I don’t like attending weddings. I’m not speaking of any particular weddings i have attended so no offense really. I just don’t feel the vibe. Period.

I’m talking about Chinese wedding – because i am Chinese, where the bridegroom and the bride will have around 200++ combination of friends (mostly friends of the parents), colleagues, close relatives and long lost relatives that they didn’t even know existed.

At the wedding dinner, the guests are serve with up to 10 exorbitantly priced dishes which technically are paid for by the guests themselves since they are obliged to present the wedding couple with red packets filled with money – the polite thing to do is to supply more than what your head count at the table is worth. It doesn’t make sense but it’s an on-going tradition to be observed.

The guests sits at the round table made for ten, having small portion of food not unlike attending a food tasting event, get drunk and go home.

It might actually be fun if you are attending your closest friend’s wedding so you are among friends at the table. Sometimes it’s about attending the weddings of friends of your partner. In my case, both doesn’t appeal much to me.

Oh, it’s not so bad really. It’s not like i-had-the-worst-day-of -my-life kind of situation but i find it weird that i don’t know most of the people i’m sitting with and making polite conversation makes my skin crawl. What do you say to someone you have only met maybe once or twice? Do you complement about his/her looks (which you may actually like or you may absolutely loath and that makes the compliment such a big pretentious lie) or do you ask about what they are doing in their life (which sounds so business-like at a friendly wedding dinner and worst they might be doing something really uninteresting which you pray to god that he/she won’t elaborate further)? Do you discuss about the weather???

After a brief exchange of words, then what? Smile whenever you caught someones eyes and hope the food comes quick so you can stuff your face with it just to avoid making conversation.

Speaking about food, hotel food isn’t that great to start with. It’s a nuisance really. The dinner starts at 8pm; not too early, not too late. You have your breakfast, then lunch and you can’t have dinner because you will be attending the wedding at eight and you can’t really snack because then you might be too full or worst, your waistline will expend a few centimeters ruining the silhouette of the dress you are going to wear.

So you wear your best dress and go to the venue with an empty stomach. You are famished by the time the appetizers are served and the first bite of food makes you realize something. The food sucks.

For me, it’s the worst kind of epiphany attending weddings. It makes me realize… or a better word would be remember, that i am not the prettiest girl or the most feminine among all the female there. I stand out at weddings not because i am stunning but because i am unusually tall with a slight slouch, bad body posture, always with the bad luck of getting a bad short haircut before any events, least make-up and even less make-up skills and awkward to a point of seeming geeky. Weddings make me remember all the flaws i have. It make me feel ugly.

And i am the most un-photogenic person i have ever known. I’m the giant and the other girls are smurfets. But how do you decline taking photographs with the smurfets without seeming rude? You can’t.

That’s it. What i hate most about attending weddings is that it makes me feel inadequate. By the end of the day when i go home, i feel ugly and sad and i pray to god that the hideous evidents (photos) of my imperfection does not get published on any social networking sites. Fat chance; by the next day it’ll be crawling all over the pages.