(This post went up in 2002, but I updated the CROME Wedding Rating System in July 2009. You can read the updated version here.)
before i get to the main point of these ramblings, here’s a few quickies that i need to get off my chest…
- Am I the only person who finds Arizona Diamondbacks Pitcher Randy Johnson’s nickname, “The Big Unit”, disturbing? Think about it for a second. Try and come up with a good explanation for why they call him the Big Unit. Yes, he’s a tall man, but is he a unit? what is a unit? Is there any other colloquial term for unit that I’m missing besides the obvious off-color one? And yet somehow, nobody seems to notice this. Props to my wife for alerting me on this one. The other day she was reading while i was watching SportsCenter when all of a sudden she looked up from her book and said, “Did he just call that guy ‘The Big Unit’?”
- Columbus, and other explorers like him, must have been pretty brave guys. I mean, these chaps traveled to unknown lands over seemingly infinite seas and into territories noone had ever been before. I, on the other hand, run like a ninny from dogs that bark really loud.
- Posting a message on an internet message board and having noone respond to it is the cyberspace equivalent of going for a high five and getting “left hanging”.
- Crickets do not make that sound they make with their legs. I’ve seen cricket legs, they’re nothing special. Besides, you and i both know that you can pick any two solid objects in the known world and rub them together and you’ll never get a sound remotely close to a cricket chirp. They are using their mouths people. It’s the biggest farce ever perpetrated on the american public.
- A word to the wise: be wary of those who wear headphones and listen to music all the time. At work, working out, walking down the street. I havent figured it out yet, but there’s something shady about these people. Like they’re afraid to think or something.
- I used to drink Mountain Dew just for the caffiene, now i drink it for the taste as well. Anyone who tells you it lowers your sperm count also believes that AOL will mail them a $542 dollar check for forwarding an email being tracked by their email tracker. These people must be identified and set to the southern tip of Florida. If we get enough of them on there, it might break off.
- here’s my prediction for the rest of 2002: those new beer commercials in which they repeatedly say “I love the twins” will eventually force me to staple 10 lbs. of New York Strip Steak to my body and dive into the shark tank at the Baltimore Aquarium.
and now onto what’s really on my mind. while sitting through an EXCEPTIONALLY LONG outdoor wedding ceremony in the HOT SUN 2 months ago in Massachusetts, my mind got to wandering (or maybe i was on the verge of a coma). I thought about how much i was not enjoying myself and was hoping that i could accurately relay said anguish to some of my peers in the conversations that would follow over the next few days. That’s when it hit me like the foul breath of someone who just given a 90-minute lecture on marsupial inbreeding. A ratings system for weddings. A way to quantify the entire wedding experience neatly and concisely. I will now share with you the system I concocted during the remainder of that very warm, very long wedding. It is my hope that you will embrace this system and not only use it to rate weddings you are forced to attend, but that you’d share the system with your friends and family as well. This has the potential to become a part of american culture in the same way that “jinx, coke on you” and “6 degrees of kevin bacon” did. or not. in any event, i will proceed…
The name of the system is the CROME system. It is very simple. The ratings scale goes from 0-50, with a 0 being the absolute worst score a wedding can get and a 50 being the absolute best. The System is broken down into 5 categories (C,R,O,M, and E), each worth 10 points. Each Category is rated on a scale of 0-10. Here’s a breakdown of each category and what I would normally consider as I assign a point value to each of these. Feel free to tweak the system as needed.
- C is for Ceremony. Things I consider when rating a ceremony: How long did it go? How many songs are sung (is this a musical or a wedding?), Did they leave out your favorite ritual? Did they employ your least favorite ritual? Is the room temp. comfortable? if outside, is the sun baking your skin so that you can actually feel the cancer spreading on your neck? Can you not hear the bride and groom? Did they start on time? and so on. The best part about the Ceremony category is that you can start off with a 10, and then deduct points as you go through it. Believes me, it makes it almost fun.
- R is for Reception. Things i consider when rating a reception: Do they feed you on time? How do they handle the clinking glasses deal? Is there dancing? Is there a bar? open bar? How many rituals do they do? slideshow? dances? cake cutting? do they smash the cake on each other or are they nice about it? is the venue nice? and so on. please note that the quality of the actual meal itself is not rated here. just the reception.
- O is for the Others. Who else is at this wedding? Are you there with a bunch of longtime friends? Are you stuck smalltalking with aunts and uncles you dont even know? Are you an outlier guest at a wedding where the only person you know is the bride or groom? The quality of the guest list is very important, and should not be taken lightly.
- M is for the Meal. This is pretty self-explanatory. Was it good? Was it enough food? Did they give you your salad with some cruddy dressing already on it (i hate that!)?and so on. and finally…
- E is for the Exit. As in, how did they dismiss guests from the ceremony to the reception. This is often overlooked, but without question is the most underrated aspect of any given wedding. The many optoins are the: “everyone is dismissed, the bride and groom will see you at the reception”, the “please make your way out to the receiving line”, and the dreaded, “we will dismiss row by row and hug each and every one of you so that those sitting in the last row will have gnawed off thier legs by the time we get to them”. The first choice always scores high with me, but maybe you’re different.
That’s the beauty of this system. Whatever aspects of the ceremony, reception, others, meal, and exit are important to you, that’s what your grade is based on. It’s a completely subjective, yet quanitifiable way of rating something that can bring so much joy and so much pain. So try it out and let me know what kind of weddings you’ve been attending. And spread the word, the CROME system will be a household term before you can say “I do.”
bryan