Dear About To Be Married Couple:

I bring up the following issue because this past weekend was the Memorial Day holiday and it seemed like there were a more-than-usual number of weddings that took place (though I should point out that I, myself, did not attend any weddings this past weekend). Now, I understand why a three-day holiday seems like the perfect time to hold your wedding—your guests will most likely have that extra day off from work so it seems like the most convenient time for your special day.

But if you’re thinking of scheduling your wedding on an upcoming holiday, I implore you to stop and think about what you’re doing. Because if you truly did, you would understand that holidays—and especially long holiday weekends–are the worst time to schedule your special day.

I admit I’m the last person to be giving advice on weddings. The longest relationship I’ve been in was a month and it only lasted that long because she was out of town for two of those weeks. Hell, I know as much about weddings as Alanis Morissette knows about irony. And frankly, I’m not a fan of weddings at all. To me, they’re in the same category as funerals except funerals are slightly more pleasant because at least they signal the end of a miserable life.

So why should you be listening to someone like me on this topic? Because it’s people like me that you need to be giving special thought to in this situation. The people who just love and adore weddings—the ones who started cutting out articles in the bridal magazines since the age of 10—you don’t have to worry about them. They’ll be happy with your wedding no matter where or when you have it. You can schedule it in the Arctic in the dead of winter and those people will still show up with smiles on their faces and enthusiastically do shit like dress penguins up in bow ties.

But for the rest of us—we value our holiday time. This is when I can do shit like catch up on work or go to the beach with my European swimsuit model neighbors or just hang out in my underwear, eat cereal and watch the Back to the Future trilogy on blu-ray. Yeah, it was a good weekend…but that’s exactly my point. This is the time when we can just relax.

Attending weddings are the opposite of that. Attending weddings = stress. You have to buy the right gift, get your suit pressed or even rent a tux, drive or fly to wherever the event is and that’s all before the actual wedding itself. As for the wedding ceremony—I’ve sat through my share of boring ones and it’s getting harder and harder to keep from going postal. The worst are Catholic weddings—they are so looooong. I truly respect the 1,000+ years of the rituals and traditions, but do we really need to incorporate all of them into one ceremony? And if you ever get invited to a lesbian Wiccan wedding and you also happen to have a penis, don’t go. Just don’t go—you’ll thank me. Oh, and if the bride and groom insist on writing their own vows and their idea of beautiful poetry are the lyrics from Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love,” run now.

So here’s my advice to you—schedule your wedding for a weekday at least two or more weeks away from any major holidays. Personally, I’d go with a Tuesday because that means I’d not only have to take that Tuesday off from work, but probably the Monday too as a travel/prep day. That gives me a four-day weekend and attending that wedding doesn’t seem as bad anymore when you have given me the gift of a four-day holiday when before there was none.

So I know the Fourth of July and Labor Day are both coming up and you may be tempted to schedule your weddings on those days thinking it’ll be better for your guests, but consider this—there are a lot of Tuesdays later in July and in August that would just be perfect for your special occasion. Your guests will thank you and my European swimsuit model neighbors will thank you.