Mar 18
AndrewRelationships Wedding
To kick off the night, the bridal party was introduced. We fashioned a tunnel for the bride and groom to run underneath and then they began the first dance to At My Most Beautiful by R.E.M. FYI for all future wedders, you can’t dance to this song. It has no beat, no discernible rhythm and it’s too fast to slow dance to. I know, I know, it is the sentiment that counts. Just putting it out there.
I ordered the chicken. Oh yes, I got at least three “really? You ordered the chicken?” I mean, if the chicken wasn’t a good choice, why was it on the menu? “Not the duck? I thought for sure you would order the duck.” Fuck you, I ordered the chicken.
The dinner at the wedding reception was really good. Most of the men at my table order manly filets, except Sherman who ordered the shrimp. You also had the option of a vegetarian dish (not in this lifetime) and pasta. Or maybe those were the same dish.
The dancing music was salsa, I have nothing to say about that.
So look, that pretty much was the wedding in a nutshell. Except for two things: the speeches and the Jewish ceremony. In a way, I have nothing to comment about either. Both the father of the groom and the father of the bride gave very moving speeches. The matron of honor spoke at length about her devotion to her sister and the best man spoke on behalf of the groom. It was all very moving and appropriate.
The groom got up and gave a truly awesome speech, as a way of thanking the guests. He called out the members of the bridal party individually and even gave part of the speech in some of the different native languages of the guests (English, Spanish, German, Ukranian, did I miss one?) It was really the only time I might have teared up. Normally a six page speech and I out at the bar trying to plug my ears with slices of lime. And what do you know, six pages flew by.
As far as the Jewish ceremony, I really enjoyed that. The groom did all of the Hebrew portions and the bride translated into English. A lot of “lord our father, king of the universe” verses. The basic Jewish ceremony parts include Havdallah (on Saturday night, to conclude the Sabbath), the chupah (the traditional wedding canopy), the breaking of the glass. Last time I tried to explain this in any detail to someone, it got lost in translation. But it was a short service, it kept people engaged and I really thought it was excellently choreographed. The non-Jews could follow the gist. It was a nice touch to have a Catholic wedding and a Jewish ceremony to honor the traditions of the couple.
Speaking of food (trust me, we were,) we also were treated to cleansing sorbet and the wedding cake (or another cake we were meant to believe was the wedding cake after they wheeled it out of the room! This conspiracy brought to you courtesy of the groom.) I didn’t really enjoy the wedding cake. I’m not a big fan of fruit stuffed into the interior of cake, and where was the frosting? I don’t think you are supposed to bad mouth wedding cakes, it might be the height of poor manners. I never met a wedding cake that really worked it for me, so I feel like I have enough experience to speak on the matter.
The biggest problem came at the end of the night when the bride went to change out of her dress. She had nothing to change into, someone (presumably a bridesmaid) had taken her change of clothes and she was sitting in the reception hall bridal room in her undergarments.
By then the guests had left and it was just the groom, his parents and two groomsmen. We were loading gifts into the Cadillac when I came across a gift bag that the reception hall had put together for the bride and groom. Lo and behold, it was champagne and t-shirts! I whipped upstairs to offer the bride a t-shirt to wear, and she also wrapped herself in a swath of jackets before making a quick exit to the car. Although I take full credit for coming up with a solution (I also offered to strip from the waist down so she could slip into my pants -- what? it was just the employees left at the venue and I have fabulous legs) one of the employees did find and offer a clean pair of chef pants for her to wear, by which time she was already in the car but it was thoughtful.
But hey, maybe it’s just me, but if that is the worst thing that happened that night, that’s pretty good for a wedding, right?
The Sunday morning after was about goodbyes and farewells. When the hotel later asked me about my stay, my only real complaint was about the carb-overload at the complimentary continental breakfast. I know, it was free (well, included) but the thing is, we live in a world where you are only as gassy as your last meal.
I’m telling you, no matter what tale you’re telling, it always comes back to food.
Mar 04
AndrewRelationships Wedding
The best part of my day came next. I got into the fight with the photographer because…well, he was a dumbass. He got it into his head to send the bridal party to this outdoor location for a few shots. Problem was, the location was nowhere near anything, and furthermore, no one in the wedding party knew how to get there. The photographer had three cars and the wedding party was in four; therefore seven cars had to make to this spot by each of us following the car ahead of us, the photographer in the lead car.
