People say there is nothing as beautiful as a bride, but as I found out last month, there is nothing as frightening as 3,000 brides.
My fiancée, mother, sister and I ventured up to Secaucus for the New Jersey Bridal and Wedding Expo Jan. 9, and we all knew we were beyond our depth from the moment we stepped inside the Meadowlands Expo Center. There, by the front doors, we saw a swarm of people sprinting toward a table, fighting for a 1-in-10,000 chance at a $75 Nordstrom gift card.
“What’s the rush?” my fiancée said. “It’s not like they’re giving away free weddings.”
Four hours later, we left, exhausted and without finding a free wedding. For our effort, however, we received 100 different forms to win a Macy’s shopping spree, 75 pounds worth of honeymoon destination catalogues and headaches that throbbed to the beat of “Party Rock Anthem.” In the time in between, we were heckled, pushed, repeatedly hit by oversized designer handbags and forced to wear stickers. The message was clear: “You want to get married? You’re going to have to earn it.”
After passing the Nordstrom Gift Card Brawl, we happened upon a table in the lobby where an event employee handed out the aforementioned stickers—we had to wear them so the bridal show vendors could more easily identify their prey. My fiancée’s sticker said “Bride,” and mine said “Groom.” (My mom and sister went stickerless and thus were ignored mostly.)
Adequately marked, we entered the expo floor, only to catch the attention of a man who needed two folding chairs to support his weight. He shouted at us, “Hey! Come here and enter this raffle!” I was prepared to ignore him in favor of a more polite pitchman, but the other three in our party apparently saw some sort of charm about him (like the chance to win a vacation) and entered his raffle. I did not enter his raffle, which did not escape his all-knowing gaze. “The raffle’s for guys, too! Enter!”
My manhood sufficiently challenged, I entered his darned raffle. But I may as well have handed in a blank piece of paper. This—and other raffles—required the entrant to provide all sorts of personal information, including age, phone number and annual income. I was not about to share my life story for some vendor’s database.
We moved on to chat with a woman who let us sit in her 1965 Rolls Royce, a floral artist—“If you’ve watched Bravo after midnight, you’ve seen my work.”—and a photographer who yelled at me for making my fiancée carry a bag but followed it up with, “I give you a ton of credit. Most guys don’t come to these things. They’ve got beer over there.”
I received some variation of that “compliment” at almost every vendor booth. Everyone wanted to talk to the bride, which only served to tick off my fiancée.
I can totally see her point. The expo was geared to what some marketer thinks a woman would want—a parade of sparkly jewelry, shapewear retailers, weight loss remedies and cosmetic dentists. Oh, and one gun range and a liquor store. (I admit to having to stop at the Joe Canals booth for some, uh, sustenance to help me make it through the morning.)
And, with 3,500 people in the room, it felt like the walls were closing in, like Penn Station at rush hour—except instead of having your train home at the end of the tussle, there was a DJ playing some Pitbull song and trying to sell you on the uplighting and photo booth package. (By the way, there were at least six DJs with booths and a DJ “main stage,” all with music competing at various, ear-killing volume levels.)
Somewhere around the end of Hour Three, the whole atmosphere in the place had worn me down completely. I took a look around the room, and wondered, “Is this what getting married is all about? Enduring cattle call events with thousands of other couples looking at the same venues, the same DJs, the same florists, the same shapewear, all in hopes of making their day ‘special’?” It was mind-numbing.
I turned around, and everyone else in our party wore the same dead-eyed look. We had to get out of there.
Knowing we were finished, I broke into a fast walk with my head down, pushing through the crowds and ignoring vendors. I blew by the men’s room, even though I had to go. I didn’t care—I would’ve rather peed down my leg than stay in that place.
Sunlight shimmered through the glass front doors, and I burst through as if I was emerging from an underwater shipwreck. The fresh air hit my face and lungs, rejuvenating me.
In all the excitement, I liberated myself by ripping off my “Groom” sticker and handing to it my fiancée. She took hers off in a less ceremonious fashion, and put the stickers together, back to back. Shocked at the waste of two perfectly good stickers, I yelled, “What are you doing? Now, bride and groom are stuck together forever.”
She turned to me and smiled.
“Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. She had the perfect response in the very instant I needed it.
And it was then I realized, I think we’re going to get through this wedding stuff all right after all. Together.
