Worst. Weddings. EVER.

You might think that a singleton like myself would remain cynical about weddings, after having attended more than a fair share of them. That, unfortunately, is not the case - and not because the reception gives me too many opportunities to indulge in cake and champagne while secretly bemoaning the absences of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The local weddings I've attended in Honolulu have always been such happy, family-oriented affairs, and if there were any humorless Bridezilla moments - other than the ones that may have been instigated by certain bridesmaids (*ahem* yours truly *ahem*) - I should count myself glad to not have been subjected to them.

And if I should encounter such horrific nuptial conditions at some point or another - either on my own wedding, or with others' - it should come as a great comfort for me that none of those will ever compare to the ones I've encountered in my own reading history.

(Note: I've decided not to include Honeymoon with My Brother in this list, since that one's more of a foregone conclusion. And, c'mon, Franz Wisner got a holiday in Costa Rica and an Oprah guest appearance out of it.)

Should've Spent More Money on the Caterer: Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

It's the wedding that started it all: Because Mama Elena was way too hung up on the "tradition" thing, Tita loses her true love, Pedro, to her older sister Rosaura - and not only that, but she also suffers the indignity of having to cook for their wedding reception, which also included an extravagant Chabela Wedding Cake, scaled big enough to serve hundreds of guests. Ultimately overwhelmed by emotion, Tita cries into the cake batter... and the icing... and though her tears do not change the flavors per se, the guests who end up eating the cake at the reception are overcome with such intense longing and bitterness that pretty much escalates into weeping, wailing, wide-scale vomiting... and even death. (Makes you wonder what could've happened if one of the guests had been litigious enough to sue for damages, right?) Luckily for the rest of us, Esquivel makes up for the disgusting spectacle with other tasty treats - including the triumphant wedding* which marks the penultimate chapter of the book. (Hee, I wrote penultimate.)

Blood on the Sheets: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A flamboyant man and his clueless bride commemorate their wedding with an extravagant celebration, and everyone who is everyone in their small town - that is, the entire population - takes part in the revelry. Hours after the last drink has been raised, however, the bride is taken back to her family by the furious groom, claiming that the girl was not a virgin on her own wedding night. What happens afterwards - up to and including the moment when the girl is forced to give up the name of her supposed "lover" - leads to a cycle of vengeance, and a murder so horrific that I felt like I was aiding and abetting the crime myself.

I guess this is the part where I tell you that Gabriel Garcia Marquez must be an artist and a genius for making me feel this way as a reader, blah blah blah, but: no, sorry. That death scene - described repeatedly in both foreshadowing and flashback form -was so grotesque that I couldn't even look at a ham sandwich for days.

Get A Room: On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

By now you've probably heard that Ian McEwan came perilously close to winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the UK Literary Review for his not-safe-for-work descriptions of a honeymoon between two virginal idealists. (Sample passage can be read here.) Really, it's not like anyone reads McEwan for passion and sensuality - again, Atonement notwithstanding - and it's pretty obvious that the author nearly dodged a bullet here just for being a perennial critic's darling. Still and all, it's not like I was holding out any hope for the poor couple in the first place; I knew that their marriage - and the book - was immediately doomed from the time I got to McEwan describing our couple's honeymoon dinner as "long-ago roasted beef" with "soft boiled vegetables" and "potatoes of a bluish hue." Oh, yummy. (See also: Like Water for Chocolate, above.)

Premature Miscalculation: Swimming with Scapulars, by Matthew Lickona

On Chesil Beach may have had the bad food and appetite-killing sex scenes, but it's a mere trifle compared to the real-life wedding night woes of Matthew Lickona. Without giving much of the book away - and this is just but one chapter of many in this book of "confessions" - let's just boil it down to the particulars: Let's just say that you're a devout Catholic, and you've waited longer than forever to finally say your vows before man and God. You know - or you think you know - that you don't want kids, but you can't use birth control outside of Natural Family Planning. So what happens, then, when your wedding night approaches... and you find out that your lovely bride... is in the middle of her ovulation cycle?

Thankfully for the rest of us, Lickona spares us the gory details (he is, after all, a Catholic writer and a married man), but he does handle what could've been scandalous subject matter with a healthy dose of humor - and not a hint of Joshua Harris-esque sermonizing. Not only do he and his wife stay together and consummate the marriage, but they also go on to become parents themselves. Five times over, as a matter of fact. (Thank God for tequila.)

