They came flying in this past spring. Sharp, accurate, and dangerous like ninja stars.

Wedding invitations.

Ten of them. Yes, 10, you read that right.

Between June 3 and Nov. 4, 2006, I will have attended 10 long, “They’re-starting-to-all-look-the-same,” and, “Whose-wedding-is-this-again?” ceremonies. And whether it’s as an honored guest, distinguished groomsmen, or accompanying date, it’s always as the Bored-Please-Get-Me-Outta-Here Guy.

Let me say this up front. I’m not anti-love or anti-marriage. I think sharing your life with someone else is wonderful.

It’s just the weddings that get to me.

As Murphy’s Law would have it, the guy who would rather go to the dentist than to weddings (both painful but at least the dentist only takes two hours) has to go to 10 in five months. That’s one every two weeks.

I’ve asked around and it seems to be a record. So let it be known that I am currently the unofficial 2006 Champion of Wedding Attendance. But if anyone would like to take the title (please!), I’d be more than willing to take a punch to the eye and lose my championship belt if it meant one less day in the monkey suit, one more day of watching college football, and one less time hearing “Here comes the bride.”

So come along as I — young, single, and especially jaded — explore the modern celebration and all its trappings, contexts and suffering. (I mean suffering in the nicest way possible.) The wedding as drama. The wedding as industrial complex. The wedding as mind-numbing, self-esteem bashing, peer-pressuring social experiment.

What is a wedding?
Is it a day where two people become a union before their friends and family? One of the most sacred and important rituals of mankind? The ultimate pronouncement of love?

It’s none of those things.

The wedding is a play. It is timeless human theater. There’s a script (the vows), a stage (a church or garden usually), props (rings), and most importantly, actors (the couple). And who’s the star of the play? Hint: It’s not the person in the tuxedo.

And as a play, the wedding is both mundane routine and grandiose individualism. To follow tradition, some parts must always be the same: white dress, entrance song, bouquet and garter toss. And then to be memorable for forever and ever, some parts must be excruciatingly unique: location, centerpiece, guest gift, wedding song, vows.

Crying, laughter, joy, sadness, and the occasional fist fight, weddings have more drama than a telenovela, a Mexican soap opera.

Bridezillas, the Super Bowl, and the Wedding Industrial Complex
I once heard a comedian say that a wedding’s importance to the bride is equivalent to a man getting to play in the Super Bowl, or at least having his favorite team make it to the big game. Translation: Really important.

And after my wedding spree — and attending at least another 10 since the year 2000 — I agree.

That leads me to the concept of the Super Wedding. The Super Wedding is like a wedding amped up on steroids. It is the Donald Trump of weddings, full of the best, the biggest, the fanciest ________ (fill in the location, hotel, limo, dress, etc.)

It is intended to shock and awe all women in attendance so that no wedding should ever even be held again. It is intimidation at its juiciest, most primordial level.

Women who have Super Weddings have been called Bridezillas, calling to mind  that often-misjudged giant, radioactive lizard that attacked Japan over and over. They dominate the affair. People are scared to look them in the eye. The ground trembles — real and imagined — whenever they walk. As a groomsman at a Super Wedding, I was so scared to mess up and trip or do something embarrassing that I got hives. A month before.

But why is this so?

I call it the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC), an all-encompassing brainwashing of little girls that starts at about 2 years old and lasts forever.

The WIC tells these girls that their wedding is the most important day of their lives. That a prince will come along to rescue them. That they are nothing if they aren’t married.

Is it right? Absolutely not.

Is it real? Absolutely.

And do people profit from it? Of course, in the billions of dollars. Because the WIC is a full service affair that scalps you any chance it gets, from the invitations to the shimmering dress, the seat covers to the cake, the tuxedos to the hairdresser.

A wedding nowadays is going to cost you. Big time. A 2005 study by the Fairchild Bridal Group estimates that the average wedding bill in the United States totals $26,327; couples were expected to spend $125 billion on such occasions last year.

I believe it. I’ve been to a wedding that could have sent a kid to college. Harvard to be exact. (That’s about $200,000). Ouch.

The Bachelor Party and Dreadful Goat Mouth
The guys don’t get off either. Their big day is not the wedding. Their big day is the Bachelor Party.

It usually includes drinking, general debauchery and other things that I have been sworn to Man Law Secrecy and cannot write about. And since I live in Southern California, it always includes that cozy hell-on-earth, Las Vegas.

Call me the oldest, most boring young guy ever, but bachelor parties stink, too.

The bachelor party is as fake as a three-dollar bill. You party at a club that’s too dark and too loud to really meet anyone. The drinks are too expensive.

The one time I truly had fun was when I happened to be rolling with millionaire bankers from Japan who spared no expense and paid for everything. And how often does that happen? Uh, usually never.

And the worst part? For me, it’s waking up with a hangover the size of Rhode Island and feeling like I got beat up by a cage fighter. And having Goat Mouth, where it feels like I have eaten tin cans and other in-organics that have left a taste of death and elementary school paste on my throat and tongue.

How come every bachelor party has to end up being like a P. Diddy video where people dump champagne out like water and sit on top of couches with their feet on the cushions?

It’s peer pressure, man-style, and yawn, it bores me.

I’m putting it in writing now. If I ever get married, I’m not going to Vegas. I’m going to get a luxury box to the Lakers (if they’re in season) and I’m going deep sea fishing with the guys. Like Goldilocks, in the story of the three bears, that feels just right.

Weddings vs. Marriage
Friends have told me I’m too cynical when it comes to weddings. And I probably am.

But I do believe in love and I see a big difference between weddings and marriages. A wedding is just a day, a rite of passage, an event. A time-consuming one at that (see chart for wedding pluses and minuses).

Marriage is cool. It means you met the right person and you’ll hopefully be together for a long time.

Neither validates you as a person.

And here are some extra thoughts on the matter. How about couples get married privately and then we celebrate their anniversaries in public, just so we know it’s a lasting commitment? (A woman at the last wedding I attended was 31 and divorced twice already).

One year would be the minimum and at five years, you’ve earned a Super Wedding.

If a couple splits up, do you get a refund on your wedding gift or what? It’s just an idea.

Or if you never get married, you are allowed to throw an “I’m-Single-and-Happy” reception and all your friends and family have to come and give you presents. And if you throw one of those then you’ve lost your rights to a wedding reception.

A wedding is a tradition and traditions can be followed, adapted, and changed, right?

So if I’m still single in five years, be on the lookout for my one-man reception.

Everyone will be welcomed.