Keep On Smiling

It’s a good thing the hall wasn’t a couple of degrees colder, or my face would have frozen permanently into a huge, fake, cheesy smile.

It’s not my fault, I had to smile. I was at a wedding, and people were watching.

I refer not to the video being shot of all the guests politely picking at their wedding hall standard fare, where people attempt to conceal bulging cheeks as they mumble a quick mazel tov to the Choson and Kallah. Nor do I refer to the omnipresent photographer who’s photos, even the stellar shots, manage to incorporate obviously unsuspecting people with faces that shouldn’t have been recorded for posterity.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate the photographer. I hate the videographer. I don’t think I want either of those folks at my wedding. But neither of them are responsible for the Colgate smile I have pasted onto my face. No, it’s the Nosey Shadchan, hiding under the mask of the Chizuk Lady at fault here. As usual.

See, when you are at a wedding, and you are single, the NS’s and the CL’s of the world are pretty sure you are depressed. It can’t be anything other than tortuously difficult to attend a wedding with your ring finger still unadorned. Obviously, right? Here you are, watching as another friend floats away on the cloud of dreamy bliss called marriage, and you are still stuck in the daily grind of the rut called singlehood.

You poor thing.

Wipe that smile off your face for half a minute, and suddenly every NS/CL in the room will descend upon you. “Mamaleh, don’t worry, your day will come soon. I am telling you, it feels like it will never happen, but it will! Just keep smiling!”

And everyone knows, being depressed is bad for shidduchim.