I knew this wedding hook-up was one for the books when he paused, mid-snog, to light some palo santo. “Just to get the energy right,” he explained, one hand on mine while the other slowly waved a small burning stick around us with his eyes closed. I nodded and promptly closed mine, too, wondering what kind of energy was required for this particular encounter – and how long I’d have to wait for it to get to the backseat of this car. Not long, apparently, as we were soon back to business, all three of us: me, this man, and the fumes from his sacred wood.
Being single at a wedding comes with a clear cultural script, one that can easily lure you into a self-centred, solipsistic reverie where everything and everyone serves as a reminder that you’ve failed to couple up. People you haven’t seen in years will inquire innocently about your love life, with some particularly ignorant ones asking if you’re “still” single. And so your internal monologue becomes rather bitter: “Poor me, all alone at the singles table! The audacity of smug couples trying to set me up with the only other single person here! Tell me, is it one in four marriages that end in divorce these days, or one in three? Haha!” And so on.
Look, I get it. Nowhere else does a single woman’s relationship status become her defining quality more than at a wedding. A lot of the time, it dictates where you sit, who you hang out with, and what strangers want to talk to you about. For a while, I found myself leaning into the negativity, complaining about how expensive weddings are when you’re single, pontificating over how archaic it feels that getting married is still the only adult milestone that warrants such lavish celebration, and resenting how many people would try to set me up with the (usually) sole single man my age in attendance, whom several other women and I were supposedly competing against one another for.
But the noise caught up with me – and I realised I was ruining my own fun, not to mention slightly disrespecting the happy couples. Because, it turns out, being single at a wedding can be fabulous, as I learned after attending six in a row last summer. First off, as Mr Palo Santo illustrated, there are endless possibilities for eccentric encounters that will serve as excellent WhatsApp group fodder. But also, weddings seem to create a sort of temporary liminal space where fun is meant to happen, and romance is meant to bloom – however briefly.
I’ve had several wedding boyfriends over the years. These are typically short-lived love affairs, accelerated by circumstance and mutual delusion: small talk over starters becomes family trauma by the main course. Maybe you sneak off to steal a few kisses behind a tree in between speeches. By dessert, you’re half-fantasising a wedding of your own with someone you’d never hang out with in “real life”. These might sound like superfluous flings, but they can still feel meaningful, even if they never progress anywhere after (in my experience, most of them don’t).
There was the extremely tall, unemployed Gen Z man who wrapped his suit jacket around me when I got cold at the end of the night and fed me crisps in my Airbnb until 5am when we eventually stumbled into my bedroom. The nomadic musician with whom I spent hours talking about our favourite bands while our bodies wrinkled in the jacuzzi of the absurdly fancy hotel he was staying in. And I’ll always look back fondly on the handsome Brazilian who laughed sweetly when I drunkenly tried to communicate to him in some very patchy Spanish.
Wedding hook-ups tend to happen with those outside your usual circle; they aren’t necessarily people you’d pursue in the real world. But in wedding world, where everyone exists in the same intimate, white-iced universe for 12 hours or so, fuelled by smoked salmon blinis, bottomless champagne and sweeping feelings of romance, anything feels possible. There’s also something deliciously feral about snogging someone you’ve just met on a crowded dance-floor while “Common People” plays in the background – as a 31-year-old woman, I find that this opportunity doesn’t present itself much outside of weddings. Typically, it requires a few tepid Hinge messages followed by an excessive number of alcoholic beverages and small talk. And even then, the most you can usually hope for is an awkward goodbye kiss on the tube. Or maybe that’s just me.
Beyond the lip service of it all, though, I do think being single at a wedding presents other overlooked benefits, too. You can flit about the room freely without having to worry about whether or not your partner is having a good time, giving you space to focus on making new friends and catching up with old ones. You can channel your inner social butterfly, forming your own covens in corners and gossiping for hours with women you’ve just met at the bar without anyone wondering where you’ve been. You can also leave as early – or as late – as you want, slipping away quietly after the cake has been cut, or dancing to Toploader until they turn the music off and then heaping into the back of a car for the afters. The choice depends on your vibe and yours alone: delicious!
Then there’s simply the sheer euphoria of drinking, dancing and living life on your own terms in a room where the resounding feeling is one of love. Yes, that love can be between two newly married people. But it can also be between friends, family members – and, well, it can be for yourself, too. I think that’s something worth celebrating.
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