Fairy Tale Wedding

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 27, 2014

Is there a better way to celebrate a marriage by getting so shit faced drunk that you can’t feel the blisters developing on your feet from uncomfortable hells?

I think not.

Despite my general aversion to the institution of marriage, I more than approve of my cousin and her new husband’s elopement.  The reason they make a good couple is because they’re both smart, funny, and genuinely great people.  That is the true recipe for a successful marriage.  Both parties have to be really good people, which is exactly why most marriages are horrible.

***Food for thought, is Lori overly cynical or just in touch with reality?***

For one thing, I sure do prefer wearing a dress to a wedding over a tuxedo.  And by that, I mean, being a guest vs working the event.  I worked in catering for almost four years at two different establishments.  The Venetian Yacht Club didn’t ruin my image of marriage, but, perhaps, expedited the inevitable.

Boy, oh, boy, do I not have enough bad things to say about the Venetian Yacht Club.  With the exception of some great people I worked with, whom I’m still friends with today, that was a horrible, horrible place.  If you have children, or plan on having them, do not allow them to work in catering.

I got hired at the young age of sixteen at the Venetian Yacht Club.  I was more mature than I am now, but far more innocent than I believed I was.  The VYC is an overpriced catering hall, over looking the Great South Bay.  A cheap wedding there costs more than double what I’ll make this year.  While people had, what they often described as their “fairy tale wedding” at the VYC, the behind the scenes was ridden with heavy substance abuse and sexual harassment, starring a cast of coke heads, drug dealers, ex-cons, mentally unwell people, and minors (like me).

At any given moment at the VYC, someone was doing coke, popping upper/downers, fucking a waiter in the bridal suite, fucking a guest in the bridal suite, while I didn’t participate in the heavy drugs, or the fucking, I did drink on the job quite a bit.  In fact, I was actually a much better waitress drunk than sober.  Sober, people would always ask me if I were okay all the time.  Drunk, I’m more friendly, and more apt to laugh at your stupid joke about wrapping a lemon for leftovers than roll my eyes.

I hated that place.  Most of the people who worked there were toxic people with bad addictions.  There was one girl, probably in her early 20’s, who was sleeping with the forty-year-old, drug addict Maitre ‘D.  Everyone hated her because she was “fucking her way to the top.”  I didn’t hate her as much as I found her pathetic.  If you’re going to fuck your way to the top of something, don’t do it in a catering hall.  Jeez…

I’m not innocent here.  I was drunk more shifts than I was sober.  The job was impossible sober.  Too many crazies.  I couldn’t handle being there sober.  I noticed too much.  That’s the side effect of being a wallflower.  Not only did I despise most the people, I started hating the building it’s self.  Sure, it looked pretty, but lean into the candelabra, it will fall off.  Sure, the Maitre ‘D comes out smiling to tell the bride how beautiful the bride is, but she was just crying in the bathroom, losing her battle to quit cocaine.  The higher up the food chain you were, the more they lied.  And the greedier they were.  The wedding business made me ill.  It’s just so fucking sketchy, and so fucking fake.

That’s when I started paying attention to the guests.  I think what I was trying to do was to embrace that love and good that was taking place during a celebration, and not focus on the mad house that was happening behind the scenes.  But what I found was just the opposite.  Most brides were superficial bitches, most grooms would check out the other women at the party, most families can’t stand each other, and most marriages are doomed from the start.  Yes, the wedding business is selling a false product, and everyone knows it, and they don’t seem to care.

***Food for thought, is Lori overly cynical, or just in touch with realty? Give Examples***

People cling to how they believe things should be so hard.  Because we’ve made weddings such a big business, it’s under this pressure that it’s so obvious whether the bride and groom  really love each other, or just settling for one another, because it’s comfortable.  Their relationship becomes like the VYC, beautiful at a glance, but fucked up at it’s core.

My cousin and her husband have what most couples pretend to have.  They will be happy, of that I’m sure.  It was a blast celebrating in the union of two lovers and best friends who are going to prosper with one another.  Their wedding was beautiful, and so much fun.  There was drinking, merriment, and dancing galore.   And, in my opinion, it wasn’t a fairy tale wedding wedding, and that’s why I loved it.  That’s what we should be striving for… something real, not something fake.