I love weddings. They are fun. Interesting feelings, thoughts, insights and emotions bubble up whenever I go to a wedding. It's like a roller coaster of deep thoughts. My wandering mind will run the gamut from taking bets as to how long the marriage will last before divorce to being really sincerely happy that a friend has found true love & commitment in this sick, sad, fucked up world; from wondering if I should make another run at the buffet to wishing the people sitting next to me at the dinner table would at least try to make conversation.



Some thoughts and insights about love and marriage:
- It's hard to be cynical at a wedding.
- a marriage ceremony is about the ritual of commitment and the swearing of vows before witnesses, although it is done in a lighthearted and romantic tone, it is fundamentally serious stuff. It's peer pressure and social ritual.
- weddings are more about the friends and family than the bride and groom.
- I used to mock the institution of marriage, like I used to mock religion. But they both serve a good purpose, if used correctly.
- 49% divorce rate in US in 2008 (source: US census). Just saying.
- A guy asking a friend to help move is a pretty heavy debt load. Imagine how much debt and obligation the man takes on when he goes on one knee and asks a woman to be his life partner for the rest of their lives. It's like the woman is doing the man a favor, a huge lifelong favor. The person who pops the question is basically surrendering the high ground, the person popping the question takes on the culpability of having dragged both parties into a not-easy-to-manage lifelong partnership. so it seems to me. The MC's "jokes" about the woman having the upper hand in the marriage relationship reinforces the dynamic.
- who the hell has 600 friends? I couldn't make a short list of 60 people to invite to my wedding if my life depended on it. And most of that 60 would probably decline anyway.
- Life can seem fine and good and easy, or life can seem impossible. It all depends on the support infrastructure you possess: extended family, lover, friend(s), aging parents, siblings, or no one.
- Real life weddings are not like Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn movies.
- and some other deeply personal and revealing thoughts about love and marriage I will not share.