SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (11-30-17)
Sadly, as of last Saturday our next door neighbor has finally run out of marriageable children, so we're going to have to find something else to do with our time other than going to their weddings. A wedding is the perfect opportunity to get dolled up, show off your dancing moves, have a nice dinner and see some people that you haven't seen in a long time, perhaps because they preferred it that way.
I have five or six suits, so that part is no problem. One is purple, and it's only a matter of time before the eighties come back, so I'm saving that one. Two others are double-breasted, three-piece numbers, which I have been told are out of style. Unfortunately, I was told that about a decade after they went out of style. Out of all of them, only one suit has a pair of pants that still zip all the way up, and they only fit up to and during the wedding ceremony itself, as long as I don't sit, breathe or look down. If I happen to ingest a communion wafer on purpose or by mistake all bets are off. Anyway, my goal is not to look so good that I upstage the bride.
Once the service starts and everyone else sits down, there are a couple of readings from the Bible. The apostle Paul's letter to the Corinthians is a staple of many weddings I have been to. I'm not sure which Corinthian in particular Paul had it in for, but he speaks of the power of love, and to paraphrase, you had better get your act together or you'll sound like a clanging cymbal. I'm a drummer and I'm clanging cymbals all the time, so I don't take it as personally as the Corinthians probably did. By the way, nobody mentions the fact that reading other peoples' mail is a federal offense.
The ceremony goes splendidly, the bride kisses the groom and we all clap based on the degree of difficulty. We say hello to everybody on the receiving line and look around to see if anyone is going to throw anything at the bride and groom. It turns out that nobody throws rice anymore because it gets caught in birds' throats and gives them agita. People tried throwing birdseed at weddings and it turned the happy day into a scene from a Hitchcock movie, so now we just blow a few kisses.
At the cocktail hour, the hors d'oeuvres are sometimes better than the main meal. My wife was literally stalking the waiter who came around with the fried shrimp-on-a-stick, and he was this close to taking out a restraining order on her. I was partial to the fried chicken-on-a-stick with sesame seeds. As far as I'm concerned you could take some carburetor parts from my car, deep-fry them, sprinkle them with sesame seeds, skewer them on a stick and I probably wouldn't know the difference until I tried to start my car.
Once the reception begins to hit its stride you better keep your camera ready because you never know when something newsworthy is going to happen. The volatile mixture of high emotion, high fashion and an open bar can lead to many different types of misdemeanors or crimes against humanity. At my own wedding we asked that no videotape be used, thinking that there might be less evidence to be possibly subpoenaed. But opportunities for photojournalism and/or blackmail are there for the taking.
If you didn't happen to bring your camera, they had a photo booth set up to commemorate that fact that my pants had not spontaneously combusted quite yet. There were some hats and props on hand, but I couldn't figure out when the shutter was going to snap, so I have six pictures of me preparing to do something clever.
At this reception there was also a fire-eater, a limber lass with a lot of fishy-looking tattoos and no eyelashes. As she pranced around swinging blazing torches she swigged prodigious mouthfuls of what looked like Jägermeister. She spit out half of it in a ball of flame; I'm not sure what happened to the other half but I have my suspicions. The fire-eating looked like fun, actually, and I would have tried it myself but I just had dessert. The fire marshal had posted a sign that listed the maximum occupancy of the place, but I doubt he factored in that one of them was a fire-eater.
Sadly, as of last Saturday our next door neighbor has finally run out of marriageable children, so we're going to have to find something else to do with our time other than going to their weddings. A wedding is the perfect opportunity to get dolled up, show off your dancing moves, have a nice dinner and see some people that you haven't seen in a long time, perhaps because they preferred it that way.
I have five or six suits, so that part is no problem. One is purple, and it's only a matter of time before the eighties come back, so I'm saving that one. Two others are double-breasted, three-piece numbers, which I have been told are out of style. Unfortunately, I was told that about a decade after they went out of style. Out of all of them, only one suit has a pair of pants that still zip all the way up, and they only fit up to and during the wedding ceremony itself, as long as I don't sit, breathe or look down. If I happen to ingest a communion wafer on purpose or by mistake all bets are off. Anyway, my goal is not to look so good that I upstage the bride.
Once the service starts and everyone else sits down, there are a couple of readings from the Bible. The apostle Paul's letter to the Corinthians is a staple of many weddings I have been to. I'm not sure which Corinthian in particular Paul had it in for, but he speaks of the power of love, and to paraphrase, you had better get your act together or you'll sound like a clanging cymbal. I'm a drummer and I'm clanging cymbals all the time, so I don't take it as personally as the Corinthians probably did. By the way, nobody mentions the fact that reading other peoples' mail is a federal offense.
The ceremony goes splendidly, the bride kisses the groom and we all clap based on the degree of difficulty. We say hello to everybody on the receiving line and look around to see if anyone is going to throw anything at the bride and groom. It turns out that nobody throws rice anymore because it gets caught in birds' throats and gives them agita. People tried throwing birdseed at weddings and it turned the happy day into a scene from a Hitchcock movie, so now we just blow a few kisses.
At the cocktail hour, the hors d'oeuvres are sometimes better than the main meal. My wife was literally stalking the waiter who came around with the fried shrimp-on-a-stick, and he was this close to taking out a restraining order on her. I was partial to the fried chicken-on-a-stick with sesame seeds. As far as I'm concerned you could take some carburetor parts from my car, deep-fry them, sprinkle them with sesame seeds, skewer them on a stick and I probably wouldn't know the difference until I tried to start my car.
Once the reception begins to hit its stride you better keep your camera ready because you never know when something newsworthy is going to happen. The volatile mixture of high emotion, high fashion and an open bar can lead to many different types of misdemeanors or crimes against humanity. At my own wedding we asked that no videotape be used, thinking that there might be less evidence to be possibly subpoenaed. But opportunities for photojournalism and/or blackmail are there for the taking.
If you didn't happen to bring your camera, they had a photo booth set up to commemorate that fact that my pants had not spontaneously combusted quite yet. There were some hats and props on hand, but I couldn't figure out when the shutter was going to snap, so I have six pictures of me preparing to do something clever.
At this reception there was also a fire-eater, a limber lass with a lot of fishy-looking tattoos and no eyelashes. As she pranced around swinging blazing torches she swigged prodigious mouthfuls of what looked like Jägermeister. She spit out half of it in a ball of flame; I'm not sure what happened to the other half but I have my suspicions. The fire-eating looked like fun, actually, and I would have tried it myself but I just had dessert. The fire marshal had posted a sign that listed the maximum occupancy of the place, but I doubt he factored in that one of them was a fire-eater.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment