So this one time, I got married.

A while ago, I got engaged. And that experience taught me a valuable lesson which I will share now.

Call me naive, but following engagement I expected a substantial amount of “blissful engagement time”. This was not so. Call me stupid, but when proposing, the thought of “I’m going to have to plan a wedding” didn’t even cross my mind. I think I speak for all men when I say that planning a wedding is not something we usually worry about. We are simple creatures, and we foolishly categorize such things as “details”.

In my mind:

Logical Timeline:

Blissful in love time, Marriage Proposal, Blissful engagement time, wedding planning, Wedding, Peace and Love

Not so.

Actual timeline:

Blissful in love time, Marriage Proposal, h e l l i s h w e d d i n g p l a n n i n g , Wedding, Peace and love.

Please note lack of “Blissful engagement time” in actual time line, as well as the extension of wedding planning, augmented by the word “hellish”.

From the engagement until about a month ago, I had been wedding planning. This caused more arguments between family members than I could have imagined. Ugly, horrible, month-lasting feuds over piddly little details; things that you just couldn’t expect. Not being a full believer in stereotypes, I now believe this one.

Due the unpleasantness of the entire situation (some caused by me, and some not) I had been reluctant and somewhat bitter throughout the affair. I complained about how ridiculous the costs were (i.e. “20% delivery fee” for already overpriced catering), I assured myself that the fears of rain would be unfounded, only to be replaced by a worser fate — it would be 95 degrees, and I would be soaked in sweat. To a certain extent I was dreading the occasion, thinking it would be much easier and more relaxing to do a tiny family-only & select friends wedding, instead of the enormous affair the planning seemed to be creating. On top of all that, I was positive that my family was going to embarrass me, or that I was going to embarrass myself by weeping like a little girl at the altar.

I am happy to report that almost none of these fears were true, and that all in all, the event was a lot of fun. Fun.

The weather was perfect, the food was great, and it was great to see everyone who came. My parents did not embarrass me, and the photographers I reluctantly agreed to give up a kidney to pay for were fantastic.

There were only a couple of unexpected hitches in the whole wedding day. The song we requested they play for the processional, Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, is a piece of music that consistently gets me all misty eyed. I figured this would be a good choice for the occasion so if it happened again the audience would think “Oh, how sweet, he’s tearing up when he sees his bride”, while I’d be thinking “Damn, this song is great”. This plan may have worked out successfully, if the song didn’t finish off like this.

Also, while I was worrying about my parents giving an embarrassing speech, I foolishly took my sights off my brother. As a result, he delivered a lengthy speech about me growing up, making sure to highlight the most embarrassing moments. This may be par for the “best man speech” course, but I doubt most best man speeches also have large accompanying photos. While most of these photos were quite innocent, I felt the picture of me, aged 2, walking down a hallway naked wearing my mother’s high heels crossed the line from toast to roast. Obviously, I was horrified. The crowd loved it, though, and didn’t really support my rebuttal speech idea by continually telling me that it was the “Greatest best man speech they’ve ever heard”.

I’m not really bitter about it though, aside from the fact that my list of “things to do when a time machine is available for my use” has a new #1: Give embarrassing best man speech at brother’s wedding. Bring photos.

The wedding started at 3pm and had a cocktail-type reception following which only lasted until 8. This worked out wonderfully, and for someone who wanted to avoid the typical late-night-all-out-dancing-with-awkward-marriage-of-old-relatives-and-young-drunk-friends-boogieing-down reception, this was a great alternative. After it was over, Maggie and I went back to the hotel, changed into casual clothes, and then met our friends at a bar. This was the best part. Wedding over, stress over, fantastic honeymoon only a day away, hanging out at a bar with our friends. Perfect.