Happiness is a Bad Wedding Reception

Friends, good morning from Minneapolis, from your good friend Sarah. 

It is a quiet, lovely Sunday morning here at Chez Saritah, and I am surrounded by yards (meters) of hot pink tulle, purple leopard fabric, and black feathers.  My loft looks something like a bad drag queen after party. 

Yesterday was my birthday, so this would be a logical explanation for said scene, but I assure you, all of these hideous things (along with 6 – 1.75L bottles of vodka and 6 bottles of Jack Daniels) are for the Bad Wedding Reception party I am hosting next weekend. Well, most of them, that is.

(After all, things do have a tendency to stay interesting at Chez Saritah, let’s not kid ourselves).

The party is my bi-annual Thank You to my clients and friends for supporting my little business, which is a terribly formal, terribly Compliant sort of existence.  I happen to love what I do, but I definitely need an outlet of rulebreaking, hence the inappropriate wedding performance which we have been rehearsing for all week.  The inappropriately shaped, pink and purple, light-up, vodka luge ice sculpture, alone, is enough to get me added to multiple denominations of prayer chains. 

The bad “wedding” party will include all things tacky and awful about weddings---my dress alone is one of the most unflattering, grimace-inducing outfits imaginable, and my groom has a suit that you have to see to believe. 

We have a Bad Wedding Photographer and a Bad Wedding Singer.  We have inappropriately shaped pimiento cheese logs and jello molds.  We have a cringeworthy picture montage.  We have a Question of Purity (which I made up in a wine-fueled moment of laughing so hard I fell off my chair after finishing a meeting with the French Chamber of Commerce this past week..you know how I love the French…nothing has changed just because I moved home, Friends, and my French ex, (mon petit renard) is still my favorite heartbreaker, ever).

And so, this next Saturday night, 125 guests will arrive in bad taffeta bridesmaid dresses and wedding gowns, plastic tiaras, velour tracksuits, redneck versions of tuxedos, and Who Farted T-shirts.  All of this will be catered by one of the best chefs in the city, of course, because I will mock weddings all day long, but dammit, the food will be flawless, and the beer will be a double IPA from Utah, in honor of my groom, who is flying in for the event.  Go ahead and have your perfect wedding day:  mine will be atrocious because I like it that way.  You might not like it, but you will remember it, and you will remember me, and maybe, just maybe, my wedding day gift to you is a story you can tell your Friends and laugh about for years.  You’re welcome.

So, you see, Friends, happiness does not always come in the ways that everyone else expects or wants it to be packaged.  It is time to stop looking for it in its predictable form and instead keep your eyes open for the unexpected and enjoy what you really like instead of trying so hard to like what everyone else thinks you should like.

It is time to start having the courage to enjoy who you really are, because you are just that good.  Why be a lemming when you can be a lioness and lead your own way?  Rawr, is what I say.  Rawr indeed.

 

It takes moxie to live out loud, to look at what everyone else is doing and thinking and valuing and being able to say, “Yeah, I don’t want that, ever.”  Be who you are, because that is how I love you best, imperfection and quirks and all---that, right there, makes me happy, and if you try it, you just might find that it makes you happy, too.

Sending lots of love from Minneapolis,

Your Good Friend Sarah

(Aka Bridezilla)