Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest (3 page)

Ginny beamed. The crowd went wild.

Anything for a Story

H
ere’s a great irony for you: A wedding is something that signifies permanence, but itself is the very opposite of that. It’s one day, one insanely orchestrated, improbably beautiful day, that most people hope they won’t see fit to repeat in a lifetime with anyone else. And just as the bride and groom and the wedding planner or whoever is in charge do their very best to tell the single story they want to convey at a wedding—to reflect an enduring life state, to make the grand, high-concept, intricately planned moment represent “forever”—the guests, especially those who’ve been around the wedding block a few times, come with their own small and large dreams, goals, and even a certain number of meticulously plotted MacGyver-esque missions. We all have stories we want to tell, and stories we want to experience so we can tell them later, as we engage in the self-propelled mini-dramas, comedies, and occasional tragedies taking place across the wedding stage. We may not be the main plot, but we are a subplot, and a not unimportant one at that.

From one wedding, I vividly recall moshing sweatily on the dance floor to the Killers and, later, wandering around the after-party looking for the cute guy I’d seen at the reception and had just started to make promising conversation with when the band stopped playing and the bartenders ceased to refill my glass. (Weddings can have the worst timing!) The sweat dried on my bare arms, and later, my skin felt almost crunchy, smelling of salt and sun and eau de Chardonnay. I remember finding that guy and arranging to meet him at a bench outside the bar after I returned to my room for the Red Bull and vodka I had stashed in the mini-fridge. But by the time I got to the room, which I was sharing with a friend, I’d decided not to go back out after all. As she and I compared our own reflections on the evening, we occasionally guessed at the absent third perspective, the guy waiting alone on that bench. Of course, I don’t know whether he showed up at the bench at all. Whatever happened to him that night is no more my tale than it is the story of the bride and groom.

At some deep midpoint down the wedding road—say, ten weddings in, in our late twenties or early thirties—we may even try our hand at creating our own stories, inventing dramas to keep things interesting and ourselves on our metallic-sandal-clad toes. It’s not that weddings are boring, but sometimes we want to bring a piece of ourselves to them that we don’t get to put forth in our normal lives. The manufactured ecosystem is already primed for excitement. It’s a quick and easy step to throw ourselves on the stage, too, trying out new roles, just to see. We become inherently unreliable narrators, unreliable characters, because we are each there in some way in our own interest and to continue the
storyline for which we have come, even as we’re
ostensibly
there for our friend/this blessed event/to support the sanctity of marriage/for love/for fun/because we want cake. I suspect that even the most selfless among us can’t help bringing it back home now and again, making the wedding in some small way just a teeny-tiny bit about ourselves. It’s human nature, and human nature is often bared to its core at a wedding.

•   •   •

I
was thirty-three years old and had been to more weddings than I could count on both hands by the time Lucy and David’s invite came. I’d met Lucy at the ad agency that had hired us both in our first post-college jobs more than a decade before, and David through Lucy. She’d gone on to become a lawyer, and he was one, too, each of them as ambitious and driven professionally as they were personally unpretentious and laid-back. They’d met at a firm where they’d worked, and they’d become friends there. As they told it, he had a deep crush while she was preoccupied with someone else. Eventually he convinced her to go on a date, and then another, and at some point, the other guy was forgotten and David became the one.

Their wedding would be in June, in Jamaica, and they urged guests to stay for as long as they’d like; make a vacation of it! No longer was I a naive twentysomething with a sundress and a giant bottle of Coppertone traveling to see my first college friend do this crazy grown-up thing. I
was
a grown-up, at least by the standard definition, earning nearly $400 a day as managing editor at
OK!
, a celebrity weekly magazine. And I hadn’t left New York City in months. The photos on the resort’s website depicted an island paradise with tiny villas scattered throughout rocky cliffs, tropical forests full of flowers and lush greenery, and suspension bridges dangling romantically over cerulean water. Plus, free yoga in the morning, open-air showers, fresh fish at the resort’s three restaurants, coconut cocktails, sunsets, snorkeling, massages. The wedding itself would be a breeze: Throw on a dress. Walk a few steps to the designated area of the resort where the ceremony would take place in front of a sweeping ocean view. Watch. Celebrate. There were no kids under twelve allowed on the premises given the danger of their falling and injuring themselves on the jagged terrain—an oversight, then, that they
did
allow drunken thirtysomethings. Danger be damned, I was in.

