I went to a no-phone wedding and lived to tell the tale

In general, I hate weddings. Dress pants make me uncomfortable, I find 70% of the appetizers unsatisfying and I will never do what a DJ tells me to. But I get the desire to make a declaration of commitment, the celebration of love and the bringing togetherness of each partner's friends and family in a way that is both personal enough to feel authentic and showy enough to display the couple's good taste. So, I do end up pleasantly tolerating the weddings I attend, even if I look for reasons not to. But I thought I'd finally broken that camel's back when I was invited to a wedding that was "disconnected"... as in no phones allowed.

What a perfect faux fancy term "disconnected" is, in the same way that "hors d'oeuvres" means "shrimp on a stick". I only knew the bride and groom casually, so not well enough to ask them why they decided to host the wedding from hell, though I wondered about it constantly in the days prior. What had gotten into these people? And what gave them the moral superiority to dictate what I have in my pants? Don't weddings have enough rules? I have to wear shiny shoes, I have to bring a card with cash, I have to pretend everyone looks wonderful and I have to feign interest in the hungover best man's oratory skills.

I get not wanting phones during the ceremony (no bride wants to walk down the aisle to a ringtone), but this was the reception — an event usually concluding with broken champagne glasses and vomit-covered bathroom tiles — why can't I have my phone?

The last time my phone was banned was when I attended a taping of America's Got Talent. They locked the entire audience's phones away for five hours, while we were forced to clap for ventriloquists like we were living under a kitschy totalitarian regime.

I am on my phone a lot. I've even live-tweeted a wedding before. When I'm not on it, it's because I've already posted something and am waiting for proof of its popularity, impatiently expecting emails and texts, or wondering why my battery won't last an entire day.

Yet, I left my phone in the car and headed into the wedding reception.

Immediately, I noticed how it felt physically — like leaving the house without your shoes. My body kept telling my brain that I had lost something and I almost did not want to walk around and say hello to anyone because my body believed that finding my phone should be top priority.

Fortunately, the other people at my table were also going through withdrawal; some had their phones with them but turned off and some just had theirs on "silent". But we were all talking about it under our breath and it was comforting to know I wasn't alone.

When I greeted the bride (yes, upon greeting her), I said "So...this disconnected thing…", to which she replied "Yeah, we shouldn't even have put that on the invitation. I didn't want it to be a big thing, I just wanted everyone to enjoy the present moment." Firstly, thanks for casually regretting the anxiety you put me through, I thought, and, secondly, this present moment sucks.

Not being able to take a selfie was such an odd loss of control for me. There were wedding photographers avidly snapping away, but they don't know my angles and best lighting. After they took a picture, I had the impulse to see it instantly, filter it and then post it. There's something about posting a picture or video right after it's taken that feels more permissible — this image is what I'm up to right NOW. Knowing I'd have to wait at least a day and find it, unfiltered, on the bride's Facebook page before I even know if I want to post it, made me not want to post it at all. It's the equivalent of telling a joke in the moment or telling it 5 minutes later, it's just not the same.

I also lost my social armour. Anytime I was previously at a social gathering and not talking to anyone, I would be on my phone, often just aimlessly scrolling. But the appearance I hoped to give off was not "I'm not talking to anyone so I'm on my phone" but "I'm not talking to anyone because I'm on my phone" — it was a social shield of false importance. Without it, I had to socialize to not appear like a complete recluse. While I noticed this forced me to have longer conversations with the people I knew, I also had more interactions with people I didn't know, to fill in those normal gaps. ("So, how do you know the groom?" "Is that quiche?") Is this why my grandfather says hello to everyone he passes on the street?

Another nagging concern was about what I was possibly missing out in the world in the absence of my phone. My pervasive thought was, "What if there's an emergency?". That's an incredibly lofty concern — as if I usually spend most of my phone time dispatching ambulances. What emergency could I possibly need to be contacted for? Even if my mother was in a life and death situation, I could think of at least 10 other people that would be of more help geographically, emotionally and skill-wise than me (my mother is well aware of this, too).

That emergency FOMO was just an extreme manifestation of more trivial FOMO — people are texting me, liking my posts and emailing me about matters I must deal with within the next three hours on a Saturday night.

I'd love to say this is the part of the evening where I had a deep, ground-breaking realization that the world was bigger than my phone and its human connection that is essential to our lives (or something). But honestly, this feeling never went away. It didn't derail my entire evening — I still ate, drank, talked and refused to dance like I would at any other wedding — but I had definitely set my internal countdown clock to the moment I would be freed.

Leaving the venue, getting in the car and grabbing my phone felt like I'd been holding my breath and could finally breathe again. I didn't even put the keys in the ignition. Sitting in the parking lot on my phone was far more urgent than actually getting home. So, what pertinent information was awaiting me? What world was revealed to me after being held prisoner by that vicious couple? What peril had my mother found herself in that only I could thwart? Absolutely nothing. Nothing. No texts, no calls, no likes, no emails. I had one Instagram message from a friend who just sent me a meme, which had no relevance to my life, and that was it.

The FOMO thing was a complete mirage. I missed nothing and nothing missed me. I had to ultimately face the fact that I am not an important human being. And even that isn't unique because, theoretically, none of us are. Whether or not you participate in that world doesn't keep it from spinning and the only importance you feel from it is self-generated. It's a disappointing, embarrassing and humbling realization for sure, but it can also be a freeing one. Does it mean we should have more "disconnected" weddings? Probably not, if it's just going to be a relatively empty gesture that forces people to miss the present moment because they're obsessing about having to be in it. But we should take some time to look at our reflections in that black mirror and ask ourselves what voids are we using our phones to fill? Will this lead us to a Zen-like state? Will we live in real-word bliss? No, if you ask me. Our voids will remain and we'll still use our phones to fill them, but I'll relent, just being aware of it seems better than scrolling and liking in denial of our insignificant truths.

Also, I saw the bride on her phone.