It's supposed to be good luck to have rain on your wedding day. It had better be, because it is raining buckets as we wait for our guests to arrive at the church.
It really isn't our fault that so many people get lost on the way here. We included a card with directions to the church in the invitations. Sure, the directions were wrong, but that isn't really our fault either. We used an online mapping service to print them up and a glitch in the system has directed most of our guests to a point about 40 miles off the coast of Maine.
So we really aren't all that worried when one of my ushers still isn't at the church half an hour before the wedding. Most of the guests straggle in with a few minutes to spare, so we hold out hope for my college buddy to show up and usher people to their seats retroactively. ("Hey lady! That pew you were sitting in? That was your seat! Way to go!")
And the service itself goes well enough. I've been watching a lot of reality TV lately and I've been a little worried that I might say the wrong name during the vows or the bride might throw up or something, but in the end, everything goes pretty much without a hitch. I have to confess to being a bit disappointed at the lack of bare-breasted, battling bridesmaids that the FOX network had implied we would have, but you can't have everything.
It's raining even harder as my best man pulls up in a rented Town Car. My new wife's army of taffeta-covered minions hold umbrellas over our heads as we get into the back seat. I have to admit that this is pretty cool. Dressed in a tuxedo, being driven around in the back of a big car, being waited on by a bunch of broads in big dresses (OK, it's my wife who is being waited on, but I reap the subsidiary benefits), on my way to a party, I suddenly know what it must have been like to be Frank Sinatra.
As we pull out of the church parking lot, we wonder vaguely why nobody else has left for the reception, but we are distracted. My wife (understandably enough) has a raging headache and (equally understandably) no purse or pockets with aspirin in them. Plus, she has forgotten something else.
"We're going right to the hotel after the reception and I forgot the you-know-whats," she tells me.
I greet this with a blank look.
"What?" I ask. "What did you forget?"
My wife, realizing that this sort of situation will probably characterize the rest of our marriage, takes a deep breath and repeats herself.
"I've forgotten the YOU... KNOW... WHATS," she tells me.
"Oh!" I say, suddenly getting it. I lean forward and ask my buddy to stop at a convenience store. "We need... um, well, that is to say, we've forgotten..."
"Got it," my buddy says, interrupting me. "Aspirin and condoms."
What none of us notice as he runs into the store is that we have a line of cars following us. Not trusting any more of our directions, most of the wedding guests have followed us at a discrete distance, hoping we will eventually lead them to the reception. The upshot of this is that as my tuxedo-clad best man trots out of the 7-11, whistling to himself and swinging his little bag of purchases around his finger, he finds an audience of anxious wedding guests peering nervously at him through foggy car windows.
As we and the other 20 or so cars pull out of the convenience store parking lot and head downtown to the reception site, we notice a lot of traffic barricades. Distracted as we were by wedding plans, none of us had realized until now that there is a major bicycle race through town today and the entire downtown area is cordoned off.
Fortunately, my buddy knows the area really well and is able to snake his way through a series of back streets and alleyways to the back door of the restaurant, only making two illegal turns in the process. Unfortunately, he loses the rest of our entourage doing so and most of the wedding guests have to walk several blocks through the rain from where they end up parking.
It's a good reception, all in all. Never mind that we beat all the guests there and have to wait in the hallway as they make their way past us, dripping and swearing into the actual reception. (Apparently, there is some sort of rule that the newlyweds have to be the last ones to make an entrance. Who makes up these rules?) Never mind that the music system goes down in the middle of our first dance. Never mind that I step on my wife's train and pull a whole wedding dress infrastructure crashing to the floor. Never mind any of that.
My nephew puts everything in perspective for me.
"Are you having a good time?" I ask him.
"Totally!" he gushes. "I was just at the window and saw five bike racers wipe out! It was too cool!"
