Not a naff wedding bouquet, gorgeous wild bunch of your favourite
just for you.
Total sympathy. It's awful. So have my best mates. To the extent that we all, at separate occasions, sat in front of the congealing pate feeling worryingly awful. There's nothing like a big wedding to bring out one's inner suicide victim.
Or inner serial killer, if you get as bored with the endless length of these dreary parties as badly as me
.
Accept it. Weddings are a chore for a lot of people. Not just the single, but the divorced, the widowed, and worst, the already-regretting-its. You are not alone.
And you have a lot of friends, given the appalling run of expensive invitations you are faced with. Friendships last, by the way.
This is what I did as a permasingle (or so it seemed) through the years of boredom, sadness and expense: only go to weddings of really close mates.
Do something else the day before and the day after, and don't get locked into the rehearsal-rehearsal-brunch-and-bowls-match. Ceremony, reception, leave.
Arrange with a mate to have them jab you with a stiletto if you start looking too glum. You will probably have to return the favour first. Don't be bothered about being a misery, just bother about if it shows.
Word of warning: after the weddings come the christenings/namings/whatevs. I stopped going to these after the second child per couple.
Never accept an invitation to view someone's wedding photographs. There really are limits.