How to Deal With Fall Weddings

Inevitably, at some point in your mostly meaningless life, you will be invited to a wedding on a Saturday in the fall.

Obviously, if you’re reading this you understand that Saturday’s in the fall are sacred and fleeting. There are 52 Saturday’s in the year and only like 12 in the fall and yet, the dude you roomed with for two years in college — the one whose dick you’ve seen way too many times — has invited you to give up one of those 12 Saturdays to go to his wedding.

These Saturdays are what give your life at least some meaning and you are being robbed of one of them because that couple who, deep down you actually really hate, decided they wanted an outdoor wedding and “well, it’s too hot in the summer.” End of the day, these people are going to burn in hell where it’s really hot in the summer, so we do have that to look forward to.

Unfortunately, it may happen that the people getting married are a couple who you genuinely like. This is a problem. You obviously want to be there for them on their big day (until the next “big day” in five years when they both remarry but don’t worry it’s just a small city hall ceremony in April because they spent way too much on that first wedding), so you need to make some hard choices in your life:

Will you be there for this:

Or will you be there for this:

Here are five easy tips to dealing with fall weddings.

1. Decline.

There are a couple ways to decline a wedding invite in the fall.

A. Tell them the truth. Of course, the truth hurts but people need to know where your allegiances lie. Guess what? Your allegiances don’t give a damn about a wedding where everyone you’ve ever wanted to avoid because they have more money than you will be at. If someone asks me, “so what do you do?” ever again, I’m going to retreat into the fetal position until the end of time. Show the happy couple that you could not care less about their wedding and would much rather spend it yelling at referees. “Louisville and Notre Dame might *never* play each other again, I can’t miss this game” It’s as simple as that.

B. Make up an excuse. These are pretty simple. Just tell the lovely couple that you have to go pick your brother up from the airport. They’ll think you’re telling the truth. Do you know how many times I’ve gotten the “I need to go pick someone up at the airport so I’m gonna have to cancel our date and maybe we should just never see each other have fun being alone forever” line? A lot. And guess what? I’ve never once questioned the validity of this excuse.

C. Defer to the second wedding. As noted there will, inevitably, going to be another wedding involving at least of one the constituents in this wedding, so make up an excuse to get out of this wedding, hoping that the second wedding(s) isn’t in the fall.

2. Tool Time.

You knew it was coming. Home Improvement Season 1, Episode 3 provides the schematics for this daring maneuver. That show just had so many life lessons, y’all.

In this episode, entitled “Off Sides”, it’s 1991 and Tim is trying to watch the Rams play against his beloved Detroit Lions. But Jill reminds him that they have dinner reservations at “Chez Pierre” that night.

Uh oh. *grunt noise.*

Tim protests, Jill insists, and they end up at Chez Pierre. But alas, Tim has a devilish plan up his sleeve. You see, our dear Toolman, secretly smuggled in a walkman radio, taped the wires to his back and listened to the game at the restaurant.

An absolutely brilliant move by a brilliant man. Try this at your next fall wedding.

3. Show up late.

As long as you’re there at the end of the night, no one is going to care whether you were there from the beginning. You’ll get to stay home and watch the midday and evening games before leaving halfway through the primetime slot. We can’t win ‘em all and getting to watch two out of three ain’t bad. Unfortunately, the early game is Purdue vs. Minnesota, the middle game is another Big Ten game that ends 7-3 and the primetime game is actually the 2005 National Championship game.

4. The Irish Goodbye.

Show up on time and leave early enough to catch the primetime game that night. Having not watched any football all day, getting home late to watch the big-time matchup that night will make you love this goshdarn sport so much more. What’s the best way to leave a party before it’s over? The Irish Goodbye. Literally, just leave without saying anything. Look, no one likes you anyways because you keep cancelling on them because you’re “busy” so no one is going to care that you left the wedding early and didn’t tell anyone.

5. The Emergency Escape.

Pull the fire alarm. They say this will ruin the happy couple’s day but it will just be “color” for their memories. And now you can go home and fall asleep during the second quarter of an ACC snoozefest.

Now, obviously, you aren’t stupid. You’re not going to go pull the fire alarm yourself. No, you’re going to pay some dumb kid to do it for you. What’s $20 when it means you can watch the University of Virginia play against...uhhh...ah...who cares, it’s football.

Take all of this as gospel and you’ll never be worried about a fall wedding ever again. Let those invitations roll in and let all that anxiety slide off your back with these very useful and only slightly stupid strategies.