Column: Let them eat cake

Dear readers,

Next time you are invited to a wedding, don’t bother saving your fork when the busboy clears the table. No cake for you!

Wait a minute. I’m getting ahead of myself. Just like Dorothy’s journey to Emerald City, it is always better to start at the beginning. This story began with the arrival of a “save the date” postcard.

As boomers, my wife, Sandy, and I attended a lot of weddings back in the 20^th century, including our own. Now that we are living in the 21^st century, we still get an invitation from time to time but the frequency has diminished. As you can imagine, I was filled with anticipation upon receipt of the postcard. When the actual invitation arrived later, I noticed the venue was out of town. I started to prepare immediately.

I made it a point to buy a can of Spam along with fruit and vegetables in various size cans on my next visit to Walmart. Nothing says “just married” like empty tin cans tied to the bumper of the newlyweds’ car. I always use a heavy-duty twine. Local newlyweds once told me that three of my tin cans bounced along behind their car all the way to Gowdy before the twine broke.  

The morning of the wedding, I put my tin cans along with a ball of twine in the trunk along with sack of rice for throwing. I also brought along a few pots and pans with a big wooden spoon for making noise on the chance there would be a shivaree. On the way out of town, I gassed up my foreign car at Bonded Oil. Sandy made me put half of the snacks I was getting ready to purchase back on the “Little Debbie” snack rack.  She reminded me that we would be eating in just a few hours. Sandy was right. I needed to save room for cake.  

Later when I discovered no cake was being served at the reception, I sure wished I had a couple of those Little Debbie oatmeal crème pies in my pocket. As I sat there, hungry for cake, I pondered why there was no cake. 

The bride was a cisgender woman, and the groom was a cisgender man.  So, the Supreme Court wasn’t to blame for ruling that bakers could refuse to bake rainbow cakes for gay weddings.

It wasn’t for lack of funds. It was an upscale wedding. Everything was first class. I was actually expecting to possibly have a choice of cake. I was more puzzled than a squirrel trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube.  

Now, call me old-fashioned, but isn’t cake the cornerstone of matrimonial merriment? It’s the sweet glue that binds two souls together – like frosting on a cupcake, or a pothole in a gravel road. But there we sat, cake-less and confused. And as the Cat in the Hat would say, “and that is not all no that is not all.” Not only was there no cake but the bride didn’t throw her bouquet nor did the groom toss her garter. Heck, I don’t even know if the bride was wearing a garter. 

What is this world coming to? Sandy says I am mistaken, but I think there used to be 4H merit badges for bouquet and garter catching. Some of my favorite memories from weddings have been when single ladies lunged for the bridal bouquet like linebackers chasing a fumbled football. It was a primal contest of floral fortitude. The winner? The one who emerged, bouquet aloft, with a look that said, “I caught this like a boss, and now I’m ready for my own aisle walk.”

And let’s not forget the garter toss – that age-old tradition where the groom fumbles around under the bride’s dress, like a raccoon raiding a garbage can, to retrieve a lacy band. Then he flings it into the crowd, and some lucky bachelor catches it, grinning like he’s won a hundred bucks on a gas station scratch-off ticket.

On the way home from the wedding, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a couple of Hostess Cupcakes. I do hope this fad doesn’t spread to birthday parties. I guess “no cake” weddings aren’t really all that bad. Most people don’t have many wedding cakes anyway. Even Zsa Zsa Gabor only had nine weddings, but she had 99 birthdays.    

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.