People like to get married in the summer.  This is great, because the only time I like wearing a suit is when it's 95 degrees and humid as fuck outside.  Now, I'm a big fan of weddings in general, mostly because the words "open bar" send me into an orgasmic seizure, and there's always at least one drunken uncle running around pantsless screaming the words to the Electric Slide while burying his face into a bridesmaid's cleavage to keep me entertained (which is also twice as great because while this is going on, no one notices that I'm double-fisting Jack and cokes and trying not to fall over every time I get up to go back to the bar).  There are downsides to weddings, though, apart from the fact that wearing a suit in the summer brings me very close to melting and shaves roughly 5 more years off my life.  First off is the music.  You hear the same songs at just about every wedding: I Will Survive, all four versions of The Electric Slide, that Hot Hot Hot song by Buster Poindexter, Staying Alive, Play That Funky Music, etc., and the evening always ends with YMCA to let everyone know it's time to get the fuck out.  They also play a lot of shitty love songs that all blend together in my mind so the only one I can think of right now is Wind Beneath My Wings, and as much as I love the movie Beaches and as hot as Bette Midler is, I don't need to hear that song at a wedding, and not just because it makes me cry.  Another downside is being stuck at a table with people you've never met before but will undoubtedly hate with every fiber of your being by the end of the night.

Yesterday I went to my first Jewish Wedding, which was also the first Judaism-related event I have ever been to.  I've never been to a Barmitzva (I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong, and I don't care) or anything like that, and all I really know about it is that it's a ceremony where a 13-year-old Jewish boy gets circumcised by a hooker right after he covers her in gefilte fish and sacrifices a pig to send the message that kosher is the way to go.  A Batmitzva (yeah, spelled wrong I'm sure) is the same thing, only it's for a girl and the hooker is replaced with Batman and circumcision with fisting.  So going to a Jewish wedding was a bit of a learning experience for me since every other wedding I've been to has been Christian except for the one that was out in the woods where everyone got naked and there was some crazy lady rocking out on a Pan flute the entire time with some guy in a dress talked about the goddess blessing unions and shit.  Something I learned: Jewish wedding ceremonies are as boring as Catholic wedding ceremonies.  One difference is that songs during a Jewish wedding are fucking awesome because it sounds like the singer's choking and they do everything under a little tent.  Organ players, however, are equally rhythmless and tone-deaf for both (not that I'm expecting good music or anything, but I figure at least one member of the congregation probably knows how to tap their feet to a steady beat).  The other difference is that apparently Jewish people think it's a sin to have air conditioning in their synagogues.  I think that because it was seriously 900 degrees in there and in the reception hall.  So Jewish weddings and Catholic weddings are basically the same, except what I've mentioned already and instead of having snack time I had to wear a little beanie hat that fell off my head every time I dozed off from a combination of boredom and heat stroke.

At the reception, there was a band.  It's been a while since I was at a wedding where they had a band instead of a DJ.  At first, I thought it would be kind of cool, or at least different.  Well, the only real difference is that instead of hearing Gloria Gaynor sing I Will Survive, I heard a portly  woman with bad hair singing it while some guy with a fading glory pony tail made Carribean sounds with his keyboard for some reason.  They played all the usual inoffensive watered-down crap you hear at every other wedding except for one song; they did not play The Electric Slide.  And I don't mean "they didn't play all four versions of it," I mean they didn't play it once. Not that I was complaining, but some asshole did and requested that the band (which was gayly called Monte Carlo) play it.  They didn't know how to play it. Again, not that I was complaining.  All I want to know is how it's even remotely fucking possible to be a wedding band and not know how to play The Electric Slide.  You can even fake it if you're far enough into the wedding that everyone's too drunk to tell the difference.  I don't know how a band is picked for a wedding, but I had assumed that "Do you know how to play The Electric Slide?" would be the first question during the interview.  Oh well.

This is also the first wedding I was ever at where my table wasn't 8 miles away from the middle of the room where the bride and groom are.  They didn't have a bridal party table.  Instead the couple got their own little table (called a "Sweatheart Table" - lame) and all the bridesmaids and groomsmen got to sit with their dates, which was great for me because I knew no one there.  My girlfriend [at the time] was the maid of honor, so I got to sit at the bridesmaids' table (it also meant we were the last ones to leave besides the bride and her parents).  At some point towards the end of the night I got stuck to talking with the best man.  I don't deal well with people I don't know, and whenever I'm in a conversation with some random person I don't particularly want to talk to it follows this pattern:

• Awkward silence

• The other person makes small talk to make the situation less awkward

• I give the most minimal answer I can come up with

• repeat until I pull my pants down in an attempt to get the other person to walk away.

• Sometimes it's the other way around, but not usually.

