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

by Jen Doll

  My eyes fell to the bottom of the page, and I clicked. “You: A little bit Amy Winehouse, there for a wedding,” read the post. “Me: There for a bachelor party, a young Mickey Rourke, pre–The Wrestler. We talked and kissed at a bar in Connecticut. I’m not sure what happened in the end, though. Hope you’re okay.”

  It had to be him. I told my friends. They agreed. “Did you write back?” they all asked. I wrote back. I couldn’t help it. I was curious about so many things. I wanted to know if he really was engaged, and if so, what he’d been thinking. I wanted to know what I’d been thinking, what I’d told him, who I was in our conversation together. And then there’s the fact that it’s hard to give up on a story, and it’s harder to give up on a wedding story.

  He never responded.

  As with life, with love, and with weddings, too, time heals wounds. In time, things pass. And in time there will be yet another opportunity, a chance to do it all better.

  Next time.

  12.

  Maternal Instincts

  Honesty and friendship can often feel like a tricky balance. After what had happened with Ginny, I made a promise that I’d be more careful about what I said about my friends’ significant others. I would never, ever insult a friend’s choice of a boyfriend or fiancé or husband, or say outright that a relationship wasn’t worth continuing. Especially if I’d been drinking. No matter what my friend confided in me, she might not actually want me to intervene, and she certainly didn’t want me to judge her for staying with that guy. If my friends were dating people I didn’t like, even if I didn’t think those people treated them as well as they deserved, I needed to leave that be, lest I lose another friend. It wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to be the sort of person who scolded her friends for dating the wrong men. I knew by now that if the tables had been turned, I would have reacted badly.

  In retrospect, I think the key to giving advice to friends about their relationships is not to say nothing—muzzling yourself completely never works—but most of all to listen and to try to understand what your friend needs as well as what you yourself need. Of course, this is far easier said than done.

  Alice was one of that group of friends that included Ginny. These were the women with whom I’d gone to college and semestered in Italy, a bonding experience we hoped would extend through the course of our lives. In our early years in New York City, I’d seen her through a relationship we can joke about now, making fun of that guy’s awfulness rather than feeling trapped by it. At the time they were dating, though, I’d mostly kept my mouth shut, adhering to an “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” policy. When she asked for advice, whether she should stay with him or not, I’d say I only wanted to see her happy and that she had to decide what she wanted for herself. I’d tell her, lesson learned from Ginny, that I’d support her in whatever decision she made. Surely I said a thing or two that was not perfectly diplomatic, but in this case I managed it better than I had before, and she and he eventually broke up, to everyone’s relief (most of all, I think, her own).

  The thing is, dating jerks—and most of us have experienced at least one—isn’t all bad. Dating jerks can help you learn who the good guys are, as long as you pay attention and stop dating jerks. Alice stopped dating jerks, and soon enough there was a new guy, not a jerk at all, in the picture. Their meeting story had a twist: Xavier was her therapist’s son’s soccer coach, and the therapist herself had arranged the setup. Though her relationship with that therapist would end for reasons having nothing to do with matchmaking, Alice’s relationship with Xavier was just getting started. A year to the month after our friend Heather’s wedding, they would walk down the aisle, too. The therapist was not invited.

  Xavier was from New Orleans, and that’s where they would have their traditional-to-modern Louisiana wedding. Alice spoke excitedly of the plans as they came into fruition: The ceremony would be in the French Quarter at Saint Louis Cathedral. It would be followed by a second line, the guests trailing a brass band for several ecstatic blocks to the reception at the Board of Trade, a pristine white building from the 1800s that resembled something between a plantation mansion and a palazzo, with an ornate fountain in its courtyard and Corinthian columns out front. It would be in November and the weather would be pleasant, New Orleans–warm but not summer-steamy.

  Alice’s view of marriage itself combined aspects of the old and the new. Her own parents had divorced when she was young, and her father had remarried, bringing the complications of an extended family that inevitably ensue. In her own relationship, she wanted love and romance, of course, but tempering that was the firsthand knowledge that marriage wasn’t a fantasy and it wasn’t salvation, it was a form of collaborating to achieve a kind of life, a foundation for more. Even before she met Xavier—who came with his own big family and their own particular interrelationships—Alice would tell me, “Relationships are work.” She was aware that she was going into something that wouldn’t be perfect. It would be marriage, and it would forever be a work in progress. It was worth it not despite that, but because of it.

  • • •

  Nora and Mattie and I stayed together in a room at one of the oldest hotels in the French Quarter. There was a seductively dim revolving bar downstairs at which we drank non-virgin Shirley Temples, and balconies above with decorative wrought-iron grating preventing those who’d throw their Mardi Gras beads onto the street from falling along with their necklaces. Alice and her wedding party had the penthouse suite. The night we arrived we went up to her set of rooms and sat with family and friends, toasting the bride, the focus of everyone’s attention. The internal surge that comes from seeing a close friend take this step was running through all of us. Even when a person has grown cynical about weddings, it’s hard to feel cynical about a good couple getting married, especially when it happens in New Orleans. So we didn’t.

