Thank goodness the shindig was cancelled
 

We were supposed to go to a fancy wedding today but Covid interfered; groom's father symptomatic and positive, others exposed. The ceremony and the reception were reduced to a zoom call.

I'm not disappointed. The last time we went to a wedding, the summer before the pandemic, we discovered the rules of attending weddings had changed and not at all to my liking.

Apparently, photographers no longer circulate and catch a group shot at the tables. Instead, everyone is coerced into going to a photo booth because they will only deliver plates while you are away, even though that means dinners get cold (if they have brought the right order). I wanted no piece of that in as much as I am not too pretty to begin with but then I found out the objective is to take stupid candids with stupid props and stupid hats and stupid poses that make adult men look like 12 year old goof balls and adult women look like sorority sisters gone wild. I really had no desire to have any picture of myself made public much less one in which I have a stick held paper Gay '90's handlebar mustache and a 30's era fedora so as to look like a mad and confused Depression bank robber; those being the least stupid props available.

Then I discovered the policy is enforced by refusing to allow anyone to go back to the table to eat at all until everyone has a stupid pic taken -- resisters ordered to sit first while everyone waits on their unhappiness -- and of course there's a queue with the next table, etc, so if you try to opt out all you do is piss everyone off.

And of course, God only knows what happens to stupid pics once the already proved to be a lazy ass wipe photographer has them, and thereafter, especially when you aren't too pretty to start off with.

What makes this even worse is that I barely even knew the bride and did not know the groom at all. I met the bride, a distant relative of my wife, when she was about 8, and then it was in a group setting, maybe her birthday party. Since then we were estranged by her parents' divorce. The absence of any significant relationship, IMHO, makes it even more likely that pictures could be used to humiliate me whether or not she could pick me out of a lineup with or without stupid props on my head. A person in his 60's should not have his image and professional reputation stolen by lazy and possibly malicious clowns for the sport of it.

To be sure, I was willing to be part of a table shot because the bride and groom are entitled to have a complete photo album of the event, and I wanted to be nice about it. But this kind of coercive, beyond the boundary behavior inflicted against moral people trying to do the right thing is dragging us all down. No wonder why people are so angry all the time and carry guns to avoid coercion. Even a party is fraught with problems that social media coupled with a couple of morons can inflict on others.

Comments welcomed.

But seriously, how do you really feel?

I do hope you let the newlyweds see this post just to show them how you felt about the event, instead of just telling us because you're too afraid to tell them or anyone else who attended the wedding!!

SMH!!