The Muddled Male

An Announcement

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

         Ann, the muddled male’s wife, and Bob, the muddled male, are pleased to announce that they have decided to stay married.  Her parents, Vic and Zylpha, and his parents, G. Glen and Rhea, are breathing a sigh of relief even though they are deceased.  Now before you get all excited and assume something that isn’t true, we have not resolved our differences.  It is just that we have come to the conclusion that if we were to split and then change our minds later we wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of the reception you would expect us to throw following our remarriage.  So we have decided that from a purely financial point of view it would just be cheaper to stay married and tough through our differences rather than to split and then later remarry once old age had blurred our memory of what it was that caused us to split in the first place.

            It is a story I read the other day written by Chandra Johnson of the Deseret News that has caused me to fret about the potential cost of a split then a remarriage.  The article stated that, according to TheKnot.com, a modern couple getting married today can expect to spend an average of $28,427 for the wedding and reception, and that doesn’t include the cost of a honeymoon or the cost of a social media concierge at the venue.  Concierge, in case you were wondering, is pronounced kind of like “con-see-airs” but with a French accent.  It is a person that will make certain that the appropriate information about your nuptials appears on Pinterest and Instagram, and that there is a special hashtag available to use as an identifier for all the tweets that will fly around the world concerning your special day.  I recognize that some of you may not be up to speed regarding the impact of social media and the importance of tweeting.  Suffice it to say that the concierge will cost you an additional $3,000 over and above the cost of the marriage and reception.  The $28,427 cost is a little easier to understand when you remember that it includes such things as $5,431 for the engagement ring, $3, 084 for a band to play at your reception, $2,379 for the photographer, $1,997 for the wedding planner, $1,619 for the videographer, $1,211 for the wedding gown, $560 for the wedding cake, $344 for the invitations, $63/guest for catering, and on and on.

            If I seem a little jaded it is because Ann and I were married long, long ago in a prehistoric time when you had your reception in a local LDS cultural hall and didn’t even worry about hanging filmy decorations on wires strung across and above the basketball floor in an attempt to hide the basketball hoops and backboards to make the room appear as though you were looking into heaven instead of being in the same big room where little children run through and yell so that they can hear their echo.  The only decorations we had, as I recall, were the greeting line, a couple of candelabras for a backdrop, and a flower or two.  The reception was held on a July night so hot that the candles in the candelabra softened and drooped.  There was no caterer, as I remember, but each guest did receive a cookie and a little scroll on which was written, “Thanks for coming and thanks for your gift.”  A ribbon was tied around each scroll to give it a more official look.  Bob looked like a nerd, but Ann was gorgeous in her wedding gown…except that she had worked so hard to have a golden tan to set off her white gown that her tan had pealed in large splotches just before the wedding causing her to look a little like a leopard with pink spots.  Luckily our wedding pictures were shot in glorious black and white by Harold Richins who charged us $20.  They were black and white because color hadn’t been invented yet.  Because of the heat, JCPenny was having a really big sale on wool blankets and we received twelve for wedding gifts.

            You might laugh, but they have lasted us through fifty-nine years of marriage, three children, seventeen grandchildren, and a thorough shaking each wash day to remove dust.  The twelfth blanket still sits brand new in Ann’s hope-chest waiting quietly until it is needed.  Come to think of it, that twelfth blanket is another reason why we should stay married.  What good is a blanket split into two, small, Solomon-like pieces with neither piece large enough to keep even one person warm?