The W word

June is not only the month when students tread back to school (I can picture the sad faces), it’s also supposed to be a happening month for marriage.

Quite funny, but just a couple of years back, my generation – the early twentysomethings – had debuts as a major topic of discussion. For us, the biggest hassle was looking for a gift, a debut gift. Now, I’m already starting to look for wedding gifts! When you’re in the phase of still trying to discover yourself and what you want to do with your life, marriage is supposed to be an off limits topic.

I was awaken at the ungodly hour of five in the morning with a text message from my bestfriend from varsity days. The message went: "Hey you’re invited to my wedding on the 29th in the San Mateo City Hall. Please tell…" and so on. Startled isn’t the best word to describe my reaction; let’s just say I was jolted out of my groggy sleepy state. My eyes opened wide and my jaw dropped. This was 5 in the morning, for heaven’s sakes! I mean this wasn’t just any party – this was an honest-to-goodness wedding – in San Mateo, Rizal. For us who live in the south, San Mateo is on the other side of Mars.

I called him right there and there –"What do you mean wedding?!" He was laughing at the other end of the line.

In fairness to him, my friend and his bride-to-be have been together for quite a long time, and I must say their relationship is quite mature compared to those of others our age. They click so well so we knew sooner or later they would get hitched, but I never thought it would be this soon and on such short notice.

I told him I’d go to their church wedding, though I doubt that it’s going to happen anytime soon.

Another occasion, one Saturday morning, I was in the gym when I got a text from a friend. The message almost made me drop the dumbbell I was carrying – she was asking me if I was going to the wedding of another teammate of mine that afternoon. I said I wasn’t invited but she said that our friend was really busy and harassed, since it had all been rushed, so he must have overlooked that one detail of inviting us, but we are all welcome to come, she said.

"OK, this isn’t another party you can go to on a whim," I told myself, again.

By now I’ve gotten used to sudden unexpected invitations (or non-invites) from friends who are getting hitched, but still nothing prepared me for the news about a blockmate marrying his high school teacher. But then I wasn’t really close to him. It’s the weddings of these two teammates that drove home the message that our generation indeed is into another chapter of our lives.

We’re facing the reality that we’re slowly drifting away from youth and entering the realm of the adulthood. I thought I would reach this "everyone’s-getting-married" phase in our late twenties, but at 23? I know of people who haven’t even graduated from college yet at that age. Or maybe because I’m rather career-oriented, which is why thinking marriage is… like a ten-years-from-now thing.

The bottom line is, this wasn’t really the type of wedding you picture people close to you having – sudden and fast. Where’s the romance in it all?

I have always pictured a wedding as an event. Like the typical dream weddings young people fantasize about.

My first teammate though can be an exception since they only had a civil wedding, and the bigger church wedding is yet to come. Hopefully it will.

By the way, nobody got pregnant; it’s just that they were really bound to get hitched. Now I have to shop for wedding gifts amid my hectic work schedule. I should be looking forward to my future godchildren, which my friend would really like –"Squeeze ninong’s wallet dry." And this time I would be psyching myself up for it – not just the future kids to suck my earnings dry but the bigger wedding that is.

I remember back in college we were hanging out once, he said his dream wedding would be in our school chapel, with his three closest friends – to my surprise I was among the three. So by hook or by crook this has to happen.

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E-mail/Friendster the author ketsupluis@hotmail.com