The Wedding

You could probably tell by the description of the honeymoon, but my recollection of wedding related events is getting progressively worse. When I initially started the blog, sometime during the third week of July, my brain worked better. Now we near the end of August’s first trimester, and the details have faded. This will make the story of the ceremony and reception all the more difficult to explain because they all three passed in a blur. Besides most of you reading this attended the event anyway. Because of this, you are well aware that I lost my ring two hours after the ceremony and stopped the dance so everyone could look for it. You are even more aware of how great a dancer I am in a fedora. You all remember Kelsey’s Dad gave an amazing and touching speech and how my brother’s humility and self-deprecation granted him the ability to follow him up and be both funny and poignant himself. You remember Ian breaking down before he got a word out and Jeff using the word “parenthetically.” You remember Anne coming out of nowhere and making the best speech of all. You remember the weather was nice unless you sat in the sun. You know Damon conducted a gorgeous and thoughtful ceremony. You know the Old 97’s song “Question” is the perfect song for someone to play while a gorgeous bride walks down the aisle. You had fun drinking margaritas and beer in your casual clothing. You thought I did a great job creating the slideshow videos. You saw the security guard steal both a plate of food and eight cupcakes. You realized Justin didn’t take any spoons. You really liked the old, wooden lodge where the wedding was held. You wondered why more people don’t have casual weddings. You enjoyed the delicious hamburgers. You danced and drank your fill. You thought, “That was the greatest wedding ever.”

Let me explain some of what you didn’t see. Let me explain what I remember.

It’s a surreal feeling standing in front of your family and friends. In reality, unless Kelsey or I win some sort of special award, that will be the only time that all the people close to us from all walks of life will be in the same area at the same time.

I mentioned in my wedding toast something to the effect of, “Without Damon this day wouldn’t have taken place,” and, “it’s no secret this day was going to happen before and didn’t.” Most of you know Kelsey and I were previously engaged and planned to be married in June of 2006. Obviously that did not happen. After a brief bout with what I call my “Dark Period,” Kelsey and I broke up for about two months. I won’t go into detail about what brought me to my Dark Period or what brought me out of it—that’s the crux of the best-selling novel I’m currently writing. I will say that there would have been no way Kelsey and I would have gotten back together if I didn’t know Damon. I mentioned earlier I don’t really know how to react to situations in the present. The day after the break-up I spoke with Damon about what to do with the ring, how I should act now, I hadn’t really ever been a single adult before, etc. He told me, “Hold onto the ring for the time being. You never know, you might want to give it back to her someday. Obviously you don’t feel that way now, but you might. Also, don’t do anything stupid.” Because of his advice, I held onto the ring, which I eventually did want to give back to her and didn’t do anything too stupid—at least nothing stupid that involved other people. In hindsight sitting around my apartment eating Chicken McNuggets and drinking whiskey wasn’t smart, but it wasn’t the stupid Damon referred to in his message.

Damon himself was my first partner at my first job out of college. When my boss originally described him to me as a, “former Baptist minister,” I thought, “Oh good, I have a Bible beating fool for a partner.” I was wrong. Damon and I soon became good friends, meeting at Starbucks for the occasional five-hour chat session. Something that bothers me about some weddings is how the officiate clearly doesn’t know the marrying couple. He/she will make a few broad references to the couple he/she met in two “get to know you” sessions, but other than that, the officiate may not know the couple as anything other than faces of a congregation. It was awesome to have someone who played a pivotal part in our relationship perform our ceremony.

They say three things go wrong at every wedding. “They” are the primarily Asian women who blog on the weddingbee.com, a website Kelsey lived on for nine months.

Our first: The chairs did not show up as planned.

The second: The bus service we hired (JoHannes Bus Service out of Rock Island if anyone is interested) was terrible. The bus driver was rude to all of our guests and didn’t bother letting anyone in the wedding party know that his last ride back to the hotel was to be his last ride back to the hotel. This left about forty drunken people, four sober people, and zero cars at the Lodge we could no longer enter.

