Sigh. It's wedding season, and that means we see a lot of dumb quirky stories about wacky wedding practices. Most we ignore. Some we mock. But every once in a while, a weird custom illuminates how the "wedding industry," for better or worse, has some curious biases.
Take this story. Reuters reports that in Japan, guests can solve the problem of a too-small guest list by hiring "fake guests" to fill out the room.
From Reuters via MSNBC:
For 20,000 yen ($200), Office Agents provides a staff member to attend the ceremony. For an additional 5,000 yen, that person can perform a song or a dance. Pitch in another 10,000 yen and that person can make a speech that would make you proud.
As recession hits Japan, Mizutani said work-related requests are rising, with clients asking for a fake boss, who in real life may have become too busy for the wedding after losing his job, or coworkers for temporary workers that switch offices often without getting to know those they work with.
Ha ha. Cute and all. Now, on the one hand, there are plenty of cultural differences between the US and Japan. That said, the most baffling aspect of this report is not the fact that you can hire "fake guests." No. Here's what's so strange: that people could consider "not having enough guests" a problem.
Having a too-small guest list is like having too-small debt. It's something to envy. And while we would think this should be obvious, some couples, it seems, might think they have to hit some "target" of 150 or 200 guests so they can seem socially credible.
It's a warped psychology, and it's part of what feeds the culture of Bridezillas, wedding-porn, and the misguided desire to "top" every other wedding you've attended in the past, which can result in spending that (literally) dwarfs the space race. Think of your wedding as your personal union with another human being...not the launch of a new product, a political fundraiser, or a final, thinly-concealed, desperate high school popularity contest.
And for advice on how to deal with the far more typical problem--too large a guest list--learn how to win the tug of war.
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