As what I’ve said many times before (most probably in other people’s blogs too), Indonesians tend to focus more on the wedding instead of the marriage – why is that?

I know being wedded off is supposed to be this big day of your life, a mark to end that singleton status, whatever – but why is it that it has to be so extravagant up to a point where the couple (mostly the brides, in which they end up being bridezillas) forget the reason why they are getting married in the first place?

I was once a bridesmaid for a friend’s wedding, and it was such a horrible experience for me, I’m not entirely sure I really want to do it again. The whole reception went okay up until the point when she asked the bridesmaid to stand in line and catch the freaking bouquet. She actually screamed our names through the microphone, asking us to come forward, and insisting that we should. Apparently, bridezillas like to embarrass their single friends on their big day, in front of other people.

Seriously -catch the bouquet? Do I look like a superstitious, despo singleton? Not to mention that we didn’t even get the chance to eat because we were busy supervising how the food was going, at the end of the evening we had to stop by at some Padang restaurant and stuff our faces silly.

Now I don’t know about you, but I personally like to make my guests – and bridesmaids, if I ever decide to have them – to have a good time on my wedding day. I want them to eat, drink and be merry. I want them to feel the joy that I feel. A wedding doesn’t have to be a massive event where there is the necessity to invite thousands of guests and spend days thinking about the favors, decorations and flowers. What is the point of having so many guests when you don’t even recognize a third of them, and end up forking up so much money on things that people won’t even appreciate?

But who can honestly say they’ve been to a wedding where it has not been a pain in the ass? I’ve just purchased a bridal catalogue that’s the thickest on the magazine stand, and by the time I finished reading it I felt like I’d attended a hundred wedding receptions that I was all fed up of it. All of the pages screamed out the same messages – weddings should be big, extravagant, luxurious, expensive, and most of all – impersonal. I even stumbled upon a wedding photographer page that begged the question of whether or not the photographer himself could actually read, since he took a photo of two wedding rings with a portion of the holy bible as the background, and used the bit from the Old Testament that talked about beheadings and disasters.

Either I’m so out of what’s hot and not, or that photographer was definitely on crack.

So what’s so great about being a bride? If you were asked the same question (notice also that the title should end with a question mark instead of an exclamation mark), what would be your answers?