Wipe Your Feet

In 12 days I’m getting married, but who’s counting? I wouldn’t be, but the internet’s wedding website corner does it for me. Sometimes I even get auto-generated notices that the wedding is ONLY ONE MONTH or JUST TWO WEEKS away, which is great because maybe I had accidentally started thinking about something other than the wedding! How quickly these reminders correct my meandering thoughts, hastily herding them into the freakout corral!

I did not think I would feel concerned or nervous at this point in the wedding planning process, because I have a tight rein on the chaos and am emotionally secure in my relationship. Sure, at one point my wedding registry had only one place setting listed on it; I thought “five pieces” meant “five places” and that’s understandable for someone who doesn’t shop for place settings often ever. Sure, we were so late on everything that save-the-date cards were off the table. Sure, my dress arrived from Portland about 2 months late, landing in a box on my doorstep just as I was heading out the door with steam pouring out of my ears on a mission to find a replacement wedding dress for under $200, maybe a nice nightie from Club Monaco. But these things are to be expected. These things are not the causes of my anxiety. My brain is working overtime to come up with disastrous scenarios, not just irritation-causing sandpapery inconveniences. When my mind tires of generating bridal nightmares, I Google “wedding disasters” for more ideas. But none are scarier than my own creations. 

The obvious culprits are earthquakes, rain, unusually strong and destructive winds, and traffic accidents. Just shy of obvious are unexpected weight gain (10+ lbs), mysterious facial swelling, surprise alopecia, loss of vision/hearing, hives and broken ankles. Then there’s the possibility of the kind of emotional distress that causes the variety of crying which makes your eyes itch for three days afterwards and gives you a red mustache. How about food poisoning? Would you like some, because even if you don’t, it might invite itself into your body, or mine, and of course that might happen the night before the wedding and incapacitate everyone. Or worse: everyone might try to “party through” the violent and horrible sickness only to show up to the wedding and throw up on the grass. Imagine 100 people throwing up on the grass. Groaning and throwing up on petals and the unusually strong and destructive wind tossing vomit all over the bride and groom, who are weeping hysterically. Or worse: pestilence, a cloud of bubonic-plague-infected mosquitos descends upon the ceremony, and everything is like The Andromeda Strain. What about the cake falls over, and when an elderly guest bends down to attempt to wipe it off the flagstones with a crumpled up Kleenex from the pocket of his or her blazer, he or she keels over, dead, before the ceremony begins. And then the ceremony can’t begin because everyone is wailing and sad, shielding toddler’s eyes, the priest busies himself, the marriage license expires. Everybody goes on anti-depressants. All because of the wedding.

The dog, who is coming, could run away. She could run down the road and I could chase her and get hit by a car just moments after seeing the dog get hit by a car. Then my fiance would see the dog and me lying on the street and Slash would appear from behind a large, gnarled oak. Slash would play the saddest notes possible on his black, stark guitar with his dramatic whorls of hair blowing in the unseasonal, horrible wind, and a big black cloud of bats would come and hook their talons on every single guest and take them to an undiscovered desert island just past Catalina, the environment of which always smells like stilton cheese and underpants. And they can never leave. And the bats stay too. And the bats have rabies. And the rabid bats have babies.

There are only twelve days left to score the necessary vaccinations, shelter from natural elements, bug nets, pacemakers, running shoes with clearly visible reflectors, electric fences, Ipecac, band-aids, crutches, diuretics, Benadryl, wigs and concealer. I don’t even know where to get the pacemaker. Or how many I might need. Maybe I should be safe and get one for every guest. Now you see how weddings become so expensive.