Nobody gets between a bride and her wedding preparations. Especially her groom.
My fiancée and I recently caught up with a young married couple during cocktails for a fashion show where we started exchanging tales about our wedding preparations. Well, most of the exchanging came from the women, who were having a lively 45-minute discussion over the details of their wedding dresses. Meanwhile, the only thing that both men were exchanging was injections of caffeine as we grimaced from ear-to-ear, listening numbly to their stories.
“I had only one role for my wedding preparations,” Gilbert said as he nudged me in the ribs, winked and gave me a lopsided grin. “And that was to just show up.”
I smirked as I continued to inject another shot of caffeine into my eyeballs.
Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, I thought. You who are blessed with a gorgeous wife and two beautiful baby girls. Oh, good ol’ Gilbert. You who are such a big, freaking liar.
But yes, Gilbert, for reasons of political correctness, you did only play one role in your wedding preparations. And that role was to say one big, obscenely fat “Yes!” to everything that your fiancée ordered, este, requested of you with the same level of enthusiasm that Kris Aquino bubbles over with during her game shows.
You see, we men labor under the assumption that wedding preparations start a couple of weeks after the engagement. But, as it is well known, we men are also imbeciles. The truth is that wedding preparations first began when your fiancée was eight years old. So for the duration of your wedding preparations, a man must be very clear: he is not a husband-to-be. He is merely a cast member in a production number that his bride-to-be has been concocting since when she started playing with Barbie dolls. That’s right, you are your fiancée’s very own Wedding Day Ken Doll. And just like Ken, all you are supposed to do on your wedding day is flash a permanently etched smile and hide your lack of biological enhancements. You are not allowed to contradict her, you are not allowed to complain, and most of all, you are not allowed to cry. If you show any signs of dissent, then she will do what she has done countless times with her Wedding Day Ken Doll, and twist your head off.
Aside from concealing my biological enhancements, another worry of mine is the idea that my mom and my fiancée might have come into armed conflict over the wedding preparations. Because if this had happened, then I would be the only casualty. But call it karma, call it a strange twist of fate or call it a one-way ticket to accelerated hair loss, but the powers-that-be have seen it fit that my mom and my fiancée have joined forces for the wedding preparations. However, in spite of this, I still am the only casualty.
I am just relieved that my fiancée’s mother has taken a more hands-off role with the production number, este, wedding preparations. “Bavalam kevalam, my children of light and love,” her mom intoned. “Here is the donation for your 17-foot, crystal-encrusted, seven-layer three-story wedding cake (Choice of wedding cake my fiancée’s, not mine – RJ). Now, in return, all I ask from both of you is that you help bring new souls into the world soonest to usher in a new age of enlightenment. But remember, RJ, ushering in this New Age can only come after the wedding. I’m sure you don’t want your Tito to turn you into a eunuch before the marriage, do you? Namaste.” Sigh. I like my future mother-in-law. (And I like my future father-in-law, too, especially since he reads this column and cuts out the offensive parts.)
But don’t get me wrong, my three female readers, there are obvious advantages to having your mom and your fiancée tag-teaming for the wedding. First, with my mom onboard, I am almost certain that there will be no natural calamities that will stop the wedding from pushing through. Apparently, she has spent several hours every day in deep negotiations with God to make sure that there will be no tsunamis, earthquakes or 250-foot-tall radioactive lizards laying siege to Manila. To also make sure that Manila is not beset by typhoons, she has offered enough eggs in Sta. Clara for the nuns to put up a poultry farm. And if there are any destabilization attempts on that day, God help those coup plotters because my mom will take them down single-handedly with just her payong, her lipstick and her handbag.
Secondly, my mom will also serve as the de facto fashion enforcer during the wedding ceremony. If there were fashion police, my mom would be the chief PNP. She made certain that the invitation screamed in big bold letters that the attire for the wedding would be strictly formal. For the fashionably negligent, this means that guests must fear for their personal safety if they plan to attend the wedding in too little or too much fashion (say it with me now, fashyoooon). So in the unfortunate instance these criminally fashionable elements get past my mom’s security cordon of the major doma and her three burly chuwariwaps, such as the man garbed in a short-sleeved office polo barong or the woman baring enough cleavage to force our wedding celebrant to say an extra decade of rosaries before going to bed or the sexually ambiguous creature adorned in knee-high boots, a sequined turban and a feather boa, then the last thing that any of them will ever hear will be the whirr of my mom’s six-inch-long heels before she lodges them into their brains. I have grown rather concerned now for my barkada who plan to attend the wedding dressed as their favorite superhero characters from the Justice League (I don’t know how to break it to my best man Irwin that he cannot come to the wedding all decked out as Wonder Woman).
