I begin this post with a grand announcement. My wedding obligations have been fulfilled! So expect regular posting (by me at least) to resume appropriately and frequently soon. In fact, November marks the “Write a Novel in a Month because You are Crazy” which means I’m going to be super busy. However, fear not dear site, for this doesn’t mean that I will neglect you further. In fact, I have a prepared story that will seem me gloriously through the writing challenge and probably in the months to come. Which is to say that I wrote a short story which is more like a novella which is going to take a long time to break down and post section by section upon this site.

But since said story also was a gift for one of these weddings, I felt it appropriate to allow the gifted to enjoy it early before I blasted into the public domain that didn’t require an elaborate ceremony and forever bonding themselves to another in order to obtain.

It’s like a pre-purchase with all the uselessness of said practice.

But as my time has mostly been involved with these weddings, it is all I really have to speak of at the moment. Well, that’s not entirely true. Derek has been spending numerous hours enrolling me in a crash course of a competitive card game called Netrunner. Expect something on that soonish. Which will probably be next week. It’s a neat little game but my words for it will certainly be longer than the time I have today to write.

Yes, I got gifts for being in the wedding party. Yes, they were both pocket watches. Now I get to play favourites… I’ll probably stick with the one that was awarded to me for having an awesome speech.

So, instead, I shall share private information about a ceremony that I really shouldn’t be making public. I suppose I shall change names in order to protect the identities of those involved. Consider everything that follows as a work of fiction and any semblances to people, places and events that transpired purely as coincidence. That’s how you absolve yourself of any legal action right?

The second of the age old tradition rife in patriarchy and out-dated religiosity was… well… more traditional and rife with patriarchy and out-dated religiosity. I will say this about my brother’s wedding – it certainly allowed me to enjoy Jeremy and Heather’s even more. This isn’t to say that my brother’s wedding was bad. It just felt different. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being more an outsider at this event and not just because I wasn’t the best man this time around.

I was still a member of the wedding party but there was a very blatant difference between the two. Jeremy’s wedding party was mostly composed of people that didn’t know each other well. There was Dan, Matt and Sebastian who are all related to Jeremy but Paul and myself helped to make clear that we weren’t a close knit group of age old friends. It forced us to seek commonalities in order to engage each other and with more than one person feeling a little on the outside encouraged all of us to extend a hand to the others. Even the brothers didn’t seem particularly close. I chatted with Paul, Sebastian and Matt and we all got along pretty well. Dan was… well Dan which is about all we could expect.

My brother’s wedding party, however, was the opposite. Here were four guys that have shared interests and history. Their time together was spent discussing the raucous parties they attended or dipping in to the married life that my brother so desperately yearns. To say I had nothing in common with them would be to strike the central cord. Since I was just one person, and the younger brother to boot, I was eminently ignorable. Which they did. My part was to solely stand around for photos. I didn’t share any brief moments with my brother to reassert the bonds of our relationship. I suppose the other issue of our shared history contaminated any sort of jovial interactions. Any young man with an older brother can probably attest that growing up is more on the trial and tribulation spectrum than on the close and endearing side that siblings can share. My brother delighted in tormenting me when he was younger. And those that are tormented aren’t apt to forget.

I would say our current relationship is… not necessarily strained but it isn’t warm either. We recognize each other as kin but we have nothing in common and little desire or motivation to change that.

So there’s that. Then there’s the issue that this wedding had a lot of my family at it. And with my family, the less you see of them the better. When they form up as a group, they’re more like a pack of hyenas than a herd of elephants. Though, actually, elephants might make an excellent comparison as well. My parents are divorced and the relationship between the two sides has been… filled with the standard drama to be expected from family. In their defence, they were on good show. My father was embarrassing but that’s mostly par for the course with him. The rest were cordial and mostly I loathe the questions and interrogations that follow. “When are you going to get a girlfriend… I hear that company X is hiring, why don’t you apply to them?”

Et cetera.

I mostly just ignore it. I won’t lie, spite fuels me and my family is in for a surprise should I make it. For they will inevitably try and pull the “I knew you’d do it all along! Let’s be best friends!” routine.

But the wedding, I felt, mostly lacked personality. Heather and Jeremy’s was infused with their personality from the table centerpieces, music played, vows and what have you. If I had to sum up my brother’s wedding in one word it would be “feathers” and I can tell you, feathers are not the first thing I think of when I imagine my brother. It was all so standard. And boring. My brother seemed bored. The bride seemed at an acceptable level of contentedness. The bridesmaids dresses were atrocious. If you were to watch a standard Hollywood movie that was shoved from the studios in a few months to fill the post Oscar season, this would be the wedding they would show.

However, my brother is married and I know have a sister-in-law. As long as they enjoyed their wedding, that’s all that mattered. And hey, I decided that if somehow I actually beat the odds and do end up getting married I’m going to ask my brother to be in my wedding partly. Mostly so he can know the torture of being the odd man. But hey, at least there is that.