Our third: The DJ ruined my funny. I hate wedding clichés. I do. If what I’m about to describe was used at your wedding feel free to get angry but know I don’t really care. My least favorite of all the clichés is when someone gives a speech and does some sort of hackneyed activity that proclaims the bride’s newly granted superiority to the husband. Generally a bridesmaid or a groomsmen does this during a toast. The Toaster has the husband put his hand on top of the woman’s hand. The Toaster then says, “Well New Husband, this will be the last time you’ll ever have the upper hand.” Hilarity! I’m in tears just typing about it. Luckily, all of our toasts avoided using clichés. I then wrapped up the toasts with a toast of my own. I rocked the mic like a vandal. At the end of the toast I made a joke that made everyone laugh because I said the word “asshole” unexpectedly. Now everyone could drink and dance. Then our damn DJ went and ruined it all! Before he would start any music, he brought Kelsey and I on stage and made us say, “Two things. Husband, you’ll say something you’ll say over and over again over the years and Kelsey, you’ll say something you’ll never say again.” He made Kelsey tell me I was right and told me to tell Kelsey I’m sorry. Ha ha! The DJ, with absolutely no permission granted by anyone, tried to ruin the wedding! Luckily I lost my ring and brought back the fun. That could have been a disaster.

Most people say you don’t remember anything from your wedding, and you won’t have time to eat. This is not true. I ate an entire meal. I am a fast eater, but really, no one came up to ask questions or pass congratulations while I ate. If they did, I could see why it would be difficult to finish a meal, but they didn’t. If this happened at your wedding, and you didn’t have time to eat, you have rude friends.

As for memories, I have a few. Some of these memories actually occurred at the post-wedding hotel party, but let’s use creative license one last time and throw them all together. The timelines of memories don’t matter.

I remember at the end of the night when Dallas started to pass around a giant bottle of wine on the dance floor. After passing off the bottle, I noticed Theo had one-fourth a bottle of tequila. I asked him if he planned to pass that around. He said, “Nope. It’s for me.” Already drunk at this point, he drank the remains of the tequila. Then he died. It was sad. We eulogized him.

My sister wore a patriotic headband.

Theo’s cousin whom I didn’t think knew what alcohol was, stood behind me at the bar, swayed back and forth, wrapped his tie around his head, and asked me to order him a strawberry margarita. I did.

My sister and I shared a shot of tequila.

April told me that her and Nick, April’s husband, “somehow got a hotel room with a hot tub.” I told April that at one point in my life I had a fantasy of sexing her in a hot tub on my wedding night, so I’m glad someone will get the chance. Nick looked at his drunken wife and said, “She might not be conscious later.” I told him that was never part of the fantasy.

My sister, thirteen others, and I shared another shot of tequila.

I danced to Soldier Boy better than probably anyone else has before.

Hampton put on silver pants and a flame cowboy shirt and did an amazing dance that ended in the splits.

My Uncle Scott took the fedora off my head and put it on his. He quickly realized I wore the fedora as a sweatband, grimaced, and put the fedora back on my head.

I talked to Dallas and his girlfriend Jamie about all sorts of relevant topics. Three minutes later as I talked to Theo’s cousin, I got punched in the back of the head. I turned around to see Hampton standing there, looking happy as can be. Instead of punching him back, I explained to him that he couldn’t punch the groom on his wedding day. He told me Dallas told him to punch me for saying, “Transformers was a good movie,” or something like that. I explained to him how Dallas misquoted me. Three minutes later, Hampton punched Dallas in the back of the head. My brother, quick-tempered and drunk, turned around and punched Hampton about six times, hard, in the back of the head. In the game of “Trading Punches,” I won via delegation. No one will ever give me a black eye again.

But what I remember most was how happy everyone seemed. While Kelsey and I gracefully twirled about on the dance floor we’d see her work buddies smiling and laughing, we’d see my current work buddies drinking and laughing, we’d see my high school buddies drinking, smiling, and laughing, we’d see everyone we knew or cared about care-free and relaxed. We were only two years removed from breaking up and no one seemed to care. I say that because any couple that is on, then off, then on-again wonders what people will think. Everyone shared in our accomplishment. If they were too intimidated by my White Boy Shuffle and stayed away from the dance floor, they seemed happy elsewhere. For a guy who up until that point only knew how to feel euphoria anticipatorily or retroactively, it felt great to look into the crowd, see his bride, and experience a moment of pure joy.