Four Weddings and a Funeral, except just one wedding and zero funerals

After the road trip, I dived straight into the excitement of my brother George’s wedding, which was this weekend. It was a lot of work, but the best thing about going to a wedding that is for someone in your immediate family is that you know almost everyone. It was a lovely, fun group. Here were the highlights, presented night-by-night:

Thursday night--All the bridesmaids (of which I was one), and mothers and grandmothers went to get manicures and pedicures. I almost never have nail polish on my fingers, and this was extra special because it was for the wedding, but basically I had 48 hours of fear that I was going to chip a fingernail or mess it up. This led to me doing not that much to help out after the manicure. Apparently, “I can’t, I might mess up the manicure” is an annoying excuse, but an acceptable one.

Friday night---Rehearsal dinner! We had it at a big farm, and the little kids who were there got to feed a horse and ride on a golf cart. The best parts for me were the barbeque that we ate and the big square dances that my Uncle Ken called for us.

Saturday—the big day. I’m still too tired to be incredibly poetic about it, but it was a happy happy day. Everyone looked great. The ceremony was done by my uncles, Ken and Pete, and my favorite part was when they were doing the vows. The vows are the only part of the wedding that you really don’t rehearse the night before, because if you say them, you’re married. So Uncle Ken was whispering the vows for George to say, and George started whispering them back, and Ken whispered, “You know, you can speak louder, so everyone can hear.” George laughed really loud. Then he spoke the vows so everyone could hear. The unplanned can be the best.

At the reception I made a beeline for the food, because I was so hungry, only to be told we weren’t eating yet. Then I got this huge plate of food and ignored anyone that was trying to make pleasant conversation with me. I was just too hungry. I mean I scarfed down food. The only way it could have gone down faster was if I had a shovel. So that’s the only part I feel a little bad about, that perhaps I could have eaten in a more ladylike manner, or at least feigned interest in people around me while I was gorging myself.

The cake was very pretty on the outside and delicious on the inside. It was two flavors—pound cake with raspberry, and cake that was pina colada flavored. Of course I had both kinds, so I could bring you an unbiased cake report, and they were both very good.

My other little brother William did a toast that made everyone laugh and cry—big highlight.

After the reception, we had our family back to the house for drinking and more eating. The drinking took the form of a gigantic beer pong tournament, and I will not get too deep into the details here on this blog, but I think basically some little kids were corrupted and learned some words that they probably shouldn’t have. At the end of the night I was handing one of my little cousins a (clean) ping pong ball, and he went, “Oooh! Beer pong ball!” And I said, “Well, after you leave here, how about you call it a ping pong ball?” And he said, “No, beer pong ball!” So I hope that none of the parents of little kids got any calls today from teachers asking what beer pong is and how it came that they learned about it at their cousin’s wedding.

Another thing about beer pong is that my dad is freakishly good at it, and he and his brother won seven games in a row before they retired as champions. Did they alienate the rest of the family? Possibly.

Now George and Courtney are in Maine on their honeymoon, and we’re all left to resume regularly scheduled programming.