Wild Wedding Weekend, Day 2

I wanted to get some more stories and notes from the wedding weekend down before the Ebbinghaus effect kicks into gear and I forget all the good stuff...

I woke up Friday morning and Nick was already up and out of the room (yup, Nick got to share a double bed with his brother leading up to his wedding day), hitting the hotel gym for a morning workout. No relapsing allowed just days before the honeymoon, you know.

Somehow Dad managed to forget all his toiletries, underwear, socks, and tshirts at home. I thought his bag was rather light when bringing it up to the room the day before. I don't know how he managed to forget all that stuff, but he did. And now he had to go shopping. Unbeknownst to us, there was a giant Walmart 500 yards from the hotel, but we didn't know the area well. We ended up driving around Westport for half an hour before Dad stopped at some fancy clothes store and bought the world's most expensive pair of socks. Later, we came across a Walgreens, and he must have spent over 20 minutes in there, doing god knows what. After all the driving, the searching, and the shopping, Mom and I were ready to ring his neck.

Our next stop was the local Men's Wearhouse. Dad's tux fitted even worse than mine. While my problem was only a tight jacket, Dad's pants didn't even reach down to his ankles. With the pants pulled up to his natural wasitline, they looked like tuxedo capri pants. I wish I had taken a picture, because it was absurd how off his inseam measurements were. Also, Nick still hadn't bought shoes for the wedding. He wanted me to return my size 11's (which I couldn't wear anyway) for some size 12's.

By now it was lunchtime, so Dad, Mom, and I drove over to Emily's house, where her Uncle Ed was making everyone lunch for HIS birthday. It felt weird that was was preparing his own birthday meal (an amazing cold cut antipasto spread), but then he didn't eat, either! We hung out at the Hall house, chowing down, getting to know members of the other family, and foling the wedding programs.

After lunch, I went with Nick who had some last-minute shopping to do. And with his wallet and credit cards still in NYC, he needed my credit card and my help. We shot over to the local J Crew- he hadn't picked out a wedding day gift for Emily yet. We looked around for a few minutes and decided on a swimsuit and sandals. Without me, I know Nick would have spent 20 minutes trying to decide which one to get, but with me there, I was quick to pick out my favorite, offer some best man opinions, and then I searched the baskets of sandals for the correct size and color. Boom, in and out in no time flat.

We had to clear up some confusion with Nick's friends coming up to CT on the MetroNorth train- apparently in his directions email to everyone, he told them to get off at the wrong stop, a stop a little further away and without any cabs. We quicly sent out a mass phone text to as many people as we could think of, but most ended up getting out at the wrong stop. They all got to the hotel or the dinner on time. They just had to think craftily or hunt down a cab. In the pouring rain.

When we returned to the hotel, I think I chowed down on some crackers and Trader Joe's black bean salsa (guess it was a good idea for Mom to bring along some hotel room food after all) and pretty soon it was time to get dressed for the rehearsal and the proceeding dinner. Finally, it was time to bust out my first suit, a light-weight blue pinstriped suit from Polo that Mom gave me for Christmas. I even still had the shirt she gave it to me with in the plastic wrap. I ended up wearing a brand new outfit- suit, shirt, socks, underwear, tshirt, shoes, all new. The tie was the only holdover.

We got a little rushed when Nick and I had to put his grommsmen gifts together. He gave everyone a metal red sox bucket filled with an expensive bottle of bourbon (which everyone was ecstatic about receiving) and a personally inscribed space pen. It was raining heavily at this point as we went out to Dad's van to retrive all the items. We got locked out of the back door of the hotel- our key just wouldn't open it- so we had to walk around the entire building to the front lobby. Great time! We assembled all the gifts together, loaded them on a luggage cart and brought them back down into the car so he could pass them out after the dinner.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, we collectively realized that nobody knew how to get from the Norwalk hotel to the church in Westport. Not even Nick. He started yelling, going red in the face, and doing his angry-man dance. For the second night in a row we were already running behind and now we had no idea how to get to where we were going. My rehearsal dinner invitations, which Mom left in the hotel room anyway, only had directions from the church to the restaurant.

My Aunt Patty came to the rescue and she said she knew how to drive to the church, so we all followed her. She ended up bringing us to the restuarant, not the church. I was driving my Dad's van at the time while Nick was driving our Mom's car, but I'm pretty sure his head exploded at this point. We were all on our cellphones with each other, trying to figure out where we were going. Since I had written out directions from the church to the restaurant, I was able to work backwards and navigate us the rest of the way.

