Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest

by Jen Doll

  They’d gone on a date to a Rolling Stones concert. Cash, who was several years older, was a die-hard fan. He was from New Hampshire, and in the times I’d hung out with him, he appeared to want to get every last drop of enjoyment from life that he could. Despite his small-town roots, he was not staid or boring or conventional, and what Caitlin offered in sophistication and social graces, he put forth in optimistic energy, entrepreneurialism, and a boisterous sense of humor. The two of them wanted to travel, to see things, to have adventures, and to live a good and most of all interesting life. It made sense that this effort would be better with a teammate. The engagement seemed fast; she was just twenty-five. But both sets of their parents had married young, too. When it was right it was right, was what they said. No reason to hold off on starting your life with that person, once you found him.

  I still had not even an inkling of the sort of person I’d want to marry, nor of the sort of person who’d want to marry me, much less how to find him. Moreover, I had no concept of what being married might feel like and when I might be ready to do it. I was just learning to pay bills on time and that my credit card limit was not “extra savings” in the bank. My relationships, insomuch as they could be called that, usually involved men who liked me but for whom I felt nothing, or at least not enough—or the opposite, me the awkward girl with a crush on someone who wasn’t interested beyond a couple of dates or casual makeout sessions. I didn’t feel jealous of Caitlin; I was more proud, and a little bit in awe. She had always been a step ahead of the rest of us, a girl who liked to get things done. She had direction, and for her, this marriage was an obvious next step in an adult life.

  In that way the marriage was traditional, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with it. In fact, this was one of those weddings at which no one had doubts, at least not doubts that I heard or saw expressed in any way. No one was afraid the couple wouldn’t make it, that they were faking it, or that they were doing it for the wrong reasons. It may have been one of the most emotionally pure weddings I’ve ever been to, possibly due to the relative youth of the bride and groom. The thing about marrying older is that the so-called baggage can’t help starting to pile on, our relationship experiences accruing like so many beads on a vintage bridal gown. This is not to say that people should get married early in life to avoid complications—we are all ready, if we’re ready, at different times, and many factors go into that readiness—but simply that this particular union seemed remarkably complication-free for very organic reasons. No one would have protested, save a few guys from college who were still carrying torches for Caitlin, and they hadn’t been invited. Everyone, from the parents of the bride and groom on down, just seemed so darn happy. It was infectious.

  Cash had a close-knit crew of guy friends he’d grown up with in New Hampshire. They had funny nicknames, like Pickles and Rowdy, Scarface and Cobra. Caitlin had her own group, Leigh and other girls with whom she’d attended her private Florida high school. (They had very normal, decent, ladylike names.) These were the women she was closest to, along with her freshman year roommate, Emily, and me, the three of us having gone on from our initial meeting to live together until we graduated. We’d all come to celebrate their union, as had her dad’s golf buddies, old family friends, and extended family. It was a small number of people, fewer than fifty in all. Many were friends to begin with, and any who didn’t know one another already would by the end of the trip.

  Destination weddings are like camp, love camp, in that way. Guests are brought together for a reason that ties everyone there. In this safe place you find yourself more open to new friendships than you ever are in regular life, and you make them quickly, in whatever time frame has been allotted. Bound by all this happiness and goodwill, particularly when it stretches over several days and nights, you can’t help wanting to snatch some of it for yourself. A mini-society built on love and togetherness is born, with collaborative activities and even shared morals and a certain kind of politics and government. You promise foreverness when you leave. You cry, you hug, you exchange contact information. And then, oddly, because the promises were sincere, only sometimes do you ever actually talk to any of these new friends again. Out of sight, out of mind, and anyway, outside of a wedding atmosphere, can you really reclaim the joy brought by an impromptu limbo tournament in the discoteca, the mother of the bride lifting her skirt to compete, or the sheer euphoria of driving around in a golf cart stolen from the resort, a wild and reckless rampage as hotel security closes in?

