Why would anyone want to outsmart the bride?
Last week, I attended a wedding. I only went because the invited guest could not make it and asked me to represent them. Since the real guest is easy on the eye, I decided to improve myself too. So I went to the spa for a full body scrub, massage and facial. I was scrubbed with what felt like a mixture of sugar and honey or was it almond — whatever it was, it felt good.
The slow jazzy rendition of Abba’s Super Trouper playing in the background did not help matters, I was in heaven! Unfortunately, I was rudely transported from this heaven to hell. After the steam bath and shower, I settled back on the bed for the massage. It was painful, so much that my face was contorted in pain and gasps escaped my crudely-open mouth.
Linda, the masseuse mistook my facial expression and moans for pleasure or relief, so she increased the pressure. Then came the facial. I cried like a baby begging her to stop but she wouldn’t. She said I had to experience pain to attain beauty if I wanted men to notice me. She also did me a favour and cut off my eyebrows. She said it was to shape them to enhance my cheekbones, but when I looked in the mirror, they were all gone. So with my swollen eyebrow-less face, I limped out of the spa ready for the wedding.
After exchanging vows, the groom grabbed his bride and kissed her. It was a ghastly sight. Picture someone drinking from a wide-rimmed bottle and covering their mouth with it. One would not be wrong to think the reverend had said, “You may now drink your wife”.
The invitation card instructed that all guests wear white; I wondered then how the bride was going to stand out in a sea of white guests.
White clothes have a way of blowing up one’s body just like black has a thinning effect on the wearer. So when one wears white, they should be careful not to wear body-strangling apparel. Sadly, most guests did not seem to be aware of this fact so the reception looked like an exhibition of body parts.
If a human trafficker or carnivore had attended, they would be spoilt for choice. One woman’s dress hugged her bosom and behind so tight I thought it would tear if she even as much as giggled. The elderly were cringing in embarrassment, to them this was Sodom and Gomorrah. I was still busy ogling at the guests when I saw her.
Everyone looked at her. I heard some women jeer and I wondered what they would do if they knew that the dress she was wearing was the same she had worn as a changing dress at her wedding two months ago. When she saw me, she waved and I waved back — exactly the same way I had at her own wedding. She was wearing her hot pink bridal dress to another woman’s wedding, complete with a tiara and gloves, never mind that she had broken the colour code.
The bride and groom finally arrived; we ate, listened to boring uncoordinated speeches, cut cake, the bride knelt and fed the groom cake and quencher, and in her speech warned all women not to look at her husband directly in the eye. The single ladies were forced to catch the bride’s bouquet, etc. And at the end, we did the shuffle to Mafikizolo’s Ndihamba Nawe. Typical Ugandan wedding and definitely not my idea of a celebration of love.
