The Great Cake* Experiment, Week 12: Happy Endings
I went to a work colleague’s wedding last weekend. It was a huge, lovely affair, with well over 200 guests. When I arrived for the post-dinner party, almost half the invited guests were on the dancefloor giving it their all to the backdrop of funky Afro-beats. I was quick to join them.
Near the end of the evening, came the inevitable throwing of the bouquet. The bride wrenched the microphone from the DJ’s hands, and proceeded to whip most of the lady guests into a frenzy.
“I want all my single ladies up here! Come ON ladies! Cos I know! I KNOW. How hard it is to find a man! I know how hard it is to keep a man! I know how hard it is to get that man to ask you to marry him! Can I get an AMEN?”
I was more than a little surprised to hear most of the woman around me (for I had been dragged onto the dancefloor by one of my single colleagues who wanted some company) respond as one.
“AMEN!”
The bride went on.
“I’ve got my happy ending now ladies, and I want to make sure that one of my girls gets hers!”
She was sincere, ferocious, impassioned and indeed sober - for this bride doesn’t drink. She clearly meant every word. What she said made me think about how it seemed that she viewed a wedding as being the end of something, rather than the start. To her, and by the sounds of it, to many of the ladies on the dancefloor, the wedding signified the end of singledom. Whereas to me, a wedding signifies the next chapter of a partnership. But apparently to her it was a happy ending. And if it didn’t seem that way for all the ladies, then certainly it did for the very enthusiastic bridesmaid (one of seven; I did say it was a huge wedding) who leapt across the dancefloor to catch the aforementioned bouquet.
To me, a wedding is a celebration of what has gone before, but it’s also a celebration of all the good that is to come. I’m not sure that this *isn’t* what she was saying, but it certainly gave me food for thought - to go along with my pumpkin stew.
