Let the groom eat cake!

During my Bronx childhood in the ’50s and early ’60s, we ate outside our home only at relatives’ houses, on picnics, at outdoor religious festivals or at wedding receptions at nearby catering halls. The ritual of those marriage celebrations was as carefully choreographed as Sunday Mass or the initiation ordeal of medieval knights.

After the bridal party was liberated from the extensive (and expensive) photo shoot behind the scenes, the emcee announced them and then belted out, “And now, for the first time anywhere, it is my honor to present to you … Mr. and Mrs. X!” Thunderous clapping and cheers erupted as the couple gingerly made their way down a festooned staircase — and ooohs broke out in the audience when the bride inevitably tripped on a step in her unwieldy heels.

At those noisy nuptial celebrations, a mess-hall-length kiddie table would be set up, where the children were served half portions and the newlyweds were charged half price for them. (Babysitters tended to be frowned on, unless they were close relatives of a trustworthy age and unblemished character.) Near-anarchy reigned at those juvenile tables, since the parents abdicated all responsibility for what went on in that corner of the banquet room. The only forces of order venturing into that no-man’s land — where a french fry sometimes whizzed through the air — were Italian-born waiters who occasionally administered a quick slap to an exceptionally rude delinquent-in-training.

The first dance featured the newlyweds moving to the strains of “their song,” followed by the bride dancing with her father and the groom with his mother. At various points, the emcee ordered the rest of the bridal party to the dance floor, and then the guests at large. As the ceremony progressed, and people drank more than usually, they often provided visual hilarity while stomping their way through manic tarantellas. When shkoostoomahd little kids executed baseball slides on the waxed floor between the wobbly legs of the older dancers, they elicited laughs and dodged slaps in equal measure.

While everybody tucked into the food, one or two men who hadn’t been wowed by the dinner, music, ambience or floor show, got up and casually headed for the gents’ bathroom. Their secret mission was to subtract a five or even a ten from the busta, which had been left unsealed just in case an emergency downward adjustment of the wedding gift proved necessary.

Things heated up when it was time for the bride to cut the cake, since the crowd sang along with the emcee: “We all want a piece! We all want a piece! Hi-ho the derry-o, we all want a piece….” Then, when she fed the groom a forkful of cake, the emcee commented, “And that’s the LAST time he’ll ever dare open his mouth!”

Before the busta line formed, the bride tossed her bouquet to the group of single women who had assembled at the emcee’s command, and the groom flung his wife’s garter above the upraised hands of the single men. The poor guy who caught the garter had to install it on the leg of the woman who snagged the flowers, while the pitiless crowd shouted “higher, higher!” The woman’s eyes would then be covered so that the bride could sneak up to replace the man with the garter while the guests continued their chanting. The bouquet-catcher then felt (or faked) horror while the bride, impersonating the male garter-snatcher, advanced the garter, inch by inch, far up the woman’s thigh.

At a few weddings, a pair of good-luck doves were released in the hall and soon captured again by a waiter with a butterfly net. Once, though, when the birds looked more like scruffy New York street-pigeons, they refused to cooperate with the net-bearing waiter who’d been deputized to apprehend them. The avian fugitives spent the rest of the reception cooing aggressively as they flitted from rafter to rafter — and neither bird seemed to need any Ex-Lax that evening. When my parents got up to leave, both pigeons were still on the lam.

Although the orchestrated skits at Italian weddings were all in good fun, they weren’t always appreciated. I know of at least one Bronx groom who, striding into the reception area with his bride (unannounced, to the shock of all present), went over to the emcee and said sotto voce:

“Listen — if you hope to get your tip later, I better not hear a peep out of you all night…”