Wedding “Favours”, Just a Martha Stewart Creation?

I am a child of the 1970s and in a way; I have never really left these years behind, despite being too young in the relevant decade to truly appreciate the beauty of the sideburn. But, for some reason or another, I have never let them go.

I speak not of the glorious lamb chop sideburns that are so beloved by the villainous casts of actors in movies of American Independence, but more of mid-way between a lumberjack and Elvis-lite, certainly not as out there as Pushkin or Lemmy.

And while I have opened the blog on this theme, it is merely a digression. It’s just that the grey hairs that are appearing with terrifying alacrity are manifested in their entirety in my sideburns…and I attribute these not to the whole notion of planning a wedding, but the wretched insistence on “favours”.

I never really knew what wedding favours were, my mind being far from angelic, conjured up far seedier images until it was made clear to me through the interpretations of Martha Stewart. Now, Martha for me is a hydra out to ruin a man’s life. Too much, everything is excessive and she only puts more effort and demands on us.

So, the “favour”.

We have bought ornate fans to hand out to the guests as they enter the church, these will have a twee ribbon fastened to them with our names and the date. And, I ceded on this one, because, well, they are in keeping with everything, they are routinely used in Colombia and despite being a ceremony at 7pm, it still promises to be hot. So, fair play.

But, then there was the idea to create a second “favour” to ensure that every guest was awarded a little reminder of the wedding. Ideas were batted back and forth, then, we landed on the topic of chocolates. Of course, not just any chocolate, Belgian chocolate. And by chance we happened across a Belgian chocolatier in Bogota. Fancy that.

I am a chocaholic, love the stuff and was actually rather enjoying the image of me passing by the reception venue and collecting all the forgotten chocolates the day after the wedding since in my experience and also relayed to me by a buddy in the UK: “everyone gets so plastered that they forget everything and you’ll end with dozens of the favours, whatever they may be.”

But, this Belgian chocolatier is an honest businessman and he made it clear that the chocolates would not survive the Caribbean heat even in the air conditioned salon. I think I felt a similar sort of evangelical euphoria and religious epiphany like John Belushi in the Blues Brothers, complete with James Brown in the pulpit.

Backflips of joy to follow!

And in other news, we fired the wedding planner.

James brown: “Have you seen the light?”

John Belushi: “Yes, yes! Jesus H god damn Christ, I have seen the light!”

Backflips.

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• I’m Not a Bigamist, Are You?
• Colombian Marriage Bureaucracy
• Fraughtography
• Everything Can Be Done Mañana in Colombia
• The End Is Nigh