Mar 11
AndrewRelationships Weddings
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.
Feb 25
AndrewRelationships Catholic, Weddings
My morning task the day of the wedding was to get the groom dressed. Well, to push him along. He showed up in our hotel room forty-five minutes later than we expected and I practically pushed him into the shower. Ultimately, and he agreed in hindsight, by getting done ahead of schedule, he had time to finish his speech, micro-manage some more, eat lunch and relax a little bit. The bride on the other hand, was late for her hair appointment and came back frazzled and rushed to get into her gown.
The groom and groomsmen were ready to go around noon with about two hours to spare. I immediately went back to bed, in my tuxedo and lay dormant until it was time to leave the hotel. I was given the keys to the Durango (8 passenger) and carted four Ukrainians and three Spanish bridesmaids to the Church. Having already done the drive the night before for the rehearsal, I was no longer intimidated by this stretch of Long Island.
The Wedding Ceremony
It was a Catholic wedding in the Filipino traditions. An entirely pleasant hour spent among friends and Jesus. The ceremony went more or less the way it was supposed to. The deacon did his thing, though I tuned most of it out, and another friend of ours, Sherman (who doubled as the wedded couple’s driver after the ceremony) read a prepared religious passage from the pulpit. It was all very pleasant and warm.
For those who aren’t familiar with the Filipino wedding tradition, it involves lighting candles, wrapping a veil around the bride and groom and then knotting them together with a rosary. They also exchange coins (a precursor to the joint bank account apparently) and, of course, traditional Catholic wedding vows. The wedding party was huge. It included three bridesmaids, three groomsmen, a best man, a matron of honor, the parents and the principle and secondary sponsors. The latter, as I understand, evolved from members of the community who essentially offered to support the couple in their earliest days of marriage by making large donations to the marital coffers. I don’t know if there is an actual exchange of money in the modern interpretation, or if the role is more symbolic at this point.
The wedded couple, towards the end of the ceremony, also went around and kissed and hugged each member of the wedding party. I don’t know if that tradition belonged to the Catholic or the Filipino culture. I kind of liked that part. It sort of gave it this ‘dude this is real!’ moment for me. Like meeting a superstar and being able to shake their hand or something. You mean you are a real person, and not just in my television screen? (I said those exact words to Sarah Michelle Geller and Freddie Prinze Jr. when they came to rent videos at the Blockbuster Video in Sherman Oaks. The girl behind the counter had them sign an amaray which is kind of like going to the White House and asking to cut a piece of the carpet for your souvenir.)
Both the processional and the recessional had more of a mad-dash quality than a deliberate and rhythmic pattern. As one of the groomsmen, I can tell you straight up if there was music playing to pace our speed, I never heard it. I let my partner pace us anyway. I wasn’t going to pretend I knew more than a bridesmaid about the correct pace of walking down the aisle.
There was this flurry of exit, then a flurry of pictures. Sure, the bride and groom never had a shot of them getting into the car and driving away (mostly because the crowd of guests refused to cooperate with the photographer and became more of a wall than a door.) I hear Sherman, who was ready to drive them off to blissful marriage in the Cadillac after the wedding, grumbling under his breath.
They overturned the church in about ten minutes for a 4pm mass. It was a slick operation.
Feb 18
AndrewRelationships Wedding Tales, Weddings
Continental breakfast cracks me up. A danish, a muffin and a banana walk into a bar…So I’m at breakfast and it’s Saturday morning. My roommate for the weekend, another groomsman, is still blissfully snoring away and a handful of wedding guests are sitting in the lounge, munching on the complimentary breakfast and sipping coffee, talking quietly.
If you’re keeping track, you’re thinking, wait one second -- what happened to Friday? It happened, keep your shorts on.
The hotel is really stellar. The staff is friendly and helpful, and everything is clean and hotel-new which is the illusion of clean and brand new. The hotel room is long and actually really spacious for a basic, one king and one couch that folds out to the bed. I originally wasn’t sharing the room with anyone, so by the time I knew it was a room for two, they wouldn’t switch us out. Since we couldn’t get two doubles, this turned out to be a good alternative. I won’t say sleeping on the couch was any big thrill. It had an apex in center of the mattress and a pretty substantial slope heading into the couch base. Hell, the fact that it has an apex at all…The room had a coffee maker, a safe, free wireless access, I mean what other perks do you need?
The bridal suite was about twice the size. The bedroom area was divided into two parts by a central dresser with a widescreen flat panel television facing the wedding bed, on the other side was a couch and what passed for a small living room (with another TV -- you could watch both at the same time pretty much.) The bathroom was double the size of mine. The view was somewhat unspectacular, but we were in the middle of Long Island off of a busy highway; it didn’t seem like there was much nearby to have a view of.
