What this blog has thus led you to believe is that the weeks approaching a wedding consist of seeing friends, drinking way too much, and getting black eyes from squirrely dudes with bad moustaches. In between the weekends are weeks, and that’s where stuff like work and planning happened. With the exception of my college roommate Dan becoming my hero, I don’t remember the timelines of any of this stuff. While there may be some creative license used here and there, for the most part this section is honest.
In the month of June 2008 I was a completely useless human being. I was useless at work. More accurate, I was even more useless at work than I normally am. I was useless at home. I built up in my head that there was so much to do at both home and work that I did a poor job doing anything. People at work got frustrated because I didn’t follow through on anything. Kelsey got frustrated because I didn’t follow through on anything. She, rightfully so, took that as a sign I wasn’t excited to get married. This was not the case. I hate tasks and execution. I like normal, mundane lives interrupted with the occasional social interaction. Going to a job I enjoy but have zero passion for followed by going home to work on wedding stuff started to get to me.
This was a completely unfair reaction for me to have. During the entire engagement and especially the last month leading up to the wedding, Kelsey was amazing. Anyone who knows my lovely wife will admit she can have a temper and be prone to mood swings, but she was completely even keel during the wedding planning. She put up with my being an oaf. Everyday I would come home and she had taken a major task off our to-do list. If anyone is interested in getting married, I’d recommend you borrow my wife as a fiancé, because she was excellent.
My journey into uselessness began on a random Thursday in the beginning of June. It’s no secret God disdains the Midwest this year. After a harsh winter and an icky spring, the start of summer welcomed us with record flood waters. Iowa was a warzone. On this random Thursday, Kelsey and I went to sleep in the basement because our house was in the dead center of a projected path of a possible tornado. The basement is where I have what we call my “Man Room.” It has my opulent TV, my excessive movie collection, my unnecessary videogame equipment, and my unread books. At some point in the night Kelsey woke me up to tell me the basement was raining. Sure enough, the entire floor had half an inch of water on it. Before moving on, I want to state that several people in my hometown of Cedar Falls experienced flooding of horrific magnitudes. What I experienced was not flooding. It was a slight inconvenience that happened at a complete inopportune time. We had to take all my movies off of their shelves and take up all of the carpet squares. My room, the room that made me feel like I was part of the home, was gone. All of my stuff was crammed into a tiny storage area.
For some reason the fact my basement was torn apart really bothered me. I’m not one for looking into symbolism, so I won’t attempt to develop a deep reason as to why. I flat out didn’t like not having my sanctuary available. Upstairs we had no room for anything because the wedding had thrown up all over our house, and downstairs we had nothing. The fact I couldn’t put the room back together for a week due to more expected rain really got to me. We did have other stuff to do, and I became fixated on fixing a room that didn’t really need to be put together for another month.
The mood swings that set in because of the flooding didn’t go away when everyone I talked to continued to ask, “How did I feel?” I won’t lie. I was nervous. You should be nervous, it’s a wedding. It didn’t occur to me until my cousin Matt asked me on bachelor party Friday that this was a big deal. I sort of just float through life and show excitement over inconsequential matters—new movies I really like…professional wrestling…a well told Batman story…etc…while the life events that should evoke excitement are met with an, “eh.” The strange thing about it all is that most of the people asking the question don’t really care. They think they are being funny. They’re not. They say the same old tired joke everyone else is. That’s not to say those truly close to me weren’t genuinely curious, I’m talking about the random faceless people I’m forced to interact with on the phone each day. “Dead Man Walking,” said Stranger A. Strangers B, C, D, E, and F laughed.
I wanted to get married. I knew that. I’ll put it in the only terms I know. As an entertainment fan I generally live in a world of anticipation. I look forward to the next great motion picture while waxing nostalgia over past ones. I’m either looking ahead or looking behind. I never care too much about what’s currently in theaters. In other words, I don’t know how to feel about the present. My engagement was similar. I loved the memories Kelsey and I built together. I could picture us in ten years with three kids, but I couldn’t for the life of me realize the wedding was less than one month away. It didn’t seem real. The house slowly filled with pink and green flowers and fabric; gifts started arriving; company continued to visit; and I sat there wanting to live like it was any given month of my life. I couldn’t put that into words before, but I can now. Kelsey deserved better than that.
It didn’t help that people as a whole are an entirely selfish species and don’t do anything to help out anyone. Let’s explain a very simple process: RSVPs. When someone sends out an invitation, they generally include an RSVP. On the RSVP there are two boxes to check, one says, “Yep. I’ll be there.” Another one says, “Nope. Sorry.” All you have to do as a human is grab a pen, pencil, bottle of lipstick, or really anything that upon contact with paper will leave a mark and check one of the boxes. The RSVP always comes with a stamp on it, so you can simply put the RSVP back in the mailbox you just picked it up in. Hell, if you happen to be carrying a pencil while getting the mail, boom, done. Good job. The problem is people don’t send RSVPs for a variety of reasons. This would be okay if an engaged couple didn’t have to have a headcount for every single vendor that they deal with or anything else to do, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Now, plenty of people lost their RSVP, which is understandable, but they called and said, “Hey I can’t make it,” or, “Hey I can make it.” Those are simple phrases. It’s really easy to do.
