I knew this wedding hook-up was one for the books when he paused, mid-snog, to light some palo santo. “Just to get the energy right,” he explained, one hand on mine while the other slowly waved a small burning stick around us with his eyes closed. I nodded and promptly closed mine, too, wondering what kind of energy was required for this particular encounter and how long I’d have to wait for it to get to the backseat of this car. Not long, apparently, as we were soon back to business, all three of us: me, this man, and the fumes from his sacred wood.
Being single at weddings comes with a clear cultural script, one that can easily lure you into a self-centred, solipsistic reverie where everything and everyone serves as a reminder that you’ve failed to couple up. People you haven’t seen in years will inquire innocently about your love life, with some particularly ignorant ones asking if you’re “still” single. And so your internal monologue becomes rather bitter: “Poor me, all alone at the singles table! The audacity of smug couples trying to set me up with the only other single person here! Tell me, is it one in four marriages that end in divorce these days, or one in three? Haha!” And so on.
Look, I get it. Nowhere else does a single woman’s relationship status become her defining quality more than at a wedding. A lot of the time, it dictates where you sit, who you hang out with, and what strangers want to talk to you about. For a while, I found myself leaning into the negativity, complaining about how expensive weddings are when you’re single, pontificating over how archaic it feels that getting married is still the only adult milestone that warrants such lavish celebration, and resenting how many people would try to set me up with the (usually) sole single man my age in attendance, whom several other women and I were supposedly competing against one another for.
But the noise caught up with me and I realised I was ruining my own fun, not to mention slightly disrespecting the happy couples. Because it turns out, being single at weddings can be fabulous, as I learnt after attending six in a row last summer. First off, as Mr Palo Santo illustrated, there are endless possibilities for eccentric encounters that will serve as excellent WhatsApp group fodder. But also, weddings seem to create a sort of temporary liminal space where fun is meant to happen, and romance is meant to bloom – however briefly.
I’ve had several wedding boyfriends over the years. These are typically short-lived love affairs, accelerated by circumstance and mutual delusion: small talk over starters becomes family trauma by the main course. Maybe you sneak off to steal a few kisses behind a tree in between speeches. By dessert, you’re half-fantasising a wedding of your own with someone you’d never hang out with in “real life”. These might sound like superfluous flings, but they can still feel meaningful, even if they never progress anywhere after (in my experience, most of them don’t).
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
