The Game of Love

There are plenty of contests I wouldn't mind entering in the name of love.

The Wife-Carrying World Championship allows you and your love to show off those teamwork skills. The Dunmow Flitch Trials (more about that on Friday) gives you an opportunity to travel just outside of London AND put that premarital counseling to the test.

I would build a time machine and set it for 2005 and bring along Martha Stewart, the producers of the Today Show (and maybe even Katie Couric so we could chat about that whole boredom with the current job thing)and they could throw me my dream wedding. I might even be tempted to immerse myself in a giant fish tank on the luckiest day of the year.


So maybe it's just me, but I can safely say I have found a wedding competition that makes me glad to be married with nary a wedding coordinator in sight. China has just announced the launch of its first ever Ongoing Polar Wedding where the lucky winners will be married. In an "under-sea ice-wedding."

OK. I don't know if something is being lost in translation, but "under sea ice wedding" sounds to me less prize and more euphemism, like Davy Jones Locker, or the Great Beyond. Like, "poor Masha had one too many sips of cousin's moonshine so it's an undersea ice wedding for him."

So according to the press release, there are at least 35 couples actively competing for the privilege of having an Ongoing Polar Wedding. I just can't get over that they have managed to find the only thing worse-sounding than a polar wedding which is an ONGOING polar wedding, implying weeks of whale blubber, hypothermia and the very real risk of being eaten alive by polar bears. You say potato, I say po-tah-to.

From the press release:

The candidates have to go through a series of tests, such as "Polar Journey", "Polar Mailing" and "Polar Lovers" to win the contest.

OK. You've intrigued me. What, daresay, is a polar mailing? I know it sounds like I'm picking on you, Ongoing Polar Wedding, but really. The couple must take turns shoveling a path to the mailbox of bliss? You are testing them on their ability to be Polar Lovers when the simple fact they applied to win this craziness wasn't testament enough?

Congrats to the lucky couple. I will be toasting you from afar, above sea level, in the suddenly delicious, sweltering jungle heat that is summer in the South.