Eating Alone At Weddings

I'll say it.

Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver.

I like using my current surroundings as art. This was taken at a local wine shop that I like very much.

*The following essay is intended to be humorous. Funny haha. It is something I’m developing as part of a book I am currently working on that explores the ways cooking, eating, and singlehood come together. If you are a married person, I didn’t write this to upset you on the internet. If you are single, I wrote it to make you laugh. If the married people laugh too, even better.

Nobody goes to a wedding for the food. If we want good food, I promise you we’re not going someplace where a large-quantity catered menu that we didn’t choose was paid for six months prior. I have yet to see a wedding appear on a food blog’s “best of” list, have you? I almost wish we’d do away with food at weddings altogether and start the ceremony an hour later so we could all go eat where we want first. The only wedding I’ve ever attended that had memorably good food was when the bride was a chef and roasted a whole pig herself about 30 feet from where the ceremony was held. We lost touch but I hope she’s really happy.

We don’t go to weddings to eat, we go to weddings because we genuinely love one or both people at the end of the aisle (or we felt too guilty to decline the invitation, this is a safe space). Wedding food is functional food and that’s fine. I don’t care how much attention the happy couple have paid to delighting their guests, feeding 250 people at once ain’t easy. It is also—most typically—not delicious, and that is never the betrotheds’ fault. While I have been thoroughly pleased by the movement toward food trucks rolling up with smashburgers once everyone’s a bit shitfaced, I have questions about the experience from the perspective of the staff. They can’t possibly enjoy being suddenly in the weeds at midnight parked outside a venue with someone’s drunk uncle (druncle?) ordering seven sandwiches at a time. I’m not the sort who dreams about her wedding but if I was to have one, NYC pizza by the slice would feature heavily.