The joke:
A group in a Chicago suburb is trying to set a world record for the largest dog wedding ceremony, with over 300 dogs. The dogs don’t really care about getting married. They just want to play Fetch the Bouquet.
How I wrote it:
I chose this news item because both of the topic handles, “dog” and “wedding,” have a lot of associations that I thought I could link into a punch line.
I brainstormed things that dogs like to do, and at the same time brainstormed activities at a wedding. Dogs like to fetch sticks and tennis balls. Are any objects thrown at a wedding? Yes–the bouquet. So I just linked those two associations to create the laugh trigger “Fetch the Bouquet.”
Dogs like to sniff each other’s butt, too. And a wedding is associated with the sentence “You may now kiss the bride.” So I also considered the wordplay laugh trigger “You may now sniff the bride.” But that laugh trigger didn’t seem clear enough because it left out the butt reference. And “You may now sniff the bride’s butt” seemed too different from “You may now kiss the bride.” So I rejected any laugh trigger about sniffing.
I used the angle “The dogs don’t really care about getting married” because it seemed like a logical way to explain why the dogs would be playing Fetch the Bouquet at their wedding.
And I added “with over 300 dogs” to the topic. Even though that detail probably isn’t necessary, I thought it made the mental image of the dogs playing Fetch the Bouquet more vivid and funnier.