  As with Las Vegas’s famous refrain, sometimes those pristine wedding memories are better left where they’ve been formed, untouched and unchanged. Leave them alone and leave them precious, like the moment captured in the keepsake photo right before everyone jumped in the pool and ruined their silk dresses and tuxedos with all that chlorine. What you felt then, in that second, was real. What happens at love camp stays at love camp.

  • • •

  The plane landed safely. Everyone clapped.

  • • •

  The bride and groom had arranged a bus to the resort, and we departed from the airport in a big, convivial cluster, talking faster and louder as we passed scenic spots and photograph-ready vistas. Emily and I had been separated on the flight, but we reunited on the bus and began to make plans for our impending arrival at the resort: room, pool, room, bar, room, dinner. We were here. We were here! When we disembarked, members of the hotel staff placed tropical cocktails festooned with colorful straws and tiny drink umbrellas in our hands and greeted us warmly. “Welcome to your vacation home,” they said, shaking our hands and smiling. “Much happiness for the wedding!” The sun was a glowing, unblemished orb. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  Emily and I were sharing a room, to which we were delivered via golf carts. It was better appointed than anywhere I’d resided in my adult life. After testing the mattresses of each of the two giant beds and gazing at all the luxury we’d been bestowed, we hung up our dresses and opened the bamboo shades to allow a view of the patio outside our room and the pink and red and yellow flowers beyond. We were in a kind of heaven, one that we weren’t sure how we’d gotten so lucky as to arrive at. Just by being friends with our friend? It seemed such an easy thing, and the rewards were so great.

  Later, I wrote in my diary: “The wedding was amazing, more amazing, almost like a soap opera, but a positive one where everyone gets along and loves each other, with no evil person or babies born out of wedlock. It is a beautiful piece of unreality.” That’s the thing about a destination wedding, though any wedding has this aspect to some extent. They are unrealities, even if what they are meant to showcase and support is something that’s very real. No one can live his or her life like it’s a destination wedding, though while we are there, it’s everyone’s prerogative to try. Of course, it’s not like you even have to try when it’s eighty degrees and sunny and there’s a swim-up pool bar within walking distance. It just happens.

  That’s where we went first. We put on our swimsuits and lathered up with the appropriate numbers of SPF and headed to the pool. Already an array of pasty wedding guests in freshly purchased bikinis and swim trunks surrounded the horizontal sliver of blue water. That’s another thing about destination weddings. The group of guests can often by sheer numbers pretty much take over whatever location they’ve been bequeathed, and usually they do. We did. We swam, we talked, we drank, we hung out en masse. We commandeered the golf carts the resort employees used for delivering room service, clean towels, and delicately scented hibiscus soaps, and we drove them around late at night, drunk from gaiety as much as from booze.

  The days blurred marvelously with unchanging weather as we repeated the same basic non-duties over the course of our stay. Wake to the sun, breakfast on the restaurant deck overlooking the lush golf course. The grueling choice between fruit and pancakes or sausage and eggs. (Wedding Tip: Have it all!) The pool, or sometimes the beach, a snack or lunch, time
to read or take a nap in the sun. Later, dinner and drinks and hanging out, at the discoteca or elsewhere. If we were lucky, Caitlin and Cash would join us for drinks or to eat or to lounge at the pool and would be treated like celebrities by their worshipful fans. But the bulk of our time was spent with other guests, because the couple was kept busy with family and the final arrangements for the ceremony, which would happen on the beach the day before we would all depart the resort. We’d heard the bride and groom would be delivered to their sandy, ocean-adjacent nuptial spot via horse and carriage like a princess and her prince, their kingdom awaiting, its citizens watching with bated breath. With the wedding our stay would come to an end. It was all happening too fast. We wanted the fairy tale to go on forever.