What happened in our case: I spent an entire Saturday I could have used putting my Man Room back together and called an entire list of people who didn’t bother sending in an RSVP. Every single person I called told me the same thing, “Oh. I thought I sent it in.” No you didn’t. You didn’t think that. I understand you enjoyed me wasting $.42 and five minutes of my life to see whether or not you could come to the wedding, but at least man up and say, “Yeah. I’m an ass. Sorry.” The nice thing about calling everyone though is you really get to see who your friends are. Ian for instance didn’t send in his RSVP at the time of calling because he tried way too hard to come up with something funny to put on the RSVP.
A close friend of mine from high school, Theo’s sister also named Theo, didn’t RSVP. All through high school I considered her my best friend. We would often times talk on the phone late at night or somehow find a way to be in the same place at the same time and watch some asinine TV show together. I called her leading up to my engagement party and never got a response. I called her several times after the engagement and never got a response. I didn’t think much of it until I never received an RSVP from her. I called her the day I called everyone, and she was only person who never called back. Finally I texted her. She texted back five words: “Sorry. Can’t come. Family reunion.” I considered her my best friend and sure, we’ve drifted apart since college, but still, I would have gone out of the way to be at her wedding. Then I got to thinking about her and my relationship and realized she was never that honest with me. Maybe she was more important to me then I was ever important to her. She was the girl I liked to talk to when everything else got on my nerves, and I was just the pleasant fat guy who cheered her up when the assholes she dated spurned her. She would lie to me. She would hide things from me. I would tell her everything. It took eight years and someone too self-absorbed to send back a fucking RSVP to make me realize I’m done with that.
Another close friend of mine, Theo’s brother also named Theo, claimed to not have received an RSVP. He claimed this even though I called him personally to tell him to save the date. When I called him and apologized he didn’t receive an invitation (even though I knew he did) he told me he’d definitely be there. He didn’t show up. I’m not as upset about this though because from the minute he started telling people he wasn’t invited I knew he created the excuse he thought would justify his not coming no matter what he said later. That’s who he is.
It might be petty to focus on two people when several people did go out of their way to spend a holiday with us, but if you had asked me my two best friends in high school I would have said Theo and Theo. The least they could have done is send in the card as to not make my $.42 a waste.
While I may have been regressing into a psychological wreck, useless in all respects, and pissy with my friends, there were plenty of shining lights. For one, my future bride was amazing and did not ever get deterred from the end goal of throwing the best wedding celebration of all time. For two, my brother called once a week to make sure I was sane and doing okay.
This meant a lot. Let me explain my brother’s and my relationship. We make fun of stuff, drink, and play videogames together. When we were little we didn’t get along, partially because he looked like a mushroom and partially because I was too stupid to understand his jokes. I eventually understood his wit and realized he was an okay guy. He’s been a great brother who does a good job of keeping a family of stubborn bastards at ease with his aloof attitude and “lazy” approach at life. He’s been Theo a time or two in his life, but that hasn’t stopped him from living life and becoming a borderline responsible adult who everyone enjoys being around. He will someday be a best-selling and/or highly respected author. His writing is much better than mine. See.
For three, I was getting married! Dammit, that’s exciting. While I psyched myself into the weird what-if fears that come with a life-changing experience, nothing could change the fact I was one lucky dude. For four, I had a redemption project on my plate—the creation of the wedding slideshows.
Not being a big fan of projects, the wedding wore on me much more than it did Kelsey. I wanted a day of relaxation and to have a night of fun with my fiancé. I never expected the US Postal Service would deliver that wish. Dan, a college roommate, could not attend the wedding. For the record, he called about three days after the invites were sent out to let me know. That’s how you RSVP. Anyways, a long box showed up on our doorstep six days before the wedding that contained Rock Band for the Playstation 3. I won’t go into detail about the game, but just know it is awesome. Without gushing, let me explain why I will now replace the expression, “a gift from God,” with, “a gift from Dan.” This gift is exactly what Kelsey and I needed. Kelsey found it addicting and could back off some of the wedding stuff. She had completed it all anyway. She had started to get lost in the details. I could back off the strange mental malaise my brain had forced itself into.
We invited over a friend of ours, Nicole, who we knew would make a perfect lead singer because she has zero issues singing incredibly loud in front of anyone. When Nicole left, Kelsey and I continued to play the game for about an hour. The two of us sat together having fun, no wedding stuff, no one else, just her and me. It felt good. It felt right. For the first time, I stopped worrying about the worry and started being excited for the cause of it.
The week passed, details were taken care of. My biggest concern heading into the wedding was that Kelsey hadn’t slept in a month. She worked late into the night and nervous energy woke her up early. It didn’t help that little issues kept arising—our bus people never sent us the contract they promised (probably because they turned out to be useless), the rehearsal dinner invitation had some misspelled words and incorrect locations, the weather forecasts changed daily, we weren’t sure how to set up the wedding itself, we hadn’t packed for the honeymoon and had people coming into town in five minutes, and sadly, Theo and Veronica broke up.
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