{"id":25069,"date":"2012-01-05T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=25069"},"modified":"2012-01-04T17:30:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T22:30:36","slug":"the-wedding-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/05\/the-wedding-party\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wedding Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As Kim Kardashian recently reminded us, marriage is no longer the inevitable result of a wedding; the ritual is easily divorced from the institution. This is a source of some comfort to the single person approaching thirty, bombarded by engagement announcements and Facebooked wedding photo albums. Just a few more years of this, you tell yourself, and people will start getting divorced.<\/p>\n

So this fall I was tickled to receive\u00a0an invitation to a fake wedding in New Orleans. With all the phoniness announced up front, there was no need for jealousy (I\u2019ll die alone!),\u00a0 anxiety (She\u2019s making a terrible mistake!), or expensive gifts (But I can\u2019t even afford health insurance!). <\/p>\n

The fake wedding was organized by my younger sister and her friends, a group of artists, actors, filmmakers, and writers in their twenties. Most are from the East or West coasts, having migrated to New Orleans in search of low rent and the kind of fun that withers in a climate of high property values. Part of the lost generation that graduated from college just as the economy collapsed, they have not even attempted to pursue traditional careers. In this spirit, the wedding was organized on a shoestring budget, with homemade food and homemade dresses and a pay-as-you-go bar at the usual rock-bottom New Orleans prices. The organizers paid something out of pocket, but it wasn\u2019t much. The fake wedding was, among other things, a reminder that ingenuity is still a valuable asset\u2014that you can still get married on the cheap.<\/p>\n

As I flew into Louis Armstrong Airport in early November\u00a0(first stop: the daiquiri stand), I prepared myself for a sardonic, booze-fueled critique of the bankrupt institution of marriage. But I soon discovered that the fake wedding wasn\u2019t about satire or cynicism. It was a sincere effort to organize the kind of communal joy\u00a0that\u2019s in such short supply these days. When I asked my sister how they\u2019d come up with the idea, she told me, \u201cWe were sitting around and talking about how much fun weddings are, and how much we love love. But none of us are getting married any time soon, so we decided to have a fake wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea caused contempt or bafflement in many of my friends from New York, but in New Orleans a fake wedding seemed perfectly reasonable. At the fake bachelor party, the fake rehearsal dinner, and the fake Jewish ceremony on the waterfront, onlookers were never surprised to hear that we were having a fake wedding. The natives smiled indulgently and the tourists were perplexed (Is this an authentic custom? I didn\u2019t see it in the guidebook), but no one was shocked. This may explain why it was so easy to find people to participate.<\/p>\n

At brunch the day before the wedding, Sam and Paul\u2014handsome best friends on the tail end of a postcollegiate cross-country adventure\u2014overheard the following conversation between two well-dressed women with Southern drawls. Paul recounted it to me as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cUncle Rat is dead,\u201d said the first woman philosophically.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe put my baby in the washing machine,\u201d the other commented.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he didn\u2019t turn it on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made a great picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was his favorite restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe loved the quiche.\u201d Making sure that the waiters weren\u2019t watching, one of the women sprinkled Uncle Rat\u2019s ashes into the flowerpot beside her.<\/p>\n

Sam and Paul invited the ladies to join the groom\u2019s family. The ladies, who were quite tipsy, accepted without hesitation; weddings and funerals are a natural pairing. At the fake rehearsal dinner that night they played their parts with gusto, clutching the groom and pretending to sob into their handkerchiefs. Raising their beer cans high, they warned the bride that they\u2019d kick her ass if she broke the heart of their darling boy. Everyone applauded, even the people who weren\u2019t wedding guests and had only come for the restaurant\u2019s Vietnamese po\u2019boys.<\/p>\n

That evening marked the bride\u2019s first meeting with her groom. They\u2019d been nominated by the organizers, with the strict requirement that they\u2019d never met and wouldn\u2019t see each other until the night of the rehearsal dinner. I had first met Matt, the groom, the day before, at his fake bachelor party.\u00a0He was feeling anxious about his first encounter with his intended. We\u2019d been dancing to the brass band at the Hi-Ho Lounge; Matt was soaked with sweat and in an advanced state of intoxication.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m nervous, man!\u201d he said, wiping his brow. \u201cWhat if she\u2019s the girl of my dreams? What if this is it?\u201d The zipper on his wedding pants had broken and he was holding them up with his hands. From time to time he lost his concentration and the pants fell down around his ankles, revealing the sparkly pink spandex shorts given to him by the wedding\u2019s costume designer. On the sidewalk he struck up a conversation with Calvin, a New Orleans native.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalvin, man, I\u2019m getting married!\u201d Matt slurred. He was putting Calvin on, but it didn\u2019t seem that way; he radiated all the euphoric anxiety of a true bridegroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou gettin\u2019 married for real?\u201d Calvin asked, bemused. \u201cMatt, tell me, who decided you were gettin\u2019 married?\u201d<\/p>\n

