On Ring Bearing, Wedding Costs And Cummerbunds

I have a handful of nieces and a single nephew, all of whom are considerably older than my boys. The first of this crop is getting married this weekend, which officially makes me old, no matter how often I tell myself that these are the offspring of my considerably older sisters. (Though now that I think of it, my 16-year-old niece, the daughter of my younger sister, should not be allowed to marry until she's 40.)

The age of my boys has made them prime candidates for the job of ring bearer. The Boy has already been a ring bearer at one wedding, and he will get another chance this weekend when he'll work alongside his younger brother, The Sequel, as a co-ring bearer.

It's a risky move to place the responsibility for holding a small, yet expensive piece of jewelry into the hands of a person with little attention span and a penchant for running in random directions and climbing on various implements and forgetting what he did five seconds earlier. Or, if he's younger, someone who still soils his shorts and places everything into his mouth.

Which is why the ring bearer usually bears no ring, because no woman in her right mind, even a mind damaged by months of wedding planning and then obliterated by several days of pre-wedding stress and one night of alcohol-fueled partying, would give a ring to a boy so small. Thus, the job of the ring bearer is to pair with the flower girl to give wedding attendees a double-dose of cuteness before the arrival of the bride's dress.

With no real responsibilities, then, the ring bearer walks several feet in one direction holding a pillow. The whole job will last about 5 minutes. The real work will have happened before hand, for several hours, as they get photographed repeatedly in their little tuxes, both by themselves, with the flower girl, and with oodles of family, hopefully not crying his eyes out as the younger one is likely to do. (We recently sat for a family photo; after a while, The Sequel started crying and pleading, "No more flashing! No more flashing!")

Weddings are good things. You get an evening of free food and free booze and all you have to do is buy a cheap set of towels or a toaster and sit through an hour-long "service." It's even more fun when you're in that wedding, because you get to wear special outfits and sit in special seats while wearing special outfits that nobody else gets to wear. And then you get your pictures taken. In my case, I get the pleasure of torturing my two boys with formal wear and cute pictures for several hours. And all I have to wear is a sportcoat.

(By the way, as the Creepy Uncle, my job at this wedding will be to give my niece and new nephew-in-law all sorts of unsolicited marriage advice and watch people dance at the reception, both of which I'm really good at.)

All that specialness comes with a cost. And, as anybody who has ever been married can attest, that cost is usually far, far, far more than whatever item is being purchased is worth if it were being purchased for any other reason. To wit: tuxedo rental.

Some people buy tuxedos, because they're rich or they're politicians and they get invited to fancy parties or because they like to look nice when they change the oil in their cars. But nobody buys tuxedos used for weddings, mostly because the tuxes come with tails or funny things called cummerbunds or brightly colored vests that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing anywhere but in a church basement filled with drunks. Or in a school gym filled with drunk high schoolers.

(By the way: does anybody know the actual purpose of a cummerbund? Is it to de-gut a male? Make him look thin? Or is there some sort of male-female accessory equivalency rule I don't know about? Of course, now that I think of it, I can't really think of a reason for the existence of a vest, either.)

So you have to rent the tuxedo in most cases, and in most cases the prices are what you'd expect from a one-day rental place: insane. Add in the "wedding premium" that comes with just about any product or service provided at a wedding, and a typical dude needs to take out a loan to rent a tux for his buddy's nuptials.

This wedding premium is on everything -- clothing, facility rental, napkins, invitations, candles, etc.. And given the fact that many brides go bonkers planning for these events, the result puts a couple into debt faster than a couple of years at Harvard. (Census data says that fewer people are getting married. I know why: nobody has any money to pay for the damn wedding because nobody has a job.)

We figured that the price for renting little tuxes for small boys would be half the cost of an adult male tux. Less fabric! Apparently, we were wrong. The cost was the same, meaning that renting a pair of tuxedos would have cost us about the same as it would cost to replace my dishwasher. Fortunately, we were given the option of buying our own tuxes, and we ended up purchasing a pair of cute, all-black tuxes for the boys for the wedding for less than the cost of renting one. And when we're done we'll be able to take the boys to all those fancy black-tie parties I get invited to but have to turn down because my boys have nothing to wear. I'll finally get to wear my old, green cummerbund.