It occurs to me that, at this stage of life, I’m not attending so many weddings of friends my age as I am attending weddings of their children. 

I wish to be clear about something, though – it is weddings of “their children”, not “My Child”.  That is because the wedding of my daughter will be broadcast on live network TV, such as:

Reporter:  “We’re standing outside the ‘Weddings are us’ chapel in New Brunswick New Jersey (‘Hey Phil, is there an Old Brunswick New Jersey?’), where the wedding of Hersh and WhatsHisName has ended in the bizarre death of the groom (‘Hey, Phil, did you get that guy’s name?’).  In an act of completely justifiable homicide, the bride’s father has taken the life of the groom, which surprised no one except perhaps the groom. The Bride, meanwhile, was radiant in her gown of…” 

I am not alone in this regard. Just recently I heard a story of a friend of mine named Dennis. Dennis is one of the most level-headed even-keeled hyphenated guys I know (if there is an adjective that involves a hyphen, Dennis is on it). However, when his daughter’s new beau came up on him, slapped him in the arm and said “What’s Happening Big D” he understandably reacted.  It is a monument to his good nature that what followed this story was not “and the kid was dead before he hit the ground.” 

In the interest of fair disclosure, I will admit to making that same mistake when I first met my father-in-law. In my case, I offered to buy him a drink.  To my good fortune, he did not know that I was dating his daughter until a while later when he was eating dinner in the middle of the meal in the restaurant and with others in plain sight.

In any case, this is not to talk about dating, but to talk about weddings. More specifically to explain why “The Bride was Radiant”.   If the “Clothes Make the Man”, then the “Dress Makes the Bride”.  With the great experience of many weddings under my cummerbund, I think I can explain.

The explanation is actually simple: All weddings are a costume party. Ours certainly was; we had everyone dress for a 1940’s supper club for the sole purpose of matching my wife’s wedding dress, which was worn by her mother in the 1940’s.

Typically one would only make the wedding party dress up. Now, who knows; but with that in mind let’s therefore start with the bride. 

It is not a wedding without a star, and that shining light is the bride.  I have never been to any wedding where the bride was less than radiant, or even recognizable.  That’s because she has spent the better part of our nation’s GDP on a single dress that she will wear on a single night for a single purpose.

But what I have learned over the years is this:  The size of the dress is inversely proportional to the height of the bride. This is a totally proven theorem based on the fact that I studied statistics and am therefore willing to make any darned thing up as ‘fact’. 

Now, you laypersons are probably assuming that the reason the smaller brides wear bigger dresses is to be seen.  You would be wrong.

I have a proof.  I want you to consider something:   Every Bride is required to purchase and study a Bridal Magazine, which requires a forklift to pick up and which contains nothing but pictures of the 453,781 types of wedding dresses available (all in white).  This thing contains so much information it won’t even fit inside the realm of Wikipedia, and yet the bride will somehow have memorized every possible configuration on each of the 2,438 some-odd pages. 

And then consider that each dress contains approximately 45 yards of Taffeta (note – saltwater taffeta is available at 3cents a piece at most candy stores), 25 yards of lace (which is what doilies are made from in the bride’s later years), and about 4,345,976,121 beads that weigh about 900 pounds and were sewn on by hand by elves from Outer Slovenia (no, not Elvis, elves – the plural of Elvis; someone created that white jump-suit after all).

So, let’s use the logic of:  If A = B and B = C, then “C – I’m right!” – which explains my GPA but also explains why I am, for once, right.  (I was recently told that I’m always right, just misguided).

A:   There are way too many wedding dresses relative to brides

B:   The dresses each take about 2 years to make, and therefore cannot be made to each bride’s specific height

Therefore

C:   All Bridal Gowns are the same size

Yep – every bridal gown is made for a woman of average height which appears to be about 5 foot 4 inches.  They include extra yards of fabric, so that each bride can be airlifted in, and then various seams, hooks, safety pins, and industrial strength glue are used to fit the dress to the bride. 

But here’s the thing – with all of the lace, beads, sequins, and other materials, it is impossible to actually shorten the dress.  That is why more petite women have very long wedding trains – it is simply the extra fabric that no seamstress can contend with. 

