Wedding Diss, pages 1 and 2

Weddings. Weddings seem to be the most common and visible catering experience for the average person. I’ve worked a ton of weddings and realize how formulaic they all tend to be. Not just the traditional rituals and roles, but even down to the songs that the hired dj invariably plays. It can be mind-numbing for catering waiters who do a lot of these functions.

It’s refreshing when the couple’s budget is smaller, so that it forces them to be more creative with the whole affair. Not only are smaller weddings more intimate for the core family, but also for the waiters and bartenders who work it.

With my current comic strip, “wedding diss”, I took a sardonic and slighty — but only slightly — exaggerated look at the wedding factory at the Legion of Honor. It’s located at one of the most spectacular views to be had in San Francisco, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge and most of downtown. For a romantic setting, it’s a no-brainer for brides. Always, upon walking up the hill to the site for an event, one is greeted with the overlapping pageantry of different wedding parties. Each one negotiates delicately from one area to another, for pictures, for ceremonies large and small. Brides floating in their white, with the visions of it being their special day, must share the open space with others with the same dreams.

After working countless weddings, they become cookie-cutter affairs, churned out with the same regalia. Monotonous. I feared I would grow to hate all weddings, crave for something revolutionary to save the institution from a meaningless tripe existence. If I hear the wedding staples, “We are Family” or “Love Shack” or “Funky Town” or “Rock Lobster” ever again, it’ll be too soon. You haven’t lived until you witness grandmothers jigging to “I Like Big Butts”.

Politically speaking, the monotony of weddings today, the bizarre allowances for quickie Vegas hook ups and taseless and wasteful uses of money and wealth drives me mental while there’s the insipid battle to disallow same-sex marriages going on. Many of the catering waiters who work wedding after wedding are gay or lesbian. It is a peculiar societal set-up that forbids rights to a group who work in an industry supported by such lavish parties reserved only for some.