Marriage. It’s a very important institution that – whoops, I’ve scared off all the male readers.

Boobs! There, now everybody’s back.

Weddings start happening almost spontaneously once you finish as an undergraduate. You receive invitations in the mail announcing the kid from fourth grade who picked his nose in the class picture has found true love, whereas you still can’t commit to a brand of artificial sweetener.

In September I was best man at a wedding between two recent undergraduates. To consummate the bond of holy matrimony, the sacred commitment of lifelong togetherness, my friends Dave and Katie got married in: a zoo. Seriously.

For a couple of hours before the ceremony, which was held in the butterfly garden, the wedding party walked around the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle taking pictures in front of various exhibits, including one the photographer described as “a real nice moose butt shot.”

The other fun feature of the wedding was that the nearest restrooms were located, as far as I could tell, in the Cleveland Zoo. It was a major problem for the women in attendance, because even under optimal conditions they take forever at social events to go to the bathroom. Like the caged animals all around us, they travel in scavenging packs – chattering like howler monkeys, laughing like hyenas, flushing the toilet like trained cats, picking and eating lice off each other’s backs like chimpanzees, etc. This is why even the fastest women need as much time for the bathroom as they would for, say, running a marathon. In extreme cases, they take longer than my dad.

The men in attendance did not have this problem. The men recognized that a) it was dark, and b) they were in a zoo. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have bothered walking all the way to the bathroom even if the wedding were at the Four Seasons.

I give Dave and Katie credit: They took a chance by picking the zoo, and the wedding was a great time. There really weren’t any problems caused by the location, if you ignore the various zoo-related aromas, which everyone got used to not too long after they brought out the buffet. As Dave told me later, “I guess it’s sort of funny that the food was made of animals.”

They’d been a couple for six years before getting married, so overall I don’t think the marriage changed much for them. Though they own a lot more flatware now.

At least Dave actually let me know about his wedding ahead of time. Jason, another friend of mine, got married last year without mentioning anything. He did remember to tell me, the morning before flying to Denver for the big event, his heartfelt belief that Buffalo’s quarterback was going to have a real good game against Minnesota.

In hindsight I guess I was bound to find out about his nuptials, but there was a good chance I otherwise would have missed out on his Bills-Vikings analysis.

Not every couple gets married so soon after college. One common hindrance is parents – the harder parents push their children to get married, the less likely the marriage will happen during the current century. This is the case with another couple I have known for a long time, “Mark” and “Katherine.” (They asked me to use quotation marks so nobody would figure out that “Mark” and “Katherine” are their real names.)

“Katherine’s” parents are concerned that “Mark” has not yet put a ring on their daughter’s finger. They emphasize how concerned this makes them whenever they call “Katherine,” on average twice per minute. Her parents’ only solace is their innocent, heartfelt, na’ve belief that “Mark” and “Katherine” are not living together.

Parental pressure has taken its toll on “Katherine,” who brings up the topic of marriage often. “Mark’s” response to this has been to change the subject. He has become very good at changing the subject. If “Mark” and I begin a conversation about, say, politics, almost instantly he will very naturally segue to something completely different, such as whether or not I can eat six saltine crackers in less than a minute. (I can.)

Just the other day, in fact, “Mark” and I were talking about marriage, and within 20 seconds he was telling me he thought the Bears’ quarterback was going to have a good game this weekend against Seattle.

Uh-oh.