The summer is wedding season, and every day people are taking the plunge into marriage faster than you can say “destination wedding.” In this time of matrimonial bliss-by-proxy, we must take a moment to loosen our ties, put down our glasses, and take a look around us: It’s also hookup season.
Women aren’t that different from us — they also go to weddings and get swept up in the beauty and the booze. Wedding hookups are absolutely doable, if you do them right. However, one cannot simply walk into a wedding and expect love and attention from other well-dressed attendees without a game plan.
These following steps will show you how to conquer the wedding hookup without ruining friendships or accidentally waking up next to your second cousin. That, uh, happened to some guy I met once.
1. Don’t Wear An Ugly Suit
Guys, look around you, do you see any pogs? No? Didn’t think so. The ‘90s are long gone, so there’s absolutely no reason to wear a baggy suit that makes you look like you ransacked your dad’s wardrobe. A well-fitted slim suit will give you the upper hand against with those who didn’t even know guys could look so good in suits. Honestly, it’s worth it to even get a custom-made suit at a shop like Indochino and then hope to god you don’t gain or lose an ounce of weight.
2. Look And Smell Decent
This goes for life beyond weddings, if you can even believe it. Basic hygiene and self-care goes a ridiculously long way. Trim your beard, cut your nails, clean behind your ears, apply deodorant that doesn’t come in an aerosol can, and just try your best not to appear as if you just walked out from prison. Not only do women like basic hygiene, but men like it too. It’s one of those universal things you should practice at all time. Brush your damn teeth, son!
3. Um, Don’t Bring A Date
If you’re bringing someone you want to hook up with yourself, consider attempting that initial hookup somewhere less dramatic. If you’re trying to hook up with someone other than your date, stop and think for a second. What are you doing with your life? That is, unless, your date is as freaky as you and the concept of bringing another person into the bedroom counts as a memorable experience. Then hell, go for it!
4. Make Sure You’re Not Related
Whether you’re going to a friend’s wedding or a relative’s, doing some due diligence to ensure that your wedding crush isn’t even remotely related to you is never a bad move. You can usually find this out easily enough, by running the “So who do you know here?” line by her. If she answers yes to any questions that establish her as a clear (or likely) distant relation, move on. True love is great, but incest is icky.
5. Take Advantage Of The Open Bar
I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but weddings are for drinking — nobody really cares that much about everlasting love. Unless those getting married made the awful — albeit ballsy — decision to not let the alcohol flow at their wedding, it’s common knowledge that you’re going to this wedding to get tanked. This is a good time to flex your skills in alcohol-centric chivalry by drinking with the one you’d love to, as the kids say, smash. Ask her what kind of drinks she likes, order two of them, bond over the new flavors in your mouth. If you do this right, you’re most of the way there. Also, just because it’s open bar doesn’t mean you don’t tip the bartender.
6. Don’t Get Tanked
While booze may lubricate and ultimately block the part of our brains that tell us not to try that flashy pickup line with a cleverly disguised homonym “Did you invent the airplane? Cause you seem Wright for me,” we all know what happens when you get too drunk. If you don’t end up vomiting over your potential bae’s dress, you’re going to get whiskey dick and that is not a fun experience. A friend told me that once…
7. Make A Killer – But Short – Toast
If you have the opportunity to make a toast, go for it. It’s a great way to introduce the whole wedding to your sparkling personality, which could mean people are coming to you for hookups instead of the other way around.
Toast rules? Always leave them wanting more, no matter where you go, and in the middle of a wedding reception is no exception. Stand up, and make it short and sweet, because no one wants to see a sweating, stammering dude with a glass of champagne trying to upstage the bride and groom with his killer pun. “Wedding bells? Try wedding hell…s” — no, dude. Four minutes, no more, no less — and don’t make a pun unless it’s awesome.
8. Bridesmaids Need Love, Too
That tired stereotype of “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” is around for a reason. You can bet your bottom dollar that any single bridesmaids are feeling a touch of the bride’s amped-up romantic expectations, only without a groom to fulfill those expectations. They may not be getting married, but that shouldn’t stop them from having a good time, right? That being said, there’s still no guarantee that any of them will be into you, so don’t focus on them to the exclusion of everyone else in the crowd.
9. Dance & Dance & Dance
First of all, do you know how much it costs to hire a wedding band? You’d better dance, these people have kids to feed. The wedding band almost always offers a huge variety of musical genres, allowing you to woo her through slow-dancing and impress her with your mean A.F. breakdancing skills (if you have said skills). No one was ever impressed by how good someone was at not dancing.
10. Ditch The #Squad
It’s great to bro down with any bros you have at the wedding, but if you have makeout or hookup intentions, you’ll need to separate the two. Yep, dudes, women don’t like when ten guys walk up to them and all start hitting on them at once. Well, maybe some do, I can’t speak to the way all women feel. Anyway, it’s an amateur move to feel the need to bring your best bud and his eight best buds over when approaching a woman. Ditch the wingman or wingmen and go at it alone. Remember, the goal is to hook up with one person, not recreate the orgy scene(s) from Caligula.
11. Have A Room Ready
Some dudes practice the move — if you can call it that — where you go to a new town or bar without any accommodations in hopes of gaining said accommodations from a person via hooking up. Don’t do this. If you’re traveling for the wedding and can afford a hotel room, secure one and do it early. There are no better words to hear during the twilight hours of a wedding reception than “Wanna go back to my place?”
