Valid Reasons to Attend a Wedding

In the absence of cameras, one could easily repeat an outfit and gaslight people into thinking it is new.

I got married to a woman who has single friends, which equals future weddings we have to attend. Since my own friends are ugly, I have never had to worry about attending weddings. But now that I am married, my wife’s friends are mine as well. It is a strange friendship where you have all the responsibilities minus the perks. No shared history, no rapport. Only a wedding invitation.

Attending a wedding entails buying clothes that aren’t Jeans and a T-Shirt. In other words, I end up with an outfit I won’t wear elsewhere.

“You can always wear it to a party,” they say. Let’s be real. I’m not getting invited to a button-up shirt party. And you can’t recycle the outfit for the next wedding because someone invented cameras. In the absence of cameras, one could easily repeat an outfit and gaslight people into thinking it is new. Now I’ll be stuck with a shirt and blazer until people update their phones and lose the previous pictures. This usually happens every three years.

No matter how advanced technology gets, we will always lose photos when upgrading to a new device. My cousin lost his pictures the same way.

“Hey dude, you have any pics of my baby? New phone, zero pics,” He texted me.
“Who are you? New phone, zero contacts,” I replied.

When I was a kid, we only had a landline, which meant the entire house had one phone, and it didn’t even take pictures. If you feel awkward expressing interest in someone via text, imagine how hard it must be doing it over the family phone. And that’s exactly what I did.

As a 10-year-old, I had a crush on Shaffy, a girl in my class. I wasn’t brave enough to ask her number directly but knew I could muster up the bravery to call her if I had the number.

Fortunately, her sister was in my sister’s class, so all it took was a Kinder Egg bribe, and I had Shaffy’s number. It only took one hour of self-pep-talk, and I was ready to call. I dialed her number and, upon hearing the dial tone, realized I had not prepared any lines.

“Hello?” Said Shaffy, and my courage melted away. “Are you from the restaurant?” She continued.

“Yes, madam” I took the opportunity to chicken out with grace.

“I was trying to call you, but the line was busy.”
“Yes, ma’am, high order volume,” I improvised.
“Okay, listen. We want three burgers. Two with Pepsi and one with Milko juice.”
“Do you want fries with that?”
“Just with one.”

To this day, I think about whether that family got their dinner. I had zero game growing up, which is why I love Hush, my friend who has zero game as a grown-up. Seeing him is like watching an alternate timeline version of me where I never learned interpersonal skills.

One day, Hush told me he was dating Sam, a girl I previously thought was of sound mind.

“How many dates have you had?”
“Our first date is this weekend…but we have talked a little…she is an intellectual. Her mind is deep. It is fascinating.”

What’s fascinating is the shit men tell themselves to feel like they’re not shallow. Sam and Hush had as much in common as me and Genghis Khan. Next Sunday, which used to be Dubai’s equivalent of a Monday before they switched the weekend, I asked Hush about how it went.

“Bro, she’s a child! Can you believe where she asked to go? Sparky’s Fun Zone,” Hush had tears from holding back laughter.
“And?”
“I spent two hundred dirhams on the same mechanical horse. Two hundred dirhams!!!” I realized the tears were real.

Regardless, Hush had invested too much into this potential relationship to cut her off. So he continued dating her, albeit away from expensive places. A year went by, and in my head, they were still dating, which is why a specific Facebook post surprised me.

Sam married (insert name I can’t remember).

I immediately called Hush.

“Hey, Ibs, what’s up?”
“Dude, your girlfriend married another guy!”
“Oh yeeeah. That. I actually went”
“What? You attended the wedding?”
“Look, man, I spent four hundred and sixty dirhams on her. I had to eat at least 100 bucks worth of food.”

Later, I met Hush for details. Apparently, Sam had agreed to an arranged marriage with a guy so rich he could buy her an entire Sparky’s Fun Zone branch. Her bridal entry was on a platform held up by four servants, and the groom entered on horseback.

“Man, I felt bad when I heard the news, but when I saw him in person, I was like ‘yeah, I can understand.’” She married a guy so much better than him that he couldn’t feel anything but respect for the hustle. “I mean, I would have married him had he proposed to me.”

So, here’s the bottom line. The only valid reason to attend a wedding is to recoup the investment you have made dating the person whose wedding it is. Focus on the main course and skip the appetizer. And if you need to borrow my button-up, drop me an email.