The “I Do” Joker: Or Why You Should Never Marry a Washing Machine
Part 11: Satin, Sweat, and Second-Hand Dreams
I woke up with the feeling that a steamroller made of Euro pallets had run me over. The light pouring through the hole in the roof was mercilessly bright. Mia was already sitting next to me on the mattress, her hair a single tangled nest of dust and despair. “We have visitors,” she repeated the sentence that finally chased the sleep from my eyes.
Outside the gate, a man in overalls was delivering a full battery of chemical toilets, while Lukas was trying to convince him that “vintage latrines” fit perfectly with the wedding concept. “A star doesn’t wait for the light, he creates it!” Lukas shouted at us when he spotted us, and threw a garment bag at my feet. “Put this on. We’ve got three hours before the mob arrives.”
In the makeshift changing room – a corner behind three stacked oil drums – the horror began. Lukas’s old confirmation suit wasn’t just tight across the shoulders, it was a fabric embodiment of a straitjacket. “If you don’t breathe in too deeply or try to move your arms more than ten degrees, it looks like tailor-made slim fit,” Lukas claimed, fastening the top button of my jacket with the strength of a weightlifter. “I look like a penguin that’s been shoved into a pasta roller,” I gasped. “Perfect! Matches Dr von Vogelstein,” Lukas grinned.
Mia had it even worse. Her dress from the second-hand shop for “theatricality and moth damage” had so many layers of tulle that it made a sound like an approaching locust swarm when she walked. “Finn,” she hissed as she emerged from behind the barrels, “if I trip over this train and fall into Lohmeyer the swan, the show is over before the first guest can even say ‘I do’.”
“You look… voluminous,” I said honestly. “Like a very elegant, but highly dangerous cloud.” “Thank you, Finn. That’s exactly what a bride on the brink of a nervous breakdown wants to hear.”
Then the hall began to fill. The eBay extras arrived on time, wearing their black turtlenecks like a uniform of emotional emptiness. Malte, the ‘sad uncle’, was already sitting on a car tyre, staring so intensely at a rusty chain that it looked as if he were searching it for the meaning of life.
Then the real danger arrived. Uncle Herbert showed up, flanked by two bottles of wine he carried like holy relics. “Finn-Alexander!” he boomed through the hall, his echo scattering the pigeons in the roof. “What is this supposed to be? A wedding or a forced auction by an insolvency administrator?”
Grandma Hildegard arrived last. She wore a hat large enough to land small aircraft on, and her obligatory customs officer’s gaze, instantly scanning every detail. She marched straight to the gift table and checked with the tip of her walking stick that Lohmeyer the swan was still aligned according to regulations. “Mia,” she said curtly. “The dress is… cleverly chosen. It at least conceals anything one might suspect in the fourth month.”
Lukas struck a steel beam with a heavy spanner. The metallic clang echoed bone-chillingly through the hall. “Ladies and gentlemen! The ceremony is about to begin! Please take your seats on the… ecologically certified seating modules!”
Basti, aka Dr von Vogelstein, stepped up to the altar. He was already sweating so heavily under his turtleneck that he looked like he’d just emerged from a steam room. He opened his duct-tape notebook and looked at us gravely.
Mia took my hand. Her fingers were trembling so much I was afraid she’d lose her balance. “If we go through with this now,” she whispered, “there’s no turning back.” “Don’t worry,” I whispered back, as my suit creaked ominously under the arms. “Just think of the two thousand euros.”
Lukas started the music. A melancholic panpipe version of “The Final Countdown” crackled from the speakers. It was the moment of truth.