Assume Not the Groom Suffers Not

* In Ventura County Life on June 1, you report with certainty that grooms do not walk down the aisle, suggest that the bride’s bouquet toss is the sole audience grabber, that guests shed nary a tear for the groom and that the bride’s parents pay for the ceremony as well as the reception.

Mea culpa this. The groom does, indeed, walk down the aisle, accompanied by both parents, in Jewish ceremonies. Surely amid the cultural diversity of our region, similar honors are bestowed the groom in other ethnic rites of marriage.

The groom’s counterpart pitch at celebration’s end is the garter toss, where all eligible bachelors await the catch.

Wedding guests who weep over the groom include, but are not limited to: the bride’s single girlfriends who mourn their loss, the one-night stand whom the groom gave over for the bride, the groom’s hormonally imbalanced distant relation, his boyhood pal who secretly swooned and his father’s client who had a few too many long before the “I Dos” were murmured.

Etiquette guides dictate the groom’s fiscal responsibilities: engagement ring, bride’s ring, marriage license, fee for clergy or ceremony officiant, wedding gift for the bride, gifts for best man and ushers, bridal bouquet and going-away corsage, boutonnieres for all men in the wedding party, mothers’ corsages, physical exam, gloves and ties for ushers, lodging for out-of-town attendants (optional), bachelor’s dinner (optional) and all honeymoon expenses.

Additionally, the groom’s family pays for the rehearsal dinner and quite possibly assumes payment for either the band or the photographer. Assume not that he suffers not.

Marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition--in terms of the mid-’90s wedding, it often begins just that way.

SARIA KRAFT

Malibu