I will provide 3 case studies here for your consideration

Petite women (about 5 feet) – Train length equivalent to Amtrak.  My daughter’s friend Amy is about to get married, and I think there is a distinct possibility that we will not see anything except her head poking above the gown.   Any shorter and it’s entirely possible that the dress could walk itself down the aisle in a mass of white taffeta, as no one would see anyone actually in it!

You may think I’m kidding, but I have a picture of my friend Sue on her wedding day; when she and her husband got into my car to drive from the temple to the reception, all I could see was her face above her skirt which was piled up to her chin.

My Daughter (about 5 foot 6 inches) – Train length more like the Boston “T” that she rides on (it’s a “T” party in Boston every day).   Yep – the perfect height for the perfect girl (I am the Dad after all and it is perfectly legal to say this to anyone and everyone).  The dress will just touch the floor, with a bit trailing behind.  It would be a perfect day, excepting that I will commit a completely justifiable homicide of the groom.

Lisa Leslie, former women’s basketball star (6 foot, 5 inches).  Train equivalent to the LA Subway – they say it exists but it doesn’t.  For her, she’ll be radiant in a miniskirt.

Now, she may try to compensate with the Veil – I’ve often seen veils that extend about 3 football fields in length.  In an outdoor wedding, kites may be attached (that’s an optional feature costing about $4,000 per kite). These start to look like Superhero Capes – and I believe in Edna Mode:  “No Capes!  (Dahhhlllinggggg) ”

In any case, I’m ‘pretty’ sure that you are now searching your memory and validating absolutely everything I just said.  You’re welcome.

But we are not yet finished.  You see, there is still the matter of the other members of the bridal party. You might think that the Groom is next, but that is silly – he is the least important one there.

So, a bit of history here. I’m pretty sure that, back in the day, there were no wedding parties. Based on the documentary Romeo and Juliet, the bride and groom went to the church alone, and then killed themselves.  This saved the bride’s father the work of having to commit a completely justifiable homicide, as we have discussed. Kids these days just aren’t that considerate towards their parents, I say.

But that’s also because they didn’t have modern wedding dresses for the bride.  You see, with the modern wedding dress, the bride has to be the star, no matter what the cost, time or trouble.

And that’s where the bridesmaids fit in.  The bride will gather her best friends, in this case including my daughter, and attempt to make them as hideous as possible so that she, the bride, looks especially radiant.  Yep, someone at every wedding will point to a bridesmaid and speak “She’s wearing that?!?” as if it were a gown at the Academy Awards. Face it, for the awards shows the only thing that matters are the ‘journalists’ after the show saying “she wore that?” – everyone remembers Bjork the Swan from a decade ago; no one remembers who was best picture this year (the correct answer every year is “a movie I’ve never seen”).

Well, a wedding is a bride’s chance to be the star of the show, and that means – Butt Bows and Vivid Vermillion.

The first, and most significant, is the Bridesmaid Butt Bow, which can be purchased (as well as a Basic Back Brush) at Bed Bath and Beyond (the BBB at the BBB, butt that’s another story). The only other place you see such a device planted on a person’s posterior (PPP?) is, of course, at the Academy Awards.

There is no way a woman would choose to wear such a thing.  It is a fashion designer’s job to recommend this, and the bride’s shrewd decision to make sure that every one of her fashionable friends looks like they are some sort of odd birthday present because after the wedding she can blame it on the designer.

And we all know that birthday presents come in very Very VERY LOUD colors.  Vermillion (ok, guys, don’t look it up – it is pink) is an obvious choice.   We are talking here of colors so bright that they can be seen from space.

As we speak, two aliens from the planet Zotar are up there circling the Earth on a date.  They’re cruising around in their space convertible, he’s trying to impress her (and failing – dating is NOT limited to planet Earth, folks), and suddenly he’s like “Whoa, what’s that flashing light”.  They stop and she says “It’s nothing – just a bridesmaid’s gown. Oooohhh look at the SIZE of that Butt Bow!”

So far, we’ve all talked about the Well-dressed Women of the Wedding (they put the WWW in wedding). But what about our men?   Face it- men do not give a rat’s behind about fashion, even if it is wearing a Butt Bow. 

So how does one reconcile that with a Tuxedo?   Again, remember that we must make the bride look radiant, and to do so the groom must NOT look like he just got off the local train from Pittsburgh after a bender with the boys (or, in other words, the bachelor party).

