Australian wedding sugarcraft

Meringues are somewhat underexploited as a material for clothing, as are sugar glass and marshmallow, although they have occasionally been cited in court as a result of being placed in strategic positions.

Anyway, consider a wedding. The bride and groom have separate clothes, an organist or other musicians often need to be employed, a wedding cake needs to be prepared, vehicles need to be hired for arrival at the venue and departure for the honeymoon and the newly weds frequently have to improvise with the food available in the minibar for conjugal eroticism. A long and complicated process.

Imagine, therefore, the following. A tandem wedding dress with twin helium-filled meringue bodices, marshmallow skirts, rice paper veils and sugar glass mechanics. The happy couple don the two halves of the wedding dress separately and lower their veils to avoid bad luck. They then power up the custard-powder fuelled two stroke engines which generate the lift for the sugar glass fans and propellers which provide the lift for the air cushions underneath the marshmallow skirts, enabling bride and groom to glide towards the venue. On arrival, the groom parks himself at the front and the bride comes down the aisle using variable revs on her engine to play an appropriate tune such as the Wedding March, or maybe "I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do". They say their vows and the dresses interlock as they lift each others' veils to kiss, then glide off together to the reception, where the guests are allowed to eat a sacrificial proportion of the dress.

After the reception, the couple hover off to their homeymoon, which can be separated from the wedding venue by a variety of surface conditions, including water, quagmire, soil or shrubbery. Since they are in Australia, it rarely rains and their dress is not at risk of dissolving. The snow white meringue and marshmallow fabrics reflect the sun's radiation and the foam of the meringue acts as insulation against the heat. On reaching their hotel, they slide gracefully across the swimming pool into the lobby and the ground floor honeymoon sweet, sorry, suite, where they proceed to eat the dress in an erotic ritual intended to cement their relationship, with the exception of the pistons, batteries, spark plugs and cylinders. In post-coital bliss, they enter the shower and the dress dissolves, aside from a few bits to be posted off to guests who couldn't make it. They then keep the engines as a souvenir of the wedding, turning them on in a ceremonial gesture of nostalgia each anniversary.

This would make weddings considerably cheaper and easier to organise, and give the groom a chance to wear a wedding dress, because at the moment it's just not fair. To further simplify things, the dress could be assembled from meringue, rice paper and marshmallow RSVPs sent back from potential guests.

Oh, and the marshmallow is veggie.