Let’s skip the wedding and head to the bar

Some men don’t care about weddings. Actually, they don’t mind attending them but they just don’t want to be one of the two main parties. They consider weddings to be a ‘girl thing’ and not in an unconcerned way, they just think that getting excited about a wedding is a well-gazetted-territory of the female species. For good measure, too. It has been continuously pumped into our heads that the wedding day is all about the bride; she arrives while we stand waiting, she gets the more expensive jewelry, someone has to hold her hand to get her to the groom, and she even gets to wear a fancy dress. Bottom line: weddings are the specialty of the fairer sex. By the way, did I mention that they like it that way? These men are not created to handle the strain of filling their minds with hopes, imaginings and fairytales of a lifetime into one expensive afternoon. It’s a good feeling to know that women know what they want and can make the decisions to get it. This is no great revelation. This is how society has decided it should be. Last time I attended a wedding was in Uganda and there were few stands targeted at men. And even those were merely presenting a well-dressed man as a necessary accessory for women. It is equally difficult to come across a groom magazine compared to finding a bridal magazine. If there’s one, then I think it is created for women to find out why the hell men don’t try to get involved. When it comes to movies, it gets weirder. Women get titles like Bridesmaids whereas men get The Hangover. Reason; because the after-party is the only part of the whole occasion where men are left to make actual decisions. It is at this point that we narrow down our list of activities we would love do; “Where shall we drink beer?” At best, these are left to the best man. When the party is over, the next event is to sit and talk about the after-party. We hate being the main focus at such a romantic function. I think that if it was possible and we could gently twist tradition, some of these chaps would be happy not to turn up on the wedding day at all. This is just a suggestion at this stage, but instead of being at the wedding where we are an added advantage at best, what if the man demonstrated his value as a husband by going ahead to the honeymoon destination to the hotel room, book massages and romantic dinners, so everything is ready when his new bride arrives? That way the bride could relax, get enough rest and regain her energy to book the massages, romantic dinners and hotel room the groom forgot to organise because he got caught at the bar.