And because we don’t want prospective grooms to be misled by encounters with friends like Gilbert, who release a good, cruel laugh whenever they tell you that your only role in the wedding preparations is to say “I do,” here is my own practical list of things to watch out for, things to avoid and things to insure yourself against before we all jump into the precipice that is marriage. After all, it is one doozy of a step to take: from being a blissfully ignorant fiancée to being a blissfully ignorant husband:
1. Be prepared to take some good-natured ribbing. How come every time I am out with my fiancée and we encounter friends who find out that we are engaged, they always offer her backhanded pleasantries like “Congratulations! But are you really sure about him?” or “Great news! Have you had his credit investigated?” or “Hay Naku! I have the number of a good psychiatrist.” Har-de-har-har. People may think their quips are knee-slapping hilarious, but it leaves me feeling as well-liked among my peers as the Justice Secretary is among journalists. What are these “well-wishers” trying to do? Test my fiancée’s sanity? She’s already had extensive counseling as it is since we started dating. “Look,” my fiancée has stressed time and time again, “You can dish out the humor but you just can’t take it.” What do you mean I can’t take it!? Of course I can take it. I can take it like a straight man in prison. I am often tempted to retort to these so-called friends with similar pleasantries, like “Hey, so is that your first or second liposuction?” or “Have you been able to live with yourself ever since your wife left you for a gay man?” or “Congratulations! I hear you’re among those being charged in that pyramid marketing scam!” Or I can just sic my yaya on them.
All right, I may have overreacted a tad. It is not so much that I am insulted by these “well-wishers,” but I am worried that my fiancée might actually take their comments seriously. It’s almost like some sinister force is trying to keep our impending nuptials from pushing through with warning signs like the appreciating peso, the rising oil prices and the breakup of Lino Cayetano and KC Concepcion. But if I do sense any indecision on her part, I have a bottle of gayuma stashed in the back pocket of my pants just in case.
2. Kindly tell your bride that it is physically impossible for men to perform complicated wedding tasks. Our rudimentary brains can only accommodate one task at a time. Even doing one task can be quite daunting for our mental capacities. That is why we cannot even aim properly at the toilet bowl when we make pee-pee. According to relationship specialists Barbara and Allan Pease, male brains are configured to concentrate on one specific task at once, and most men will tell you that they can only do “one thing at a time.” So please do not present us with questions that will require more thinking processes than a simple yes or no. Please avoid questions like: “Do you think I should have a corset or a princess line for the bodice of the wedding dress?” or “What is more appropriate for our floral arrangement? Baby’s breath and hydrangeas, lady’s mantle or dogwood?” or “Should we have ganache or meringue on the wedding cake?” No more. No more. If you love us, please, no more. Please do not force us to make these complicated decisions or else what little gray matter we have will implode. (Although we are unsure if you will be able to tell the difference.)
Instead, you should only give simple instructions prior to the wedding like “Keep on pole-dancing to pay for the wedding dress.” Or “It’s not the honeymoon yet, so stop reading the Kama Sutra in front of my parents.” Or “Do not let any woman sit on your lap and say ‘Koya pa-kiss’ during your bachelor’s party or else you will be the only married man on record who will be living with a vow of chastity.” And we will try our best to follow your instructions.
But do not despair, all you brides-to-be, your married life will not be as dismal as the administration’s prospects for success in the 2010 elections. Your husbands-to-be, although none too evolved in the brain matter department, are much better than dogs as companions. Some of us may not always be so obedient. But we are very loyal. And we always come back housebroken. Well, most of the time.
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Next column: Abandon hope all ye who enter… the bridal registry.
A running contest and a book launch! The best answers to the question “What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your yaya?” will get a free autographed copy of my first book, Lies My Yaya Should Have Told Me: RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Whine and Women, during the book launch on Thursday. Feb. 7, 6:30 p.m. in National Book Store, Rockwell (second floor, The Archaeology section). You are all invited to come to my book launch where DJ Mo Twister, Jojo Alejar, Gary Lising and other special guests will be reading excerpts from the book. And, finally, a chance to meet my yaya! But if you want her autograph, may bayad na yan. Text your answers to PM POGI <text message> to 2948 for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers or e-mail \o “mailto:ledesma.rj@gmail.com” ledesma.rj@ gmail.com.