A Guide to Successful Wedding Crashing

It's June, and that means it's "that time" of the year again, when unsuspecting virgins walk up the aisle and all the family gluttons gather to eat and drink to their happiness (or sadness). How can you, the otherwise ordinary nameless brick-in-the-wall, add some spice to your life and theirs? You show up at the wedding, uninvited.

This easy-to-comprehend, step-by-step, detailed, and tried-and-tested guide to Wedding Crashing will have you ahead of the game in no time.

WEDDING CRASHING 101

(Loosely based on last Saturday night's adventure)

WHAT YOU NEED:

1. A Suitable Outfit

Imagine, that could be you in the background!

If you identify as masculine, choosing an outfit should be easy. Pants, shirt, coat, tie and polished shoes. Cuff-links and tie-clasps are optional.

For the feminine, a formal dress and shoes, along with make up might do the trick. But on this island, a flashy saree is unfortunately the socially-accepted wedding attire. It may differ in other parts of the world- kimonos,  caftans, deer skin- whatever society deems is right, is right.

Choosing the wrong outfit could be fatal, specially if the bride's father is the shotgun-carrying alcoholic type of dad. The concept to understand here is 'camouflage'. Your objective here is to fit and blend into the crowd like a chameleon in a bush. (Wikipedia says "The primary purpose of color change in chameleons is social signalling, with camouflage secondary... males show lighter, multicolored patterns when courting females". If that tickles your fancy, go ahead adorn yourself in some wild color and see how the opposite sex reacts to your advances, but don't tell me I did not warn you.)

2. Mode of Transport

Now that you are all fancied up, you need to figure out how you will get to the venue. If you are oblivious to stares and finger pointing and groping (or may be you even get a kick from that sort of deviant behavior), then public transport should serve you just fine. If not, you might want to drive, hitch a tuk-tuk, or, if you can afford it, call a cab.

3. A gift (optional)

The decent thing to do is to take a special gift for the couple on the most expensive day of their lives. All you need is a little creativity, and you could throw in a dead cockroach or a condom for extra LOLs. If that sounds like too much work, you could just take an empty envelope with the words Congratulations! scrawled in an elaborate cursive hand.

HOW TO WEDDING CRASH- KABOOOOOM!

1. Get your ass to the Feast

They look so happy together!

If you live in a crazy city like Colombo, finding a wedding should be a piece of cake. All you have to do is go to a fancy hotel or reception hall on a weekend and you will find a few weddings going on simultaneously, and in typical Asian-style each will have a few hundred guests. If you live in a multicultural, fruit-salad city like Colombo, try to find a wedding you can easily blend into, specially if you feel language, dress code and cuisine will be problematic. You do not want to be the rude girl who says no to shark fin soup or the prudish guy who refuses to take his boxers off at a skyclad handfasting ceremony.

If you live in a less populated area, like Ames, Iowa, you might have to take your planning to the next level, and device a strategy that involves finding out when and where weddings will be held. How do you do that? I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that. If you have any suggestions on how to bomb a wedding in a rural church on the outskirts of civilization, go ahead comment.

When crashing a wedding, timing is crucial. Get there too early and you will walk into a serious ceremony and attract unnecessary attention. Walk in too late, and you will walk into a drunken sausage fest, and, again, attract unnecessary attention.

The Gurus of Wedding Crashing tell me the perfect time to walk in is when the food has just been served. This is when everyone is walking around making small talk, and their brains are too flooded with thoughts of gobbling down as much food as humanly possible to notice your unfamiliar face.

Remember that wedding receptions are normally focused around lunch or dinner. Plan accordingly, allowing for changes in different cultures. For example, a religious ceremony held separately in a church or temple, or auspicious times observed, may change the timing of the reception.

2. Walk in.... like a Boss!

This is probably the hardest part of the whole mission- having the balls to walk in. Remember, before you perform this bold act of bravery, take note of the couple's names, and come up with a small story to explain your relationship to them in case someone asks. "I am one of John's friends," my friend, and partner-in-crime mumbled to an acquaintance he met inside the hall, and it worked! Walk in without hesitating for too long, and try not to giggle or blush. Remember to smile and acknowledge anyone who meets your eyes.

