The Best Dude, For Real

Ten years ago, my friend Dax and his girlfriend Melissa were knee-deep in plans for their October wedding. Since I live in Minnesota and they lived in Florida at the time, we stayed in touch regularly over the internet, mostly through Apple’s good old iChat application, checking in for an hour or so on most nights. Because of this, I learned about a lot of wedding decisions the same day they were being made. One night Dax was telling me how everything about the order for the bridesmaids and groomsmen was finally in place. The best man was a friend of his who had helped introduce the two of them. Melissa’s sister would be the Matron of Honor, and Melissa’s friend Stacey — the bridesmaid I was to be paired with — would be the Maid of Honor.

“She gets two ‘of Honors?’” I asked, throwing my ignorance about wedding ettiequte out there for the whole world to see. “How does that work?”

“What do you mean?” Dax asked. 

“Well, who wins between those two?”

“What do you mean, who wins?”

You see, I’d never heard of that being done before. I knew what the Matron of Honor was, as well as the Maid of Honor. But out of any number of weddings I had attended before, I couldn’t think of an instance when there had been both a Matron and a Maid.

“Usually there’s just one or the other, isn't there?” I asked. “And she’s having one of each? That’s like you having a Best Man and a Best Dude.”

There was a brief pause in the messaging. Then the reply came through: “You are so going to be my Best Dude.”


I laughed, thinking this would be a running joke we’d have throughout the weekend, one that maybe only a few other people would ever even know about. Then in the following days I heard how Dax had talked to Melissa about having a Best Dude, and how much she liked the idea. Soon after that another update came through, and all four of their parents at least didn’t hate it. Now I was going to be listed as the Best Dude in the wedding program. In what felt like a very small amount of time, my smart-ass quip had taken me from being just the generic groomsman that literally five other people at the entire wedding even knew existed, to the groomsman that must have some kind of intriguing backstory to have merited such a head-scratcher of a title.

Smash cut a few months ahead and I’m off the plane in Orlando, shocked to feel such humidity in late October. I’m soon surrounded by the Disneyfied version of Southern culture, which included a stay at a hotel that, I kid you not, featured a three-story sculpture of cowboy boots about four doors down from my room. The evening was spent meeting the bride for the first time, then playing some Guitar Hero (who remembers the Pretenders "Tattooed Love Boys" from Guitar Hero II? Talk about your ear worms), going out to dinner, and bowling with some of the groomsmen. I got to spend time with Dax’s brother-in-law Matt and soon to be brother-in-law Lee, since we were all coming into the wedding party with different varieties of outsider credentials.

The whole weekend was nonstop, from the rehearsal dinner at an incredible Thai place, to the impromptu backstage round of Name that Tune, to me being physically unable to unroll the runner down the main aisle without messing it up, to the canine ring bearer, and one of my favorite stories illustrating what a ridiculously talented musician Dax is that really is deserving of its own separate post someday. It was a great time, which I was thankful for since I had gone into the experience with a tiny bit of trepidation: How many uncomfortable moments were there going to be for Introverted Me to navigate when I was going to be surrounded almost completely by strangers for an entire weekend? Of course I should have known better; Dax and Melissa would not have anyone but caring and quality people sharing such an important time with them. Everyone welcomed me to the fold as one of their own, which, of course, they should have. 

Because...Best Dude and everything. That kind of says it all.