Wedding Bliss

The Wedding Crashers
Originally uploaded by RLabay.

(From The Hartford Courant -- By Greg Morago)

Actually, it's a perfect recipe for a wedding. But don't most weddings lead to sex? [Hmm...] And we're not talking about just the bride and groom's honeymoon. Think about all the weddings you've been to and consider just how many times you've heard stories about wedding guests getting it on behind the bushes or bridesmaids and groomsmen hooking up after the reception at the wedding inn.

If you're offended by the thought of such wedding shenanigans, don't go see THE WEDDING CRASHERS, a comedy opening Friday starring VINCE VAUGHN and OWEN WILSON as a randy pair of playboys who sneak into wedding receptions for the sole purpose of scoring bridesmaids. Sound like just another outlandish Hollywood script? Think again. Art, apparently, imitates life.

"The great thing about weddings for a lot of people is, like, it's a pre-approved set of friends. Everyone there knows the bride and groom. It makes the hookup a little easier because it's not like meeting strangers in a bar," said KATHLEEN MURRAY, wedding editor for THE KNOT bridal magazine and www.theknot.com. "There's something so romantic, too, about weddings. It puts everyone in a very romantic mood -- in the mood for love."

Or just good sex.

Just ask BILL, a 32-year-old bachelor who hooked up after a wedding in LAS VEGAS recently. Bill, who works at A HARTFORD INSURANCE COMPANY, met his hook-up at a get-together of wedding guests the day before the nuptials. He said he sensed an immediate attraction to her. They wound up having sex at his hotel room the day after the reception (there was, after all, gambling to be done).

"It was amazing and intense," Bill said. "We were both really into it."

Or ask LINDA, a 29-year-old publicist from NEW YORK who has hooked up at least five times at weddings -- a number that she doesn't consider high but her friends tease her about. Linda counts 37 weddings in the last six years.

"It's just the law of averages," she said, jokingly laughing about her wedding flings. "I'm a good girl, but I love hooking up at weddings. I'm literally the girl at weddings who is going to hook up."
[Linda, where are you?]

Linda's hookups have been both from the wedding party and wedding guests; her trysts have taken place in hotel rooms, coat rooms and even an outdoor gazebo. "I get really excited at weddings. They're fun with open bars and whatnot. Everybody's so happy and excited. They're all celebrating love."

Indeed, that love-is-in-the-air feeling is one of the reasons wedding guest hookups (like those of Bill and Linda, which aren't their real names) aren't so unusual, Murray said. "You're watching two people exchange vows. For a lot of people, that gets them in the mood for wanting that same experience, wanting that same love," she said. "There's nothing bad about it. Everyone's looking good and feeling good. It's the perfect environment."

There's also something slightly conspiratorial about weddings that leads to hookups. Anyone who has planned wedding-reception seating knows to seat available singles together. There are few brides who haven't secretly wished their single bridesmaids and single girlfriends might just meet MR. RIGHT (or perhaps MR. ONE NIGHT STAND) at a wedding. Singles are often thrown together with potential love, if not immediate sex, on the agenda.

Murray knows. She's getting married soon and is doing what any thoughtful bride would do -- setting others up for happiness like she's enjoying. [Take note here married folks -- help out us single folk.] "Since the bride's off the market, she wants to marry off all her single friends," Murray said. "I'm doing my seating charts right now. We're saying, 'Oh, here's your single friend, and here's my cute single friend; my single girls and your single guys.'"

Crashers? Who needs the amorous-minded uninvited when wedding hookups happen so, um, naturally?