In preparation for the trip, I bought a tropical-print cotton halter dress in sunbaked reds and purples, an emerald-green frock with a skirt full of ruffles, a bright gold silk minidress, and, for more casual outings, a pair of baggy jeans with numerous rips and tears—you know, the kind the quirky-cool retailer names “boyfriend jeans,” the kind my mom would question my paying actual money for had she been there. I bought my ticket to Jamaica, reserved a hotel room for a full five nights and six days, and laid down my credit card for an array of trip-related goods and services—including the wedding present. And then one morning, approximately three weeks before I was scheduled for departure, I went to work and came home unemployed. I would go on to wear those ripped-up, baggy jeans for most of the summer, in
the absence of a boyfriend or a job, dubbing them my “unemployment jeans.”

My parents seemed perplexed that I’d take this rather dire career moment to jet off to Jamaica.

“Are you sure this is wise?” asked my dad.

“I’ve bought the tickets already,” I explained, further rationalizing as only a city dweller can that I’d probably spend less money
off
the island of Manhattan and on another. “Either you have a lot of money and no time,” I said sagely, “or time and no money.”

My dad grunted, clearly unimpressed by my logic, and later that week a copy of Suze Orman’s
The Courage to Be Rich
arrived in the mail. But, I thought, this trip could be exactly what I needed. It would give me a moment to reevaluate this weird professional time (in the sun) and figure out what I really wanted to do. There was something else, too, which I didn’t tell my dad—something I’d discovered a few months before buying my ticket. This would be a wedding with a revenge subplot, if the nerdiest revenge subplot that had ever existed. Which meant I
had
to go. It was a story.

As a senior in high school, I had been the captain of my debate team in Decatur, Alabama. I did Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is a talky, moralistic kind of enterprise, values debate as opposed to the “policy” version, in which competitors appeared to just read things out as quickly as they could regardless of intelligibility. For L-D, each person wrote and argued an affirmative and a negative side, alternating through the course of the competition, on specific topics like “Is Assisted Suicide Ever Justified?” or “Should Prostitution Be Legalized?” I was pretty good, hence the captainship and the handful of silver platters, the L-D award of
choice, stashed away in my closet at my parents’ house. Senior year in the state finals I was up against a boy from Montgomery, Alabama, a prep-school kid with a fancy tie and too-large teeth who seemed all bluster and bravado. He was also two years younger than me. This was my win.

Yet I lost. I was shocked. How could this have happened? Clearly I was better. Clearly this had been fixed, to champion the younger boy from the private school in the state capital over the girl from the public school, the Yankee transplant residing in one of the northern-most of Deep South towns. This was sexism! Paternalism! This was unfair.

After my loss I shook hands with the boy, as we were forced to do, and I noted the smug, self-righteous smile on his face. He, too, thought he’d been better. The indignity of it all too much to bear, I turned away and didn’t look back, went to college, got a job, led my life, got another job, went to weddings. But then I found out he’d be at this one. And then I got fired.

He was a friend of the groom. They’d gone to college together. He was single, like me. I’d long forgotten the topic of our debate, and my coming in second had lost any import or meaning in my actual life, but if I was going to face my onetime competitor while dateless at a wedding, you could be certain I’d find a way to win. I was jobless, spending my days writing blog posts for free on a site I had created about being unemployed. I
needed
a win.

In the dinners we had preceding the wedding, Lucy, who found it hilarious that two of her wedding guests had known each other in a way previous life, confessed all she knew about Boyd. That was his name, my high school debate nemesis:
Boyd
. He was, I
inferred, still rather full of himself. He was a lawyer. A litigator, of course. He’d dated one girl for a while, but they’d broken up when she moved away. He had recently run a marathon. He was terribly conservative, Republican, at times a self-professed chauvinist. “Oh, you’ll hate him,” Lucy enthused. “You might even make out with him.” I smiled and feigned indifference to what might happen. Then I went home and found that Boyd had friended me on Facebook.
Hahahahahahahaaaaa
, I thought, with imagined diabolical hand-wringing. I would be his wedding kryptonite.

