Marriage and the Power of Divorce

Wife and I did the courthouse thing for the ceremony and blew the cash on receptions. This worked out good for two main reasons. First, as an atheist, I was not going to stand in church and say a bunch of religious stuff I did not truly believe on what amounts to the most important day of my life. Second, my family was all back in Wisconsin and I did not want to get into the drama of where to have the ceremony, because ultimately we would have done it in Cali to accommodate the wife's poor ass Jebus loving needs. Or worse, would have fronted the money to fly them to Wisconsin.

As it stood, we rented space at Castle Park and had a Shrek themed pizza party there for the California people (my folks flew out anyhow) and then had a Big Lebowski themed reception in a park back in my home town. We even rented out a Bowling Alley and drank white Russians in robes the night before the park party. It was awesome and all the assholes I know who rolled out the money for the big poofy weddings all remember our receptions, but like hell if anyone remembers theirs. The one day at Castle Park in Cali wound up costing more than the entire weekend in Wisconsin, including air fare, heh. But the whole ordeal was fairly inexpensive and we bought some video games and home appliances with the leftover money, instead. A couple of my friends who nearly went bankrupt funding their weddings and are not getting divorced are insanely jealous of how ours went down. If you marry a wife who wants all that shit, you are probably going to have problems down the road anyhow, in my opinion.

Having been a singer for literally dozens of weddings over the years, I have come to one conclusion. Weddings are just ways for mothers to try and vicariously correct perceived failings of their own past through their daughters, in my experience. Its a giant dick waving contest pitting you against your inlaws, and unless you have money to burn, you are better off setting the tone and doing a small ceremony for your real friends and having a party afterwards for the larger crowd.

Yeah somewhere. The whole thing came about because the wife and I went balls out dressing up as Shrek and Fiona for one Halloween (she has red hair, I shaved my head and we both painted ourselves green; only time I have ever seen her in a dress of any kind) and it got used as one of the few semi formal pictures of us. The costume rocked and we won a costume contest at the Rock Horror movie at the Rialto that night over some lesbians in lingerie I would have voted for over us. People really liked it and it was the one picture of us that friends and relatives kept over the years.

Mostly, it was just decorations from her friends and sisters, plus the Shrek cake. We were both fine with it. The wife is a nerdy tomboy and after singing in a bunch of other people's weddings, I really had zero interest in something super formal.