How To Be A Stress-Free Wedding Guest

by Rebecca Wright

Jennie and Martin broke up a few weeks later. But six months after that, Jennie began to have second thoughts. The catalyst, ironically, was being a bridesmaid at another wedding. “This wedding was much more what I’d like for myself, and I enjoyed it,” she says, despite the awkward conversations with other guests about her relationship status. “At the end of the evening, when the cheesy tunes came on, I found myself wishing Martin was there.”

Jennie’s nostalgia for her ex is a typical wedding-guest reaction, often exacerbated by what author Darcy Cosper calls “prom mentality.” “Everyone is well-dressed, high on champagne, well-fed, and often far from home, surrounded by attractive strangers in a flower-bedecked, candle-lit setting,” says Cosper, whose recent satirical novel, The Wedding Season, takes its protagonist and her boyfriend through 17 weddings in a single summer. (Yep, a movie version, starring Nicole Kidman, is in production.) “And, of course, the day itself is about the ostensible triumph of love over all.”

In Jennie and Martin’s case, love did eventually triumph—surviving not only Martin’s brother’s wedding, but also Martin’s subsequent dalliance with another girl, and Jennie’s six-month sojourn in Australia.

Seven months after Jennie’s “bridesmaid moment,” the pair is back together, and even looking forward to going to weddings together again. “We’ve got five this year,” says Jennie, two of which are on the same day.

But is each one just another opportunity for disaster? Cosper puts weddings in a class of red-alert events: “Any occasion where there’s particular pressure for things to be Very Romantic—an anniversary, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve—the super-elevated expectations set us up for drama and disappointment. Add to that the inevitable if unspoken questions a wedding raises about the couple’s own future, and you have ideal conditions for a knock-down-drag-out, or at least a respectably protracted snit.”