Fun Time: Mock Wedding Don’t Go Far Enough
I’ve been to many weddings in my life, but I’ve never been to a mock wedding. A mock wedding is a wedding in which two people pretend to get married. Why do people organize mock weddings? Well, let me list just three reasons:
- Pretending to get married is more fun than actually getting married. There is no stress about impressing guests and no worries about marrying the wrong person. “So what if he never takes showers— we’ll be together for only two hours.”
- It may help you prepare for an actual wedding. You get to experience a solemn ceremony that many brides and grooms go through only once in a decade or so.
- A mock wedding may help you realize the importance of not settling but continuing to search until you’ve found the right wedding planner.
The New York Times recently wrote about mock shaadis being organized at North American universities by students of South Asian origin. In one of these weddings, held recently at Columbia University, the groom, Bilal Nasir, wore a golden sherwani and arrived on a white horse. The bride, Samar Iqbal, wore a white gharara suit. They were students at different institutions and had never met before, so it was almost like a mock arranged marriage, except there was no mock dowry. (If anything deserves to be mocked, it’s dowry.)
Many students attending the mock shaadi were thrilled to wear traditional attire and celebrate their culture. They joyfully danced to music from the Indian subcontinent, while wishing Bilal and Samar a lifetime of mock happiness.
Bilal enjoyed being a groom and seeing his friends of different races have so much fun. “Most people only get married once,” he said. “I had the chance to practice.”
In case you’re wondering, the “practice” ended with the mock wedding. There was no mock wedding night. Nor was there a mock honeymoon to a mock island in a mock ocean.
That’s too bad because the wedding is usually the easiest part of the marriage, even if a lot of planning goes into it. What young couples—or even older couples—need to practice are mock scenarios such as these:
- Mock mother-in-law visit. The groom’s mother visits the happy couple, wishes them well, and promptly takes over the kitchen. “My son is too thin after marriage,” she says. “He is missing my cooking.” The bride tries to miss her mother-in-law’s cooking and before long, she is the one who is too thin.
- Mock mother-in-law extended stay. The groom’s mother decides to extend her visit from a few days to a few decades. The groom still considers her a guest, the bride still considers her a pest.
- Mock household chores. The bride and groom squabble over division of labor in the house. She’s willing to do most of the mopping and sweeping; he’s willing to do most of the napping and sleeping.
- Mock anniversary. The groom forgets the anniversary of their mock wedding. The bride forgets he exists.
- Mock jealousy. The groom is jealous that the bride spends too much time with another man: her boss. They even have drinks together after work. “Don’t worry, honey,” she says. “We are just having mocktails.”
- Mock bedroom activity. The groom is unhappy that there isn’t enough activity in the bedroom. The bride comes to bed with a pack of playing cards.
- Mock parenting. The bride gives birth to a baby girl. The bride and groom have a huge argument on what her future career will be. The bride wants her to be a gynecologist; the groom wants her to be a neurosurgeon.
- Mock financial distress. The groom loses his job, their landlord doubles the rent, and they’re forced to cancel their Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. Can this marriage survive on just basic cable?
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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