  The rehearsal dinner was at a private home in the Garden District. The hosts were long-standing friends of the groom’s family, and they had two sons who were about Xavier’s age, Andrew and Harrison. The three boys had grown up together. It was a gorgeous old house, peach in color and patrician in feel, and behind it was a big backyard full of grass and flowers and formidable old trees, with enough space for tables at which people could sit and eat gumbo and po’boys and red beans and rice, washing it all down with Abita beer. It was chilly, so over our dresses we wore coats. There is a photo of Nora and me in the backyard that night, smiling and cuddling together for warmth; she’s in red wool, and I’m wearing a black jacket with a fur collar.

  Months before, Harrison had visited New York. Alice and Xavier had taken him to a Lower East Side bar that no longer exists, and I’d joined them and a few other friends. In the middle of that bar was a metal pole extending through the ceiling and down into the cement floor, a relic from some previous building purpose, or maybe a structural element. In between sipping our drinks we took turns grabbing and sliding down it, like firemen or strippers, or stripper firemen. Harrison and I started talking—it’s a surefire conversation starter, a stripper pole—and later that night, on the street, he kissed me. I didn’t see him again before he returned to New Orleans. The kiss was just one of those things that had happened that didn’t need to lead to anything else. Still, in going to this wedding, I remembered the kiss. We had history, if kisses counted as such.

  Since the party was being hosted at his house, he was kept busy, and spent the night replenishing beer and wine and food and making sure there were enough chairs and the music was at an acceptable volume for the young and old ears present. Throughout it all he was flanked by a crowd of family members and old friends, with whom he mingled comfortably. But we briefly reconnected that night, enough that it wasn’t weird for either of us to look around and see in the backyard a stranger with whom we had once had a moment. He found me inside as I was waiting for the bathroom to free up. I was talking to his little cousin
, who was around three or four years old. She was holding a picture book. “Is that your favorite?” I’d asked. She’d smiled enigmatically and turned pages, and I read her some lines.

  “This is Neena,” he said, seeing us together and picking her up. She hugged him and laughed and patted his head. “How’ve you been?” he asked. “It’s been a while.”

  “Good!” I said. “Working, staying away from stripper poles. How about you?”

  “Pretty good, pretty good,” he answered, handing the baby to her mom, who’d just exited the bathroom. His own mother entered the room and gave him a look. “I’m supposed to help keep people out of the house,” he whispered.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” I said. “I just need to use the restroom . . .”

  “You better hurry,” he warned, and when my face registered shock, he laughed. “Aw, I’m just kidding. She doesn’t want people upstairs, is all.”

  “Ha,” I said, heading into the bathroom and shutting the door. When I emerged, he was gone, and I only saw him again to say good-bye. He stood shaking hands with the departing guests at the door of his family manor.

  “See you at the wedding,” he said.

  “Yep,” I agreed. That was a near-guarantee.

  • • •

  The ceremony took place in the late afternoon. The sun was still high in the sky when we left the hotel to walk the few blocks to the church. I was wearing a purple silk dress topped with the black fur-collared jacket I’d worn the night before and was feeling very retro-chic. Saint Louis Cathedral, the oldest continuously operating cathedral in North America, is one of those incredible buildings, its architecture outshining everything that surrounds it. In the postcards and in real life, too, it looks rather like a Disney castle, but it’s 100 percent Catholic, not mouse. I’ll blame its awe-inspiring presence on the fact that I do not remember one iota of the ceremony, save the sight of Xavier and Alice, tiny at the front of the cavernous, beautiful church. After a priest pronounced the couple bride and groom, we headed outside and the brass band began to play. Serenaded by a tuba-forward rendition of “Just the Two of Us,” Alice in her white dress and veil, a flower behind her ear, and Xavier in his khaki suit, broke into a spontaneous dance in front of the church. The guests joined in. Then the parade began, and we traveled that way, pausing to boogie in the streets when the spirit moved us, following the couple and the band to the reception. It was pretty obvious given our attire and the mood of the crowd, but strangers would stop and ask, “Is this a wedding?” When we said yes, unable to help themselves, drawn in by the music and the magic, some of those people fell in line with us and started dancing, too.

  Canal Street was busy with traffic, and as we reached it, a child ran out ahead of the group. Without thinking I reached out and grabbed him, holding his hand so we could cross safely. My friends looked at me, astonished.

  “Oh, my God,” said Nora with a gasp of feigned horror. “You have a nurturing side.”

  “You like kids! You like kids!” Mattie taunted. “Ha! We’ve found you out!”

  “Everybody, calm down,” I said, deadpanning. “Seeing a kid get hit by a car would have been a real downer for the reception.” I turned the little boy loose and he went running back to his parents.

  A few minutes later I turned to Nora and clarified. “I’ve never not liked kids, you know. Just because I don’t talk about how I’m dying to have them, at any cost . . .”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “It’s just funny to see you do something maternal.”

  If it’s maternal to want to prevent a kid from getting hurt, I thought, guilty as charged.

