wedding

Bride And Groom

7 steps to a perfect wedding

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As you may know, I got married five months ago.

You could say this kind of makes me an expert on all things wedding-related. You could say that, but you’d be wrong. So, you know, don’t say that.

A wedding isn’t something you just slap together in an evening. It’s an event that requires a bride, a groom, and some other things, too.

Don’t worry, I’m here to guide you through the most important ingredients of a perfect wedding. Just like my other guides, where I taught you to walk into glass doors and to fall on treadmills, this one is really just a poorly-disguised fail compilation. I am uniquely lazy and I can’t be bothered to do much about it (refer to: “lazy”).

Step 1: The Entrance

They say first impressions are like a box of chocolates: easy come, easy go. I get my sayings confused. The point is: First impressions matter. That’s why you want to make damn sure you make a memorable entrance. Case in point:

Can you see what he did wrong? Yup, he wore a bow tie. How tacky! Also, he fell while attempting to give his date a piggyback ride, in case you missed that part.

Step 2: The Ceremony

No wedding is complete without someone getting married. Some even say it’s the most important part of a wedding. I’m not here to take sides in this controversial debate. I’m only here to stress that if you’re going to get married, you want to do so while standing by the edge of a stage overlooking a body of water, and to have a clumsy best man who hasn’t mastered the concept of walking.

The opposite. I meant you want to do the opposite of literally every word I said above. I’m not very good at this.

Step 3: The Photo Shoot

After the wife is fished out of the pool and the newlyweds are newly wed, it is time for the couple to retreat for a private photo shoot. Remember: This is your chance to get creative—you’ll be boring people with your wedding pictures for years, or even generations, to come. Go crazy. Take some photos of you jumping into the air. Strike a pose. Hell, why not have a remotely operated drone film you while you’re at it?

On the other hand, why have a remotely operated drone film anything?! Whose idea was it, anyways? Was it Billy? Billy always ruins everything.

Step 4: The Dance-Off

When the happy couple returns from their photo shoot, with lots of new memories and a mild concussion, it’s time for everyone to let loose on the dance floor. Better still—let one guy let loose on behalf of everybody, while the rest of you stand around awkwardly and pretend there isn’t a man possessed by demons having an epileptic seizure right next to you.

A+ for effort, sir.

Step 5: The Wedding Cake

This is it. The cake. The Holy Grail of our existence and humanity’s proudest achievement. Wedding cakes are to weddings what cheesecakes are to cheese. (That’s probably wrong.) Bring in the cake, dudes.

Pro tip: One’s face is rarely the best way to prevent a cake—or much else—from collapsing.

Step 6: The Bouquet Toss

You all know how this goes: The bride tosses a bouquet into a group of women, who proceed to wrestle each other for the chance to grab the bouquet. The winner gets to take the flowers home and put them in a nice vase and look at them for days and days. Women sure love flowers. And face-plants. They love a good face-plant, those women.

No flowers were hurt in the filming of that video.

Step 7: The Drinking Of Drinks

A wedding takes its toll on a couple. Sometimes, alcohol is needed to remedy the situation. There’s not a problem in the world that a good gulp of Rum-n-Vodka Gins can’t fix. However, drinking’s not always easy. You need good hand-eye coordination, especially if more than a single hand is involved—then you need at least two hand-eye coordinations.

If I have done my job, you learned absolutely nothing here today. I told you I wasn’t an expert.

Yellow Hand

What’s that on my finger?

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Hint: it’s not a Triceratops.

First, Triceratops are way too large to fit on a finger. Second, they’ve been extinct for at least a couple of years or so. Know your history, reader!

Did you guess it yet?

Correct: it’s a ring. One ring to rule them all.

Or, in this case, one ring to rule one man, am I right? Marriage humour. Ha-ha. Good times.

As you have gathered from that long-winded and entirely unnecessary intro, I am now officially married.

Correction: I have actually been legally married for over one-and-a-half months now, since June 29th. Due to a set of circumstances that I will not bore you with, we have found it necessary to get married in Denmark, in the Copenhagen Town Hall.

