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"  Although getting a new job, a new apartment, and other small personal successes are now cause for celebration, there remain only three benchmark occasions for humans to plan meticulously, send out invitations to and eat finger food at. Two of them are birth and death. I&amp;#039;ve got those covered: I was definitely born, and rumor has it that someday I&amp;#039;ll probably die. The one in the middle&amp;#039;s the one I&amp;#039;m not sure about. The phrase &amp;quot;wedding expo&amp;quot; falls somewhere between &amp;quot;ocelot ownership&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;colonizing outer space&amp;quot; on the list of activities that are relevant to my life\u2014which is to say, so far down on that list that it actually places somewhere in the molten-lava center of the earth. I&amp;#039;ve never had a serious relationship. Conversely, I am a grown-up in ways that plenty of other people aren&amp;#039;t: I am twenty-six, have reasonably impressive writing jobs, pay rent on my own studio apartment, adequately care for myself and the idiotic little cat who lives with me. I eat kale. I recently took the batteries out of my vibrator and put them in my Swiffer. What&amp;#039;s more depressingly grown-up than that? Even as my identity as a self-sufficient single adult flourishes, the idea of marriage makes me feel even more like a child. It&amp;#039;s something that grown-ups do! Case in point: I was the maid of honor at my childhood friend&amp;#039;s wedding last summer. While my mom was downstairs doing the Electric Slide at the reception, I got drunk and went to second base with an acquaintance of the groom&amp;#039;s in the room upstairs designated for the bridesmaids&amp;#039; purses and hair tools. And I&amp;#039;m a child of divorce. So that should tell you all you need to know about me and weddings. Not that I wasn&amp;#039;t aware of the existence of the wedding expo. This is 2013! There&amp;#039;s a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic expo populated primarily by men who watch the show and call themselves &amp;quot;bronies.&amp;quot; So a large convention room filled with tiered cakes, frothy dresses and coupons for 20 percent off ballroom dancing lessons is hardly an offbeat concept. Two weeks ago, I received an email inviting me to the New York Wedding Expo sponsored by New York Magazine, whose reputation as a mainstay for the high-maintenance Manhattan bride guaranteed an unfortunately lopsided chill bride :: crazy Bridezilla ratio. I am the kind of person who has had more than one panic attack in comparably low-key places like Duane Reade. With this in mind, I took a deep breath, had a beer (okay, two beers. Okay, three beers) and went over there. After this necessary chugging of Stellas, I made my way through the gaggles of women standing outside, holding various floral and food freebies, many of them on cell phones parsing out matrimonial ceremony options with friends or moms who weren&amp;#039;t present. Inside the huge convention room was a veritable Choose Your Own Adventure: Bridal Edition, with mostly New York-based designers, restaurants, videographers, and others purveying their wares to women, their moms and the occasional bored fianc\u00E9e. (&amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re shopping for tiny foods to eat at that party we&amp;#039;re having to celebrate ourselves hopefully dying together! Baby, try this crab medley.&amp;quot;) Everyone&amp;#039;s marching around like Himmler in Tory Burch flats. It&amp;#039;s like The Hunger Games and everyone&amp;#039;s a Wedding Tribute. An alien whose first trip to Earth included a jaunt around the New York Wedding Expo would think the wedding was the endgame, not the lasting marriage itself, and after the wedding, the two would never see each other again. One of the more idiosyncratic components of wedding expos, it turns out, are the live models posing in dresses made by some designers present. I did a brief, informal sampling of the marital status of these wedding dress models. None of them were married. (&amp;quot;I just got out of something serious,&amp;quot; one model in a bedazzled gown said. &amp;quot;I just want to have fun right now.&amp;quot;) &amp;quot;So does it feel weird to be wearing a wedding dress?&amp;quot; I ask. With a wary glance towards the designer\u2014this being, after all, a hard-to-come-by job\u2014most of them gave me a quick nod to the affirmative, or a furtive &amp;quot;Yeahhh.&amp;quot; Most looked befuddled that I&amp;#039;d even ask. The most eye-catching of the live models are three who have been posed on a bright, hot-looking platform with a painted nature backdrop. I am informed by the designer that it&amp;#039;s based on Botticelli&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Primavera&amp;quot; (above). &amp;quot;If you look at the painting, it&amp;#039;s really exactly the same,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Wow. I&amp;#039;m a little drunk,&amp;quot; I inform her. She laughs. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re my kind of girl.&amp;quot; She invites me to a cocktail party afterwards. I offer to get the three models a drink. They decline. Although I&amp;#039;ve made a point to leave my press pass in clear view in front of my jacket, as I wander past various vendors&amp;#039; booths, variations of this keep happening: VENDOR Congratulations! Are you the bride? ME awkwardly pigeon-toes feet, shows them press pass. Hahaaaa, no, I&amp;#039;m not! VENDOR Cringes a little, as if embarrassed on my behalf. Smiles, attempting to make me feel more at ease with the exchange. Haha, oh, oops! ME Haaahah. VENDOR Hahahahahah. And then I attempt to linger and ask questions. Women crowd into the booth and begin asking questions that pertain to their actual wedding ceremony and the vendors have a chance to hustle for actual money, rather than derp around uncomfortably with me. Finally, my claustrophobia and discomfort win out. ME Well, I&amp;#039;ll get out of your way because there are real people \u2013 I mean real brides \u2013 I mean, hahahaHAAA! At which point I grab a crab cake in my talons and run away. And, scene. Clutching my wine like a safety blanket, I find brief solace at a booth of offbeat jewelry and not much human traffic, run by two men in a couple. They met on the street and have been dating for a few decades now, one of them says. They have a dog and a house in New Hope. Soon they&amp;#039;re hoping to retire, move to Honolulu, and work with horses. Surrounded by the people and wares of so-called traditional marriage, their quiet union\u2014earned after years and years of fighting restrictions, controversy and ever-changing laws\u2013-seems doubly poignant to me. I&amp;#039;m glad to see, on my way out the door, that more brides-to-be seem to be flocking to their station. If I get married, I want a small wedding, I decide on the spot. Small enough to fit in a thimble, if possible. Ironically, one hour after I make my great escape from the Expo, I&amp;#039;m sitting in a bar snacking on the crab medleys and mini-cupcakes I hid in my purse, waiting for a first date to begin. You have to crawl before (if) you walk down the aisle. Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Photo of presentation by Donna Distefano Ltd. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a12269/crashing-wedding-expo/>