Went to a wedding this weekend for the first time in at least 3 years. (I can't remember whose wedding we went to last.....it's been that long). The wedding was for a co-worker of mine and Janice's from Iowa who moved to Cincinnati; we played golf together a few times and played poker, but that's about it.
1) I am a baby when it comes to weddings. I am not a great friend of the groom, and neither Janice nor I know the bride, but when that bride walks down the aisle, I get all choked up. What's wrong with me?
2) We have a new record! The procession started at 5:31, and the bride and groom exited at exactly 5:53. A 22 minutes ceremony - I believe that's a new record of mine. On the flip side, the longest wedding was a Catholic affair that lasted over 90 minutes (and I can't name the person invoved, since he maybe reading this blog......)
We should blog about different wedding stories. The stories from my college roommate's wedding in Rhode Island would be tough to beat on the weirdness scale.
3) It was a fairly large wedding (~250 people), and since we didn't know anyone, I played the "match the wedding attendee to a celebrity" game. Orson Bean was in attendance (any Match Game or To Tell The Truth aficiando should know who he is), as well as Nancy Pelosi. The lady who walked down the aisle who looked liked Ms. Pelosi led to this exchange:
Me (whispering, to Janice): "Gees, she's a dead ringer for Nancy Pelosi!"
(wait for it....)
Janice: "Who's Nancy Pelosi?"
And Janice claims to listen to NPR every morning. Don't they say the "Hail Mary" every morning on "Morning Edition", except they substitute "Nancy" for "Mary"?
4) Always trust your wedding hosts to pair you up at a table with somebody you can relate to. We were a bit skiddish of the reception, since we knew nobody (outside of the few guys I met at the poker nights). At the reception, after standing by ourselves for 10 minutes, we saw another couple by themselves as well; we struck up a conversation, and yes, they were friends of the groom from P&G as well, who happened to be assigned at our table. We had a table of 8 P&Gers at our table and hit it off quite well. Always trust the host- they know what they are doing.
5) If you are a maid of honor or best man, don't include inside jokes in your speech. 95% of the audience has no freakin idea what you are talking about. And if you do decide to do this, don't blame the audience for their lack of a sense of humor.
"One thing to say... Waterboat poker! Ha Ha Ha!"
(silence)
"Boy,we need a few more drinks in this room!"
No. No good.
6) When the bar has a) Killians on tap, and b) you order a vodka tonic, and the bartender actually says "Smirnoff or Ketel One", then it's a good wedding. Maybe I've just been at too many midwestern weddings.
7) Eric's rule on the dance floor: When the black man claps his hands, you clap your hands. Automatic rhythm.
8) Should the band play the long version of "Papa was a Rolling Stone" at a WEDDING? I mean, this isn't the best song to play at this occasion. Reminds me of the birthday party we had for my high school girlfriend in Sacramento..... her house actually burned down 2 days before the party. The band at the party started playing "Burning Down the House" by the Talking Heads. There was a mad rush to the stage to get them to stop.
9) I would comment about the 55-year old guy at the wedding who had too much to drink and is hogging the dance floor with his Elaine Benes-like dance moves......
but I realize that in 15-20 years, that's going to be me. I can accept that.
10) Who will be in the next wedding that I attend? .... hmmm... let's see.... think, think.....who do I know that is:
a) not married
b) has a girlfriend and
c) is in love?
Nope, nobody I can think of.
7 comments:
You better hope to god that this post is off the blog by Sunday.
Endless amounts of reception stories but the top two actual wedding ceremonies are below:
-Set over/under with the wedding party for Lee's Catholic wedding. I believe I set it at 55 minutes. Everyone took the under, and it looked as if it was going to hit, but a late break to light the Virgin Mary candle put it just over. A group ahhhh from everyone except for me was just classic.
-Was at a wedding in Carrol County with Amy for one of her friends and it was outside and was just soooo hot and humid. Everyone was so pissed, and who did I see come to do the ceremony? The same guy who did Jay and Laura's wedding. A hired gun. Wasn't as quick as he was with Jay and Laura, but well under 30 minutes. I tried to make eye contact with him during the ceremony just to give him a thumbs up.
For the best wedding reception stories, I honestly have a solid one-two for each one that I have been to. What has escalated throughout the weddings during the years with my friends have been the after parties. Once it was just go to the bar and have a night cap. Now its going out for an all night drinkfest with buses and shit.
I think I've got a winner of a reception story. Derek and Amy were going to a wedding with Amy's roommate who needed a date after a recent and sudden breakup. So I happily obliged and went along. Being upset about the breakup Amy's roommate left early and I stayed to go home with Derek and Amy. Well, I proceeded to get nice and drunk for the rest of the reception. As we're getting ready to leave we're making the rounds saying goodbye to everyone. As Amy introduces us to her mom and her mom's neighbor, who were also in attendance, I suddenly lost the ability to stand upright on my own.