Oh yeah, although he was repeatedly asked for either verbal or written directions, he kept saying “Just follow me, just follow me.”
Cut to the chase, I was the groomsmen in the last car of the wagon train. My driver and I immediately hit two red lights in a row, by which point there is no hope in catching up with the wagon trains. We were food for coyotes. We ended up on the highway heading back in the general direction of the hotel, called the groom get vague directions, drove for twenty minutes, circled a lake twice and finally through blind luck turned into a library parking lot and found the wedding party and the photographers on a veranda taking beauty shots of the bride.
I was on fire. First off the groom is yelling at me in to the phone because he is excited that spotted my car during our leisure drive around the lake twice, despite the fact that I had no idea where he was or how to get there. Great, I yelled back, not out of excitement. Then we get out of the car and the smarmy photographer is looking smug and excited because I was pissed and he knew it. I let him have it. Then to top it off, we took one photo. That’s it. Two flicks of the camera and we are all racing back to the hotel to get ready for the reception.
Later, several people mentioned to me that I was actually too nice to the guy and he really deserved it. Nevertheless, I was restraining myself because I wasn’t the one paying for his services. It did occur to me way, way later that it would have made the most sense if I had just driven with one of the photographers; but alas, I didn’t.
Feb 04
AndrewRelationships Wedding
This wedding tale begins with the groom. I met him in college. His favorite story about me is that my first sentence to him was “Fuck you.” He said something that ticked me off, provoked me into that kind of response to a stranger. What it was? It doesn’t matter; he was that kind of person. (Still is.) Later on, I loaned him a blanket to use.
Flash forward to a few years later.
Okay, the bride entered the picture through a secretive office romance. It is always difficult as a third party to fully realize what attracts two people together. Some couples are mirror images of each other. Identical twins with identical temperaments. Like someone standing next to a mirror and performing all the motions of life with their reflection mimicking every movement.
The other end of the spectrum, and this fits better for Groom and Bride, are polar opposites that are united through some invisible screen. One is the pole and the other is the tether ball. As the ball gets punched around, the other keeps the relationship grounded. Some couples switch their roles back and forth. Some are always the pole, some always the ball.
I like Groom and Bride both. I am acutely aware of their individual idiosyncrasies. He has never been on time to save his life, or anybody else’s. I’m being generous. She’s a smoker. Yuck. But they are both loyal friends and I love being invited over for dinner because it means I eat better than if I cook for myself.
Is that all you need to know? I will be driving down for the wedding rehearsal, then the wedding is on a Saturday, and coming back home Sunday afternoon. It all sounds simple and linear. Funny how in the planning, most of life does.
Oh, the wedding is on Long Island. Might as well be a foreign country. No idea. I was studying a map of LI and it is just a weird shape and it freaks me out. I can make it through Manhattan as long as I am on my way to somewhere else. But to drive around Manhattan to end up on Key West, yeah we’ll see. The directions are tricky and involve a lot of foreign words like Wantagh and Nesconset. The trip to the hotel is mostly highway driving so I’ll make it.
On weddings in general. First, they are clearly intended to suck as much money out of your wallet as humanly possible. The Bride and Groom pay the up sell price on everything just because it’s a wedding, and then try to pass off the cost to the guests. Second, people are so bent on tradition that they become cannot seem to function without an exhaustive list of steps from the proposal to the marital bed. Third, I think the responsibility of the guests to support the couple during the first year of marriage is magnanimous, but it really should be the choice of the guests; not some tally the groom and bride keep in their back pocket to measure success.
I have, though, been to some fine weddings. The last one, my sister’s three hundred guest affair, really hit the romantic notes that I fantasize weddings should be about. And my friend Kerri got married in a simple and elegant affair. The dining was outdoors, which is like death in my opinion, but it was a gorgeous overcast day in San Diego and there were about 20 people and it was short and lovely and she looked stunning.
I went to one wedding where the dj played James Brown’s “I Feel Good” perfectly timed for the kiss-the-bride moment but managed to scare the living shit out of the guests.
Every good wedding story begins somewhere. I don’t know how they met, or what they saw in each other; this is my tale after all. So for me, the story begins, truly begins just days before the grand event itself.
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