I’m going to take chance here; I’m not a gambling man but I would put at least a fiver on the table and bet that this isn’t the first wedding-related blog post you’ve read. In fact I’d go further and bet this isn’t even the first wedding blog post you’ve read today, possibly not the first this hour.
If you’re a connoisseur of wedding blogs then you’ve probably had your fill of caterers conjecture on canapés, dressmakers’ diatribes on dreary dressers and probably had a gut full of photographers giving wreckless advice on weight-loss. Hopefully this post will be a breath of fresh air. I’m not going to talk about guest lists, or how to impress your friends and family with fancy flower arrangement. I’m not even going to talk about wedding photography. This month my subject is perfectly poles apart from these predictable problems - I’m going to post about pets.
When I sat down to plan out this blog post I had to think pretty hard about whether I’ve ever actually seen many animals at weddings, let alone pets. Sure I’ve seen plenty of horses pulling carriages, and if my hazy memory serves me then I think I’ve probably seen a guide-dog or two at weddings. But pets? Not so much.
So why don’t we see any pets at weddings? I’m sure most dog lovers would be happy to take their hounds to a wedding, in fact I’m sure dogs would behave better than some guests once the bar has been drunk dry.
Cats would be a nightmare at weddings; I’d like to write about how they’d make catty comments and caterwaul through the hymns, but we all know that if you took a cat to a wedding they’d just to that weird thing where they go all low-down and don’t move at all.
Spiders could liven up a dull service I guess, and a decent size snake seated at the front of a congregation could help encourage the vicar to keep his sermon short.
But let’s not focus on the negatives of involving more animals at weddings; there are also some really cool things that a well-trained beast could bring to your big day. How about a bird of prey delivering the rings to the best man, or baboon belching the vows. Maybe a warthog could walk you down the aisle. Maybe not.
If you think my ideas are mad then spend a little bit of time looking up animal ideas on the American wedding scene and you’ll soon realise that my ideas are tame by comparison. One thing is for sure; when my wife reads this blog post she’ll be relieved that I didn’t make any zoological suggestions for our own wedding day.