I flew to Montego Bay one early Tuesday morning in June, and at the airport located a driver with an unmarked white van, as the bride and groom had advised, to take me to our spot on the island. Upon arrival I was greeted by the hotel staff and ushered to my small room, one of the cheapest available. It offered just one window, shadowed by an overhanging roof, and my bed was topped with a large mosquito net. Contrary to the photos, my outdoor shower seemed dark and bug-enticing rather than serene and brightly tropical. On the plus side, the refrigerator in the room was stocked with Red Stripe. I popped one open, plugged in my laptop—I’d blog once daily, I had vowed—and unpacked my island attire, changing into my swimsuit and a dress and sandals for my walk to the pool, where I’d been told the happy couple was waiting.

I was one of the first guests to arrive. Boyd was not expected until later in the week. Time to stake out the place and make arrangements as needed, I thought, marveling at how well Mission: Debate Tournament Revenge was working out already. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do when I finally confronted Boyd—pummel
him with coconuts until he admitted his win was unfair? Stage a winner-take-all Round Two debate? Employ the age-old technique of revenge by seduction?—but it seemed like being tan and relaxed, with supple arms from morning yoga, would help.

At the pool, I greeted Lucy and David with hugs and that universal destination-wedding croon of “How lucky are we? This is amazing!” before selecting my lounge chair and beginning the business of relaxing. Outside, everything was as expected: the sun hot, the water cool, the service pleasant, the couple thrilled to spend pre-wedding one-on-one time with someone who had virtually no (ostensible) demands, except to coexist in peace and harmony alongside them in their selected form of paradise. This was a brief lull before the rest of the guests and family arrived, and we all appreciated it for what it was. We stayed at the pool into the late afternoon and ate under the stars that night. In opportune moments, I surreptitiously dug further into the secrets of my wedding nemesis (“So, who at the wedding would you say is the most afraid of snakes?” “Are there any allergies I should know of?”). After dessert the couple went off, hand in hand, to the honeymoon villa, and I trudged back to my slightly damp room by myself and listened to the Kinks on repeat. “Strangers on this road we are/We are not two we are one” kept running through my head even after I shut down for the night. I pulled down the mosquito netting and closed my eyes.

By Thursday evening most of the guests had arrived, and we gathered to eat in the more casual of the restaurants on the premises. That’s where I first saw him, my rival, my scourge. He looked about the same. Taller. Wearing a bigger belt. I would have
recognized him anywhere at this resort, not least because I knew he’d be there. We were at opposite ends of a long table and so did not talk, but our eyes met, and when they did I would quickly look away, a theme repeated throughout the meal. After dinner, the crowds quickly dispersed into their separate groups, him with his friends, me with mine, and no commingling between. It was a slight disappointment. The next day, I kept scanning the pool deck, gazing laser-eyed and keen into the waves, thinking of what I might say in case he suddenly appeared. There was no sign of him, though, and I started to doubt my initial interpretation of his look, his Facebook friending of me. Maybe he didn’t actually want to meet again at all. On the other hand, maybe I had to be patient.

The next night, at the rehearsal dinner, he and I were seated at separate tables. I was across from two friends: Natalie and her fiancé, Luke, who she’d later marry in Connecticut. To the left of me was my newly appointed Best Wedding Friend (BWF), a man named Fred. Fred had gotten to Jamaica early as well, and in the last few days together we’d found the easy harmony of destination-wedding friendship, with all the necessary confidences shared, jokes told, drinks drunk, and our separate lives communally affirmed. We were similar enough at the same time that we were suitably dissimilar: He was gay and stylish and, a matter of key importance, he’d never beaten me in a debate competition. He lived in New York, too, and we’d promised to hang out in the city. We probably meant it.