The Wedding

This is a ridiculously long post, so I’ve broken it into multiple sections for you.

Andy and Lea’s wedding went off without a hitch, thank goodness. I meant to post after Friday night’s rehersal, but I got home so late and still had so much to do that I didn’t get a chance to until today. Friday night was the wedding rehersal, followed by the rehersal dinner.

Friday Night / The Rehersal

It’s amazing to me how well most weddings look compared to how badly most rehersals go. It’s kind of like a magic trick, you know? Once you learn the secret it’s easy to think that the trick wouldn’t fool a soul, but when you don’t know how a trick works they can be pretty convincing. Our rehersal Friday night consisted of a bunch of goofballs (Andy’s groomsmen) trying to figure out exactly where and in what order to stand in. The wedding coordinator was kind enough to place pieces of masking tape on the floor to remind us where to stand, but I wasn’t sure even that would help the lot of us. Our part was broken into bite-size commands for our tiny man-brains — walk in, don’t walk up the steps, walk up the steps, face the about-to-be-married couple, turn and face the audience, and at some point scoot back. We ran through everything once and after all the guys were thoroughly confused the rehersal was deemed a success. The bridesmaids had no problems picking up the maneuvers. I think women dream of the day they will get to participate in their friends’ weddings, while guys dream of creative ways to get out of the obligation. (I kid, I kid …)

Friday Night / Rehersal Dinner

After the rehersal the entire wedding party migrated to the Mustang community Center for some delicious food, provided by Zios. Susan and the kids skipped the rehersal but met us over at the rehersal dinner. Both kids have had simply unlimited amounts of energy from from being out of daycare over the past week. Being uprooted from their schedules has turned them both into little toots this week. The rehersal dinner was no exception; even before most people had finished eating Mason was doing handstands and rolling around on the floor with Morgan in tow. I know the kids are young but it’s still a little embarassing when you have seemingly no control over them. Susan and I finally decided the quickest solution was to just get them back home and so that’s what she did.

After dinner, while everyone else began decorating the hall for Saturday’s party, I tried out the sound system for the first time. The Community Center provided the speakers, microphone, and some of the necessary cables. I provided my laptop, a CD player (as a backup), my own mixing board, a mic stand, and a few other odds and ends. I was a little nervious as this was the first time I had connected “my stuff” up to “their stuff”, but fortunately everything worked swimmingly. In fact, as I began testing my music system people began singing and dancing and having such a good time that the night kind of evolved into an inpromptu party of its own. The decorating wrapped up around 10:30pm, and I got home about ten minutes after that.

(Side story. Some friends of mine from out of town planned a vacation this weekend that begins with a train ride leaving from OKC. They arrived at our house Friday night while Susan and I were at the rehersal dinner. When I got home the two of them were (barely) awake. We talked for a few minutes and then everyone went to bed.)

Saturday Morning / Pictures

Saturday morning began by taking Brian (Icebreaker) and Ginger down to the train station for an 8:25am departure. Then it was back to the house to finish up the playlist. By this point in time my music collection for the wedding had swelled to a ridiculous size. The reception was scheduled to run for four hours, but as I told Andy, should it run up to about 60 days in length, I had them covered. My main goal was to have every song they could possibly want. For example, I found compilations that included the top 100 songs from every year of the 1960’s and the 1980’s (that’s 2,000 songs right there). Of course I didn’t have everything everybody wanted, but more on that later.

Pictures were to begin at 11:45am with the wedding scheduled at 2pm. I arrived 15 minutes early, already wearing my tux. The picture taking didn’t start until around noon, but only took about half an hour to complete. By 12:30 we were cut loose until the wedding, which created a logistical problem for me as I live 15 minutes away from the church. I ended up driving home, catching a cat nap, and then driving back for our 1:30pm agreed upon arrival time.

