Three Weddings and a Haircut
Matrimony is so in right now.
April: Wedding #1
My sister’s wedding passes in a haze of watercolor impressions bleeding into one another. Only a handful of sensations retain their distinct outline, the details preserved in amber. My heartbeat drumming a deafening rhythm in my ears as we line up to walk down the aisle. Water dripping down the bouquet stems toward our elbows. Milky grey light fighting to cut through the cloud cover. My sister’s face crumpling as she recites her vows. Her shoulders quivering beneath my hands while everyone else raises a toast.
The entire day is spent waiting and posing in various rooms. I’ve never felt so observed, so self-conscious of the way I hold my arms and what my eyebrows are doing. I’m hovering above my own body, watching from a distance as I scurry around fetching veils and bustling trains and trying to live up to the maid of honor title. My eyes keep being drawn back to my sister who, in all her bridal glory, might as well be a stranger. Her sensible sneakers and glasses are nowhere to be found, and the anomaly of her appearance only adds to the surreal mood. Time is running out. I feel like I’m forgetting something I need to tell her before everything changes forever – promise you won’t stop being my sister just because you’re about to become someone’s wife, maybe, or when did you decide to grow up and how can you bear to leave me behind? The right words and the right moment elude me. I am Jo March clinging in vain to the vestiges of childhood while my older sister prepares to abandon our shared surname for one that will mark her instead as a member of her husband’s tribe. It’s the worst time to indulge my proclivity for self-centered melodrama, but in the safety of my own mind it strikes me as a tragedy that the Hyon daughter duo will henceforth be a solo act.
After the reception, the fluorescent overhead lights flood back on and scatter the stragglers off in search of friendlier shadows. A few guests on the groom’s side sidle up to me with compliments for my speech in tow. Confronted with their puppyish enthusiasm, I age an extra three years.
“Do you live around here? Or go to school in the area?” Asks an undergrad in a three piece suit, his hand in his hair and the upper half of his body listing toward mine.
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Oh,” he says, blinking. “You don’t look it.” Behind his glasses, which are slightly smudged from the night’s excitement, his eyes are bright with approval and champagne.
I don’t really feel 28 either. I remember how important every increment of age used to be when I was in school and the gap between 17 and 18 seemed to span several lifetimes. Now I think I’ll wake up one day and discover that, without my own permission or knowledge, I’ve become a card-carrying member of the 40-something club. By then I’ll probably have accumulated enough material about attending weddings to fill several volumes.
The overcast gloom disperses overnight, leaving perfect, undiluted sunshine in its wake. Depending on where you fall along the pessimism-optimism spectrum, this is either Mother Nature’s way of mocking the months of meticulous planning on my sister’s part or a fitting celebration for the dawn of her new union. She and her husband make the rounds at the post-wedding brunch, their plates of glass noodles and fried dumplings and rice cakes sitting untouched while they bow to the extended family members who traveled across state lines or even oceans to be here. The years of gatherings like this to come stretch out in an endless scroll before me, and I have a vision of them performing this ritual together ad infinitum.
Later, after the newlyweds depart for their honeymoon, I pledge my allegiance to the pessimists. It’s one of those early spring days that’s so beautiful it makes you ache to be alive: a clear, endless sky; warm sunlight bathing my forearms; and the twang of “II MOST WANTED” filling every corner of the car. Even I-66 is transformed into a thing of wonder. It’s one of life’s cruel ironies that at the precise moment when you feel most wretched, the world chooses to show off its loveliest features like a taunt. All at once yesterday’s lingering numbness lifts, and I’m helpless to do anything but cry.
May: Wedding #2
No amount of hairspray or setting powder can compete with this weekend’s oppressive heat. The atmosphere hangs heavy, an overripe fruit fit to burst. Air-conditioned buses shuttle us from the hotel to the wedding venue, racing up, and up, and up over steep hills with an impatient jerk. Any hopes that it might be cooler at a higher elevation are dashed upon our arrival.
A verdant garden boasting blooms in shades of peach, seashell, cornflower blue, and buttery yellow envelops us. Bees orbit flowers and wedding guests in lazy circles, listing under the weight of air thick as molasses. We fan ourselves with paper programs and try to ignore the sweat dripping down our backs and pooling atop our upper lips. It’s easier once the bride arrives and dazzles us with her lambent smile. Tears mingle with sweat on the assembled faces.
