We’re talking weddings and right now the fashionable place to say ‘I do’ is Nottingham Road and the Midlands.
Between patches of dead grass and invasive tree species, with the aroma of Jersey dung hanging in the air, and often overlooking a small putrid pond, couples agree to love each other even when her underwear starts looking like it’s made by Canvas for Africa, and him not even going to shower without his phone.
I attended friends’ Midlands wedding a while ago and let me tell you; if Oxfam had their budget, world hunger will be a thing of the past, forever! Beforehand, I Google’d the venue (I believe Google has become a verb).
The webpage read like a cheesy Danielle Steel paperback, with the chapel being described as a ‘unique and honest stone, glass and steel structure,’ which will appeal to the ‘discerning client’.
All I saw was a dilapidated cow shed with glass sliding doors and corrugated sheeting stuck over the holes in the walls. I came to the conclusion that ‘discerning’ is just another way to say ‘stupid rich’.
This wedding wasn’t just a Saturday afternoon affair like back in the day.
No, it was a weeklong exposé on how to show off and those who could afford to lose time and money, were there by Wednesday already to play golf with the groom on the farm-cum-estate’s nine-hole golf course.
I couldn’t afford it, but didn’t care because to me golf, as an activity, is on par with stamp collecting.
At least I was regularly updated via Facebook with posts containing hashtags like‘#weddingofthecentury’ and
‘#loveisallaroundus’.
On the Friday, when I reached the ‘intrinsically splendid’ Posh Estate, the make-up artist, hair stylist and DJ had also arrived from Gauteng, and where cows once gave birth on hay, there was a carpet of rose petals and enough chiffon to cover all the virgins in Lebanon.
#4forver
On the actual wedding day, the Posh Estate’s cow shed turned primitive chapel was packed to its 200 people
capacity.
There was a slight panic among the family when the pastor’s flight got delayed at Lanseria airport, but with 10 minutes to spare the helicopter landed behind the shed, blowing two corrugated sheets off the roof and almost all the rose petals out the glass sliding door and into the ‘mystical lake’ aka putrid pond.
As per custom, the man of the cloth asked if there’s any objections to so and so getting married – he had to double check his notes to get the names right – but luckily no one said a word because it would have been a #travestyofenormousproportions.
I sat there hoping the marriage lasts forever, or at least until the parents have managed to pay the loans, so I will not tell anybody that he had his eyes on someone else six months ago while we were on a 4×4 trip.
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