Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest by Jen Doll Page A

Scriptures and stained glass filled the room, and there was a pastor in front of a cross. Before him were hands clasped in a promise, and after that came the pronunciation of man and wife. Violet, a bridesmaid, stood at the front of the room, holding a bouquet of flowers against the bouquet of material formed by the voluminous folds of her dress. I remember a feeling of surprise when the minister uttered a line about a woman’s role beingto honor and obey her husband, though I’ve been told since that was another wedding entirely. That’s the trouble with weddings. As real as they feel in the moment, the memories, blurred by what you drank and how late you stayed up and how many people you spoke to or saw, but most of all by what you brought to the wedding yourself, can end up pretty cloudy. My recollections of this one are particularly so, it having been more than a decade ago, and attended by someone who in certain ways was more different from the person I am now than even the eight-year-old girl was.
    We arrived at the country club and made our way to a banquet room where silver buffet trays were lined up on tables covered in starched white tablecloths, Sterno burners underneath to keep things hot. The scent in the air was heavy hors d’oeuvres—melt-in-your-mouth fatty things, like baked brie and cheese straws and fried chicken fingers and Swedish meatballs. There they were, being carried about on plates, fragrant little gravy vehicles. There was no fear of butter here. Food was supposed to taste good. The walls were dark and woody, and the room felt akin to being in a high-end cave, or some wealthy person’s basement outfitted with all the bells and whistles so that if you didn’t want to, you’d never have to leave. The open bar was just opening. In the excitement of getting ready for the wedding, we’d barely eaten. I realized I was hungry and got in line.
    “Jennifer Doll,” I heard, and there was Nathaniel’s old best friend, Buddy, grinning at me and shoveling meatballs onto his plate. I had liked him a lot, until, in typical rumor-mill high school form, another friend had revealed he’d mocked my relationship with Nathaniel, saying he doubted we’d even kissed,much less “done it,” and that poor Nathaniel probably had blue balls worse than anyone in the whole damn town. That statement had brought more mortification to me than if someone had said the opposite. To be prudish, or to be considered that way, had made me feel I was forever uncool, the Coke-bottle-lens-wearing girl nearly getting pantsed in the playground all over again. There was also the fact that his statement wasn’t entirely false. Nathaniel and I had kissed, but we hadn’t slept together. I guess by the point we might have gotten around to it, I was already preparing myself for the future.
    We know this from class reunions, but it’s true at weddings, too: Just because you get older doesn’t mean you’re different inside. Feelings long past can pop right back up again when you’re confronted with something that wounded the previous you, especially when you revisit high school feeling only marginally confident about your adulthood. At twenty-five, I was sure of very little. Yet my former classmates were getting married. It was hard not to think about where I measured up, and I was afraid that when it came down to it, I hadn’t done much at all, not in my eyes, and not in anyone else’s, either. I desperately wanted to be something beyond misfit fifth-grade Jennifer, or high-school-debate-captain Jennifer, or throwing-parties-when-her-parents-were-out-of-town-and-getting-grounded sophomore Jennifer. Or Nathaniel’s-girlfriend Jennifer. And I was, I was! I was an adult, I had a job, I had a new town and an old town, too, I reassured myself. I had nothing to be afraid of. Also, Buddy might have information.
    “Hey, you,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
    He swallowed a meatball and nodded. “Sure has. How’s