So, I bumped into mentions of the "Lily Max Cohen wedding" recently. Honestly, no clue who they are, really. But you know how it is, a name floats around, and it just sort of sticks in your head for a bit.
It didn't make me want to dig up gossip or anything. Nah, not my style. Instead, it just got me started on a whole other track. I started thinking about weddings. Like, all weddings. The big, flashy ones you hear about, and then the ones normal folks have.
I found myself remembering my buddy Dave's wedding a couple of years back. Man, that was something else. Not because it was fancy, far from it. It was chaos, in a good way. Pure, unadulterated chaos.
- His mom was trying to arrange flowers she bought from the market, stressing out.
- We, the groomsmen, were struggling to tie our own bow ties, watching YouTube tutorials last minute.
- The cake almost didn't make it because the delivery guy got lost.
And you know what? It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Because it was real. People were running around, things were going a bit wrong, but everyone was laughing. The food was decent, music was just a playlist Dave made, but we danced like crazy.
Then You See These Magazine Weddings
Then my mind drifts to these mega-weddings, like the ones you imagine when a name like "Lily Max Cohen wedding" pops up – assuming it's one of those types of events. Perfect photos, everything orchestrated down to the last tiny detail. Thousands, maybe millions, spent. And I just sit here and think, what's that really like?
I bet they don't have an uncle accidentally knocking over a speaker. Or the bride's little cousin smearing chocolate cake on her dress five minutes after the ceremony. Those are the bits I remember, you know? The human stuff. The unplanned stuff.
My process was just me, sitting with my coffee, kind of comparing these two worlds in my head. I wasn't researching Cohen's wedding itself, that wasn't the point. I was using the idea of it to go down this rabbit hole of what weddings have become, or what they mean to different people.
I started pulling up old photos on my phone from Dave's wedding, and a few others I've been to. Just looking at the faces. Real smiles, a few teary eyes, a lot of slightly sweaty people having a good time. It’s funny how a random name, a wedding I know nothing about, can trigger a whole afternoon of just… thinking. And, I guess, appreciating the simpler, messier experiences I've actually been a part of. That’s my takeaway, really. These perfectly curated events are fine, I guess, for whoever has them. But I'll take the slightly chaotic, very human celebrations any day. That's where the real stories are, I reckon.