We got there a half hour late, but you know what? The Halls were running even later than us, and they knew where they were going! We saved face bigtime, and ended up being the first group to arrive, so all that tension washed away in a few seconds.

I always thought weddings were pretty straightforward, and perhaps a lot of them are pretty cut and dry, but ours did not fall into that category. We all NEEDED that rehearsal, and probably could have used another run-through thereafter. Everyone was excited and anxious to get to the dinner, kick back, have a few drinks, and tell some stories, but first we had to figure out where to stand, where to walk, when and where to enter, who escorts whom, who does what and when, etc. It was a lot to take in, and Emily's mom was still making decisions with the pastor throughout the rehearsal.

With the actual rehearsal checked off the to-do list, it was time for dinner at The Three Bears Restaurant. But not before helping Emily's dad set up the sound system and projector for his "Nick and Emily through the years" slide show. As best man, and with both my parents just kicking back and enjoying the evening, it was my job to make sure the night ran smoothly. I waited out in the parking lot for Emily's dad while everyone was inside feasting on appetizers and having drinks , and of course Bill was the last to arrive. We carried all the equipment inside, and with Krister's help, we decided where to place it and set it up.

We had a big, boisterous crowd of 65 for dinner. The Three Bears was one of those old, old restuarants that have been around forever, and we had the main dining room all to ourselves. A few minutes into dinner, it was time to start the toasts. I had barely gotten started on my shrimp and pasta dish, but I was hosting the event and in charge of organizing the toasts, calling people up, etc.

We thought my Dad was going to do one of his infamous poems, but he surprised us with a short, heart-felt story about Nick when he was a little kid, and how Nick wanted to eat the same diet as Dad while our Dad was recuperating from something major. Oscar, forgoing a slide show, made a color-copied sheet of photos he distributed to everyone while talking about Nick and how each photo captured a certain part of his personality or history. My Aunt Patty came up with my Aunt Julie and they sang a couple oldies with re-written lyrics about Nick and Emily. The memorable/creepy part was she had life-size masks made of Nick and Emily from some photographs she had taken of them last summer. All of a sudden there were 4 Nicks and 4 Emilys dancing and singing. Nick put on an Emily mask, and Emily put on a Nick mask, so when they kissed and mock-made out in front of everyone, it messed with my head.

Emily's dad, Bill, ended the toasts and presentations with an Imovie slide show comprised of pictures of Nick and Emily from when they were little tykes to thew present day. A wonderful 6 1/2 minute show, and a perfect way to end the night (Bill was going to put the slide show on a loop at the reception the next day, but he forgot to bring the DVD with him. They had the projector set up, ready to go and everything, and no disc. That's one of those, "Oh, wells.") The dinner was so much fun, it was hard to believe there was still a wedding to throw the next day.

The only negative of the night was my dinner being taken away before I had a chance to eat it. I was up MCing the toasts so I never had the chance to finish it. Overzealous waiters kept coming by my table trying to take my plate away, but I'd catcg them before they could and shoo them away, but eventually they snatched it up when I wasn't looking. When I told Nick, Mom, and Dad, this, they got some waiter's attention and had them bring out some prime rib for me. They were basically, like, "Yeah, we just paid $6,000 for this dinner, so you're gonna get some food."

Back at the hotel, we had this room reserved for all of just off the mian lobby stocked with food and beer (the first night, Nick and I went downstairs to check it out and came upon 2 random businessmen sitting there enjoying our Coronas and Heinekens. Once they got the hint that they belonged to us and, no, the giant tub of beer wasn't free for all guests, they sheepishly put their empties on the serving table and left without even a "sorry" or any outward sign of acknowledgement. Fabulous manners we have nowadays, right?). I brought down the private Sam Adams stash from the hotel room for reinforcements, and all of Nick's friends settled in down there for a few late-night drinks, and we started sharing our best Nick stories from yesteryear. This was exactly the one thing the bachelor party lacked- a hearty "bull session" and a mini Nick roasting.

A lot of new stories and old classics were shared- one highlight including Nick's roommate recounting their NYU dorm days and how they and their suitemates, with such limited privacy, would masturbate in their dorm room. He described his "Spiderman" technique to us all, and I think some guys actually started tearing up they were laughing so hard. Nick shared his Patched the Cat story, and for the rest of the weekend, all of us were yelling out. "Patches!" in my Mom's low, raspy voice.

With all the rain, there was no par-3 golf to be played the morning of the wedding, so we all stayed up late, knowing dear Nick would be a married man in less than half a day's time.