  The truth is, I like kids now, and I liked kids then. As a little girl, I was a loving older sister to my baby brother, even when he punched me so incessantly that my mom, fearing she was raising a bully and a wimp, told me to punch him back. (I eventually mustered the nerve to do this, and he stopped punching.) As a teenager, I babysat a family of four girls for an entire summer. I adored them, each with her own unique personality and quirky habits, and am sad that our families lost touch and I don’t know what they grew up to become. I love my friends’ children, and am fascinated and entertained whenever I’m around them. They do the greatest kid things, like staring into a ceramic bunny’s eyes in search of the secrets of the universe; demanding a bunch of frozen mini-pancakes to be both cold and hot, at the same time; shouting “Wheeeee” in a deep, serious voice while being pushed on a swing; or asking for the definition of the word transform and then using it repeatedly throughout the night.

  The decision to like kids is easy. The decision to have them is something else. I have never been someone who wanted above all else to be a mom, which could be why my friends were so amused by what they saw as unexpected and revelatory maternal antics.

  Of course, parenthood, like marriage, has changed. We’ve gone beyond those stock nuclear conceptions of family and into a varied field of increasingly acceptable arrangements. I have plenty of friends who’ve married and had children, but I also have friends who’ve married and never procreated. I know single women who are having babies on their own and committed couples who wish to remain unmarried as they raise their families. There are families with divorced parents; children who split their lives between two, and even more, as those parents remarry and form new units. And there’s that much-discussed biological make-or-break moment that arrives for women in their late thirties or early forties, a point when marriage and children may be forced together in a rush before the proverbial curtain closes.

  At Alice’s wedding, I was in my early thirties. I felt like I had so much time, but I knew some of my friends didn’t feel that way. That they were dubbing me maternal, I realized, might have been more about them than it was about me. At twenty-five you may not be thinking much about kids, but in your thirties, chances are they’re on the horizon and even a key part of the decision to marry. While Alice wasn’t rushing to the altar to have babies, the idea of creating a future family—not just her and Xavier but children as well—was part of their plan, and sooner rather than later, I wagered, they’d be embarking on that new life stage together.

  • • •

  We mingled in the courtyard of the Board of Trade, sitting at the fountain and sipping prosecco in the remaining sun as the second-line stragglers filed in, and when all had arrived we headed into the large banquet room where dinner and dancing would take place. I was seated at a table with Harrison and his brother, Andrew, along with a group of friends including Nora and Mattie. We found our spots, dropped off our purses and jackets, and waited for the reception to begin in earnest.

  Ginny and her husband were at this wedding. We hadn’t talked since LA, but I’d seen her at the church and again outside, standing near the fountain, the two of them smiling for a photo, his arm around her. I tried to put that to the back of my mind and focus instead on chatting with other guests and eating the appetizers that were being passed around. (Wedding Tip: Truffled deviled quail eggs? Yes, please!) But I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about them. It was like a buzzing in my ear, this unresolved thing, and it grew louder with each prosecco. It seemed I should at least acknowledge her presence, if only so I could move on. It was weird not to, I decided. It made things worse. I broke away and walked over. I’d just say hello and that I hoped she was well, and that would be that, I could stop stewing. I tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Hi, Ginny,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Hi,” she answered, not smiling, but not frowning, either. She was calm, if chilly. “Nice to see you, too.” She clearly did not want to talk.

  Her husband was standing near her and looked at me. I thought I detected a note of censure on his face. “Well, I just wanted to say hello,” I said, and made an exit. She watched me go but said nothing, and neither did he. Well, that had been a failure. Certainly I hadn’t gotten what I wanted from it, even if I wasn’t sure what
I wanted—forgiveness? A return to the old days? An honest discussion? A hug? I didn’t even know that I had the right to expect whatever it was I’d been aiming for. I had tried, and the only thing it had done was make me feel worse.

  At the front of the room, there was a commotion. Alice and her mother were talking to a man who didn’t appear to be a wedding guest, and as I got closer, I realized he was a cop. He was gesturing and explaining and, occasionally, writing in a little notepad. By the time I reached them, he was on his way out of the building, his walkie-talkie spitting out new information.

  “What happened?” I asked Alice, who looked livid.

  “This is a freaking circus,” she said. “A waiter was just arrested for hitting the wedding planner’s son in the head with a sheet pan.”

  “What?” I said. “Why?”

  “We have no idea. An altercation. Also, my chocolate sheet cake has gone missing. And all the gifts that people brought with them today—all the cards with cash—are gone, too.”

  “That is awful! I’m so sorry,” I said.

  She was too angry for sorry. “It’s bullshit is what it is. Utter bullshit. In even more pressing dramas: This stupid DJ we hired won’t play anything from our playlist! He only wants to play salsa.”

  “Salsa? I’ll fix that,” I said, and walked over and cajoled this long-haired dude to please, please, please play something the bride and groom wanted to hear, something on the list of songs they’d given him. For a minute, he did. He picked “Brick House,” which was at least widely recognized by the guests, who went crazy on the dance floor. Alice perked up and gave me a big smile and a mouthed Thank you. Soon enough the DJ went right back to playing exactly what he felt like, but by that point we would not be stopped by salsa and kept dancing anyway. Harrison joined me.