A Joycean "I Do"

As James Joyce would say, "spring has sprung in spickness" (Finnegans Wake) here in Vancouver and I am already dreaming of lounging on the beach reading books, despite the fact that's it's (unsurprisingly) going to start raining again tomorrow. Yet while I might be prepping for sangria on patios, the blog/fashion/magazine world is starting in on wedding season. 

This wedding-mania is fairly awkward for me on a number of levels, including the pervasiveness of heterosexual stereotypes, abundant consumerism, holding on to tradition to the point of incredible boredom from guests... And I'm not the only one who worries about the warm weather setting off an onslaught of wedding articles in my Google Reader feed: "Wait till spring has sprung in spickness and prigs beg in to pry they'll be plentyprime of housepets to pimp and pamper my. Impending marriage."

What was that, Joyce? Did you say "Impending marriage" or "Impending doom"? 

Of course, the secret is that I'm totally stoked about actual weddings. My oldest friend is getting married this summer and I can't wait. I think it's the best that when you have a wedding you can add all kinds of great personal touches on what results in a fantastic party with everyone and everything you like best! If Joyce was alive today, even he could marry Nora Barnacle at a wedding infused with his absolute favourite thing in the whole world - his own works of literature. The Los Angeles Wedding Officiant provides a fairly expansive list of readings to choose from and nestled in there right in between "Love is courteous/Love is kind" and Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" is a Ulysses reading! I have to say, I was pretty nervous that it was going to be Molly's soliloquy ("yes I said yes") or the Gerty McDowell and Bloom fireworks encounter ("and everyone cried O! O! in raptures") and I'm not sure if I'm relieved to say that the reading is actually from "Cyclops":

Love loves to love love.  Nurse loves the new chemist.  Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly.  Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle.  M.B. loves a fair gentleman.  Li Chi Han loves up kissy Cha Pu Chow.  Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant.  Old Mr. Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs. Verschoyle with the turnedin eye.  The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead.  His Majesty the King Loves Her Majesty the Queen.  Mrs. Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor.  You love a certain person.  And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.

I mean, I guess. But I think there's some subtext in "Love loves to love love" that's being overlooked here and "The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead" doesn't exactly invite enthusiasm for tying the knot. I actually find myself wishing for a little "flower of the mountain" here! 

What do you guys think? Is there a hidden 'sexy Joyce' that isn't laced with religious cynicism, general romantic malaise, or fart jokes?