Saturday Afternoon / The Wedding

All the groomsmen arrived basically on time give or take a few minutes. Larry (Andy’s dad) hung out in the bachelor’s cove with us while everyone got dressed. Apparently for both the photo shoot and the wedding I was the only person who got dressed at home and just slipped on the tuxedo jacket after getting out of the car. I thought that’s what you were supposed to do? (Shrug.) Nobody seemed particularly nervous (not even Andy). Andy’s groomsmen consisted of three firefighters (Mike D, Tommy, and his brother-in-law Kenny), his brother Matt, and myself. I don’t know if you know this or not but if you hang around firemen for more than five minutes eventually someone will begin talking about dead bodies. So while the six of us were standing out in the hallway waiting to be led into the chapel, everybody was discussing how many pedestrians they had seen get hit by cars. Right while Andy was telling us the story about how they had seen some guy on a bicycle get hit by a drunk driver one night after bowling, the pastor motioned for us to walk in. Remind me to ask Andy how that story ends.

The ceremony goes pretty well. Like dumb dogs we (the groomsmen) all walk to our respective pieces of masking tape on the floor and stand there. My only thought through most of the ceremony was to do what Matt does. Matt is Andy’s brother and, as the best man, was standing directly in front of me, next to Andy. So when Matt walked, I walked. When Matt turned, I turned. I suspect everyone behind me was doing the same thing, so had Matt screwed up he would have led us all astray. Fortunately, he didn’t.

So during the ceremony, we (groomsmen) are staring at the bridesmaids, when I notice the maid-of-honor is motioning something. I am an easily distracted person and so as I’m watching her I realize she is mouthing something about “the ring” and making a hand signal to someone in the audience, who then gets up and leaves the chapel. I begin to realize that the maid of honor has forgotten the wedding ring, and a race is on to find it before we get to the part where the preacher says, “do you have the ring?”, because the answer is going to be, “no I don’t.” Apparently the person who left the chapel was Lea’s mom, who returns and shrugs her shoulders as if to say, “I couldn’t find it.”

Now you have to realize at this point that in the entire place there are only about four people who realize what is going on — the maid of honor, the bridesmaid next to her, the bride’s mom, and me. So now in a sick way I’m watching wondering what’s going to happen. So then I hear the preacher ask, “do you have the ring?” The maid of honor leans over and says something and I’m not sure if they used a different ring or simply faked it, but I was standing three feet away and I couldn’t tell the difference. I asked Susan after the ceremony and she said she hadn’t noticed a thing and I doubt anyone else in the entire place noticed. Immediately after the wedding the maid of honor left crying and I’m sure she felt like she had ruined a moment or something but you know, these kinds of things are funny stories we can look back and laugh at in due time. If I know Andy and Lea (and I do) I’m sure they are laughing about it already. It will be one of those stories that they will remember for the rest of their lives. I felt bad about the girl crying and later when I saw her I patted her on the back and said it was okay but I could tell she had been crying.

Other than that, everything went great. The slideshow photo montage I made for the wedding went perfect. I’m not sure if this is a sign of trust or if it simply shows how little time Andy and Lea had before the wedding, but apparently during the ceremony was the first time they had seen the slideshow. I snuck a few pictures of Andy that I had lying around on the hard drive and everyone seemed to enjoy them. I was careful not to pick a bunch of pictures of just he and I together; I threw in one of Matt and Andy from Alison’s wedding, one of Matt, Andy, Kenny and myself from Andy’s bachelor party, and a few others. The cool thing about the slideshow software I’m now using is that the final product is on a DVD, so Andy and Lea can watch it in their home any time they want.

Saturday Evening / The Reception

So after the wedding was over we took a few more pictures and then I had to hightail it to the reception hall to get the music started. Matt’s father-in-law generously brought a CD of instrumental/piano pop songs, which I had softly playing in the background. My buddy Jeff was at the reception and he came over to the DJ booth to check out the setup. It was great to have somebody, anybody, standing next to me as I felt all eyes were on me.

