Nuptials for the Single Man

So, getting back to Monday's post and my aversion to weddings, I've been thinking about this whole business of the media's assumptions that marriage represents 'normality' and that being determinedly single is 'unnatural'.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm just going to have to marry myself.  Apparently it's a 'thing' now.  It's marketed as a way for us sad single people to enjoy the whole wedding experience without actually having to marry anyone else.  Mind you - it's that whole wedding experience that I've spent half my life trying to avoid.  That's the trouble, you see, this self-marriage business makes the same assumption as the media: that us sad singles actually want to get married and secretly covet all the pomp and ceremony of a wedding - something that our single status denies us.  It's like those dating apps which try and get people to set up their single friends with dates - it's making an assumption that we're unhappy with our situation, which simply isn't true.  But to get back to my proposed marriage to myself - it would have to be quick registry office job, with just a couple of witnesses dragged in off of the street.  I mean, I don't want any of that bollocks you usually get at weddings - and I certainly wouldn't want family or friends there.  I expend enough effort trying to avoid them at the best of times.

Still, at least the reception would be easy - I'd just take myself to the pub and but myself a pint.  Maybe even a packet of crisps, too.  After all, it would be my wedding day, so I'd be allowed a bit of extravagance, wouldn't I?  Marrying oneself seems to be one of the less crazy things people do matrimony-wise these days.  Hardly a day goes by without me reading somewhere about people marrying bridges, tower blocks, lampposts, probably even their cars.  (After all, the most meaningful relationship some men seem to have is with their BMWs, so why not go all the way and marry the bloody things).  It's all pretty harmless, I suppose, but I do wonder where it will all end -people marrying national monuments or natural features, like lakes or mountains?  Mind you, there is precedent for the latter - I seem to remember that on The Goon Show Minnie Bannister, spinster of the parish, once declared that she was in love with a mountain.  She might even have sung a song about it.  And that was back in 1957 or so, (just to clarify, I am too young to have heard The Goon Show on its first broadcast, it was long over before I was born, but I've heard he repeats and shows issued on tape and CD).  There really is nothing new under the sun.