Since Erin and her sister are in the wedding party, I met up with her parents at their house. Also there were Erin’s Aunt Sandy and Mandie’s date, Carl. Mr. and Mrs. B had to lead Carl and I into South Bend as we didn’t know where the church was. After running a couple red lights, we got to where we needed. The church—First Presbyterian, was very beautiful. Carrie and Justin don’t go to church there but they thought that it was an ideal place for their wedding. We were still a little early, however, as Mr. and Mrs. B were the receptionists. Let me tell you, it’s great to have connections. Because we are the dates of the bridesmaids and because we are associated with Mr. and Mrs. B, Carl, Aunt Sandy and I had reserved seating in pew two. Right behind the Bride’s immediate family. Yes! Ahead of all other family and friends.
The wedding ceremony itself was really nice—and short which is always important. Aunt Sandy and I thought that the mothers lighting the separate candles that will later be used for the unity candle was a nice touch. I guess it doesn’t happen in her church nor in mine. The only problem came with the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer. No one told us which version the preacher would be using. It was a mess. I just stuck with my version of course. I thought that I had majorly embarrassed myself when the ushers were dismissing us. They started in pew one but the bride’s family stayed sitting. The groom’s family left. Then they moved to pew two. This time, no one on the groom’s side got up. Mr. and Mrs. B got up but not the other family members that were in pew two with us. At this time, I had stood up, expecting to go when it occurred to me, maybe they were only dismissing the family member. With an “Oh crap” and a red face I promptly sat my ass down. It took a few moments, but finally the rest of pew two took Mr. and Mrs. B’s lead and we all left, even if we were really dismissed or not. It turns out that there was nothing wrong with what we did (except my “oh crap” remark.)
We made a quick retreat in order to find a parking spot for the reception. We had a while to wait before the wedding party showed up. Carl and I made our way to abuse the open bar. I wasn’t feeling too creative so I just stuck with the beer and rum ‘n pepsis. We spent the time talking with Aunt Sandy and Mr. and Mrs. B. Aunt Sandy is pretty awesome. She even showed us how to make a napkin chicken.
When the wedding party made their entrance everyone used poppers. It was supposed to take the place of the rice that normally is thrown when a couple leaves the church. Big modification, but at least the birds won’t die. Erin had forgotten to bring her speech so she shouted out my name.
“DAVID!” Everyone looks over to her. “Let’s go!”
I didn’t even ask. It looked important. When we got out into the lobby area, she explained to me what had happened and she needed me to come along incase she didn’t make it. A valid concern as we were soon sprinting across main street with heavy traffic. Her doing it with her dress hiked up, added a moment of hilarity to the night.
While making our dash across the first parking lot (because she parked two lots away) I said, “Wow, I feel like I’m in a Julia Roberts film!”
It took quite a while, but she was able to find her speech. Then we dashed our way back up to the reception. I guess she was just in time as the speeches were just getting started. I thought Erin’s turned out well. The Best Man, Jeff, I thought was a little low key. Some humor is nice to have. Jon attempted an impromptu one but it fell flat. Terry, Carrie’s father, was giving the emcee the cut it off sign. We wanted to eat!
Again, with my great connections, we were right after the wedding party and family to get to the food line. I snapped a picture before we went up with Carrie holding her platter. She brought out a huge plate. She justified her special plate as being necessary because she hadn’t eaten all day.
Me, Erin, Mandi, and Carl
Soon afterwards, the dancing started which lasted until the event was over. In truth, there wasn’t really all that much dancing. It started late and by the end, there wasn’t really much of a crowd that would dance. Some of the notables:
- The Dollar Dance
- The Bridesmaids’ strip dance
- Justin and the rest of his frat doing some weird ass dance (which involved dancing on one foot and bumping into each other.)
- Cotton Eye Joe (which involved people making up their own dance moves)
- Cha Cha Slide (shown in second picture below)
When everything was done with, I gave a hug to Carrie and shook hands with Justin as they were preparing to leave for an “undisclosed location” (ahem… Comfort Inn and Suites on 31, Roseland) The rest of us headed for Bee Dubs (Buffalo Wild Wings) for more drinking. I would like to take a moment to say that Bee Dubs in East Lansing/MSU is a helluva lot better than the Bee Dubs in South Bend/Notre Dame. In the photo shown above, Groomsman Jeremy need to have his picture taken with Mandie. He was an escort for the kid bridesmaid and he needed to be seen with someone older. But poor Carl, he had to get up early in the morning to get back up to Grand Rapids by nine for work. It was looking like he may be staying up until 3 in the morning. Luckily for him though, Bee Dubs closed early and kicked us out. People started looking for another bar like Corby’s or the Oyster Bar. We just headed for our hotel room and crashed. Too lazy and tired to drive to some other bar for only an hour.
Amanda and Carl left early in the morning. She had to get to her tournament and he to his job. Erin and I continued to sleep until Aunt Sandy called around 8am. Uggh! We still had four hours left to sleep. But we slowly got up. When we got into the car, we found out that Carrie had left her makeup bag. So we made our way to the “undisclosed location” and Erin tried to drop it off at the front desk so that Carrie could pick it up when they checked out. Erin was told that some guests don’t check out at the desk. They just leave some sort of paper in their room. So Erin tried to call up to the room but Carrie and Justin had left instructions to not be disturbed unless it was an emergency. Emergency—Erin made the call.
When we got back to her house, I was still so tired that I needed to crash. She mentioned about going to the bar that night. Sorry, too tired… and maybe I should give my liver a rest. I certainly made the most of that open bar and definitely drank that $17 worth.
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