3. Blend In... like a Chameleon?

Now is the time to have fun. Chat up the groom's grand aunt or break a leg on the dance floor. The most epic moment of my experience of wedding crashing to-date was when we walked up to the newly-wed couple on a little make-shift stage thing, gave them pecks on the cheeks, wished them good luck and posed for pictures by the official photographer. The groom was either too drunk, too tired or too caught up with fantasies of tearing those fold of white satin off his lovely bride to notice that we did not belong there. But the bride eyed us suspiciously and gave us a knowing smile. If the marvels of social networking somehow work in our favor and I get my hands on that photo, I will upload. I promise!

HAVE FUN KIDS!!

A Silver Lining

I don't understand why I keep filling this blog with pages and pages of miserable rants. I don't even know who reads this. The majority of views I get here are directed by Google, for pictures I have stolen. I know a few of my friends drop by occasionally, and sometimes drop a comment or two, which is very encouraging. Seriously, I mean it. Thank you!

Other than a few creepy lurkers and sadists who are probably getting a kick out of hearing me whine, who else would find the shit I write of interest? I often try to go down the path of confessionalism not only because it is a genre I personally love and am inspired by, but also because I hope someone out there somewhere might  find my words and feel a little less alone. I know I do when I read about how someone, a stranger on the other side of the world, goes through shit, as mundane as it might be, and chooses to write about it. It is almost like making a new invisible friend.

But recently my blog has been full of nothing but negativity, the tiny spark of creativity and inspiration it had has been washed away by bucket-fulls of nothing but morbid and dull rants.

Perhaps my writing style is to blame. I only pick up a pen, or reach for a keyboard for that matter, when I feel down and have absolutely nothing better to do. So it is no surprise that everything I write has a melancholic ring to it.

I intend to put an end to that, and bring you more interesting content. I am sure I can find more than enough random tidbits to keep you invisible readers, whoever jobless people you may be, interested, at least for a little while.

And may be, just may be, this will rekindle that fire in me again. That desire to write, just for the sake of writing. Not for money, not for grades and not for any fucking cause, but simply because I want to write.

When I was a teenager, I somehow assumed that writing was something everyone did. Of course anyone who is literate can write, but back then I was naive enough to think that everyone who could, does. By writing, I don't mean grocery bills and memos, but artistic and expressive stuff. You know, the good stuff. I thought everyone, everywhere in the world sat down with a pen at night to write everything that was in their heart.

Only when I was older did I begin to realize that not everyone was very fond of writing. In fact, many despised it. I figured that being able to construct a cohesive sentence was an excellent way to bluff your way through exams. A few years later, someone offered to pay me, and pay me well, for writing grammatically correct bullshit. Ever since, the love I had for writing has slowly vanished, and instead I have taught myself to speak in a robotic voice devoid of color.

This is why I want to be sixteen again. I want to sit on the roof, light a smoke and write, like I used to. May be this is what it feels like to grow old, to watch your bones grow stiff and your mind bleary.

But I am young at heart and often as scarred as I may be, I still have enough youthful energy in me to stay happy when I want to. So here goes, from today on I will bring you not the rainy clouds, but the silver lining. And if that doesn't work, I'll just hook you up with someone who sells happiness in a plastic bag.

And here is some happy music to go down with that:

Emotions and Other Monsters

So after half a dozen failed blog posts, here I am typing in words just for the sake of it. Because I'm dying to see something else appear on top of my blog. Because I'm desperate to shake myself out of the 'block' my muse has abandoned me in. Because I want to prove to myself that I am capable of something productive- something, anything.

I am stuck in one of those periods of brain freeze again. Idleness makes anyone stupid, but in my case it also has the power to make me depressed and angry.When I close my eyes I yearn to see swirls of color. Without music I would die, and it is the opiate of wonderful people that keeps me from killing myself. (Why, oh why, all these melodramatic metaphors?)

Recently, I have often spoken of my fears, but now I realize that the worst fear a human, or any other creature for that matter, can experience is the fear of emotion. Their acuteness, their power, their complexity scares me.

I have learned the hard way that emotions are monsters you must embrace. Hideous leeches. All my life I have fought to keep away, to shield myself from their evil tentacles, to keep myself from being strangled by the creatures of the deep sea that we call Emotion.

Sometimes I have failed, often succeeded. But I must admit, there is a sense of liberation to be found in defeat, in succumbing to emotion. Building sand castles against the advancing waves brewed by a passing storm. Laughing as the ocean, grey and brooding, attempts to drag you to its depths, before it cascades and kisses your feet. Those are moments I choose to remember.

But then there are others, moments when emotions have killed me, almost. And those are the ones I fear.

That aside, here is The Sadistic Motives Behind Bereavement Letters by Arsis, a band I would kill to see live!