We invited Calvin to the waterfront ceremony. Then somebody saw the bride approaching from across the street and hustled Matt back inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, it\u2019s more real than fake, if you think about it,\u201d Matt mused drunkenly as the bachelor party ended.<\/p>\n

This observation seemed more and more accurate as the weekend continued. On the second day, some of us went out for an oyster lunch. As the meal ended one friend sighed, \u201cI don\u2019t have to go to the dinner, do I? I mean, I\u2019m not a family member.\u201d \u00a0He had forgotten that, in fact, no one was a family member. Here it was, classic wedding fatigue\u2014nothing fake about it. I became depressed that I didn\u2019t have a date. Why hadn\u2019t I found a fake boyfriend? It was a failure of imagination. I had another Bloody Mary.<\/p>\n

Things picked up that evening at a concert that included rockabilly covers of the Beatles and Roy Orbison and an all-male choir singing sea shanties. When the choir leader cried, \u201cWho\u2019s here for the fake wedding?\u201d the whole room screamed. The bride and groom circled the hall, grinning and drunk on the attention. Whether it\u2019s real or fake, your wedding is your chance to be a star. Some of the nonfake love interests of the giddy new celebrities became offended. Someone started to cry.<\/p>\n

Because I had no fake boyfriend, I danced with Paul, who told me that he and Sam were planning to move to New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will you do there?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Sam plays guitar. He wants me to start a record label so I can release his albums,\u201d Paul said earnestly. With his big eyes and tousled blond hair, Paul looked like the kind of boy who could have made it big in Warhol\u2019s Factory. He was all youthful hubris, so confident that he didn\u2019t even know it. Realizing that I was now old enough to find this charming, I remembered Mayakovsky\u2019s famous lines:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not one gray hair in my soul,
Not a bit of senile tenderness!
Shaking the world with the power of my voice,
I pass\u2014handsome,
Twenty-two years old.<\/p>\n

All the margaritas and sea shanties in the world couldn\u2019t make me forget the gray hairs that had already sprouted in my soul. I was tired.\u00a0The band started to play \u201cCrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this song!\u201d I said to Paul. He looked at me blankly: he didn\u2019t recognize it.<\/p>\n

The wedding ceremony was held the next day, on the waterfront at sunset. The zaftig bride wore an elaborate cheetah print and gold lam\u00e9 confection. With the bridesmaids in matching cheetah-lam\u00e9 minidresses, the entourage achieved a kind of Flintstones-at-Studio-54 effect. The fake rabbi made obscene jokes and Matt\u2019s vows were drowned out by a medley of New Orleans standards honked out by the cruise ship nearby. A flock of black birds swarmed against the colorless sky.<\/p>\n

When it was dark, we second-lined through the French Quarter, dancing to the wedding band\u2019s New Orleans klezmer. Tourists poured out of hotels and bars to film us on their iPhones. Our rabbi danced at the head of our ragtag procession, smiling ecstatically, stopping only to light another cigarette.<\/p>\n

At the after-party a beak-nosed boy in a black suit threw his arms around his friends, crying, \u201cI\u2019m not a guy who has fun\u2014but this is the most fun I\u2019ve ever had!\u201d All night people congratulated each other. \u201cYou\u2019re all so beautiful!\u201d they yelled. \u201cIsn\u2019t this amazing?\u201d I remembered a melancholic Russian friend who once asked me why Americans were so immoderate in their adjectives. \u201cHow can everything in America be so amazing<\/em>?\u201d she had asked morosely.<\/p>\n

The wedding was followed by an amazing hangover, if not by an amazing honeymoon. Scores of pictures were posted, liked, and discussed on Facebook, fond memories of group happiness. Next year\u2019s wedding is already in the works.<\/p>\n

Sophie Pinkham is a student of Russian literature who lives in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Kim Kardashian recently reminded us, marriage is no longer the inevitable result of a wedding; the ritual is easily divorced from the institution. This is a source of some comfort to the single person approaching thirty, bombarded by engagement announcements and Facebooked wedding photo albums. 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