Wedding Weekend

There was another wedding in my family this weekend. Usually I hate weddings. A lot. Seriously. Not always for the same reasons that so many other people hate weddings; my list has more to do with that whole "in the 40s and still unmarried" deal and the feelings of general inadequacy that stem from seeing someone who was born after you had earned your driver's license get married. Talk about being LAPPED, people. Oh, the delicious self-pity....

And then there's the dance. I have nothing against dances on the whole, but I usually sit them out on principle. It's not that my collection of dance moves is so... distinct... that its been given its own name and has people studying it to try and learn how to replicate me. After all, let's face it: Nobody at a wedding can dance except for maybe one or two people, and most of the other guests watch them and are impressed for a song or two, then wish they'd just get off the floor and quit making the night their own personal showcase. Most people just want to hear the music and have fun and celebrate. I'd rather be the person enjoying about 60% of the music and working the room, catching up with the people I don't see very often, and I do what I can to avoid being the guy during the group dance who has to slink off quietly when a slow song comes on and all the couples fall together while I find a table with the 12-year-olds, who are staying up too late and traveling through the ballroom like a cloud of sugar-fueled locusts, systematically eating all of the remaining dinner mints still in the little decorative arrangements.

Oh, the delicious, delicious self-pity of it all....

(Incidentally, I'm thinking about authoring a petition to be passed around to all independent DJs in the land, asking them to have some kind of summit that would establish a new list of songs that have to be played at every wedding dance. I don't need to list these tired, overplayed wedding-dance songs; you know which ones they are. It's time for some retirements, and time for some new blood. I'm willing to provide several suggestions to get this new paradigm underway.)

Anyway. Yesterday my cousin and his long-time girlfriend got married. And for a nice change of pace, I enjoyed myself! (I know! Pick up your jaw!) Decent meal. Nephews #2 and #3 had fun with very little time spent fighting. Lot of good conversations. A very welcome surprise guest showing up late in the evening. A DJ instead of my cousins' band... not that I have issues with my cousins' band, but I think I can only be reasonably expected to hear "Black Velvet" so many times in one life, and I'm rapidly closing in on my quota.

One of the best things about the night though was that the ballroom was actually in the hotel where so many of us were staying. Which was awesome. How would you rather make your way back to bed: Drive 45 minutes through unfamiliar city streets in the dark, or hop on the elevator and whip out your key card? No contest for me.

One of my favorite moments of the night had to do with our being at the hotel. Now, the thing you need to know here is that I have a huge extended family, and we are unusually close; even in the cross-generation aspect this holds true. And we have all grown up together. I am closer to several of my cousins than many people I know are to their own siblings. And as the night was wrapping up, a group of us volunteered to bring the wedding gifts up to the hospitality room where the gift-opening would take place the next morning. It took about nine of us to get them all up there, and when we got to the door, we had to wait for another cousin, the sister of the mother of the groom, who had to track down the key card to let us in. While we were waiting, someone decided it would be funny if we made it look like we had just left this huge pile of gifts in the hall, out in the open for anyone walking by to grab, and so she would think she was the one person who would have to move them all in the room. So to pull this off, this group of people from my family? This collection of parents, teachers, accounting partners, professors, aunts & uncles, volunteers, high school students, grandparents, and so on? What did we do?

We left the gifts on the floor. Then all ran around several different corners to hide.

We stayed quiet and hidden for at least three or four minutes by my estimate. Silent. Peeking out to check, listening for voices, trying to keep each other from laughing.... at least that was the story at my end of the hallway.

Which was exactly the kind of thing we all would have done thirty years ago. Some things don't change.... much. I'm happy my family is on that list.

And I'm also happy that Sandy is finally, officially, one of us.