The Wedding Crashers

I was ‘invited’ to a wedding last Saturday - not by Groom or Bride-to-Be, but by a friend who am sure, didn’t have an invite.

If I were younger, I would have crashed it, but as it involved getting all suited and booted, I found it to be too much of a chore.

The first wedding I crashed was on a hot Saturday at a small chapel in London. We were bored. As we drove past the chapel, we stopped and asked Limo Driver where the reception was going to be held. With the address firmly tucked in my pocket, Norris and I went home, got changed and off we went.

To our horror, the wedding was not in a hall, but in a small semi-detached house where it was impossible blend in seeing that Norris and I were the only black faces.

But we had a plan. To go on the offensive and ask the guests as we mingled if they were on Groom or Bride’s side. If they said ‘groom,’ we would then say we are on the bride’s side.

Somewhere down the road we were rumbled by Groom’s Brother and had to leave. But at least we had quaffed enough beers and filled our stomachs with food though, we didn’t get to taste the wedding cake – something that we thought was totally rude and unfair of them - even though we were wedding crashers. And black ones at that.

In Uganda, I crashed a wedding back in the day. When Oscar M was getting married to Miriam, I didn’t know him like I do today. ‘I knew of him’. He was also a good friend to OPP who I knew well, and it was OPP who had taken it upon himself to invite me to the reception at Nile Hotel before its transformation into Serena Hotel.

Unlike the London wedding, there were a good number of guests so it was possible to skulk amongst the bona fide guests. And oh yes, I did drink and eat my fill and unlike the London wedding, I also ate cake. I might have also packed some to take home – I think.

When Sandor married Laura, their reception was in Munyonyo. Sandor was very particular about wedding crashers so he made sure the gates were adequately manned. While I was invited, Young Man sitting next to me wasn’t. It all came to light when a not so amused Sandor had to serve cake to Young Man who he knew he hadn’t invited. And he couldn’t do anything about it except whisper to me: “I didn’t invite him.”

If Sandor was frothing mad, spare a thought for OPP who flipped because Young Man had the nerve to wear one of OPP’s jackets to the function, a jacket that the whole of Kampala knew belonged to OPP, and that made it look like it was OPP who had invited him.

Some weddings are hard to crack. When KK married Sarah, Red Top’s were deployed at the entrance. When Rita, who was a top dog at a telecommunications firm and had been ‘invited’ by Annette, she met stiff resistance at the gate from Binyo who, smirked because he knew Rita was not on the guest list. No matter how much Annette pleaded on her behalf, there was no getting in.

Rita persisted and it was only when Red Top started poking his head about that she left for fear of being embarrassed. That put Annette in a quagmire. Does she stay seeing she was invited? Or go back with uninvited Rita? Had it been me, I would have treated Rita like she was the plague, flushed her and stayed.