And the reason for that is a bit of a history lesson. Now, kids, listen up.  I realize today that no guy wears a suit, even to a wedding.  But back in ancient history (1994, when I got married), EVERY guy wore a suit AND a tie to a wedding.  The problem was that most guys owned only one suit – a Basic Blue Blazer (BBB, not to be confused with the BBB) with a black pair of pants and red tie.  I still own these, so I know. So, if we asked the groom to wear his suit, he’d wear a BBB like everyone else.

The result – give him a suit that really makes him stand out. But (or Butt?) – How shall we do that?  Here’s how.  You give him these items that are not part of a regular suit because, follow me here, they are absurd:

• Striped  Pants – ok, that seems obvious, but do they have to have satin stripes that match the Mariachi band you hired?

• Jacket with “tails” – I double-dog dare you to explain to me the difference of a Butt Bow and Tails.

• White Shirt with small black plastic buttons that are inserted through button holes on the shirt. Yes, they call them Onyx, but we’ve done scientific research (meaning we accidentally, sort-of, broke them, but told the store that they were run-over by a small herd of bison. The funny thing is that the store accepted that story without laughing). Based on this scientific evidence, we have discovered that they (the buttons, not the store clerks) are in fact plastic. 

• Bow Tie:  most guys can tie a tie, but NO one can tie a bow-tie, so these fake things are rubber bands with hooks.  Further, no guy wants to look like he should be computing weather statistics for fun and profit.  And in the rare instance that the groom gets a tie instead of a bow-tie, the does not get to tie the tie. The bride is leaving nothing to chance.

• A cummerbund (and we do NOT mean Benedict here):   This is just a glorified belt. 

Sidenote: Important Fashion Fact for Men:  Many men (ok 1 or 2) have asked this question: 

Question:  Do I wear the pleats in the cummerbund facing up or down?

Answer:  Up, of course. That way you can store shrimp from the happy hour for a snack later on.  Geez, guys, that should’ve seemed pretty obvious.

The piece de resistance (literally, these things are something any guy should resist) are the plastic shoes.  No groom wearing these will ever get cold feet.  These things are so air-tight that they do not allow air to enter the foot (I suppose that’s what air-tight means). It is the same material that is used by astronauts to be air-tight against the ravishing cold of space. Plus, it allows the astronauts to do the ‘moon walk’. 

That works in space, where the -256 degree temperature keeps the astronaut’s feet rather comfortable in these shoes.  But here on earth, it means that many wedding nights have been spoiled by the groom removing his shoes, only to find that his feet smell like 2 sweaty muskrats that have not bathed since Lyndon Johnson was President.  Yes the shoes were designed by the father of a bride.

The other purpose is to prevent the groom from movement.  This is why, at the beginning of the ceremony, the groom is already located at the altar.  He cannot physically walk, much less run, from his wedding.  Imagine if he were to try:  The groom leaves the altar in a slow-speed car chase, while a staggering mound of unrecognizable taffeta comes after him, only to chase him down and drag him back to the alter.  It’s been done.

This also explains the first dance later in the evening (assuming the groom survives from a completely justifiable homicidal attempt on his life by the bride’s father). I do not care how many Arthur Murray lessons you’ve taken – you are not going to dance in these shoes.  You will, instead, move in a small, zombie-like circle while performing a death grip on your new wife.  Everyone else is eating the left-over shrimp from the groomsmen’s cummerbunds.

And speaking of the groomsmen – why the heck are they dressed the same as the groom?  I mean, the bride gets to make every bridesmaid look like a fashion-don’t, but don’t that apply to the men? Why do they all look so uniform?

The answer is simple – Camouflage.

Face it – with all the suits, bow-ties, and cummerbunds, a completely justifiable homicidal bridal father can’t tell them apart.  So, he has to decide – do I wipe out all of them, or take a chance on that one over there?  You, the bride, are banking on your father’s last shred of decency and humanity.

Of course, if the groom’s father has a daughter all bets are off.  There is a high correlation that his daughter is of marrying age, and therefore, he will understand and may even offer a helping hand:  “No, he’s there, at the end, no not that end, the other end,  yes on your left, no, your other left, yep, that’s him. Go ahead its ok, I have a daughter.”

There you have it – the most thorough, honest, and truthful (doesn’t that mean honest? I’d better invest in a thesaurus) explanation of why and where we wear what we wear.  If you survive, you can thank me later.  If not, you simply were dressed for wedding success.