Wedded bliss

I am having second thoughts.

After attending almost a million weddings in the last few months all I can think of is how sweet weddings are and how much fun weddings are and how I royally screwed up the only wedding I have ever been a part of.

Why, just this last weekend I had a priest get mad at me when I volunteered to take a few confessions. When did priests lose their sense of humor? I guess, fucking children wears a priest out.

Marriage really is for young people.

I think the magic of marriage, the ceremony and tradition are really necessary for people under, say, the age of 35. Thats arbitrary, because I bet there are people who get married later in life who enjoy it, love it and cherish it. What I really like about weddings is the tradition.

One of the most important aspects of the marriage ceremony, at least for me, is to gather all your friends and family in one place and declare your love to them, and that promise to honor and respect the other person is key. Because when you gather all these people and you tell them that you will love this person until you die, and stay with them in sickness and in health, and build a life together, you are basically telling all the people there that you are no longer a player, no longer a wolf in a decent suit.

And your friends and family know this and most will guide you through life.

A short tangent. When I was married, and trust me, it was not a bad marriage for a fairly long time, I would go out with friends, without my wife and we would get ourselves into some fun times. A few of these fun times had be close to someone who was either cute, or sexy or both. There were many moments that I thought it might be fun to cross that line and maybe, you know, pounce on a hotty. I did not, for the most part. I add for the most part, because what one does and does not do is hardly the point. Friends would take me aside and remind me of my vows. And I would return home, to the loneliness and strangeness and bask in it. That is what marriage did, it turned my friends into the relationship police.

In the end, and is often the case, vows ended up being kind of passe. It's not the vows that keep people happy and together, it is the people and while in the midst of so many weddings, I kept thinking how lucky they have been to find one another, to love one another and to share these moments with the people who are most important in their lives.

Something about catholic marriage ceremonies, they always talk about babies. Getting married is part of this cycle, where you get married, you have babies and you die. Big cycle, but it happens. Now, in America, many people don't do that, many have babies, and then get married, or do not get married at all. Many decide to get married and not have babies, or find out they can not have babies. There are no rules, but these catholic ceremonies sure do focus on babies.

There was a point to this post and now I have lost it.

Maybe it is this, like bike crashes, marriage is a once in a lifetime thing, you should do it once and that's all.