The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (15 page)

W
e have devoted a separate chapter to engagement parties and weddings, because these hormonally charged events present Mountaineers with opportunities and challenges not found at other social functions. While love and marriage never did go together like a horse and carriage, we at
The Social Climber’s Bible
are happy to report that weddings and social climbing are still inexorably intertwined.

Know that you are not just going to a party where people throw rice, catch bouquets, and cry because they are happy. You are attending a sacred event. A pageant based on traditions designed, choreographed, and costumed so that when coupled with alcohol, those witnessing the spectacle will be prone to succumb to a form of mass delusion and magical forgetting that blinds them to the realities of modern-day nuptials, i.e., that statistics prove that there is a better than 50 percent chance the couple who just promised to love, honor, and obey each other in
sickness and in health till death do them part will soon be fighting over the wedding presents in divorce court.

What’s important for Mountaineers to know is that this magical forgetting also prompts individuals who would normally spot you as a climber a mile off to fall under the delusion that you are a person of sterling character whom they should do something to help.

But before you can capitalize on the tactical advantages weddings provide the climber, you must first, of course, get invited to the wedding. Which brings us to the subject of:

Engagement Parties

Note: Mountaineers who have been invited to the engagement party because they are the ones getting married should immediately flip ahead to the following chapter, Dating, Love, and Marriage, and find out how to make the most of the social climbing opportunities when you’re marrying up.

For those of you who are single and fancy-free, your first job at the engagement party is to do whatever it takes to make sure
that you will be invited to the wedding. Know that in these financially uncertain times, you may be worth cocktails and pigs in a blanket but might not be deemed worthy of a three-course meal and a Dom Perignon fountain, especially if they know you can’t afford to buy any of the wedding gifts they have registered for at Tiffany’s. As with all social functions, you can increase your chances of making the cut if you plan ahead.

The social climber should always be the one to organize a group of the bride’s or groom’s friends to each donate fifty to one hundred dollars so they can get the betrothed couple a special present. Volunteer not only to collect the money but also to make the purchase with
your
credit card. We don’t suggest you do anything as crass as claiming to have paid for this present entirely by yourself. Simply forget to include the gift card that lists the names of those who contributed and accidentally leave your credit card receipt in the box that contains the present, and the bride and groom will assume you paid for it by yourself.

A great present will get you off on the right foot at the engagement party. But to actually secure an invite to the wedding, you will also have to make a great impression. And to do that, you must navigate the undercurrent of anxiety that is ever present at all engagement parties due to the fact that there’s no guarantee that the engagement party will be followed by a wedding party. And as such, the engagement will turn out to be both a waste of money and a social embarrassment. Usually, whoever’s paying for the party is “the party” that most wants the marriage to go through, i.e., either the bride is pregnant or one of the
betrothed’s parents hopes for financial gain before the balloon payment on their mortgage comes due.

The high hopes, higher stakes, and uncertain outcome of engagements kindles a giddy sexual energy that prompts some to make the mistake of offering a toast that references the future bride’s or groom’s previous romantic indiscretions. Resist the temptation to turn the engagement party into a roast. The mother of the future bride will not feel inclined to send you an invitation to the wedding if you raise your glass to wish them well by offering up an anecdote that includes the details of her daughter’s or future son-in-law’s first ménage à trois, especially if it involved you. Play it safe and get off on a good foot by deliberately mistaking the bride’s or groom’s mother for her or his older sister.

If you want to sleep with the bridesmaids or groomsmen at the wedding, do not sleep with them at the engagement party. Think of the engagement party as a research trip. Say you have only just met the betrothed and you’ve gotten yourself invited to the engagement party because you heard the wedding’s going to be held in a château in Uzbekistan; sounds great. The only trouble is that in certain parts of Uzbekistan, a château is simply a home where the donkey doesn’t sleep in your bedroom.

Likewise, it is prudent to discreetly find out what kind of presents the bride and groom plan to give their attendants before you start lobbying to be picked as maid of honor/bridesmaid/best man/groomsman. Obviously, paying hundreds of dollars for a bridesmaid’s dress that’s designed to make you look fat and the bride look thin is a good investment if the bride’s father is going
to give you diamond clips from Tiffany’s. But agreeing to rent a cutaway and springing for strippers at a bachelor party is a decidedly bad investment in return for a ceramic beer mug with the date of the wedding hand-painted on it by the groom’s mother.

If you are a friend of the bride and upon arriving at the engagement party discover that the groom’s family and friends have infinitely more to offer you in terms of connections, future invites, and better vacation homes, this is the time to change your alliances and become the groom’s new best friend. If you find yourself thinking,
I would get more out of this fascinating clan if I were the bride- or groom-to-be
, do not hit on the future bride or groom at the engagement party. Wait until they begin to argue about china patterns and prenuptial agreements before telling them that they seem unhappy and volunteering to give them a backrub to help them relax.

