Wedding Season

Nothing but stag dos and weddings for the next month or two so I've been busy trying to organise myself into some kind of um, organisation - sorting wedding presents out, flight tickets (the one at the end of the month is in Spain) and other such necessities.

There's nothing like a good wedding in my book, but consider everyone getting sloshed and any/all of the following occurring (which I have seen in my wedding-going career so far):

(1) Catch me, catch me - ladies (some larger than others) scrabbling like frantic ferrets to catch the symbolic bouquet...usually ends with one or several ladies on the floor due to drinks spillage (see big moves below). To date, no fatalities but a couple of sprained ankles have been witnessed.

(2) The little people take a sip - children falling ill from drinking from adults' unattended/leftover alcoholic drinks (it's kind of funny seeing them reeling around...until they start vomiting everywhere). Let's face it, most of us tried it on at their age and there might even be some uncle (let's say 'Jim') who encourages such under-age sippage of the 'Ah, let 'em have a drink, it's a wedding for chrissakes!' school of (un)thinking.

(3) Uncle Jim shows his big moves - there's always some middle-aged rooster willing to show the youngsters how it's done on the dancefloor. Usually the only thing they achieve is self-injury by slipping on drinks spillage when attempting the 'running man'. Young children shriek in delight; older ladies tut and mutter that he should know better at his age; his wife reaches for the wine bottle.

(4) Love spreads - ah, how infectious love can be...pity that sometimes at weddings one or the other person to hook up are already married, and not to each other uh-huh. Seems to these lovers-who-like-living-on-the-edge that everyone's too busy celebrating to notice, but there's a lot of wily old eyes out there.

(5) Keep it in the family - familial fall-out sometimes related to the above when people have been found out, but usually related to some long-simmering family feud which everyone talks about happening in the distant past yet nobody can actually furnish the details. Uncle Jim gets a bloody nose but gives uncle Phil a black eye - they are last seen at the bar necking whisky together, whilst their bored wives dance with the young and dashing ushers.

Well, not all weddings are raucous events and sometimes they pass serenely and without major catastrophe. Now, I'm not cynical - I think two people pledging their troths to one another is a great thing; it's just that if you go to as many weddings as I seem to, then you start looking for something to differentiate each one, else they all merge into one big blur of white dresses, bad dancing and drink...