It was billed as the wedding of the year, and quite possibly the decade. My Coral Ridge neighbors were all buzzing with the details and angling for an invite. The reception was at a very swank resort on Palm Beach Island and the bride’s dress was reputed to have cost well into five-figures. Recession or not, the bride’s parents were giving their little girl the wedding of her dreams.
The mother of the bride and I have been good friends since high school and have kept in touch in all the years since. I am one of the few people that remember that she, like I, came from very good, solid peasant stock. My friend’s current home on a point lot on the Intracoastal is the result of a very good marriage, not a trust fund, but of course I’ll never tell.
My friend prides herself on doing everything by the book and puts a very high value on what she calls “class.” Accordingly, the wedding band was the best available and the ice sculptures were detailed beyond belief. There was a sting quartet playing the “Canon” as we walked in, although, curiously this may have been the only selection they knew how to play since they played it for almost an hour. The cake came from the best bakery on Las Olas Blvd and the orchids were shipped in from South America. The mother of the bride wore Vera Wang.
Given the pre-wedding build-up, the crowd was in a high state of anticipation as we waited for the ceremony to begin. It is not insignificant to mention that the open bar that was available prior to the ceremony was largely responsible for the feeling of well being manifested by the congregation. Since the ceremony started late, it also gave everyone time to have one more cocktail and we were to the point that we were ready to bypass the ceremony altogether and get right to the dancing. That extra cocktail also gave certain guests time to transition from admiring the flowers to giving a frank critique of the arrangements.
The program (can you believe they had programs?) indicated that the bride and groom would share vows that they had written themselves and I immediately drooped. After more weddings than I can count where the bride and groom wrote vows that sounded like they had been written by either Hallmark or Lifetime Television, I knew there those vows would be syrupy sweet and tedious. Generally, in this situation either the bride or the groom, or usually both, tears up at their own eloquence. “Yes, yes,” I want to say, “we know you’re soulmates. I give the marriage a year. Can we go back to the open bar now?” In my experience, most brides and grooms would do well to stick with, “In sickness and health….”
But then the bride began her vows and the crowd was suddenly riveted. “Right from the night we met when we hooked up at my place,” she began, “I knew you were the man for me.” The bride’s mother’s face was frozen in horror. “The next morning when we woke up I was sober,” she continued, “but I still found you attractive.” The bride’s mother had the exact look on her face as a dead opossum I once found in the pool. By the time the bride mentioned the groom’s size 12 feet, her mother looked on the verge of collapse. The priest’s mouth was frankly hanging open and some guests were already twittering their uninvited neighbors.
In a kind of stupor, I don’t remember the groom’s vows except that he used the term “38 Double-D” when describing his bride. Twice. This clearly had “In sickness and health…” beat by a mile. After the vows, the reception itself was kind of an anti-climax, because everyone knows that expensive Society weddings are always dull. But always classy.