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RSSWedding Tales: Reception
Mar 11
Relationships Weddings Comments Off
The reception hall was absolutely gorgeous. It was the design of an old English manor and they ushered the bridal party upstairs for photographs and munchies. I have a strong appreciation for having a wave of appetizers forced at us before the cocktail hour, having been there whilst my brother’s bridal party and family starved (and when we were finally released downstairs to the party, the guests had ravaged every single cube of cheese in the Bay Area.) Here, they took our drink order, we took some pictures, and it was a nice calming moment for everyone.
Downstairs, they opened the cocktail hour thirty minutes ahead of schedule in order to accommodate guests who had arrived early (again, slick move.) The cocktail hour hors d’oeuvres were exquisite. There was a little bit of everything from pasta to fish to stir fry to cheese nibbles and my personal favorite; deep fried yumminess. The room quickly filled up with too many people and I declared my intentions to sit outside.
Did I tell you about the weather that day? Maybe mid-thirties (I’m being optimistic here), overcast, a gray cold day. But they had warmers out on the deck and tables and what do you know? It was a pleasant improvement over being crammed into the tiny reception area with 155 other people and about seventy-five plates of millefeuille.
My friends braved the cold with me and it was a pleasant hour of catch-up. There were two ladies (I use the term hesitantly) with the most enormous fake boobs I have ever seen. Skintight dresses (think hooker). They were so out of place. It was like they stumbled from an LA nightclub into the wedding by accident and when they realized the common denominator of all the single males at the wedding was playing together in high school band, they vacated quickly to more sinful pastures.
Given the personalities of the bride and groom, their need for control and order, it should not surprise anyone that the reception was actually more micromanaged than the ceremony. From the moment the crowd of well-wishing attendees entered the main dining hall and found their table assignments, every second of the next four hours was a carefully crafted and controlled environment to party.
I am going to go off on a tangent here and tell a story about my friends. The tables were designed to hold thirteen guests, not comfortably but securely. Nobody was meant to escape. The largest man at our table, we’ll call him Sherman, sat at the end but we realized that we would have to break up a couple to keep him there. So he came around the table to losers side (er, single men and the Dubins) and squeezed in between Elliot and myself. The result was an imbalance. In order to compensate and squeeze myself into a space that was not wide enough for me without slicing off one arm, I was practically sitting on the lap of the groomsmen on the other side of me. In order for either of us to get in and out of chairs, we had to both push off against the table, scootch our chairs backwards and away from each other, and then the departing person had to crawl on top of and over the other. It was more difficult to get seated (or rather, had we been sharing the same chair, we would have less difficulty with the arrangement.) We were all so close, I think I caught an STD.
I suppose we had had enough to drink that it really didn’t matter. The only thing left was the wait for the dramatic grand entrance of the bride and groom and the real celebration was ready to start.