Try To Set the Night on Fire: El Filibusterismo, by Jose Rizal

If only those annoyingly extravagant "high society" weddings in Manila could be interrupted so easily. Here's what happens to the doomed wedding in El Fili (aka Subversion or The Reign of Greed) from the Wikipedia plot summary:

Simoun then tells Basilio his plan at the wedding of of Paulita Gomez and Juanito, Basilio’s hunch-backed classmate. His plan was to conceal an explosive inside a lamp that Simoun will give to the newlyweds as a gift during the wedding reception. The reception will take place at the former home of Captain Tiago, which was now filled with explosives planted by Simoun. According to Simoun, the lamp will stay lighted for only 20 minutes before it flickers; if someone attempts to turn the wick, it will explode and kill everyone inside the house. Basilio has a change of heart and attempts to warn the people inside, including Isagani, his friend and the former boyfriend of Paulita. Simoun leaves the reception early as planned and leaves a note behind..

[edited to remove GIGANTIC SPOILER for those of you who have not read the book at all]

As people begin to panic, the lamp flickers. Father Irene tries to turn the wick up when Isagani, due to his undying love for Paulita, bursts in the room and throws the lamp into the river. He escapes by diving into the river...

...And yet, Paulita Gomez remains married to the hunchback. Gee, "thanks."

*EDITED 05/01/2008: For those of you who have read Like Water for Chocolate, the "triumphant wedding" that I referred to in this section is actually not between Tita and Pedro. To say anything more would be to give away the massive spoiler of the ending (and I should know, having watched this movie so many times in college that even my frat-boy housemates have started saying "te amo" to each other)... so until then, my apologies.

Personal Legend

Sometimes, you just know.

Soundes like a cliche, doesn't it? When you're looking for a job, or a mate, you hear those words and you think, What a crock. How could you just know, when you've been looking for one for the longest time, with all the tools in your hand - and still no closer to the intended?

On the other hand, when you use those four words to describe the first time you read a book... it suddenly makes so much sense. You pick up a volume, not knowing anything about what's inside except for an expectation of greatness between covers... and the next thing you know, you're in bed, hanging on to dear life for the final paragraphs, wondering how God has placed this book right in your hands.

That's how I felt when I - after years of resistance and hesitation - finally picked up The Alchemist.

Before I go on, however: I am not one of those freaks who regard this book as some sort of self-help bible or personal manifesto of life. Nor am I going to be the kind of person who's going to force this book on you with a promise that it will change your life OMG!!!111!!!! Fact of the matter is, I picked up The Alchemist without any knowledge of the book's plot or message - and, okay, because part of me wanted to be cool.

In a sense, reading The Alchemist reminded me of the first time I picked up The Catcher in the Rye - the lack of anticipation, coupled with the mystery of picking up something that I had only heard about but never really known. Then again, picking up Salinger at the age of 14 isn't the same as picking up Coelho as a grown but vulnerable adult, in that awkward holding period between graduate school and the professional world.

Say what you want about The Alchemist, but I've personally found that reading this - and Coelho's works in particular - took on a certain quality that I can vouch for but never describe adequately. There's the romanticism, of course, and inspiration... but it goes beyond how our world currently defines "romance" or "inspiration," as something that can easily be picked up from watching enough episodes of Oprah. This is not the kind of comfort that anyone can boil down into bite-size quotes to post on a Facebook profile; in my case, it spoke to my own deep secrets and deeper truths, to the point where I didn't just want the book to end -- I wanted to live inside that story, to find my own way through the desert in search of my Personal Legend.

It's not the first time I had a strong reaction to Coelho. I still remember the time I picked up Eleven Minutes - absentmindedly, to be honest - and found myself getting way more absorbed than I should be, as if I was reading a stack of intimate love letters belonging to a stranger. The same goes for the time I tried, and failed, to read The Fifth Mountain - I felt like I was intruding on a personal conversation or internal memo, for which I may have to pay with my life if I were to even lay my eyes on a single line.

Perhaps The Alchemist really was the right book at the right time - although it shouldn't have been, given that I had just finished Chronicles of a Death Foretold and was hoping that my next book would be much frothier than the Coelho. (As it goes, the chick-lit novel I had chosen for that purpose remains unfinished.) Perhaps I am not as deep as a reader as I thought I would be, considering that I'd choose a fable of a shepherd boy looking for his Personal Legend over yet another heavy fictional tome full of allegories.

Or maybe I just knew it all along.