What Next?

It seems to me that everyone's getting married.  Every year there are new movies out about weddings (Bridesmaids, Bride Wars..), I keep coming across engaged bloggers, there was a freaking royal wedding recently, and I'm going to a wedding tomorrow.  Maybe it's just the season for it.  You know, the bride that's married in June and all.  While riding the train down to meet friends to wait for the wedding tomorrow, I was thinking a little about weddings.  From all the romantic comedies I've ever seen, the movie ends with the wedding.  Some people argue that those are bad for our mental health, because we never see that life goes on past the honeymoon.

Well, I have a question.  What happens after the wedding?

I don't mean after the honeymoon.  I mean directly after the wedding.  Sure, some people leave right away for their honeymoon.  What about people with jobs, or those who stink at making reservations?  Do they stay to help clean up the reception?  Or are you exempt from that one on your special day?

If you're not quite the modern couple and are still living separately, do you each go home to your own place?  Go change into sweats and feed the cats?  Or maybe climb into your childhood bed at mom's, and hope the family isn't too loud the next morning?  Do you still have to cook dinner?

Maybe the rom-com culture is getting to me.  Once your big event is over, doesn't life still go on in the same mundane way, even if there's technically still a few hours left of your big day?

I kind of don't want to think about that.  It takes a little bit of magic out of weddings.  But weddings are about celebrating the future of two people, and all futures contain bits of the mundane.  What a bummer.