hell for a single woman

Recently, I found myself attending a wedding and not just any wedding but my best friends wedding. Weddings: the pitfall for all single women. Attending an event where the fact that you are single while your friend has found what you hope to be is eternal love, or at least eternal enough that she’ll end up with the vacation house, the dog and the jag before calling it quits, only reminds you of one thing: you definitely won’t be getting the vacation house or the jag anytime soon. Because you don’t even have a potential guy lined up to date let alone marry. Infact, you even had to bring your best friend to the wedding for lack of a real date. So unless your boss suddenly decides to give you an overly inflated, but well-deserved in your opinion, raise you won’t be saying “I do” to that new Jag anytime soon. So while you are incredibly happy for your friend, in an “I hope she chokes on that thousand dollar cake of hers” sort of way, you find yourself becoming and more miserable with every fluke of champagne you toss back. The situation only worsened still by the fact that your date, aka your male best friend who always gets dragged along, is being hit on, non-too-subtly, by the girl whom you and all the other bridesmaids loathe. That and the fact that there are absolutely no available men for you to hit on. Not even ones where you would pull a “coyote ugly” in the morning just to make yourself feel a tinsy bit better. Somehow Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson get to crash weddings and sleep with numerous women and end up with the girl by the end of the movie, yet here I am in a dress that set me back $200, which I sure as hell will never wear again, without even the remotest chance of meeting Mr. Right let alone Mr. Right-now. Not only am I surrounded by my now married best friend, but also by a sea of other friends who are all in happily content relationships. I’m starting to think, I need some new friends. Friends who are single and can wallow in misery by my side. Ones who do not have to call their “significant” other to let them know we got out of the movie late or that they are making a pitstop at a bathroom. And more importantly, ones who will drink all their sorrows away with me at the latest downtown hotspot. If gagging at the ceremony and having to put up with the first half of the reception, where we saw a slideshow of the bride and groom growing up and then meeting one another, wasn’t enough torture, it only gets better. The bouquet toss. Having a beautiful, but deadly, floral arrangement hurled at my head is not my idea of fun. “What’s the point,” I think as I make my way onto the dance floor, keeping myself distanced from the pack of foaming women awaiting the signal for them to release their claws. It’s like looking at a pack of starved wild cats as a single piece of food is about to be tossed into the cage. You can see the greed and hunger in their eyes. Only one thing separates me from them, my unwilling desire to have any part in this. Thanks but I think I’ll starve. I already have to declare my singledom to everyone in the room simply by being up there, I am certainly not about to sink any lower. Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule against this. Against a single woman with no potential husband, no boyfriend, hell not even a potential boyfriend at that, from partaking in this event. The whole point of the bouquet toss tradition is for the catcher to be the next to wed, or at least that’s how the saying goes. Well that definitely isn’t going to be me; so why take the chance of depriving someone else of happiness. This supposedly originated from the bridge chucking the bouquet at the drunken men who were attempting to take her garter off before the groom could get to it. Personally, I believe this little tradition was concocted up by bored married women who wanted to see their single girlfriends in even more misery. Apparently simply receiving the invitation stating “Leslie and guest,” and having your guest be your male best friend isn’t enough punishment. And did I mention, I was the only single person in the wedding party and my date got hit on the entire night by some tramp. Unfortunately we had no crashers at this wedding. Then the toss. The claws are out. Only the most deceiving can be the victor. Standing on the sidelines, alcoholic beverage in hand, I watch them trample over one another until one finally emerges as the clean champion. Luckily after this awful display I was finally allowed to return to sufficiently drowning my sorrows and waiting for the night to end. So I could go up to my empty hotel room, raid the mini-bar and watch a depressing romantic comedy. And this was only my first wedding invite. So it begins, I already have another one scheduled in the not too distant future. Damn.