Friday - Only 1 day remains!!!
So I knew there was a big day ahead of me as I was informed as much by the groom the night before when he and the bride decide to cut the shenanigans short and go home at 10:30. That notwithstanding, I agreed to help the groom pick up tuxes and set up the reception area during the next day starting at 9:30, I figured it was the least I could do for one of my best friends on the most important day of his life, right? Right.
Also on this day was the rehearsal dinner and the offcial start to the weekend for all those suckers who did not take the entire week off like yours truly. This start to the weekend promised the arrival of even more friends and the start of much more shenanigans after the important things like rehearsal dinners were over.
Here is how the day went down:
8:32 - The groom calls, I glance at the phone, notice it is not 9:30 and promptly silence the ringer and head back to sleep.
9:00 - The groom calls again, this time I decide to answer "You're early." Apparently, when you are only a day away from your wedding and you have about a million things to do you tend to want to get an early jump on things....who knew?
9:28 - The groom arrives to pick me up so we can (get some coffee) make some last minute adjustments to the slide show, pick up tuxes, etc. With my friend in tow we head to the coffee shop.
9:45 - Arrive at the coffee shop where before any editing is done, I get a preview of the slideshow which contains pictures of both bride and groom from their early years to present, which I assure was quite awesome. It is quite amazing that a face someone makes when they are 12 they can still make EXACTLY the same face at age 24. What is also quite awesome is learning the inner workings of PowerPoint. With the expertise of our friend we were able to make the cue slides "pop" with a multitude of accent colors. Excellent work.
10:41 - We leave the coffee shop and head to the tux shop to pick up our tuxedos. The drive to the tux shop gives me two thoughts, could I pull off wearing a vest in every day life? It is the same as a sweater vest right? And I hope everything fits.
10:57 - I try on my tux which leads me to a few thoughts that I will list out in bullet point format
2. Wow, JFK pose or not I look REAL good in this tux, point 1 for the groom for the good tux choice.
3. Actually, this vest looks like it might be just a bit too big. I wonder if they have another one.
This is when the day really started to take a fun turn. So as is common knowledge, or so I thought, most weddings are held on Saturday's. So it would stand to reason that most people would pick up their tuxes the day before (Friday) so as to not add to any of the craziness of the day itself. This wedding was apparently alone in that logic because there was only one single, solitary person at the tux shop. ONE PERSON!!! The line was at least 10 people long. So after finally getting the girls attention she said she would call the other shop that was "just a few minutes away" and have the vest ready.
I asked the groom if it was acceptable to take the time to get this, and as it was only about 11:45 or and we were a little ahead of schedule he said everything should be fine. After waiting about another 15 minutes for the lady to call and make sure the vest would be waiting we set out to the other store.
12:01 - We set off to find the other store. The groom knows the general vacinity of where it is but not necessarily exactly how to get there. Thank God yours truly has an iPhone and can help out in these situations. Unfortunately, the iPhone does not take into account exactly everything in cities, such as construction and sometimes even one way streets. Note to Apple: such things need to be fixed....is there an app for that?
12:51 - After much driving, a few wrong turns, and a lot of frustration from the groom, we finally arrive at the second tux shop. This site had the right idea as there was more than one person at this location. We got in, got the vest (fit perfectly) and continued on the the recption place.
1:33 - Arrive at the reception place close to on time. We unload everything from the groom's car including two of the largest bags of fortune cookies I have ever seen and more chocolate covered pretzels than any party should have, although very tasty (a little backstory on the pretzels: The week leading up to the wedding I contacted the bride at work asking how everything was going to which she replied by forwarding me all the emails related to the pretzels. Apparently, there are more options for chocolate pretzels than one would ever care to know about and in the planning of this wedding every one of those options was explored. The final result being three different types of pretzels (chocolate, white chocolate, and regular) all put into two bowls at the end of the bar. I am not sure how many people ate the pretzels but the groom assured me that it took up at least 15 hours to get the pretzels from inception to reception, a classic example of how it is easy to get wrapped up in small details in a wedding. But you know what, as a guest I would not have had the wedding without the pretzels!)
It was up to the groom and I to stock the bowls with pretzels but the worst thing about stocking that many pretzels is that its hard not to eat them, which led to me getting chastised by the groom for eating too many :( Apparently they were reserved for the ACTUAL wedding reception, again, who knew? As I tried to sneak a few more pretzels some slight crumbs fell to the floor, at which point the groom notified me that I had to pick up each one as they would not be sweeping again before the reception. I had no problem doing such things as there were only a few crumbs.
This leads into my next smart move while helping set up. The couple had decided on an idea for signing the guest book involving fortune cookies, which necessitated two very large bags of fortune cookies. In an attempt to fill the jar I sent about 1/4 of the bag sailing to the ground which incidentally decided to shatter and scatter shards of fortune cookie everywhere prompting me to dive for cover as if fortune cookie shards were shrapnel (what I was really getting cover from was the scowl I was sure to get from the groom for my stupidity). This did not get a very good look from the groom, double :(. I assured him I would find a broom and clean it up, which I did and helped to finish the setup and be on our way.
2:42 - Back to my friends house where I was staying with a solid two hours to get ready for the Rehearsal dinner that was to begin at 5. Thus begins the present fiasco. Somehow, at the house where I was staying there was two friends and two people actually in the wedding party and not a one of us knew where the couple was registered. Is this even possible? Does this make me a bad friend? How did I not ask this? How did we wait till the day before? And for those who are not familiar with how registries work, the couple makes a list of what they want that the store keeps track of and crosses off what others buy.
