Believe it or not, but weddings were not made for single people. This is why most receptions employ a “singles table” strategy; not in hopes that they will mingle and hopefully spark something—although that would certainly be nice—but to make them easier to corral should any of them suddenly and inevitably realize where they are and feel their shot clock on finding happiness has dwindled down to  half a second, causing a crazed attempt to score from the other end of the loveball court or, sometimes, across the street from the arena.

The placement of such a potentially volatile table can be essential to the success of the wedding reception and the comfort of its planners. Great care must be taken to properly align the table with all of the various facets of the celebration. For example, there is a great difference based upon whether the reception has a cash bar (singles table close-by) or an open one (singles table far, far away).

Indeed, upsetting the delicate balance of the singles table can lead to turmoil and very poor parents of the bride. As an occupant of the table, however, I was surprised to find that it can sometimes be a heck of a lot of fun.

It didn't begin that way, though. The ceremony for my (younger) friend and her beloved had just ended, and I was making my way down the Corridor of Congratulations, hugging and shaking hands with all those involved in procreating the happy couple. When I hugged the Mother of the Bride (MoB), she drew me closer and whispered in my ear.

“You'll really like where you're sitting,” she cooed. “It's the 'singles and significant others' table!”
My excitement was unmeasurable.

It was Table 10. And as I discovered who my tablemates would be, I soon realized a better name would've been the 'single and significant others' table. That's right: everyone else was dating or married to someone in the wedding party. Luckily, I knew most of the people there so I didn't have to try pretending to get calls from “Amy,” the long-distance girlfriend from Oregon I just decided to make up in case I ever find myself in a situation like that in the future.

Anyway, we found our table and marked our territory with place cards so we could go schmooze and grab appetizers. Unfortunately, it appears place cards are not sufficient protection against

                                                  TABLE PIRATES

As I grabbed some carrots and something I won't pretend to know the name of, they suddenly appeared out of the corner of my eye: a middle-aged woman with her arm in a sling and a gentleman in a cowboy hat. Nothing normally to be too concerned about, except they were both heading straight for our table.
The woman looked around, then took her free hand and picked up the large “Table 10” card, whereupon she turned it inside-out, set it flat on the table and set the salt shaker upon it. This is apparently the voodoo wedding ritual for exorcising a seating arrangement.

Satisfied, the couple sat down, immediately attracting cronies from the shadows who slipped in to fill the remaining seats. Finally shaken out of my fascination at the act I just saw, I walked up to the group.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you have the right table?”
This, of course, is Polite Social Speak for: “Excuse me. What the @$#! are you doing?”

The woman, definitely the ringleader, looked up at me defiantly.
“We're family of the groom from out of the area,” she said. “They have us sitting at different tables and we don't like it, so we took this table.”

I waited for further information; something such as, “And yes, we do know we're piles of rude, pilfering swine entrails for doing this.” But nothing further was said. Cowboy Hat sat solemnly, adding nothing to the matter.

They were tough. I'd need to bring out the big gun.

“I'm sorry to tell you this,” I told the MoB, “but our table has been... commandeered.”

There's no way they were going to hold up against the wrath of the MoB. You might as well step between a mother bear and her cub who just happens to be wearing a $1,000 dress!

“If you don't like it, you'll just have to make us leave,” the woman told the MoB.

It was around this time I began to imagine how this woman had gotten her arm put into a sling, and whether she'd look better in a matching set. The MoB developed a tic.

Sling Woman had us cornered, though, and she knew it. There is one unshakable law that you never, ever break: Don't do anything to remove the wedded couple from their Happy Haze of Holy Matrimony. A zombie outbreak could hit the wedding reception and the only thing they would ever be told is that some of the guests decided to switch from the vegetarian entree. Since the groom would most likely notice sooner or later that a percentage of his family was missing, we were at a deadlock. My compatriots and I were officially refugees.

A few of us were able to slip in with other tables. I was, of course, not one of them. So for the remaining five of us, the staff pulled out a four-person table on the second floor.

As we squeezed in around the table, we had a choice to make: We could spend the rest of the night defeated and miserable, muttering about how unfair things were. Or we could christen ourselves “Table X” and look down sneeringly upon the table thieves, imagining all the things we could do to them, such as pouring the bubble fluid we had been given into their drinks or playing “How Many Grape Tomatoes Can We Land in Cowboy's Hat?”. I chose the latter, and I'm proud to say my taken tablemates did as well, although it didn't hurt for them that they had set us up next to the bar.

Looking back upon the whole thing now, I can only laugh at what happened; that sort of outrageous laugh that is your only option when faced with such insurmountable insolence from others. But, to tell the truth, I'm grateful our table got stolen that night. I could have spent the entire reception mulling depressively on being the only single person at a wedding. Instead, I mulled vengefully on how to torture a snotty, injured woman and her family; much more fun and productive.

Later that night, after the offending people had left, I checked on the MoB. She was on the verge of a breakdown when Sling Woman refused to budge, but she held together well. She told me that the woman's group had originally been seated together, but that she had to rearrange everything after the woman's own daughter refused to sit with her.

So what kept the MoB from falling apart?

“I was just glad I wasn't related to them,” she told me. A truth much more valuable to take home than the centerpiece.