Hello, and welcome to the new groom/guy portion of the mywedding.com blog! You may be wondering what qualifies me to write this blog. The answer, quite simply, is experience. That’s right: I’ve been married over seven times, so I definitely know the secret to a great wedding weekend!
Of course I’m just kidding. I am happily married to my first (and only) wife, but I did write a funny book about our wedding called Well Groomed, and as we all know, when someone publishes a book in America, they are instantly reclassified as an expert. Just ask Dr. Phil.
My goal with this blog is to offer a slightly different perspective on weddings. Although this will sometimes take the form of advice, most of the time it will just be my own observations (man-servations?) about weddings I’ve been to, including my own. The reason I hope and think this will be helpful is because brides usually believe guys only care about two things: the booze and the music. And while those areas are important (don’t get me started on how inappropriate the song “I Will Survive” is for weddings), they’re also just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s the first of many examples: My wife and I just returned from a wedding in Napa Valley, California. It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony, but less beautiful was the annoying prospect of having to apply suntan lotion to the top of my semi-balding head. Suntan lotion is always a little uncomfortable because your skin suddenly feels like fly-paper, but applying suntan lotion while wearing dressy threads is a particularly awkward combination for me. It’s like wearing a wet bathing suit to the office. But, since my skin tone is, shall we say, more British than Italian, I just sucked it up.
At this wedding in Napa, though, they had an inventive solution: straw sun hats for all the guests. Normally, I would feel out of place wearing a hat to a wedding, since I don’t live in 1957, but when the hosts offered them up to everyone, I was thankful to have carte blanche. Obviously straw hats only work with certain types of weddings – in this case, the ceremony was on a ranch in Northern California so the hats went perfectly with the setting.
Most women, including my wife, who has thick brown hair, never think about head protection. That’s fine, of course, because I never think about having to shave my legs, since the mere prospect of dragging a razor over my knee makes me shutter. Nonetheless, I was very impressed by Napa bride and groom’s foresight. I may be a dude, but I (and my fellow dudes) can still appreciate the little details at a wedding, including those that have nothing whatsoever to do with cocktails.
By the way, an hour after the ceremony, everyone gathered to watch the sun set. Most guests thought the colors in the sky were beautiful. I was just happy I could finally take off my hat.
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