10 things I hate about the wedding season

1. Why must I attend the mayun, mehndi, shaadi, valima, five dholkis AND a new-fangled pseudo-extremist dars for the wedding of my mother’s cousin’s son’s daughter? Why?!

2. The throngs of relatives arriving from abroad who decide to camp in your house because we Pakistanis are well-known for our strong family values and would rather die than suggest that our kin spend the wedding season in a hotel. Can I get an expletive in here?

3. Dance practice. And dances in general. Hasn’t the coordinated dancing trend gotten completely out of hand? Why are people taking professional trainers on for weddings? Isn’t inviting strangers to weddings just because they dance well completely insane? And if I have to do another coordinated dance combining bhangra with hip-hop moves just because that’s the done thing now (insert colourful expletive here).

4. I absolutely loathe that 45 minute drive to the wedding hall/outdoor tent which is inevitably delayed because the womenfolk (who happen to be the ones actually interested in attending) just can’t seem to find that set of bangles which matches that particular pair of shoes.

5. So you get to the wedding which is ultra crowded (because everyone wants to make ‘the scene yaar’) and you discover that the only table with free seats is the ‘old people’ table… ’nuff said.

6. The false smiles and running into people you hate in a setting where you simply don’t have the option of sticking a knife into them. Why must weddings be on such a grand scale that you end up inviting 40 people you abhor?

7. The overzealous banker-type yuppies who get hammered to prove they are not the sum of their MBA degrees, and the ancient aunty/uncle types who insist on dancing with the ‘bachas’ in an inebriated version of the cha-cha or samba.

8. Did I mention I hate the rishta brigade? Those gossiping ladies in the corner trying their hand at on-the-go matchmaking for the next wedding season. “Do you think that girl is too healthy for my son?” or “Mashallah, with a wallet like that, he must be a good catch.”

9. The obligatory 10,000 photos which each wedding season comes with. Fifty taken by the professional photographer, and 9,950 taken by giggly girls competing to see who can have the largest Facebook album of the season.

10. I hate the good food. If it wasn’t for the good food, I’d never go.

Published in The Express Tribune August 1^st, 2010.