We Cordially Invite You To …

A wedding reception. It’s the event where no one is seemed to have a good time, except the bride and groom, and that I’m not even sure of.

Everyone who attends is expected to dress up to the nines, turn up on time and wait for the obligatory ‘walk down the red carpet’ bit, the cutting-up and exchanging slices of cake, and the moronic MC who always tries to get a bit of a show happening by making the couple kiss and embarrass themselves with the awkwardness of having to display something so private in front of the attendee.

In the meantime, the people get anxious because they can’t wait for the whole thing to be over so that they can hit the buffet and check out all the good food before they’re all wiped out. But alas, there is still one step to do before hunger can be thoroughly satisfied; the ridiculous queuing up the throne-like chair where the newlyweds and their parents sit in order to congratulate them – in other words, demonstrating the invited of their presence, as if saying “Look, I’m here, OK. Now can we just get the hell out of here and eat because that’s the only reason why I even bother coming.”

Now – the dressing up bit was the one part I don’t understand. I have rarely seen people turning up to wedding receptions looking very well-dressed and appropriate. It just seems to me that people always get the dress code wrong.

The fat girls walk around showing off their flabs because their entire existence are swathed in such tight clothing, as if the night’s theme was spare tires and the waiters were serving muffin squirts. The skinny ones turn up even more odd looking in all covered-up, nun-like styles of dresses, as if they are ashamed of the state of their skinniness.

Then there are those awkward ones who have visible pantylines shown very visibly from behind (you’d think that because these girls can afford such nice dresses they are also familiar with the concept of g-strings!), and those who have unsightly clear bra straps dragging down their backs which caused them to repeatedly walking around and adjusting at the same time. But those are not so bad compared to the anorexic-looking girls who look like they might just fall off and faint in any second.

Not forgetting also the ones who tickle my sense of humor – girls who drag around their boyfriends everywhere as if those boys were accessories and give murderous looks to the other girls in the room as if any female creature is out to steal their boyfriends, old ladies who refuse the fact that they are old and therefore opt to dress up like teeny-boppers going on a prom night but end up looking like drag queens, single men with love handles and weird hairstyles, and even more single men with weirder sense of style, and I seriously don’t know why these men think this is a good idea – yep, it’s the shirt collar-over-the-suit look, which they probably think is very chic, very ‘in’, very now while I’m thinking (and nodding at the same time as in, okay, I dig you), “Very John Travolta in Grease, very pimped up look, though the only things missing are the fur coat, the Panama hat, the mucho bling-bling and the whores.”

I’m telling you, the very sight of these people are enough to put me off food. My appetite thoroughly goes out of the window the minute I see the left-overs on some greedy bastard’s dirty plates who has taken every single item on the menu just because he feels like it, spoilt brats who run around dangerously followed frantically by their babysitters, and the waiters cleaning up the messy, greased-up plates and glasses full of disgusting looking leftovers. And there are queues everywhere – queues to the buffet, queues to the toilet, queues to even get out of the building.

The whole thing is like a slow-torturing process for me and it makes me rethink the whole idea of anyone ever having a wedding reception.

The image of me slumped down in front of the telly wearing my dags seems way much better than attending anything disastrous like what I’ve described above. I can’t wait to kick my heels off, wipe the rag off my face – who am I kidding? – and just be.

Anywhere, but there.