What’s to love about weddings?

I’ve been to three weddings in my life. None was mine. I don’t like weddings. I like wedding couples even less because nowadays, after stressing us with committees and adding us to WhatsApp groups without our permission, they don’t stay married longer than it takes us to digest their wedding cake. I think lately, more people are opting to have wedding than to have a marriage because during weddings, unlike marriage, nobody snores.

Plus there’s the promise of a honeymoon after a wedding.

I attended my first wedding some 10-years or so ago because my best friend was getting married and I was in the line up. It was back in the day when everybody was too lazy to have their reception anywhere but Safari Park Hotel. It was a nice wedding.

A wonderful band played; the bride’s father gave a rousing and unforgettable speech. He told his son-in-law, in short, that even at his age he still fights with his wife, that fights don’t stop, they go well into old age. Everybody clapped. Except the women.

After this wedding I turned down dozens of wedding invitations until my younger brother decided to have one and have me in the line up.

Thankfully, he saved everybody from going back to Safari Park Hotel. Funnily enough, his best man was my best friend whose wedding I mention up there. He stole that friend from me. Then stole another close friend.

My brother is the type of man who steals your friends. Now I keep some friends away from him.

LOUSY SUITS

For his reception we went to some grounds in Upper Hill. The bride was beautiful. Their daughter was smashing and naughty and bright eyed. He looked stately and proud. We had a whale of a time, dancing and drinking until the small hours of the morning.

Our suits were lousy though. Normally you will find a reason to wear a suit after the wedding. I haven’t found a reason to wear the suit my brother made us wear for his wedding. It was a shade of blue you can’t go to a cocktail function with. I tried selling it to a cousin of ours after the wedding but when he said he’d pay Sh5,000 I said I’d rather leave it hanging in my wardrobe. Which I have for the past four or so years. But lately I’m increasingly getting open minded to accept that Sh5,000. Unfortunately time settled on my cousin’s midsection so that suit wouldn’t fit him anyway.

After my brother’s wedding I settled in the knowledge that I wouldn’t attend any more weddings, ever… unless our last born brother decides to get married, which doesn’t seem likely given that you need a bride for that happen and he currently isn’t meeting anyone worth marrying.

So I was safe – until a good friend of mine and a business partner who also writes for this paper sent me a wedding invite on WhatsApp. I groaned. She made me diarise it six months before the date because she knew I was going to make excuses or leave town conveniently.

BEST WEDDING

A few weeks ago she had a garden wedding in a quaint place called Ol Arabel Gardens in Ridgeways. It’s probably the best wedding I have attended in my life because it was so simple and minimalist.

White seats, about 50 or so; a small white podium and five metres away, the reception with white seats and white table cloths. The guests were few and there was no big show business.

I was happy that I didn’t see any of our overbearing ‘celebrities’. She came from a house in the compound with her father, a slim, tall-ish man in a fitting suit and a shock of white hair. He looked like the kind of guy who says the deepest lines in movies.

She cried a river as they walked down the aisle, her hand clinging onto Daddy’s biceps. Daddy also cried another river. Father and daughter cried as they trudged on. A drone buzzed overhead like an obese bee.

The groom and the groomsmen looked so young, boyish, restless and playful. My friend had a cake of make-up on and ridiculous eyelashes.

I had never seen her like that, never in tears and never under that weight of make-up. She cried during the vows. She cried when the groom said his vows.

She kept crying and crying and I leaned and whispered in the ear of the poor lady I had dragged to the wedding for moral support, “What if she’s crying like that because she’s changed her mind?” It was a great wedding. I didn’t stick around for the reception, though, but we had a cocktail just after the brief service.

I have the strength for two more weddings in my life; my son’s and my daughter’s. I hope they will be simple, they will be fast and I will at least find peace in my heart to accept the boy my daughter will be marrying given that he would have won after my subtle intimidation, abductions, threats, blackmail and outright pleading on my part to please leave my little girl alone.

Which means he will have earned her. I also hope I don’t cry when I walk her down the aisle. God, I hope I don’t cry! That will be more embarrassing than the speech I plan to make.