The engagement party isn’t always a win-win affair for the betrothed, but it can be for you. Except, of course, if one of the two people getting engaged is your Swan. Once a Swan says “I do” to someone other than yourself, he or she is no longer
your
Swan but becomes someone else’s ride to the top.

Yes, being a caring person, you want to see your Swan happy. But are you going to be happy if she brings her fiancé instead of you to all those swell parties? Sure, she will let you tag along at
first, but after the wedding, how much love will be left for you? You care about your Swan—are you going to stand by and let her be used by someone other than yourself?

For the social climber in danger of losing his or her Swan, the engagement party is an opportunity to regain control. Yes, you should have nipped the relationship in the bud long before it reached this point, but do not waste time berating yourself. There is still time to do what is best for you.

Swans, being fabulously beautiful and perennially sexy, often get engaged and dis-engaged twice a year (about as often as a real swan molts its feathers). Ultimately, unlike real swans, human Swans rarely mate for life, but between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, they are prone to bouts of magical thinking in which they will delude themselves into believing they are like real swans in that regard. Supplying them with grim statistics that prove that Swan marriages to mere mortals often end in the worst kind of divorce (no alimony) will not convince your average Swan to call off the engagement at the engagement party.

What the smart social climber needs to do is to get the Swan’s fiancé to call off the engagement. We are not suggesting you do anything as cruel as actually telling the Swan’s fiancé that he is making a grave error, marrying a creature as innately and incurably flighty as a Swan. Your Swan would never forgive you for that. Let someone else plant the seeds of doubt. You will simply water them.

Who could you get to do something as socially unforgivable as sabotaging a couple’s engagement at their engagement party?

Because Swans are promiscuous by nature, they can’t resist inviting old boyfriends or girlfriends to their engagement parties. Old boyfriends or girlfriends are prone to become intoxicated at the sight of a Swan they once dallied with getting engaged to someone other than themselves, which makes them your perfect accomplice.

After helping the brokenhearted ex to his third, fourth, and fifth shot of tequila, it will be easy for a silver-tongued devil like yourself to talk him into standing up and making a toast in which he will recount one of his many funny misadventures with the Swan. All Swans, being Holly Golightly creatures regardless of sex, have past life experiences they have not shared with their fiancés. The stories you want to convince the drunken ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend) to reveal in the toast might include the transmission of STDs, past drug arrests, or witty anecdotes about how the Swan got crabs in his or her eyelashes.

Remember to quiet the crowd so that not only the unsuspecting Swan’s fiancé but the hard-of-hearing parents or grandparents will catch every word. When jaws drop and the room goes quiet, you should be the first one to stand up, turn on the drunken ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend, and take offense. Better yet, help the confused and humiliated fiancé throw the offending ex out the door. Then, pull the fiancé you are actually trying to dispose of and his parents into another room and say the following magic words: “As long as you keep her [your Swan] on her medication, she’ll be fine.”

Of course, if your Swan is marrying a really Big Fish or, better yet, a Whale, the wise Mountaineer should not, under any
circumstances, encourage the ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend) to make an incendiary toast. In fact, you should do any and everything to make sure the Swan actually goes through with the marriage. Yes, in the short run your Swan will desert you for the Big Fish or Whale spouse. But when the inevitable divorce happens, you will be there to make sure your Swan’s alimony settlement includes unlimited use of her ex’s private plane, and your Swan will soon be jetting you off to even better parties.

Weddings

The fantasy of the bride in white conjures up such potent and positive voodoo, everyone at the wedding begins to see the world through rose-colored glasses. However, that only works to the social climbers’ advantage if they steel themselves against contamination and do not fall victim to the spell of wedding fever themselves and waste time and attention charming guests who have even less to offer than themselves. Linger with the maiden aunts from Wisconsin who can only invite you to the opening of a can of creamed corn no longer than it takes to make you seem like a caring person to people who can help you. Stay focused on what you came to the wedding to do—climb.

While weddings offer a romantic respite from the cynicism of modern life to the civilian, to the climber they provide a hearts-and-flowers version of von Clausewitz’s fog of war, a veritable cloudbank of romantic delusion that makes even the clumsiest climber seem like an upwardly mobile Fred Astaire.

As to how to negotiate the wedding, know that most large weddings are basically dinner dances with pagan overtones and
small weddings are generally for people who’ve been married before and lost most of their friends to the more successful ex, or those whose parents are too cheap to spring for a blowout. Basic cocktail party and dinner dance rules apply. In the postreligious service predinner cocktail stage of the party, it’s best to stay moving. You are a shark, not a bottom-feeder. Meet, greet, and ascertain the worth of the guests as quickly as possible. Pretend to go to the bar, but do not drink at the bar. And even if you have the good fortune to be attending a no-expense-spared nuptial, do not keep hitting on the waitress carrying the tray of glasses brimming with champagne simply because it is free.