6pm DINNER—Please find your seats and enjoy a three-course meal from the couple’s favorite eco-friendly farm-to-table establishment, Recyclage.
The tables were named after famous couples from history, though the wedding planner had played fast and loose with the definition of “famous,” and “history” too. Merris and I were at “Sandy & Danny,” along with an extremely ragtag group of professional acquaintances and lesser relatives who had clearly been lumped together after the rest of the tables were decided and only a few randoms remained. I sat between Merris and a lanky man called Jesse, who was there with his partner, a freckled, braless woman called Darragh.
Darragh was so much hotter than her boyfriend it would have been inconceivable had I not encountered three hundred other couples exactly like them already that evening. It was not that Jesse was hideous, just that his girlfriend was more attractive than him by every possible metric: funnier, sexier, smarter, and more charming. I remembered a joke I used to make to Simon, that I was queering the straight relationship by being less attractive than he was. Thinking about Simon was a mistake.
“Me and Patrick worked together at the marina in Port Hope,” Jesse said, attacking a seeded sourdough bun with a too-hard ball of whipped butter. “Back in the day, obviously. How about you guys?”
An older woman across from us perked up—mine and Merris’s relationship was obviously causing some confusion at the table.
“Emily and I went to high school together,” I said. “And this is my friend Merris.”
Merris waved. “A bit of a last-minute substitute,” she said, though that didn’t seem to clarify things for our dinner companions.
Darragh leaned forward: “So are you two . . . ?”
“Together?” I said. “No, no, it’s more glamorous than that. I live in her basement.”
Servers descended on our table with the smallest possible servings of “cured beet carpaccio,” and Darragh smiled at me like Princess Diana visiting those orphans. “I used to live in a basement,” she said. “Think I still have my SAD lamp somewhere.”
My stomach growled, and I wanted to eat a roll more than I’d ever wanted anything, but the Eating Window dictated by my fasting schedule did not open until 6:30. Clear liquids were allowed any time, so I had more of my tequila, then I went to the bathroom and composed a tweet regarding that feeling when you’re at a wedding and want to burn down the entire marquee.
8pm SPEECHES—A chance to hear from Emily and Patrick’s loved ones and, of course, the couple themselves!
Everyone congratulated the couple at length. This was the smartest thing they’d ever done; it was meant to be; they were perfect complements to each other and welcome additions to their respective families-in-law. Their parents could not wait to give them money and hoped they would start having sex to make babies as soon as possible, preferably tonight.
The banalities were their own kind of drinking game: drink when the mother-in-law cries, drink when somebody says “my person,” drink when a bridesmaid delivers a joke she clearly found by googling wedding speech humor. It was awful to watch, but I knew from experience that it felt amazing to be on the receiving end of this parade of generic compliments.
Between my private drinking game and raising our glasses to the happy couple, I had quickly drained my glass. I turned to Merris and offered to get her a refill.
“Maybe some soda water,” she said. “So we pace ourselves.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Tequila is an upper.”
I stood and made my way through middle-aged couples and out-of-town cousins and children, so many children, in the direction of the bar. When I got there, I ran into Amy and told her I was going to win Simon back. She listened patiently as I detailed my various plans: I could leave a secret message in the 6Bites comments section, or send him a cookie with his face on it, or maybe get on the Jumbotron at a soccer game.
“I want something big and impactful,” I said, “to show him I know I fucked up.”
Amy frowned. At the front of the room, the groom’s brother told a story that danced gracelessly around the hiring of a sex worker.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s going to work,” Amy said, after I confided my best idea: telling his landlord I was his sibling so I could break into his apartment and fill it with balloons. I said that kind of thing worked all the time in the movies.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I mean, not to be rude, but those are fictional situations. The only people who want a big public gesture are the women who watch those films.”
I finished my tequila and soda and switched to white wine. The sugar would perk me up, which I needed; although my Eating Window had opened, the main course was a breaded chicken Kiev, and I was trying to avoid brown food. I looked over to my table and saw Jesse pick up Darragh’s napkin from where it had fallen at her feet. Amy cleared her throat.
“Hey, um, I just peeped Twitter,” she said. “And I feel like . . . I don’t know, I saw some of the stuff you said about Patrick’s tie and the theme and everything, and I just think, like, those are public, right, and if they saw that stuff they’d be pretty hurt.”
“They’re jokes,” I said. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“Oh, totally,” said Amy. “Yeah, totally. I just mean, maybe you don’t have to live tweet the wedding?”
I grabbed my glass and headed back to my table as Emily took the mic and began an acrostic poem using the word “COMMITMENT.”
9pm THE DANCE FLOOR IS OPEN!—After the first dance, guests are invited to join the couple on the dance floor. Prizes will be given out for wildest moves （look out, cousin Eddie!）。
“My girlfriend thinks you’re beautiful,” Jesse whispered as I participated, against all odds, in a table-wide conga. Interesting. This phrase was internationally recognized couple code for you seem bi and we have always considered ourselves evolved enough to have a threesome.
Despite our rocky start, Sandy & Danny had been irreversibly bonded by how long it took our main courses to arrive, so by the time the dance competition was announced most of us were game, which was to say very drunk. Even Merris was a little tipsy—Patrick’s bachelor uncle was giving her sips from his flask—and Jesse and Darragh had proved themselves more fun than expected. Jesse had stolen us some leftover canapés from an abandoned tray, and they had both participated enthusiastically in a few rounds of What Did This Cost, which I played about every element of the wedding. We guessed the entire event had a final price tag of $40,000, or approximately two and a half independently funded master’s degrees.
At some point in our slurred calculations, we realized that nobody at our table was married. Darragh, who was from Oregon, said her initial position on marriage was that she would never do it herself until it was legal for everyone: “Then they legalized it for gay couples, and I was like, oh, maybe I think marriage sucks.” Jesse said being divorced was sexy, and Darragh shot him a look, widening her eyes like, be cool, man. She took a sip of her drink and winked at me. Well, I thought. Well, well, well.