Bachelor Party

I went to a bar last weekend.

And it was weird.

Not that all bars are weird, but this particular one was. You see, it was one of my best friend’s (and fellow MBJ writer Josh Godwin) bachelor party this past weekend. All the groomsmen headed down to the Queen City of Charlotte, NC for a night of celebration. Unfortunately, due to the age of Josh’s brother, the best man, we had to resort to the one bar in Charlotte that allowed in people who were 18+ instead of the standard 21+.

I won’t use the name of the bar, as it doesn’t really matter, but said bar had all the charm of well… a place that has little to no charm. Bright neon lights, fog machine, and a mechanical bull that had seen better days in an extremely distant past. It was everything you would imagine an under 21 nightclub/bar would be. The people were dressed sketchily, the music was loud enough to be offensive, and whenever you thought things might be getting boring the bartender would get up on the bar and shoot an air cannon full of confetti into the crowd.

Why did we put ourselves through this? Good question. What some would see as a strange and somewhat torturous destination, we saw as our Friday night hotspot. But it was for a purpose.

And that purpose? Celebration. Not drinking, or dancing, or rooting on the groom as he went for an eight second ride on ole Bessie. Weddings are a celebration, and people love celebrations. And why shouldn’t we love them? There are few enough opportunities in life to let down your hair and celebrate something absolutely beautiful: the joining of two people in marriage, an image of the bond between Christ and His Church.

That is why we have bachelor parties my friends. Unfortunately, over the years they’ve been hijacked. They’ve been used as an excuse for debauchery or foolishness. They’ve been turned into a celebration of singleness rather than a celebration of love.

They were never meant to be that. The bachelor party shouldn’t be one last hurrah before a man gets the “old ball and chain.” The bachelor party is a party because two people who love each other are entering a holy covenant together, and that’s what we got to do last Friday. Yes, we danced and goofed off. But overall, we got to sit around and share the bond of brotherhood as we prepared our friend to enter into the most important relationship he will ever have on this earth. The bar might have been stupid, and Josh might have worn a sombrero hat and a Hawaiian lay the entire time, but what a celebration it was.