COVER A SLIP ‘N SLIDE WITH KRAFT MACARONI AND CHEESE If it makes you happy.
  • JAMES YAMASAKI
  • COVER A SLIP ‘N SLIDE WITH KRAFT MACARONI AND CHEESE If it makes you happy.

Two years ago, I got a job at a catering company that specializes in weddings. Sometimes I'd see two a day. It was surreal and a little disconcerting to lay out one couple's polished rocks and bags of monogrammed candies and then chuck them into a dumpster halfway through the day to make way for the next couple's color-coordinated napkins and shot glasses. I served enough champagne to fill a Cadillac and enough hors d'oeuvres to bury one. I saw weddings that seemed meant to be, and ones I'd give about two months. I saw blow-up dolls dressed as cowboys. Then gay marriage passed, and I started writing a column for The Stranger called Wedding Crasher, which I got paid for, if you can believe it. I went and ate free food and danced with people I didn't know, and then I wrote down my thoughts about how it went in exchange for cash. I saw things I'll always remember, and I cried at every damn wedding. I also saw things I would recommend no one ever replicate. But let's focus on the positive. If you're planning to get married, I offer my observations and my lust for revolving beverage fountains as assistance.

Even if You're Madly in Love, Don't Get Married Until You're Thirty

Okay, I guess that's not a very positive way to start, but it must be said: People change a lot during their 20s. When I look back at who I might have married when I was 19, I cringe—a tall can of Rainier wouldn't look good in a wedding dress. I've dated two women who were dissolving domestic partnerships that began in their early 20s, and the paperwork weighed about five pounds. The most worrisome weddings I've witnessed were those of teenagers who looked either like they just wanted a party or, worse, like relatives had pressured them into it...

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