We’ve kept it secret until the big day on August 10th, so as to keep the ceremony special. So, yes, we lied to our friends, family and, most importantly, we lied to you, dear reader. There is nothing I can do to make it up to you, which is convenient, because “nothing” is exactly what I feel like doing about it.

We had a fantastic wedding. The weather was perfect, the people were amazing, there was a surprisingly low number of mutated aliens trying to chase down and chew our guests. Everything went exactly as planned, which is 95% due to the awesome planning by my girlfriend-wife-fiancée. The day wouldn’t have been the same without her, which is a statement that falls solidly into the “duh” category.

Enough talk, let’s see some pictures. Here we are:

Angelina Jolie Brad Pitt Wedding

Image Source

OK, I confess. I tricked you. That’s not us in the picture. That’s Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. They’re supposedly some sort of celebrities in the US. Have you heard of them?

We have a ton of pictures to sort through, including some upcoming incredible ones from the professional photographer. I may share those at a later stage. Edit 16-08-2013: here are the ones from the photographer.

For now, here’s a collage made by a friend (if you’re on Instagram you can follow her, right here)

Wedding Collage

Check out that cake, yo! That’s a typewriter on it. Edible typewriter. It has all the proper keys with letters and everything. Katka’s father and stepmom made it as a tribute to my writing passion. There’s also a nest with birds in it, because Nest. Holy shit, how simultaneously insane and great is that? Very. The answer is “very”.

After the main wedding shenanigans were over a handful of the most committed guests went to our newlyweds suite. If you want to form an entirely incorrect impression of us as a well-adjusted and calm group of people, here’s a perfectly misleading picture:

Afterparty Crew

To retain that impression, stop reading right now.

You’re still reading, aren’t you? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here’s a video made by my best man, the same guy who made that perfectly innocent picture above and the guy behind my kidnapping. I share it with you because Harlem Shake is still so relevant and topical, and because I never tire of traumatising my readers:

Your life was so much better one minute ago. You only have yourself to blame.

Oh, and within 5 minutes of our coming back Django gave us a welcome gift in the form of peeing on my wedding suit. You gotta love cats.

On that cheerful note I leave you to go wash your eyes with soap and search for a good hypnotist that is capable of erasing memories.

I’ll be back with the regularly scheduled Nest Expressed program soonish.

Bride White Dress

Flash Fiction: “Not ready…”

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A new Flash Fiction challenge at Dude Write is open.

This is my submission.

As always, 500 words maximum.

This month’s prompt:

Bride

“Bride”, an image by Nicholas Hayward

She ran through the forest, ignoring the scrapes left on her exposed arms by the tree branches, the chilling air that sneaked through her thin dress and under her skin, the pain in her tired legs. She ran to get away as far as she could, to find a place to hide, to be by herself and try to make sense of it all.

How could this have happened? Was she not looking forward to this day? Was this not the most important event in her life so far?

She slowed her pace, trying to rein in the fleeting thoughts that flashed through her head. She recalled the disappointed faces of her family, the shock of her friends, the sight of him standing there without knowing how to react. She recalled the exact moment she felt nervous and weak in her knees, the moment she knew she couldn’t go through with it, the moment she simply said “I cannot do this!” and sprinted out of there without looking back.

She had failed them all. Each and every one of them had expected better of her: her mother, who went shopping with her for the dress; her friends, who prepared together with her and rehearsed this day to make sure it would be just perfect. Most importantly, she had failed him, who stood there ready to say the words, if only she could do the same. She knew this meant as much to him as it meant to her, if not more. Yes, she’d let him down the most.

She let bitter tears stream freely down her face as she sat down on the cold ground.

Maybe it wasn’t too late? Maybe she could still return? She’d tell them all it was just cold feet, that she’d had a moment of panic, that it was nothing. Surely they’d understand?

No.

She knew that the real answer was a lot simpler, yet a lot more painful to admit. In truth, she really wasn’t ready for this. She had only thought she was…

This realization somehow made her calmer, more determined. She got up and started walking further and further away from it all.

Perhaps one day, in the future, she would be ready to take the plunge. One day, she’d have the courage to follow through. One day…but not today.

Today, she would not be coming back.

Today, she would leave them all behind.

Today, her high school drama class would have to find someone else to play Juliet.