A Wedding And A Funeral

Something funny (and yet not-funny) happened to me recently. This is the story of how I went to a wedding and a funeral. And yet, this is also the story of how I did not go to a wedding and a funeral. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I did both at the same time.

A funeral implies death so before I continue, I'd like to say that death is not a joking matter. However, since I don't know the bride or groom or any of the 200+ guests AND since the person I went with only knew the bride for less than a week, I don't feel too bad about finding humor in the situation. I'll admit it probably says something about my moral character, but I know you all love and enjoy it ;=)

Basically, my other half, who I'll refer to as Jandergirl, was invited to a wedding. I'm not sure why she invited Jandergirl, since the bride has known her for less than a week. I'm not sure why Jandergirl wanted to go since she's known the bride for less than a week. I'm sure I'm not going to even try to pretend to the understand the female mind because the resulting logic would be something like:

"I'm getting married! Let me invite some random person off the street!"

The bride told Jandergirl that she could wear pretty much anything...except nothing sleeveless and any skirts/dresses would need to be ankle length. I asked one of my co-workers about this and he thought this was a little odd since it made them sound a little hardcore Muslim.


Neither one of us owns clothes like this. I figured I should dress nice and wore a gray pin-striped suit. Since Jandergirl didn't want to be the first woman in New York State to be publicly stoned, she wore pants.

After getting dressed in stone-safe clothing and locking the car doors since we were going to be passing through Jamaica/Queens on the way to the wedding, we eventually arrived at the mandir.

Okay, so that's mandir in the wikipedia looked like. Instead, it was just a normal looking building. Actually, I thought it was pretty small for an empty building with locked doors - how would they fit 200+ people inside and feed them? And did I say that the building was empty and that the doors were locked?

I thought it was kind of odd that there was no one there. Actually kind of scandalous, after all, I just watched Sex and the City: The Movie the other day so my mind was in overdrive thinking of possible reasons as to why no one was there. I asked Jandergirl if it was odd and she thought maybe it was because we were early.

After waiting fifteen minutes, I called my co-worker, Lobster, and he told me that traditional Hindi weddings were very punctual since the timing was determined by some kind of special calendar and/or fortune telling - so it was possible that they started at twelve o'clock sharp and locked the doors. I told him that while the doors were locked, the temple was 100% empty. Lobster agreed that it was all very odd. So far, I'm thinking that this is not a good omen - way to get the marriage off on the right foot by starting late!

Another couple showed up later since they thought they heard the wedding drums. Since there weren't any, they went back to their homes around the block. That's what I like to see - dedicated wedding guests!

After waiting for an hour, we were about to leave when someone from the wedding party showed up. As it turns out, the wedding was cancelled because there was a death in the family. Instead, they were having the visitation that afternoon. While they tried to call most people to let them know that the wedding was off, they missed us and this little old lady who came all the way up from Brooklyn.

This was the story of how I did and didn't go to a wedding and a funeral. Since we were hungry/bored, we went to Applebees for lunch.

THE END