  • • •

  During all of this, friendships and even romantic relationships were being stoked. Lots of mild flirting was going on everywhere, thanks to potent quantities of translucent blue water, brightly colored daiquiris, vitamin D, and the overall vibe of honest, earnest emotion. At love camp, there’s a captive audience for the affections of anyone who might be feeling anything, and it’s hard not to feel at a wedding. That’s a big part of why you’re there.

  Our time at the resort had saturated us in a new sort of confidence, both in ourselves and in the sense that romance, despite what we might have known of it back at home, was possible and even likely. I remember hearing Caitlin’s dad mention his daughter’s friends to another of the wedding guests, an older man, and suddenly I realized he was talking about Emily and me. He described us as “beautiful and smart,” and I felt honored, eager to embody those words. Here at love camp, I thought I might really be beautiful and smart, which were not two things I often felt so fully at the same time.

  I was getting a refill at the bar, and Pickles sidled up next to me. “Hello, hello,” he said. This wedding wasn’t our first meeting. There had been a party thrown by Cash’s family up in New Hampshire to celebrate the upcoming big event, and there we’d bantered pleasantly, but we hadn’t spent any time alone together. He was older, Cash’s age, with red hair, plentiful freckles, and a big laugh. He had a job in sales and traveled extensively for work. Cash had told me Pickles was starting to feel the loneliness of “life on the road” and was seeking a “suitable lady” to make his world feel complete. We’d been amused by the corny drama of that sentiment, which seemed to indicate that Cash’s momentum to marry had made an impression on his friends. I was flattered, too, at any indication that a suitable lady could be me. Pickles didn’t live in my town and wasn’t the sort of guy I saw myself having a relationship with, partly because of the long distance, and partly because his nickname was Pickles. I hadn’t figured out what that meant, though I guessed it might not be good. But he was nice, and very funny, and he was paying me a lot of attention. Half the wedding-relationship battle—and this may be true of any relationship regardless of weddings—is finding a person who gives you attention in the degrees you want and expect it (and, on the opposite side of that, learning to be okay with it when that occasionally does not happen).

  He said, “Let me buy you a drink at the next bar.”

  “Oh, are we going somewhere else after this?” I asked. We were at a destination high in the cliffs, with striking aerial views. It was off the resort, and we’d been bused there. This dinner, and our return to the resort, had been the only plan for the night on the itinerary. But there was always more that could be done.

  “The after-party plan is to go to the discoteca,” he said. “Cobra and I drove our golf carts over here. Bets are being placed now for our race back.” He glanced at his friends, who were deep in their own conversations. “You should ride back with me.”

  “I can’t believe you guys stole the golf carts from the resort,” I said. “Hotel security is probably looking for you as we speak.”

  He grinned at me. “Bad boys are hot, right?”

  “As for your offer of a beverage,” I said, “I think Cash’s dad has the guests’ drinks on his tab tonight. Which means that your kind gesture is suddenly somewhat less impressive.”

  He let loose with his laugh, and it echoed out over the ravine, a message right back to us. “Do you think I’d offer otherwise?”

  • • •

  I didn’t ride with him to the discoteca, but Emily and I watched them from the windows of the bus as we shuttled back to the hotel. They were a couple of idiots, racing on sandy roads as fast as those little machines could take them, hooting and hollering the whole time, and though Cobra won, Pickles was never too far behind. We went to the discoteca, and if he didn’t buy me a drink, he at least delivered several to me, and that was enough. “Want to dance?” he asked, and I got up and we moved around to ridiculous songs like “Achy Breaky Heart” and “Mambo No. 5,” played with gusto by the resort DJ. There may have been a limbo, though it remains mercifully undocumented. When the bar closed, Cobra and Pickles drove Emily and me back to our room in the stolen golf carts. Both of us shared a private moment with our respective wedding liaisons before we reconvened. We collapsed on our beds, which had been decorated with towel swans, two on each with entwined necks forming the shape of a heart, romantic and silly, just like our evening.

  “Do you like him?” we asked each other at the same time. “I don’t know,” came our in-sync answer.

