Kraig and Stacey's Wedding

This post is mainly for my friend Season, who missed a great wedding in order to move to Florida and land a job but you all can read along too if you have the time.

Yesterday, Kraig and Stacey got married. Kraig used to go to high school with me. He was in the year behind me while his brother, Kevin, was in my year. Stacey went to a neighboring school district—Niles, where she was good friends with Erin who is also one of my best friends. Small world? Yes, I’m very much aware. Not only that, Stacey is best friends with Val, a gal that I know from church who is also a cousin of Kraig. It’s like the six degrees of separation was mapped out for me.

I’ll admit it, Kraig and I aren’t friends per se. We never really hung out during high school. (Actually, I spent most of high school alone.) Then college took me away from here so I never talked to him. But he was one of the best people that I got along with in high school. You have to understand that in a school that was as small as ours, everyone knew everyone and class division was blurred. However, over the past half year or so, I have been running into Kraig and Stacey quite a bit usually when I am with Erin. And it’s been fun. I like them a lot and I hope they like me. I guess they must’ve because I got an invitation.

Well, actually, I was invited by bar napkin. A couple months ago, I was hanging out with Erin, Will, and Stacey for the day at St. Joe. In the evening, we were at The Tavern and Kraig came in. Rather than throwing me pity, I hope they thought that I should go to the wedding even though they had sent out the invitations. So Kraig broke out a pen and bar napkin and he and Stacey proceeded to write me out an invitation. Well now this was unique and I honestly was touched that they would want me to come. You better believe that I’ve kept that invite. It’s awesome.

The day arrives finally and I am about to leave for St. Joe. As I head into the city, I notice that I had received a voice mail. It was Ashley from work telling me that the front gate at work wasn’t opening. So do I head back to Mishawaka to try and help her or do I stay in St. Joseph? Sorry Ashley, but I was staying here. First of all, it was an hour after the call received that I got the message. I was hoping that she had gotten the gate up by then. Even if she hadn’t, there was no fraking way that I was going to drive an hour south. I would miss the wedding, I would spend probably $10 or so on gas, plus it would be at least two hours of my day. I do not get paid enough to put up with that shit. Later on during the reception, I called the store and found out that they did get the gate open.

I hooked up with Erin and Carrie when I got there. They were both coming together as Will has recently left the picture and Justin, Carrie’s husband, had to work. We took our seats on bride side. I had originally planned to go on groom side, but there was no one there that I wanted to sit with. So, even though I have more of a connection to Kraig, I went and sat with my friends on Stacey’s side.



The ceremony itself was nice. There wasn’t anything too unusual that I noticed. Instead of using candles, they did use sand. Makes sense since it was outdoors. But what I continually look for in a ceremony is the minister being brief. When my Aunt got married, we were practically going through an entire church service. (Avoid Lutheran services if at all possible.) Luckily, this one seemed to speed on through.

At the end of the ceremony, the crowd was supposed to throw flower pedals at the bride and groom as they walked back down the isle. Erin, Carrie, and I were at seats farthest away from the isle, so we went around to the back where I took this picture. Seconds later, I threw my pedals at them. Instead of bursting apart and hitting them gently, the clump stayed together and hit Stacey in the chest at such a speed that it burst apart and hit her in the face while some of them went down the front of her dress. I could hear groans in the audience. I felt so bad as I was the last person to throw pedals at them and everyone was watching them as I beaned her.

The reception was held at the same place. Very convenient. As soon as you said your congrats to the couple, you headed for the tent. They should have told everyone to bring their own chairs from the ceremony as there were none underneath the tent at the tables. So I helped to collapse the chairs, bring them to the tent and set them up. To my surprise, Kevin, actually said something to me. “They should have hired some Mexicans to do this.” I wasn’t put off by the actual statement, but that he actually spoke to me. For those special readers, you’ll find out more on this.

Let me tell you, I have never been so full at a wedding. When it was time to go up for food, they had a huge buffet. Chicken, beef, vegetarian lasagna type thingie, mashed potatoes, pasta, salad, veggies, and a wide assortment of deserts. In addition, there was a full breakfast bar complete with sausage links, bacon, waffles, fried potatoes, bagels, and two chefs making omelets to order. I only got a little bit of everything and I still couldn’t make it to the omelet. Oh, I am going to have fun running this off on Monday!

They pretty much had an open bar. Technically, everyone was supposed to get three tickets for a free drink each. Then, you had to pay for any additional drink. It was so great. I ended up with a fuzzy navel and two rum n’ Pepsis. There were also two other fruity type drinks but I can’t remember their names. You’d have to ask Carrie. With five alcoholic drinks, I still came back home with two extra tickets. How’d that happen, I can’t recall. But I never got drunk, I swear it!

The cake, I believe, was made by a relative. It was a simple two-tiered cake with cupcakes being distributed to the guests. Personally, I like the idea that a relative made the cake. I’m not big fan of big elaborate cakes that costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to make. This looked perfect and it tasted just as good as I expect a catering cake would. While, I may not have personally have gone for distributing cupcakes, it was a good thing. After cutting the cake, Kraig managed to shove a little into Stacey’s face.

Dancing was pretty much kept to a minimum. It wasn’t really a dancing type crowd. Most of the Galien kids stuck to their table, or later, by the bar. They did the dollar dance but in their case, they made you pay a dollar and then do a shot before you got to dance. Kids exempted of course. I enjoyed watching that although I was waiting for the Cha Cha Slide to come up. Ever since I sat out on that one at Carrie’s wedding, I’ve been taking every opportunity to do that dance. So far, that has only meant once.



After a few hours, Carrie and Erin left. I stayed on for a little bit more as I had hoped that I would have gotten to talk to Kevin. As I sat at my table, Kraig came over to talk followed by Kevin. We didn’t get to do much talking. There were… observations that I think best not to write about here. Still, Stacey came over too and she talked about the candy arrangements. Earlier, I had apologized to her about hitting her with the flower pedals like that but she didn’t seem to mind. Whew! But she wanted to thank me for coming. “No, thank you for inviting me.”

Just as it began to sprinkle, I thought it was about my time to go. I had pretty much got to have a few words with Kraig and Stacey so I didn’t feel too bad about leaving without a proper goodbye. As I drove home, I thought about all the people there and how things have changed. I’m glad that Kraig and Stacey are familiar sights in my life. It’s certainly a change for good as far as I’m concerned.

UPDATE 1024, 28 Aug. 2006:
This post was actually prepared yesterday but blogger gave me an error every time I tried to publish it. It said something about a device being full. I interpreted that to mean that I had too many pictures so I deleted them. I thought I had saved the post in draft form to be published later but apparently, Blogger decided to publish it without me knowing.