Now neither Andy nor Lea nor myself have ever planned a wedding reception, so everything we scheduled was based off of plans we found on the Internet combined with Andy and Lea’s wishes. We came up with a loose schedule and so with my mic I could control the timing of the events. Pretty early in the reception the professional photographer (who was very nice) came and asked me what time things were happening and when I began telling her times she made a funny face and I immediately realized we hadn’t done things right. For example we had a 2 hour block of dancing before the garter removal and bouquet toss — the photographer said, “everyone will be gone.” With her advice I quickly rescheduled about half of the day’s events. Then she asked when it was going to be over and I said 7:30pm. She said they wouldn’t be there that long so she wanted to fake the bride and groom leaving, take pictures of that, and then have them re-enter. So now I’m panicing because here I have every minute of the evening written out in black Sharpie already and now we’re going to “wing it”. YIKES.

Apparently during all of the excitement I forgot that I hate talking on a microphone. So for the first few announcements, I did what any man would do — I made my wife do it. I was like, “do I say ‘ladies and gentlemen’ or ‘attention party guests’ or …” at which point Susan grabbed the mic and made announcements like the pro she is. I felt like a pansy but what can you do. Another lovely problem was that I didn’t have the phantom power turned on on my mixing board, which meant I had to turn the volume way up on the mix which occasionally caused it to SCREECH and SQUEAL loudly. It only happened two or three times but that was enough to be quite embarassing, let me tell you.

Eventually I got through the awkwardness of the first few announcements: the the cutting of the cake, bride and groom’s first dance, the bride and the father of the bride dance, the groom and his mother dance … there were a lot of special dances! Then we faked the exit, then they re-entered, then we started the dancing.

Now as I said before, I had tens of thousands of songs on my laptop for this event. If it was remotely popular over the past 50 years, I probably had it. So the first request I get is, “that one song from Ladder 49.” I’m like, “what song?” Mike D. says, “you know, that song called ‘Fire'”. I’m like, the one that goes, “Fiiiiiiiiire?” He says, “no, that’s Elmer Fudd.” So then I said, “well who sings it?” He says he has no idea, but he’ll find out.

So while Mike D. is off finding out who (other than Elmer Fudd) sings “Fire,” I discover that the library (within the community center) has free and open wi-fi access. I connect, using my laptop. Mike D. comes back and tells me it’s by the Ohio Players. Now, get this — while the music’s playing, I connect to my home machine, search for the song, find it, download it, copy it from my house to my laptop there at the reception, and play it. Talk about a high-tech DJ — let’s see Casey Kasum pull that off!

Once the music got started, I think everybody forgot about what a terrible speaker I am and began enjoying the afternoon. I front loaded the playlist with lots of 60’s and country stuff. Being a DJ gives you a sense of power, when you can play a particular song and get people up out of their chairs. It’s almost a game to see how many dance songs you can link together — Cotton Eyed Joe, followed by T-R-O-U-B-L-E, followed by Play that Funky Music White Boy …

I checked with the bride and groom as well as other people at the party, confirming playlists and song choices and sound levels and whatnot. From the feedback I got, I think everybody enjoyed themselves. I know a professional DJ could have done the job better but he would not have done it free-er. I hope Andy and Lea weren’t embarassed by any of the music or anything and feel like they got (at least) their money’s worth. Not every song went well. Matt requested “Come on Eileen” (the greatest party song of all time, he claims) and not only did people leave the dance floor but some people actually left the room and I got several “thumbs down” from people. But more often than not people seemed to enjoy the tunes. I discovered that 12-year-old kids enjoy making requests but most of them I could not fill — not because I didn’t have the music (hello, it’s ME!) but because I didn’t know if they would be appropriate wedding party songs or not (anything from Fergie is suspect). One of the kids asked for Thriller so I went with that, which both the kids and adults enjoyed.

At some point everybody involved realized that the party would not go the full four hours, as most everyone over 40 (except relatives) began trickling out. Andy called for the limo to come an hour early, but apparently they either didn’t get the call or couldn’t get there on time because they were almost half an hour late. By then so many had left that Andy and Lea didn’t feel a need to do the “last dance,” so instead we jumped to the last song, Elvis’ “A Little Less Conversation.” People danced, people hugged, people parted.

I was the very last person to leave the reception center. It took me quite a while to pack up. The only sign that a huge party had taken place were several stuffed trash cans and a lone piece of broccoli sitting on the floor. I flipping the lights off, shut the door, and headed home.

Congratulations Andy and Lea. I love you guys.