  “He’s nice!” I said.

  “He’s funny!” said Emily.

  “Caitlin will think it’s hilarious if we hook up with Cash’s friends at her wedding.” I was basing this on the rom-com and wedding-movie fare I’d seen in my lifetime, but it certainly seemed true. Emily agreed.

  “Isn’t that sort of, I don’t know, what we’re supposed to do?” she asked. “Half the point of a wedding is for the great stories you tell the bride afterward. And all brides and grooms want to think that their love inspires others. Making out with a friend of the groom when you’re friends with the bride is a rite of passage.”

  “It’s the American dream,” I said. “So, did you kiss Cobra? Is there a great love welling up inside of you? Is this a monumental occasion, after which your whole life will be different?” I threw a towel swan at her. “Do you want to marrrrry him?”

  “Yes, obviously,” said Emily. “I desperately want to marry him. In fact, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and I’m only just figuring that out now. What about you? Can you find the inner strength to settle down with a man known publicly as Pickles?”

  “We could have a double wedding,” I suggested. “But I’ll have you know that my future husband’s real name is Doug.”

  “Of course it is. Should I even ask: Why Pickles?”

  “Not unless you know, Why Cobra?”

  “He’s saving that for our wedding night,” she said, and we both burst out laughing.

  My head on my plush pillow, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, thinking about love and like and the many strange permutations of each that could exist in this fine world in which we lived.

  • • •

  The wedding day dawned fresh and sunny and gorgeous, scented with exotic flowers and coconut suntan lotion, just like all the rest. I was feeling more and more heartsick that we’d have to leave our happy little created society, and it wasn’t just about departing this place. I’d also have to leave the person I was here. I could barely remember life back home—pushing papers around in a cubicle, late to meetings again and getting scolded, the shadows of a bar and the glow of the cab ride home afterward as I fumbled through my wallet for cash, and how the mornings could feel purposeless and bleak—but I’d have to return to it. I hoped some of the self I’d found here would come back with me and even stay a while.

  We were hungover that morning, but in paradise a moment outside or a quick dip could cure such ills easily, as could eggs and sausage, so we sat in the open air and ate, immersed our bodies in the cool waters of the pool, and then began to get ready for the wedding. I
put on a clingy dress of varying shades of pink, from pale to deep fuchsia, with flowers patterned across it and one thin strap over the shoulder. I slipped on sandals, though we’d be barefoot on the beach. We made our way to the appointed spot to wait for the bride and groom to arrive, like real royalty—each in a horse-drawn carriage—and when they did we took picture after picture before following them, Pied Piper–style, to the sand. There they stood before us, in front of the blue-green water, facing each other, their officiant off to the side. While he had a key role in this event, he was not who we were there to see.

  The bride’s gown was white with an overlay of lace and beading, and her blond hair was slicked back and tucked into an elegant bun topped by her long veil, which fell below her waist. Pinned over one ear was a huge pink flower, an accompaniment to the yellow and pink blossoms she held in her bouquet. At the bottom edge of the veil, in red glitter puffy paint, she had written “I Cash.” He had on a dark suit, a yellow boutonniere pinned to his lapel, and underneath his jacket and his white button-down, he had her name tattooed on his arm in a heart. We’d seen it at the pool. That was love.

  It was difficult to hear their vows over the crashing of the waves, but there was no question about the pronouncement of them as husband and wife, because right afterward, they shared one of those majestic cinematic kisses, him clasping her face in his hands. A photo of the moment remains on her Facebook page. Though it’s more than a decade old now, a glance at it takes me right back to the occasion, with its upswing of emotion and the transformative, palpable joy we felt for this new official duo. Though it might not arrive in this exact form or shape, I felt sure that the mutual love and attraction wrapped in a promise of forever we were there to witness was something I wanted, too. Just as it had at the wedding when I was eight, its appearance someday, somehow, in the far-distant future, seemed indisputable.