Is it bad etiquette to watch the Jays game during a wedding?
One bride-to-be is mulling it over
The Blue Jays being in the World Series runs our lives now, from praying our way through Ticketmaster queues and subsequently navigating the greed-driven resale market to Toronto’s other teams changing their schedules so everyone can watch the Jays beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.
This new and exciting postseason lifestyle extends outside Ontario. With days to go before she ties the knot, one bride-to-be in Calgary is contending with a likely common dilemma as the first weekend of the World Series approaches: should she let her guests watch the Jays game at her wedding?
“Half of our wedding guests are flying in today from Toronto,” Josie Balka, a radio host, told Global News. “Everyone from Toronto wants the game on.”
Balka was born in Toronto—in 1993, in fact, the last year the Jays were in the World Series—so she understands her guests’ desire to watch game two even if it’s during her reception. But her wedding is a momentous occasion too.
“I had a horrific thought of us pausing the game for my mom to give her speech and everyone booing her because they want to keep watching,” she said, adding that there’s a sports bar next to her venue that may tempt some of her loved ones.
Hopefully Balka’s guests maintain proper postseason etiquette and keep their phones politely concealed under the table, subtly checking the score every now and then, screaming in silence. (No, she’s not enforcing a no-phone policy.)
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
