My wife loves brides. Earlier this week, she posed next to a bridegroom for the traditional photograph while informing him he was lucky to have found our daughter's friend as his partner. Next, she embraced the bride and told her she looked lovelier than usual. We congratulated some elderly citizens, who hovered around looking like the couple's family, and then searched unsuccessfully near the bar for our children. By this time my wife had had two glasses of wine and professed herself partial to the cheese fondue. Finding no one who seemed familiar, I called our daughter on her mobile phone only to learn that we'd strayed into some stranger's wedding. "Oh dear," I said to my wife, "I think we should make a discreet getaway." "Not before I've had the prawns," my wife insisted. After the prawns, she wanted to try the seafood risotto, so finally we wound up having dinner. "But don't worry," my wife reminded me of the shagun we'd handed over at the gifts desk, "We paid for our fare."
In these intolerant but auspicious times, a slew of invitations to multiple wedding functions have taken their toll, not least because of the traffic jams they cause that last late into the night. In the most popular of these party farms, our friends whose children are plighting their troth, or our children's friends who are rehearsing their vows, have planned their nuptials months in advance, but getting to these venues seems to take almost as long. My wife, who plans her wedding wardrobe every year ahead of the festive season, is irritated because Sarla, her sometimes BFF, might leave the venue before we get there without seeing my wife's newly acquired danglers. And she dare not repeat them the following evening because somebody might notice - and guess how that would troll on Twitter.
So, when we found ourselves stuck in another interminable jam last evening, scratchy in our party finery, irritated and hungry to boot, and wanting to use the washroom, my wife ordered the driver to pull into the closest hotel. After we'd used the facilities, I asked my wife if she'd like a coffee, or a cocktail, while we waited for the traffic to thin outside. "I have a better idea," she said, "Follow me." To my alarm, she led me to the sprawling lawns outside where a wedding party was in full flow. "Just look like you belong," she told me, so we nodded at other guests that included a few acquaintances whose names neither of us could recall. One of them shook our hand to ask if we were from the groom's side. "No, the bride's," my wife assured him, before whisking a champagne tulip off a passing waiter's tray. By the time the evening ended, we'd posed for pictures, sampled the Hyderabadi haleem and some incredibly thin pizzas dusted with truffles, accepted a take-home souvenir, and left a wedding gift behind for the newly married couple - even though they might wonder at our names when they opened their presents.
Now, my wife has decided on our course of action. "If we simply sit at home and decide not to attend a wedding dinner, I will feel guilty," she told me. "But in case we get stuck in traffic, we will walk into the first wedding underway en route." That way, she explained, not only would she assuage her conscience, we'd actually feel like we'd attended the wedding - and as for gatecrashing, we'd be leaving a wedding gift behind, wouldn't we?
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