Tomorrow I am going to my friend Courtney’s wedding, Sunday its Annie’s in Santa Cruz. Everyone is falling in love and getting married and its quite the summer of love for me. At least, watching love. Annie and Russell actually met at a friend’s wedding, which gives me a marginal degree of hope that I may meet someone at theirs.

Sometimes I don’t know if I want to have a wedding. The average American wedding is close to $30,000. That’s more than I make in a year. And weddings are high intensity situations….not my specialty. They require like a year planning and then it all ends within a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. Do you know what you could do with that money instead? Probably feed an entire village in Mozambique for a year. Fly around the world. Pay off college loans. Buy a fully-functioning robot with feelings.

Gosh I’m a negative nancy today. Maybe its the depression of First World pains setting in from reading a book about missionaries being stoned in India. Maybe its my nagging cynicism derived from being a part of a bit of a dramatic wedding recently. Or feeling quite alone at these functions that are designed so that those of you in the audience either a. fall back in love with your spouse as the same (or similar) vows and experiences of your own wedding are relived or b. single out your singleness. IE The garter belt. The bouquet toss. Maid vs. matron of honor. Or, for example, at a recent wedding, they called all the single ladies onto the floor to dance by themselves. As cool as that song was two years ago…aint no way I’m going out there in front of everyone to dance with all the other miserable girls. Most of them were nine years old. My friends and I ran and hid in the bathroom. We are junior high teachers, after all.

In a bout of frustration over recent nuptials I was a part of, I told both of my parents that I would be eloping with my future husband, and no one had to be there, we’d take a picture and send it to them. Then they and all our would-be guests could just write us a check for the amount of time and stress we saved them. And we would go on vacation for a year and when we came back, have a barbeque and go karaoke, call it a matrimony.

But inside of every woman is a little girl who played house and played wedding and will always want the white dress, to walk down the aisle and into the church and for just one day be the most beautiful girl in the room. We want our moms to be proud and to make our dads cry and to read special vows that poetically capture my unique love for Mr. Perfect-for-me. And of course, I want to choose a rocking playlist for the all-night dance party that takes place immediately afterwards. I fight that little girl a lot, tell her she’s silly and old-fashioned, but she usually ends up winning.

my future husband

And then I watch the ESPYs and the love of my life, Brian Wilson, goes and wears something like this…..and I realize within my heart of hearts, that I want, nay, I NEED to stand next to that unitux in a white dress, on the pitchers mound at AT&T park, take off the ray-bans, look into those sterling blue eyes and say “omg I totally do.”

I’m thinking the magical moment looks something like….

Cute couple, ay? I bet our babies come out with beards and mohawks telling jokes.

Bochy could officiate, timmy would be ring bearer, we’d serve garlic fries and Anchor Steam at the reception.

And our walk up song? Obvious choice for Giants fans…

Pack it up pack it in, let me begin…