In a few hours the sun goes down and the quality of the heat shifts from suffocating to merely sticky, which is all the warning we get before a storm crashes the party. One second we’re dancing and the next, howling gusts of wind are blowing white tablecloths up and exposing the vulnerable legs underneath. As a rumble of thunder rolls toward us from across the valley, we make a break for the sole enclosed shelter in the vicinity – a gift shop that wasn’t built to contain this many bodies at once. A few near collisions between tipsy guests and the shop’s precariously arranged ceramic goods are enough to entertain us until the power flickers off and we’re left huddling in the dark, listening to the rain clattering on the roof. But no matter. We make our own harmonies while the storm rages on around us.
June, Part 1: Wedding #3
There is one true avatar of millennial arrested development, and it looks like Ilana Glazer circa Broad City.1 Her portrayal of a woman in her late 20s who has nothing figured out reassured me, a college student at the time, that no matter how much of a mess my life seemed to be, it could always get worse. Ten years later, she plays a slightly different strain of the same archetype in the movie Babes, which she co-wrote with Josh Rabinowitz. But instead of feeling smug about all the ways I’m different from her character, this time around I’m a bit spooked by how easily I could see myself in her shoes.
In Babes, Eden (Ilana Glazer) gets pregnant following a one-night stand and decides to embark down the path of single motherhood, though not entirely without companionship. She expects her best friend, Dawn (Michelle Buteau), to be by her side every step of the way. After all, they’ve checked off most milestones together up to this point. Why not make motherhood a joint adventure too? The problem is that Dawn just gave birth to a second child herself and between breastfeeding struggles, postpartum depression, and the challenge of raising her first child and a newborn simultaneously, she can barely keep her head above water – even with the support of her husband (played by Hasan Minhaj for some reason). The collapse is inevitable: Dawn has a vanishingly small amount of patience for Eden’s codependency and chaos while Eden is deeply wounded by Dawn’s neglect at her time of greatest need. The fantasy of their perfect friendship withers on the vine, and soon Eden finds herself face to face with the reality that she is nobody’s top priority.
Staying good friends with people as you age is hard for everyone, but it’s more daunting when you’re the one watching everyone else settle down and wondering how you’ll fit into their lives in ten years, if at all. There’s a new inner circle you’re not privy to, no matter how much history you share, and after years as a core cast member you suddenly find yourself at risk of getting demoted to a limited guest star appearance in your friends’ stories. Eden fights this involuntary distancing past the point where most reasonable people would’ve capitulated, even going so far as to suggest moving in with Dawn and her husband once the baby is born. Dawn puts her foot down by saying that she already has a family – and Eden is not part of it. Message received.
A bit of time and distance provide enough perspective for the two of them to reconcile just as Eden’s water breaks, of course, but the sting of Dawn’s dismissal lingers long after I walk out of the theater. I used to believe, with all the smug naïveté of the young and inexperienced, that failure to endure into adulthood was the mark of a weak friendship. Now the only thing I know for sure is that the older you get, the rarer it is to have friends who make the active choice to be in your life day after day. It’s not that they’ll stop caring about you, it’s just that there are some things you can’t compete with – spouses, babies, and the families that you’re technically not a part of. The fact that your friendships might not survive your friends’ marriages is a bitter pill to swallow.
The mysterious alchemy by which friends are transformed into wives is at work throughout the third and final weekend of my matrimonial marathon. Will the common ground that our relationship was initially built upon erode with every year that she spends as a Mrs. and I remain a Miss? Is the love enough, or is wanting the same things ultimately more important? I’m trying not to be a downer, but I can’t help it. To me, every wedding feels like the end of something – I’m there to mourn as much as I am to celebrate.
June, Part 2: A Haircut
The longer the hair, the more devoted the bridesmaid. By mid-June, my hair is nearly down to my waist – all to give the stylists more material to work with and guarantee the fruition of each bride’s vision. I spend the lead-up to my first adult wedding season in a state of perpetual self-deprivation: no lopping my hair off, no snacking late at night, no skipping days in the gym, and no procrastinating on writing my maid of honor speeches. When I finally cross the finish line, I’m lightheaded with accomplishment and hunger. My body is mine again, at long last.
See: “Lincoln, I’m only twenty-seven. What am I, a child bride?”
"It’s one of life’s cruel ironies that at the precise moment when you feel most wretched, the world chooses to show off its loveliest features like a taunt" is a lovely line, and I chuckled out loud at "(played by Hasan Minhaj for some reason")