This was not a quick, drunken fall to the ground, but more that slow loss of equilibrium where you feel it happening but just can't do anything about it as you slowly keel over and eventually fall when gravity takes hold. While making every attempt to catch myself on the table, I managed to miss it and fall with my head directly in Amy's mom's neighbor's lap. Good times.
my best wedding story involves the return of my beligerent self (if you believe that it actually ever went away). i was at a wedding with suze shortly after we got engaged. the wedding was here in pburgh and i decided to drink white russians as my featured drink of the evening. i must have had about 50 of them.
when we got to the after party at the hotel bar, i proceeded to puke in the corner. 4 of us were sitting around a table and apparently, in mid-conversation, i turned my head ever so slightly and chucked a ton of stuff. the way its been described, it apparently looked like a scene from 1) a bad horror movie, 2) a cartoon, or 3) some silly sketch comedy land where vommit runs out of someone for seemingly minutes.
but that's not the fun part.
after a friend somehow convinced the bartender that i wasn't the one that yaked in the corner, i was given more booze.
the wife-to-be wasn't very happy and she escorted me to the bathroom to freshen up. i sat in a chair and proceeded to yell at people who looked at me wrong as they entered the toilets. then i passed out. when i woke up, i had no idea where i was.
i stormed (or stumbled) back to the bar and found my fiance talking to one of her high-school friends. whom, i had recently learned, she had screwed a couple times in the recent past (not on my watch - but recent within 5 years or so).
starting with being furious that she left me alone in the state i was, i then turned the anger toward the fact that she was within the vicinity of a cock she'd known intimately before.
i went off. something to the effect of "you obviously don't care for me that much if you're willing to leave me in a strange place by myself...why don't you just go fuck HIM again. i don't care." this of course, was said in front of many of her high school friends, many of whom had no idea that they'd bumped uglies as they'd decided to keep it amongst themselves since it would hurt feelings or harm relationships or something like that. quite embarrassing for them, i believe.
she actually handed the ring back to me that night. which, in the state i was in, i happened to lose. to this day, i can't remember where or how it was found. i've been told it was something simple like just in another pocket that i hadn't checked. but i was so drunk that night that i've blocked that part from my memory. every time i think of this story, i can never remember again where we found it. whatever.
so, i don't know if this story was in the style of comparing weddings as intended, but it is, by far the most memorable one i've attended. besides my own, of course. which surprisingly enough, was in fact to the same person in my story above. amazingly, we're able to laugh at it now. or at least...i do. i still think she's annoyed at me for it.
Dudeman- I totally forgot about that. I just remember turning around, thinking you were next to me and I just see a group of people around Amy's mom with you stumbling trying to get up. God that was funny.
Laura- I thought you puked in the elevator? I just remember waking up the next morning and honestly not being able to see. I felt bad for Neil and Lee who I was staying with that had to go to a breakfast the next morning. Easily the second most drunk I have ever been, next to my b-day. I think we stole chess pieces from some bar as well? What about the after party at Kerry's wedding? I think I ended up drinking beer from an actual trash bag with two of Kerry's friends.
Curr- why have we not heard this story before. Classic!!!
"Reminds me of the birthday party we had for my high school girlfriend in Sacramento..... her house actually burned down 2 days before the party. The band at the party started playing "Burning Down the House" by the Talking Heads. There was a mad rush to the stage to get them to stop."
THAT is funny.
I was at a wedding the past summer for a college frat buddy from Roanoke, who got married in Baltimore, and obviously married up, as the reception was at the top of the WTC. Open bar was served by giggling high school age girls, who had no problem with loading up on drinks; at times letting me pour drinks for myself. After 5-10 glasses of wine and 5-10 bourbons, dinner consisted of eating the shrimp cocktails of the entire table before being seated. After dinner dancing consisted of a circle singing "You Never Called Me By My Name". As a final surprise (nail --> coffin) the groom busted out 4L of Jagermeister, for a communal toast to pull the curtain on the night's memories. Being I hate Jager, my sippin' style was subject to the ridicule of the grandmother of the groom, who smoked the shot like the octagenerian was racing death.
Kudos also go to the "first guy to get married after college", which always results in flasks being passed in the church, and the pews resembling a three-line hockey shift, based on the goons present.
I always go back to when my old roommate got married @ 2001. I asked his mother if there were going to be shots at the wedding. She had no idea what a shot was, so I explained the premise of straight alcohol with no mixer. Once an understanding was reached, she flatly stated, "why would anyone EVER want to do that?"
I don't know if it was clear enough, but the band at the party was completely innocent and had no clue of what happened to my girlfriend's house.
Anyway, the Rhode Island wedding was the wedding of my roommate for 4 years to his bride, one year behind us at Case. He was a physics major, and at that time he was working at Lawrence Livermore Lab in CA.
1) (channel Gene Rayburn) "Rhode Island is SO small...
(audience): "How small is it?"
Rhode Island is so small that even though the wedding was in Rhode Island, the rehearsal dinner was in Massachusetts.
2) The time of the wedding: 10 am. I have never heard of a formal morning wedding before or since.
(The rationale was that "you get a lot better deal on a lunch reception!". Do I need to mention that it was a cash bar?)
3) I was part of the wedding party, so after the wedding we departed to take pictures.
The wedding pictures were taken in a funeral home.
4) We got lost on the way back to the reception hall. I believe the wedding party arrived at the reception 45 minutes later than expected.
5) Back at the hotel after the reception (it was about 3:30 pm - what a weird feeling. You've already attended a wedding and a reception, and it is the middle of the afternoon!), one of my other college roommates ran into a high school buddy of his on a road trip. It was completely coincidental.
This guy's road trip consisted of visiting each Presidential grave. A noble quest, no?
6) The groom and the bride gave everybody their room # on the night of their wedding. Yes, they finally gave in and joined the party.
7) The party that night consisted of a lot of Case grads (groom/bride undergrad friends) and physics majors/PhD students from Livermore/CA.
One of the highlights of the gathering was that one of the physics guys put Schrodinger's equation on his bare chest in mascara.
Details of why this was done are a bit fuzzy.
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