This makes buying a wedding present the day before the equivalent of waiting till the day before prom to get a date. Four guests combined to get them a set of barbeque tongs and an industrial package of twisty ties for a combined total of $14.75? That is the equivalent of asking the girl with braces, an acne problem, and rocking the side pony at about 100 lbs. overweight to the prom and hoping to have a good time. So needless to say, we had a gift dilemma.
After a little over an hour of debating we finally decided on a gift, a surprise of which I will not divulge in case the bride or groom are reading this.
4:30 - After a shower we are ready to head to the rehearsal, which leads to the dinner afterwards, and then leads to some crazy shenanigans. Tonight I will not be denied my shenanigans!!!
4:45 - Make it to the Church for the rehearsal. Wait a tic...am I the first one here? I am not even getting married, really? I was the first one there, but it was ok cause I was rocking out a sweet tie the bride mandated I wear.
After walking around a bit I see the brides father, after a little chit chat he offers to buy me a drink at the bar across the street Milo's, that has a full fledged bocce garden....yes, a bocce garden. As we started to walk over, others showed up and the drink got postponed, the brides father promised me a raincheck on the drink for later.
5:07 - The rehearsal begins.
The Church was amazing and the rehearsal went off great. The only other comment I will make are there are some words or phrases that come up during a rehearsal that, suffice it to say, can create a chuckle or two. That's all I'm gonna say.
6:00 - We head to the dinner which is at a very good Italian Restaurant. I was told to get the lasagna but as I do not like lasagna I ordered the Chicken Parmesan, and let me tell you it was absolutely delicious. We all had a couple of drinks along with dinner, the grooms father gave an excellent speech and the dinner was done. The couple decided not to go out and rest up for the biggest day of their lives...whatever. Just gave the rest of us cause to get into some serious shenanigans....as I said before, I will not be denied my shenanigans this night.
8:37 - So the plan for the evening had been constructed, we were all to meet the rest of our friends who were in town at a bar of which I cant remember the name and cant remember where in STL it was, details which were not important as we were to meet up with friends we haven't seen in a long time. This should be fun.
9:14 - As the plan was to meet at this bar a little after 10 we decided to head back to the bar down the street from my friends house as the skee ball machine was calling our names. Before this night the 400 point barrier had not been breached, but not only was that our goal, we were shooting for 500. A tall order indeed. So after spending far too much money the goal was accomplished, by none other than yours truly....a score of 530!!!! The picture above was supposed to show the score but the screen switched before the picture could be taken. Some cry foul at this but I assure you, it happened, I have two witnesses to prove it.
10:07 - We receive word that the rest of our friends will be arriving at the bar shortly and we decide to make our way there.
10:40 - Arrive at the bar. It was very good to see all the friends who live in other places that I don't get to see often, some of which I haven't seen since college. Upon arrival the fist thing we do is get a shot and a drink, it just seemed like the best idea.
After a while the Jose Cuervo girls happened to be at the bar this night and finally made their way to our table. They just GAVE us all free shots of cuervo. This whole process I never understood, dont get me wrong, I took my shot, enjoyed it, and pocketed the free shot glass, but why go to a bar and just give free shots/shot glasses? I understand giving free stuff if you buy a shot from them but just giving it away? Whatever, we all enjoyed them. There were also a few extra which prompted my friend to have about 5 more shots, as if they were going out of style. Needless to say we were well on our way.
1:37 - The next event was what really topped off the night. In Missouri bars can stay open till 3 o'clock in the a.m. However, a special license is required for such things, so in STL not all bars have this license (unlike KC where they all have it...reason #387 why KC is better tha-nevermind) So anyway, as the bar we were at closed at 1:30, our shenanigans had to move elsewhere. This is when we decided to move to a bar which shall remain nameless but I will say was...how do I put this...not exactly my scene. However, we were all feeling good at that point and rolled to this place anyway.
What caught my eye upon entrance into this bar was a sight that changed my life. There were a lot of tall people in this bar, many that were taller than I am and yet one person stood out above all else (literally, above all else). I immediately felt like Garth from Wayne's World as I was nearly pancaked by the beauty of this woman. When I came to and heard "Dream Weaver" playing in the background I wondered why such a song was playing at this bar and realized it was just in my head. I have provided photographic evidence of this woman who was, no joke, 6'8" and TOWERED over me. For those of you who don't know me, some would say I have a "thing" for tall girls, and admittedly I do like red heads. As you can see from the picture this woman was a perfect mesh of both. Everyone was talking about how tall this woman was and all I could say was that I needed a picture. I went up to her and asked if I could take a picture to which she immediately replied yes and told me her name was Sam. I just smiled and took the picture, which did not come out so I had to ask her again, to which she again said "my name is Sam," No offense to "Sam" but all I wanted was my picture, she was like Helen of Troy meets attack of the 50 ft. woman and she shall haunt my dreams for years to come...
2:47 - Well I had my picture, got a few more drinks and it was time to leave the bar and go home...after all...big day tomorrow. Tim and Kellie will be getting married! So we all made our way back to my friends house, watched some Arrested Development, and got some sleep in anticipation for the next day, although we had no idea the EPICNESS that was in store.
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