Another niece is getting married in August. As with any other couples, she has started the flurry of activities that attend the present-day editions of marriage. This means that, as early as today, they have reserved already the church of their choice and selected the priest of their own persuasion. A new feature of marriages presently are the so-called prenuptial photo sessions. This is an activity that assumes the proportion of a real filmmaking, with directors of photography and stylists. I have been informed that drones now are regular features of prenuptial photo documentations the better to provide a panoramic perspective about unions and exchange of vows.
There is, however, a new development in weddings that are almost unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago: the existence and presence of wedding coordinators. The wedding managers are a composite of two teams: the stylists who take care of how the bride, the groom and the entire entourage will look and the gang of stage managers who will govern the procedures and movements the moment the wedding party moves out of the hotel or home, till it reaches the church and the ceremonies are conducted. Their presence, which can be dominant all throughout unless you scream at them to stop intervening, will extend up to the hotel or wherever the reception is held. I have heard of wedding coordinators who see to it that the food in the banquet are not poisoned and thus are the first to taste them, the chocolates and candies not excluded.
If the wedding participants have enough economic surplus, a separate squad composed of photographers can join this team who combine the power of traffic policemen, counsels and manipulators. These cameramen will tell you what to do: where to place your arm, when to smile and, if you are unfortunate, command you to do a wacky pose. I suspect wedding photographers are unhappy persons and, thus, amuse themselves at the expense of wedding guests caught in the fever of the occasion. If your misfortune is plentiful, these men and women with camera will even request you to do a jump shot. Don’t.
I have attended enough weddings, standing even as sponsors, for me to speak about the danger and complications brought about by wedding coordinators.
These wedding magicians have the power to enchant everyone, except the priest whose sacerdotal authority remains superior over them.
The gimmicks and tricks developed by wedding coordinators can be intractable and uncontainable. If you allow them, they can propose anything and act on their proposal with the might of a dictator.
Weddings are not circuses but these coordinators can turn your quiet event into a carnival by their capacity to articulate the persona of, usually, the bride and groom. Once, I stood a wedding where, upon sitting at my designated spot, I noticed something alien on my table: a paper plane. I looked to my left and to my right and farther down the table and saw that we all had paper planes in front of us. I remember looking at the other guests and, like me, they had the same puzzled look. What are we going to do with these paper planes? Then the ringmaster, the emcee/host if you wish, started to talk in an accent that was a cross between a Midwest accent and an Irish brogue. She commanded us to pick up the paper planes and fly them as the couple entered the hall. The host explained that the bride and groom are flying to abroad immediately after the wedding. The paper planes were the symbol for this fate. It seems “bon voyage” does not suffice anymore.
For all the varieties of details articulated by these wedding planners, the coordinated weddings usually end up all the same: the main door of the church is closed so that the bride can enter like some phantom figure against the light. The sponsors are marshalled to walk in a certain way. And, as the newly wed are about to step out of the church, these coordinators distribute devices from which glitters and confetti would burst, turning the ordinary recessional into a ticker tape parade. The strategies are endless.
Today’s weddings require something else other than composure; one needs a sense of humor. I once was in a non-Catholic wedding where there were two officiating persons: a man and a woman. Both were talkative. There was no quiet moment in the long ceremony as they took turns annotating parts of the wedding ritual. Toward the end, the two sang—with solos and duets.
I wonder how long we will give up our human rights to manage the weddings of our loved ones. In many cities, there are already coordinators and planners tasked to oversee funerals.
There is enough uncertainty about life; it is nice to know that there are people ready to manage dying and death.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano