CHUCKY’S SHADE: Can We All, Collectively As A Nation, Stop Saying ‘Wedding It’?
If someone invites you to the happiest day of their life (allegedly) and the most you can muster up as a caption to your photo is “wedding it” – you’re definitely not being invited back to the anniversary bash. If you tack on “with the best” after “wedding it” there should be an automated system where the annoying wedding planner and his clipboard appear from out of the bushes to throw you out, right then and there.
While the request for an entire nation to stop using an annoying phrase may seem a little pedantic, it’s only because it is.
But putting aside the complaints over what may seem like a non-issue (is this your first time here?), there’s something about the phrase that just doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s the fact that nouns becoming verbs work better when proper, “let me Google it” sounds better than “search engine-ing it (with the best)”. Maybe it’s because the action being badly described is attending the wedding, and not doing the marrying (so “sweating-in-this-fucking-heat-while-suiting it” would probably make more sense).
Or maybe it’s because the phrase only grew in popularity because we love to blindly copy anything we see on social media.
Maltese people love nothing more than sun, sea and hating on influencers (in reverse order), and that hate is probably because of our natural inclination to be influenced. Some fifty years after independence, we’re still happy and proud to make our own decisions as a country – but on an individual level copying the success of others is easier than sticking our necks out and trying something new.
Tamara Webb turned totally spontaneous shopping sprees into a career, and now every teen with an Instagram account posts to their stories to show off every product they picked up from LIDL. New York Best let you add as many patties as you wanted to your burger and suddenly every joint with a fryer was determined to give the whole nation diabetes.
Someone (probably wasted and getting their gift’s worth from the cocktail bar) posted the phrase ‘wedding it’ on a photo and got over 100 likes? Better do exactly that and maybe I’ll get likes too.
Is the ‘small island mentality’ a bit of a stretch to find meaning behind an incredibly annoying Facebook photo caption? Absolutely. But it’s easier to believe there’s a deeper, anthropological explanation for the whole thing, rather than just accepting it as a fad, and the most needlessly overused phrase of the past two years.
As with most epidemics in Malta, this one spread quickly – and more worryingly it mutated over time. While ‘wedding it’ used to be confined to the two periods of the year where young couples would throw tens of thousands of euros at a single evening to celebrate their love (and the ultimate capitalist victory), nouning-it has now become an all-year-long problem.
We’ve seen everything from the almost-acceptable ‘gymming it’ (made less offensive if posted alongside a pleasing shirtless selfie) to the inexplicable ‘examing it’. If that’s the level of English you went in with, you shouldn’t have any high hopes about not have a ‘resitting it’ post in three months’ time.
The sad truth is, just like Malta’s influenca (that’s influencer influenza and officially my trademark), there seems to be no sign of nouning-it relenting any time soon.
So if you’d like to be on the right side of history, the next time you find yourself posing with a bunch of ridiculous props while trying to balance the two G&Ts you ordered to avoid having to wait at the bar twice, plan a cute caption ahead of time. And if you are going to go with a Maltese cliche, the better option is to write “good luck to the newlyweds” – it’s just the right amounts of well-intentioned wishes mixed with pointed shade.