Weddings are chock full of these little awkward conversations, but that's what booze is for.  So somehow I'm at the table alone with the best man.  He asked me how I liked the service, which I thought was kind of a weird question since I assumed he meant the religious aspects of it, and I said it was the first one I've ever been to and couldn't compare it to anything.  Then he started going off about how he once went to an Irish Catholic wedding and there was a guy playing bagpipes the whole time so he assumed it was normal.  Now, I have been to one wedding a long time ago where there was a guy playing the bagpipes (and I'm pretty sure it was a drunken uncle and not someone paid to do so), but I'm Irish and raised Catholic, and I've been to a lot of weddings.  I told him this, he probably assumed I was lying in order to hide the mysterious secrets of the Irish Catholic wedding tradition from the Jews, and I walked away to try to dance (I wasn't wasted, but I was drunk enough to pretend I knew how to dance and not care if my fly was down - which it was but that's not the point).  That's right, it was an awkward enough conversation where dancing was a welcome alternative.

Other people at the table weren't much better.  One bridesmaid was nice enough and didn't make me want to pour the water from the centerpiece over her head, but her husband looked exactly like Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts, so I knocked about ten points off her coolness rating.  I gave her husband an extra 4,000 points though because Donkey Lips fucking rules.  Then there was a girl without a date (who was kind of attractive - or at least attractive enough to easily be able to get someone to go with her) who did nothing but talk about how she's on the Atkin's diet and lost 40 pounds and is still on the diet because if she eats one piece of bread she'll balloon up right before our eyes.  I was expecting her to break out a briefcase and start selling Atkin's diet books at the table.  Then another bridesmaid was there with her boyfriend.  She was annoying and one of her eyes was about twice as big as the other, but he looked exactly like some kid I went to high school with, and I kept calling him "Firely" (that was the guy's name that I went to high school with).  I think he got insulted, but whatever.  It's not like he knows my name.  Then, there was the fourth bridesmaid; the bridesmaid that was still fucking pissed she wasn't the maid of honor.  She was there with her fiancée, and god damn did they fucking deserve each other.  They were so sickeningly all over each other and so socially inept that I can't believe they resisted the temptation to call each other "Pookie" or "Shmoopie."  She didn't say one word to me all night. Again, not that I was complaining.  But after hearing horror stories about this bitch I was waiting all night for her to say something ignorant to me or my girlfriend [at the time] just so I could start making fun of her and not feel bad for causing trouble.  This was a big girl, and it would've taken only one cheeseburger-related comment to shut her up for the rest of the night.  Or to get so depressed that she would have eaten her fiancée.  Oh well.  I did, however, get to see her and her fiancée hold hands all night, even when eating and taking pictures, as well as giving each other cute little kisses all night, and that was fucking great.  Well, either kisses or they were licking gravy off of each others' faces, one or the other.

One part of a wedding that's great for comedy: the speeches and toasts.  I love listening to toasts at a wedding, and I got a front-row seat this time since my table wasn't somewhere in the back of the kitchen.  I'm not talking about the best man's speech; those are typically filled with bad, over-thought-out jokes that receive only pity laughter and usually amount to "when I met your new wife, I wanted to fuck her so hard she'd be in a wheelchair for a week.  But she's yours and I fucking hate you for it.  I hope you die, you woman-stealer.  Oh, and one time in 8th grade, the groom had a hard on in the shower room after gym class.  Fag!" Ok, only some of them are like that.  But there's always one toast you can definitely count on: the drunken relative toast.  This is always either one of the fathers or an uncle.  The father of the groom last night did a toast about his family's immigration history.  None of it had anything to do with his son's wedding or any wedding in general or even made sense.  All I got from it is that I should move to America because Lithuania (or where ever he said - I stopped paying attention) sucks.  Last week I was at a different wedding, however, and someone's uncle was babbling into the microphone about god fucking knows what.  He was rambling on and on about how "the two turned into four" and about the last time he fired a rifle.  And it was fucking hilarious.  And I'm sure it would've gone on another 20 minutes had he not been interrupted by the glass-clinkers.  And that brings me to the next thing I hate about weddings.

You all know who the glass-clinkers are, but in case you've never been to a wedding and are reading this in a hut in Zaire right now, the glass-clinkers are the people that constantly bang their silverware into their plates and glasses to get the bride and groom to kiss.  More often than not, these people are all grouped together in the same table well beforehand. Now I could see having an obnoxious round of glass-clinking break out once, maybe twice during a wedding just so some people can get it out of their systems.  Instead of getting it over with, they treat glass-clinking like they're all fucked up on heroin, and each round of glass-clinking makes them even hungrier for more of it, and conversely each round of glass-clinking is less fulfilling than the previous.  By the end of the wedding not even five minutes can go by without these people banging away on their glasses, whooping and hollering the entire time, forcing the bride and groom to kiss so much that they're starting to swallow each other's souls like the little troll thing in Cat's Eye. People, enough with the fucking glass clinking. What do you really get out of watching other people kiss?  Does it fill some kind of hole in your own life when other people suck face in front of you, letting you vicariously live through them because no one would kiss you even if it was a well-documented fact that that doing so would make a wish-granting genie fly out of your ass and one of the wishes could even be making that person forget they kissed you?  Seriously, knock that shit off. It's really bad by the end of the night when the glass-clinkers are drunk and have no self control so they start smashing their glasses in an extremely desperate attempt and forcing two people to hook up.  And do you know the worst part about the glass-clinkers?  THEY'RE ALWAYS SITTING ONE FUCKING TABLE AWAY FROM ME. STOP THAT SHIT, IT'S DRIVING EVERYBODY NUTS.

