get me to the church on time (because it will be very crowded)

If it’s true that we eat our feelings, then I guess I ate lots and lots of joy last weekend. That is when my cousin Mary Henry married my new cousin-in-law Brad at Kanuga. I am pretty happy about this arrangement, to the point that if anyone had objected during the ceremony, even as a joke (something I often daydream of doing), I would have fought that person right then and there. Especially if that person was my arch-nemesis.

Yes, I managed to acquire a new arch-nemesis at the wedding, even though the whole festivities only lasted a weekend. Hey. What can I say. You get on my bad side and you are dead to me. But let’s not dwell on the negative. Let’s dwell on the positive. The most positive thing was that Mary Henry and Brad got married.

The second most postive thing was that there was a TON of food. For the rehearsal dinner on Friday night, there were specialities from Buffalo, NY, which is where Brad’s family is from, including hot dogs, roast beef and wings. As well as two kinds of cake! Then, on Saturday morning, my side of the family had sausage biscuits from Bojangle’s because we couldn’t wait til 10 am for brunch. Then we had the just mentioned brunch; I had french toast with strawberry topping, sausage and egg bites and bacon, among other things.

Then a few hours later was the reception, where I feasted on spinach and artichoke dip, meatballs, ham biscuits, cheese straws, cheese and cake. I had more than one piece of cake at the reception, for which my first cousin once-removed Sophie chastised me, but I pointed out that she didn’t have much of a case because she was eating sugar straight from the packet at the time. I guess that was just a snack to tide her over before dinner, which included roast beef, chicken, potatoes, green beans, and salad..and that’s just what I remember. And poundcake with fruit for dessert.

Then the next day we had a breakfast that included eggs, biscuits with sausage gravy and also sausage on the side. There was a lot of sausage. And that’s not even including all the food there was in the hospitality suite, which is where my family hung out between mealtimes. In the hospitaly suite there were goodies including cookies, pretzels, M&Ms, cheese straws and spinach dip. As I said before, I ate lots and lots of joy this weekend.

But the wedding weekend wasn’t all about food, of course. It was also about drinking. My brother William showed up with his custom beer pong table, and many a good game was had, including one monumental game that had three overtimes. At one point my cousins and I ran upstairs to Brad’s family’s hospitality suite and took them on in a game of flip cup, which we won, thanks to a little bit of cheating. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I was not aware that I was cheating at the time. I was just unsure what the game was.

This was a multi-keg wedding, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t wine and spirits as well. And the younger folks had lemonade and soda available, but what they really loved was water. That’s because they played water pong for most of the weekend. Stylistically, water pong is very similar to beer pong, but the scoring is much different, particularly if you play against a child. Children tend to give themselves half-points for a lot of things, such as being close and for cool throws. At one point I was down 7 ½ to nothing despite the fact that I had gotten several balls into cups and my opponent had gotten no balls into no cups. But such is life.

Other than eating and drinking, I guess there was the wedding itself. That was an extremely nice event that is too difficult to explain in blog format. But everyone looked wonderful and everyone in the whole chapel cried, but in a good way, and everyone was very happy to be there.
I’m trying to think if anything happened that didn’t involve eating or drinking or a wedding ceremony but I’m coming up with very few examples. I took a nap. My cousin Worth played music. I looked at the pictures my first cousin once removed Maggie drew. We all played with Baby Sarah. I conspired against my arch-nemesis. Mainly, though, I think I will remember the eating. And so will my waistline.