THIS WEDDING THING...

I hate weddings. Hate is a wrong adjective. I loathe weddings. Fair try. I despise weddings. Not bad.

As a rule, I never attend weddings. Fortunately, I have only been invited to a few in my adult life. But I have attended a dozen wedding fundraisings for my friends, whom for kinship and friendship sake, I will reserve my vitriol. But really! Legalizing intimate relationships should not be such a fuss and a big deal.

I would make only one exception before I launch into this tirade. The church or garden weddings that only attract a handful of family folks and friends to witness are OK. Also those that take place at the AG chambers with even minimal witnesses, thumps up. We need more of that.

What I can’t really stand is the swine who parades Mercs and Audis on Saturdays doing million-shillings weddings. What is wrong with people? These people who do grand beach weddings so as to broadcast to the world on Citizen or NTV. Every time I tune to the wedding show, I am sickened, no end. I occasionally tune in just but to listen to the mellow ballads they have as background music. It is always fine listening to an unexpected James Ingram or Johnny Gill number. See, there is always a silver lining for every cloud.

But everything else drives nuts. See, a wedding is simply a female affair. Essentially, your wife manages to get you into a pissing match with her bitchy friends. Weddings are the ultimate show-offs for your average woman. Women who went to college not. It is the best place to measure balls (or whatever women measure) with her girls. It is the ultimate ‘look, bitches, I got me a man and a grand wedding, keep talking,’ for the bridesmaid.

And women relationship can be so poisonous. Attend a wedding and get to the nearest woman to offer her opinion about the whole affair. Every woman always has an opinion. One would have problem with the colours, ‘they tamper with the coastal mood!’. Some will be complaining about flowers, ‘daisies are so yesterday’. Some will have problems with the food, ‘the amount of meat in the pilau is …’ And some will be having problems with the man, ‘Hesbon of all people…such a bore.’ Believe you me; they will be saying pretty horrible things than this.

Scientists in my head have long determined that the smile the bridesmaid is wearing is ‘YOU NIGGARS, IT IS MY WEDDING’ SMILE. She only succeeds to drive a wedge among her closest friends. Actually women don’t have the best of friends. All they have are a bunch of haters and backbiters who are always running at the mouth about their them. They say that men are competitive, sometimes negatively, but the level of competition amongst women is yet to get a name in English. It is competition mixed with hatred and jealousy. A very explosive mixture. If women had genuine friends, they won’t let them step out of the house in only tights with nothing on top.

Nowhere is the legendary female bitchiness and pettiness witnessed than on a wedding day. All the women you see grinning and simpering for the camera have an agenda. Meat a woman who has not been invited to a wedding by a friend and you know what I mean and you might want to revise the phrase ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned to hell hath no fury like a woman who has been not invited to a wedding by the best friend.

So a wedding essentially is her day and a man has no role to play other than being reminded that the sound is down, this bill has not been sorted and so forth. The man is mainly a spectator and probably a ‘regretor’ the entire day. While being oppressed by the suit and the tie and the new shoes and the inseparable sight of the wife, he is also envying his best male friends having a ball with the girls. The hotties always turn up all hot and bothered.

The wedding attire and make up of course bolsters the looks of any woman and they look hot and cheerful. They are always giggly and silly for the camera. And the perverted friends of the groom are always up to some mischief. They have a long day to lay them, play with them, dance with them, exchange the contacts and get some access to some good shag at some future date.

That is where the groom would rather be. Where the action is. Rather is condemned to be with the wife whom he will be spending lots and lots of time from then. Their provocative dresses and smiles of course will have little Joe Wood stirred since one or two of them will be looking hotter than your wife and willing to shag you as soon as you get the tie off. Women.

He will be with her and by the time they will be kissing; their mouths will be stinking from the quietness. Who deserves that?

Any right thinking man should resist any temptation to get into a settling score match for the wife. I have ever seen a man with a beard; a huge Adams apple and a bass confess how he met his wife, the chasing and all that. Such a disgrace to manhood. What would make a man say such silly things on TV? It can’t be sex, even if she has the tightest and most engaging game in town. It can’t be love, even if she is an angel on earth. What could it be? Only stupidity.

Think about the bill. I remember accompanying my homie Dave to search for a wedding dress at Realto in Anniversary Towers. A wedding dress went for Ksh 190,000(about $2250). What is wrong with the confused middle class in Kenya? They can’t help us get Sonko out of parliament, but they have time buy a wedding dress for all that money. A one-day dress. That patched-up mosquito net. I mean kids are dying in slums. So many beggars in the streets and you squander hundreds of thousands in dress that will not even improve your personality, still less, make your marriage worthwhile. You should have seen my face upon discovering that was not even the most expensive dress in the shop.

Think about the food, the hogging and the hedonistic pursuits of your male friends that you have to fulfill. The women and their exquisite tastes. Then, there is the lot that takes loans or goes into huge debts to legalize sex. This lot is better off dead than alive. Whatever happened to SIMPLE? Some people take so long to learn that the world does not give a damn. Whether you marry in Mars or in the Moon, people are preoccupied with their own mundane experiences, to even bother with your show-offs. They will gape, they will exhilarate but by nightfall, they would have forgotten.
I think people who deserve those grand weddings are those who have lived together for 20 years. Cohabiting and shagging for some months would not transform into a blissful existence in marriage. If anything marriage and a wedding are different things. And I am forced to think that the grander the wedding the higher the likelihood of a divorce in less than five years. Ask Fidel Odinga.

Having a grand wedding is like preparing for examination by buying expensive book titles and you forget to read them. Marriage is a union between two people. And the less people you involve in it the better and the more chances you have surviving the hard times guaranteed to come.

Anyway, weddings like dancing are some of the inventions of mankind to make our insufferable and mundane existences bearable. But any man who finds pleasure in weddings needs to have his head  examined. Stick to a simple affair witnessed with as few friends as possible. Make a good marriage the aim and not the wedding. Ensure that you don’t overspend, even if she insists.

On that sour note, leave me alone!!