So, if and when I get married, I'm taking a huge shit on wedding traditions and starting my own.  I already have a list of 13 guidelines I hope - fuck that, demand - for my own wedding.

1. The actual ceremony can be held in a church.  However, it will be ten minutes long.  I don't want a mass. I don't want to eat stale crackers that stick to your teeth.  I don't want to hear the story about how God created Eve so that Adam could get his rocks off.  I don't want the priest to self-righteously drone on about what his celibate (other than little boys) ass thinks about marriage.  I want people to file in, say the vows, give the rings, say "I do," give my bride's ex-boyfriend a chance to drunkenly stumble into the church to say, "Stop the wedding!  She should be marrying me!" right before he shits himself, kiss the bride, and file out.

2. There's a new thing with weddings.  People don't throw rice anymore.  They blow bubbles.  And I thought gay marriage was still illegal in this state.  No one is blowing pansy ass bubbles at my wedding.  You can either throw rice, throw midgets, or breathe fireballs like circus performers do.

3. At most weddings, the reception is three hours after the ceremony.  Why?  Especially for people from far away, what the fuck are the guests going to do for three hours while the wedding party gets their pictures taken?  Last summer I was at a wedding, waiting three hours for the reception to start, and to kill time me and two people I didn't know well actually hung out in a K-Mart for two of those hours.  And I don't care if you've had a Jehova's Witness selling you eternal salvation while you were slowly being dipped into boiling acid, two hours in a K-Mart all dressed up is the longest two hours of your life. Instead, you can start drinking for free as quickly as it takes you to get from the church to the reception hall.  It can be a race.

4. At the reception, the first person to clink a glass gets eaten.  No exceptions.

5. Instead of having my best man give a toast when the reception starts, I want this guy to do it.

6. No Electric Slide.  No fucking disco.  The only music I want to hear all night is Parliament, Prince, and !!!. And the song playing for my first dance with my new wife?  "Put It In Your Mouth" by Akinlyele.

7. When it's time to toss the bouquet, all single women must strip down to their underwear and get into the Jello pit in the middle of the room.  Then, my new wife will toss the bouquet into the Jello pit and the girls must all wrestle for it.  The only rule for this wrestling match is: There are no rules.

8. No old, crusty servers and bartenders.  Midgets and chimps will do their jobs.

9. I demand there be Moon-Bounce inflatable trampoline cage thing at the reception.  Those things are fucking sweet.

10. The wedding will not be in the middle of the summer when it's fucking hot.  And if that's impossible for whatever reason, the hall will be extremely air conditioned and anyone who wants to wear shorts and a T-shirt can, but only if the T-shirt has a giant picture of my face on it.

11. Every wedding I've been to, the dinner menu looked really good.  All very good appetizers and entrees. However, when you get the food, 75% of the time it's inedible to the point where it's probably illegal to sell it in a high school cafeteria.  Seriously, it's horrible.  You know how if you eat McDonald's, the processed food kicks the shit out of your stomach?  Well, most wedding food calls your stomach's mom a fat bitch.  It's that bad.  So, at my wedding, we will actually have good food, and if my kidnapping plot goes without incident, I'll get that "BAM!" guy to cook everything.  Speaking of the "BAM!" guy, I wonder how he's taking the fact that his 15 minutes ran out about 5 years ago.

12. If you can't breakdance, you're not allowed to dance.  No exceptions.  If one fucking person does the mashed potato or the cabbage patch or anything a nerdy white guy does in every movie where he gets "hilariously" teamed up with a hip black guy or sassy black chick and eventually starts dancing, they will be eaten along with the glass-clinkers.

13. Drinks at most weddings have too much ice and hardly any liquor.  Not even 9-year-old girls that just gave blood would get drunk off of a couple drinks from a wedding.  That said, bartenders at my wedding will make drinks correctly.  They will only overfill the glass with ice on request.  They will actually put more than a quarter of a shot of liquor in the glass before filling the rest up with soda.  They will not give you a hard time when you're on you 15th Jack and coke when they assume you're drunk even though if you add up all the liquor you've drank in those 15 glasses, it adds up to about three real Jack and cokes from a real bar.

I think everyone can agree that if my wedding goes as planned, it will be the best wedding in the history of weddings. All weddings after mine will be a pathetic attempt at recreating the sheer amount of awesome the was my wedding.  But until I get married and raise the bar, do the world a favor: don't encourage the Electric Slide by dancing to it, and if you clink your glass more than once (which is arguably too much, but I'll give you social retards one), you're a fucking asshole.

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