Why many men hate weddings

By Tony M

For the next three or so weeks, I’m going to go flat out and try to bring home to the ladies, for once (although I feel sure not for all) the reason why so many men detest weddings. I attended one in Thika recently when this truth hit me. I loathe weddings! And I’m sure I speak for all men, only.

Can I hear ye men of Sparta say "Auuu", like foolish wolves? Excellent!

Men detest weddings, first and foremost, because of all the fuss that goes into grooming the groom, dressing the flower girls, committing the committees — all in an effort to make the bride the pride of the day.

Pray, why would a woman go into years of reverie about one ‘magical’ day? See, when a soccer player practices day after day, he knows he will be playing in various leagues every week for club, country, pride, trophy...name it. Not ati he’ll play one magical Wednesday evening in Rome, win the Big Trophy, then that’s it. Ladies, a man and a wedding are like one match, then a trophy gathering dust in the mantelpiece.

The groom’s people and the bride’s family often do not mingle but sit in large tents opposite each other, more like adversaries facing each other across the field of war, than two families coming together as one — which is what they are.

Marriage brings two large clans together so they may feud with one another, like the Shakesperian Capulets and Montagues. Intrigues for control from bothersome mothers-in-law and leech-like brothers-in-law are brought to the fore. Matrimonial courts ought to abolish these tent arrangements, for families’ peace.

Playing innocent

And then there’s the issue of the food. Why are most wedding ‘parties’, determined to feed the people on dry chapattis, half cooked pilau and boilo that tastes as if it was borrowed from the local boarding school? People should just be told to ‘eat well before you come, because the food is going to taste like raw sorghum’.

And you know why I like to Bring My Own Bottle to those wedding receptions? It’s because the hosts and ghostesses like to make the folk drink hot-to-warm cokes that taste awful. In Thika, they gave us Tarinos, I thought those ones had run out of production.

Kenyan weddings usually manage to combine a ridiculous cocktail of the mundane, plain silly, kitsch, corny and cheesy. Cheesy — a little word meaning kitsch. Or let’s just say silly, we cannot all be into the literature. Corny — a word meaning of the corn, maize, or ‘mahindi,’ in other words, u-shamba mingi.

Sample a few flinch factors about weddings.

First, I find all that ‘hide under the sheet’ stuff a little spooky. Like being back in Standard Three, and playing at ghost, although one can get to grope those other hot relatives of the dear betrothed, the upside on the backside.

Stale advice

And how cheesy it is to see a bride pretend to cook with a mwiko for show, yet we know so many modern women who won’t cook all the time for their man. One even dared come out openly in a newspaper under the title, "So I cannot cook, so what?"

It’s better you tell your man that you used to be a stripper-slut at one of those dimly lit clubs once, then confess you cannot cook.

What wouldn’t be corny is the bride and groom demonstrating in public during a wedding how they’re going to go at it on those ludicrous marital beds they put on display.

But the worst thing about weddings is the endless speeches — from the pastor (get to the ‘do you?’ bit quickly and get it over with), to the bitter divorcees warning of pitfalls, to the widows with a sepia-toned glow of re-invention of their late goners, to those darn aunties who talk like they have PhDs on marriage.

As for those dreadful church choirs crooning sickeningly, sentimental gooey love songs, you make real men want to throw up, or give you the smack down! Talking of smack downs, I’d advice dewy-eyed lasses to watch the Spanish movie Te Doy Mis Ojos.

And then there is the idiotic fuss about wedding cake — what are we? Six? Pass a crate of beer around, and we may still stay here. Pressure, pressure — the song says; and here it comes when the fiancÈe looks at one after a wedding and sighs: "You know, if we are to do the wedding in a year, it’s about time we started planning and saving, si ndiyo?"