Friday’s itinerary besides the drive to LI was to check in, pick up some guests arriving that day, and make it to the church for the rehearsal. I met up with the groom and we drove the Cadillac to Brooklyn to pick up a groomsman who was waiting for us on a street corner on some random block. I guess someone in his family left him there, and we sat in traffic so he waited a while. On the radio was a song called ‘Double Dutch Bus’ by Frankie Smith. It was hysterical. The song can best be described as funky, a little Artist Currently Known As, a little They Might Be Giants. I am so going to find a copy of it for my collection. Thank God for XM radio because it listed the artist name and song title (one button purchasing power and XM would be for me!)
Now, I should probably explain that of the groom’s friends (those in the wedding party and other invitees), I know all of them, have met them before during our mutual college years. So the weekend was a lot of catching up, how are you, where are you working, what city do you live in. Things like that. There’s a lot of camaraderie in our cohort because we were all connected to one other either through UNLV or Niles North (shout out!)
The Cadillac was a shade of purple. Not the overwhelming kind, just more like a purple highlight. It was not ostentatious at all. I drove the Cadillac to the church with some members of the wedding party in tow.
To the rehearsal alone, about twenty-five people must go. The deacon was a nice guy but it was clear from the get-go that he was not a good fit for the groom. He would say, “It’s okay, it’s okay, nobody will know if we screw up” and the groom is freaking out saying “I’ll know if we screw up.” The deacon’s laid back attitude was rich enough to keep the groom fired up for hours after the rehearsal. But in addition that, the ceremony itself was a little confused. We worked through it and pretty much the groomsmen were instructed to follow the cues from the bridesmaid, no thinking independently please. Fine by me. The deacon told us to relax, smile and have a good time.
The rehearsal dinner was a night at an all you can eat sushi restaurant. We were a party of 50 strong, family and out-of-towners. I sat at the cool kids table and stuffed my face with raw fish. Afterwards, the five of us men staying at the hotel planted ourselves at the hotel bar and played Texas Hold ‘Em for a couple of hours.
And one weird moment I have to report: Mr. Belding was there in our hotel; hanging out in the bar that night. He graciously allowed the bride and a few others to take pictures with him and shook everyone’s hand and made some chit-chat. The thing is, nobody could remember his real name (Dennis Haskins, if you need to know). People were salivating to meet him, well who didn’t watch Saved By The Bell? He was super cool with everybody, though I half suspected he wanted to charge an appearance fee.
If yesterday was the fever, I expect today will be a full on flu.
Feb 11
AndrewRelationships Love, marriage, Weddings
If this is any indication of the weekend ahead, I’m in trouble.
It is Thursday night and I am leaving tomorrow in the Bride’s car to drive down to Long Island Nowhere. My mission is to gas up the car, pack, and enjoy the rest of the night with a burrito from Qdoba in one hand, and the remote control in the other. (You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you?)
I noticed after I got home tonight that car’s passenger side rear tire was flat. Single digit PSI. No big deal, I was planning on getting dinner from the burrito place, and gas. I just added air pump to the list with a minimal amount of complication.
I drove the entire length of Somerville looking for a gas station with a working air pump. First gas station (the one where I actually stopped for gas) broken. The second gas station I thought I would drive by wasn’t there. I don’t know if I missed it or if it mysteriously evaporated. The third, the air pump was there, the hose was not. Someone had tied it up inside the service bay. (Who steals an air hose?)
Finally, I found a gas station, almost in Medford, 3 miles from my apartment. The pump was 75 cents. 75 cents! For that, I can play Cops and Donuts for an hour at Foxwoods. Well, fortunately I had taken 50 cents out of my laundry money just in case I had to pay to pump. Unfortunately, the pump was 75 cents. Wife only had nickels in her ashtray, and it was clear she actually used her ashtray so I wasn’t touchin’ those anyhow.
On to the next gas station, same predicament. Now I have been gone for an hour, any thought of burritos and remote controls fled thirty minutes ago. Finally, I found a pump for 50 cents, somewhere still on Broadway, east of my house. Closer than I was from the further point, but having gone in an enormous circle to get there. The pump and I didn’t get along. The gauge was broken and it took me 10 PSI to figure it out that I was overinflating the tire. What happens when someone doesn’t have their own gauge and they think they are still at 12 PSI just before the tire explodes? But at the conclusion of my adventure, the tire had been properly inflated, gassed, and I was not gassed because I never got my burrito.
I was so annoyed, I forgot about doubling back to Qdoba and I drove straight home. I made it on to Atherton a block from my street going the wrong direction. Atherton and all the streets around here are one way. Yeah…not a good start to my long (island) weekend.
Just as icing on the cake, television on Thursday night sucks. I still have to pack.
RSS
