A Woman in Law School

Remember the wedding I'm supposed to go to that I'm now dreading? Well, I thought I'd take some time to express my gut feeling about it. It's not good. In fact I think there are a handful of us who are questioning this wedding, yet we'll all be there with bells on and mouths shut. It wouldn't be appropriate to speak up then and there. But when do you? Or should you?

I've known the groom for almost three years now. J of course has known him for easily fifteen years. We're as tight as Chuck Norris' abs, or at least I thought we were until she came along. Everything changed when he started dating her and in some ways by dating her he has flip-flopped in terms of the qualities he seeks in a mate. She has a child, he isn't interested in being a parent. She has a personalized license plate, he is the biggest opponent of them. She doesn't drink, he drinks beer like it's water. So suddenly he's a different person.

And she, well she just confuses me. For one they met when she was finalizing her divorce. He was the first guy she dated in ten years. TEN YEARS PEOPLE! If she was my friend I would have told her to "play the field" for awhile, not jump into a serious relationship and marry the first guy who comes along. But I don't know her well enough to say it. Nor do I have the guts to bring it into conversation. It's not that I don't like her because honestly I don't know her. I've joked that she doesn't have a personality and that it would be nice to know more about her but they've become very family orientated. And long-term friendships don't count, only family. There is nothing wrong with this it's just that he was NEVER really family orientated before. So it's also new.

I could go on about a dozen other things that just don't feel right but I won't because I need to stop thinking about them and suck it up. It's not my wedding, it's not my place to say anything, but at least I get some cake. But back to my question, will there ever be a good time to tell the groom our anxiety about this marriage? If your friendship spans a decade, in good times and bad, does that qualify you to interject and release your jitters? We've known about the wedding for a month and they started dating a year ago. And a conversation like this is one that takes some timing, which of course we don't have.

It's strange that our group of friends will be sitting at a table off to the side and he won't be with us. Granted he does have a responsibility to his guests but we've really missed him lately. And we're worried. Especially when he's confided to one of us about how they wanted to call the wedding off oh about two weeks ago. It seems like she won't grant permission to see some of us and that his curfew (when he's allowed out) is getting earlier and earlier. Last week it was 9:30. We want our friend back. You know, HIM--the guy deep down that you really, truly know. We want his personality to shine again and drink cheap beer in the back yard with him.

I just see myself crying tears of loss at the ceremony and feeling like a stranger crashing someone else's wedding reception. And no amount of vodka is going to make this gut feeling disappear...