June again, wedding season. I do love a good wedding, though it’s deeply unfashionable in a professed socialist.
But I don’t care; I love the whole hoohah, the sentimental tears at the first careless rapture of young love (or the umpteenth of mature love) the boggling at the hideous bridesmaid’s dresses and the style of the invitations and the colours of the ribbons on the cars. I like to see a wedding done well, but because they mostly aren’t weddings are a glorious opportunity to bitch to my heart’s content, behind a discreetly held service sheet. Ooh – have you seen her shoes? Vile. Not sure I would’ve chosen lilies for a wedding… oh my, her sister’s butt ugly.
But I’d never, ever do it in public and most certainly not in print or pixels. Despite the blog’s hunger for content I hardly ever write personal stuff on the blog. Why? I know what a cow I can be. No-one’d ever speak to me again if I did.
I don’t do over our friends or family for blog hits or – unlike Guardian lifestyle hack Tanya Gold – for money:
Three weeks I ago I received a wedding list from a friend. Let me be more accurate. She used to be a friend, but as her wedding looms she has been replaced by a shape-shifting, John Lewis-icking monster. She wants ice-crushers and cookbook holders and spoons. Give them to me, she squawks through her John Lewis proxy, because I am in love – and that means I get consumer durables for free! I demand a new kitchen – and you will pay for it!
Wedding lists were designed to help a young married couple build a home, in the days when everyone got married aged 12 and a half, and were totally spoonless. But today, you are not buying your friends a new life. They are 30 years old and rotting. wrinkles and Botox and they sag, like dying balloons. You are buying them an upgrade.
They don’t want a deep expression of your friendship, which you have chosen. The message is – your input is not required. Kill your imagination. Destroy your sensitivity. Give us the spoons. Or you will not be invited to the wedding and you will not get to eat lukewarm mini-pots of risotto
I bet getting the cheque for that felt good.
Awful to read that about yourself in the daily paper and worse still, written by someone you thought liked you. “They have wrinkles and Botox and they sag, like dying balloons”. Ow, nasty. Just sheer unwarranted bitchery. The key phrase seems to be “….- your input is not required”. Bitter at not being the centre of attention much, Tanya?
The former friend and future bride didn’t take it lying down and had the editors put this at the top of the comments:
joholland
10 Jun 09, 1:08pm
As the bride referred to in the piece I should point out that Tanya was invited to my wedding but no wedding list was included in her invitation because I know how much she hates them.
I do have a wedding list at John Lewis which I can appreciate is bourgeois but we decided that it would be practical, though by no means compulsory. The irony in all this is that I really, really don’t care about gifts and have never even brought the subject up with Tanya (my dress, I concede is another matter). It might sound trite but all I want is a happy unforgettable day surrounded by people I love. My wedding is less than a month away and frankly, Tanya I don’t want any spoons but I’m not sure that I want you at my wedding either.
And that’s the end of that friendship, which is why I don’t do personal stuff for public consumption.
I can remember my own and my sister’s and friend’s weddings and the enmities and angsts thereof, when all the sibling rivalry and buried family resentment came bubbling to the surface and rows abounded. It was horrible. My younger self would certainly have blogged about it had a blog been available – it would’ve helped vent the tension. Hah! That’s told her.
Getting paid for it by a national newspaper I would’ve seen as pure bonus. I’d’ve gone out and bought shoes with the money. Like Gold I would’ve thought nothing of the permanence of my words or considered they might follow me around for ever, souring potential future friendships.
My older self knows better. I’ve been asked occasionally why it is I rarely blog about anything personal, or keep a LiveJournal or Facebook page. I could and do waffle on about privacy, which is political. But the primary reason I won’t ever write about anyone I know is encapsulated in that bitter, sub-Bridget Jones-ish post. For Gold that’s a friend lost forever and a reputation as a journalist, such it was, sullied for the sake of a bit of paid bitchery about weddings and the chance to let off a little steam. Was it worth it?
