedding ceremony is go in with a mental checklist and try to check everything off the list. What's on the list? A person over eighty-five who's asleep, or getting there; a guy who looks like he's with the mafia, a guy under 30 who really hates wearing a suit but his girlfriend made him, another person who clearly knows no one there, a woman who is completely overdressed. You can make up any kind of list you want. Assign points for each person you can locate in the crowd.

And a last trick: play word games with the program. If the wedding has a program, you've got great fodder for fun. And everyone will think you're just checking out the details of the service. Instead, you'll be seeing how many words you can form using the letters in the word 'ceremony' or 'recessional.'

Once you get to the reception, there's plenty of good, clean fun to be had while you sit through a lot of personal, intimate, family and friends stuff that has no bearing on your life whatsoever. There are traditional things here, too: make small talk with your table mates and make new friends, dance with your date, if you have one, eat, stock up on free toiletries in the bathrooms. The usual.

But there are some more creative things you can do to keep occupied, too. One is to see how many people you can get to believe you're someone you're not. Strike up a conversation with five or so random people - make sure they're not sitting together or closely related- and tell them each a different made-up story about who you are. Be sure it's nothing that can easily be disproved. If you say you're an OB/GYN and someone goes into labor- you're caught. This can be a fun way to pass some time: messing with people you will never see again.

Another idea, chat up the wait staff that's standing at attention near your table, waiting to serve the next course. Yes, they're probably tired, perhaps disgruntled, and not necessarily more interesting than your tablemates. However, you two have something in common already: neither of you really wants to be there. Aha, a common bond.

Here's another way to have fun at a stranger's wedding - tour the reception hall or its vicinity. If you're a stranger's wedding, you might need a little break. Take a break and take a stroll. If the wedding reception is in a hotel, see what else the hotel has to offer - a gift shop, a pool, a spa, several other floors with soda machines. See if you can get a soda from each floor. If it's feasible, take a lap or too around the neighborhood and see what there is to see. Don't be gone too long, and try not to miss anything important. That probably wouldn't go over too well with your date if you have one, and would defeat the purpose of going to begin with.

Of course, there's also a place for gambling at the reception. Place bets on how long it will be before the meal is served, or before the first drunk tries to break-dance, or on how long the best man's speech will go on. You're probably going into these bets blind, since you don't know the group of people on whom you're betting, but that can just make it more fun. And why not make new friends doing this? Bring your tablemates into the pool. If you think it's out of line to bet money, bet for other things: dinner rolls, butter packets, the centerpiece.

And a last thing that might keep you entertained? Break out the camera and take random photographs. There's no reason to focus on any specific person or event, since you don't know anyone, so try to capture things that tell the story of your experience at the wedding: the places you went, the people you bet with, and how you had fun in a reception filled with strangers.