It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding

This being prime bride season, a few thoughts about weddings. Of all family rituals, weddings are the most likely to bring out pent-up family tensions. At christenings, everyone's just so excited -- and relieved the mother is married -- no one dredges up hard feelings. During funerals, families are too devastated to argue, and while the deceased may be highly pissed, she's not saying much.

Then there are the big '0' birthdays, bar mitzvahs, graduations, grandparents' 50^th wedding anniversaries, holidays and summer reunions, all providing the kindling for familial conflagration. Of course, divorces can be messy, but other than in West Virginia, they're usually not considered family affairs. No doubt, weddings have the potential to be the most painful of family rituals. (However, the vote from baby Jewish boys is not yet in.)

As if one family isn't already under sufficient stress and in enough turmoil preparing for the big event, the very purpose of the thing requires the involvement of a whole other family harboring its own ancient animosities, petty jealousies and peculiar ways of doing things.

The mother of the groom makes it clear she wouldn't be satisfied if her son married a combination of the Virgin Mary and Martha Stewart. The father of the bride keeps dropping hints that eloping would have saved wear and tear on his Visa card. The mother of the bride is a wreck trying to figure who's table she can stick with dotty old Aunt Grace and how best to keep Cousin Rachael's redneck kids away from her new in-law's Yuppie nephews to avoid a food fight. And the father of the groom, having no official assignments, will spend the entire reception ogling the tender young bridesmaids and getting plastered in the hotel bar. If any of the parents are divorced and re-coupled, the odds of conflict quadruple.

The only people in the wedding party who are completely oblivious about the intrigues are the bride and groom. Their friends, who aren't relations and therefore have no axes to grind, always have the best time.

The only thing that saves this opëra comique is the open bar at the reception along with various nephews who inevitably show up with hip flasks. By the time the meal is served and Uncle Frank finally gets the message to stop banging on his wine glass when the mother of the bride gives him the finger, half the guests are well lubricated and the other half are on their way. What else could account for adults standing in a circle doing the Chicken Dance?

Kids love weddings. Little girls get to wear makeup and one inch heals; little boys get to sneak sips out of abandoned beer glasses. Teenagers dread weddings, but then end up falling in love with third cousins, they considered geeks the last time they met, after sharing a purloined carafe of red wine and sucking face in the back stairwell. This will become one of their fondest memories shared with knowing glances at all future family reunions.

As the evening wears on and more coats, ties, high heels and inhibitions are shed, the real coupling of the families takes place; except for Aunt Grace, who as usual is mortified but can never seem to find her car keys so she can leave. The groom's father dances with the bride's mother; the bride's stepfather dances with the groom's stepmother; the groom's stepfather dances with the girlfriend of the bride's father; the bride's brother dances with the groom's best man. Anyway, you get the idea.

Sisters, aunts and female cousins form an alliance with their opposite numbers in the other family to identify every available bachelor ensuring not one male prey remains unstalked. Arranging for their designated bride-to-be and their choice for alpha male to catch the bouquet and the garter, they assume once he cops a feel of skin placing it on her leg, he will become uncontrollably smitten, and the whole wedding drama can begin again. Much to their dismay, the single groomsmen will have none of it, instead having determined which of the bride's attendants is most likely to engage in sequential sex and are busy serving her shooters.

In their advanced stages of inebriation, the families manage in one night to grow an entire new set of relatives whom they can mock, scorn and aggravate for the rest of their natural lives, guaranteeing that at all future family gatherings, the level of testiness will automatically double.