#115 This Is a Classy Affair
It was my then-business partner’s second marriage, to a prominent lawyer. She was 40-ish but behaved like a Cosmo-swilling sorority sister and was obsessed with optics, image, status. The wedding was a twi-nighter at a banquet / event center in the city. When my wife and I showed up we discovered the guests had been partitioned into an A-list and a B-list.
We were on the shorter A-list who were invited for cocktails, the ceremony, and a sit-down dinner. The B-listers had been told to appear 2.5 hours later for cake and dancing. During dinner, the already-half-in-the-bag bride stood up and told us A-listers we were her “real friends,” the “cream of the crop,” and our standing with her was reflected in the fine catered dinner we were eating.
Things ran long and the B-listers began assembling outside. They were not allowed in, but the place had storefront-type windows and you could see what was going on in there from the street. We were having creme brulees. It began to rain and the B-listers had to stand outside getting wet and staring at us while the banquet part of the evening wrapped up. They clearly had not been apprised of the two-tier deal.
The favored A-listers were in acute discomfort. A gang of the bride’s alleged best friends, similar sorority types in little black dresses, talked major snark about her for the rest of the evening, mocking her dress, her weight, her choice of husband, and especially the uncool structure of the event. Finally the door was thrown open and angry damp B-listers straggled in bearing rain-washed gifts.
The groom was nowhere in sight and the by-now-drunk bride was doing the electric slide by herself on the dance floor. The room was thick with tension and weirdness and my wife and I slipped out before the cake-cutting. (Later I would tell the bride how nice the cake-cutting, etc. had been and she said she had seen me and all the A-listers front and center.)
The marriage lasted about three years. Four months in, the bride made a serious pass at me in the office. Shortly thereafter the sex was over, and she was sleeping on the sofa (she said). The whole wedding / marriage seemed to be merely a hook for a big party and a pretext for classifying her friends into first class and economy.
Credit: AnotherPint