The wedding was a ton of fun. Apparently I missed the most fun of all, the bridal party night out, which happened the day before I got to Maine (I will pay good money to anyone involved for footage of my wife dancing with Kelley’s sister in law to an Eminem tune).
We had a good time at the rehearsal dinner. During the long wait for food (familiar to anyone who’s had a rehearsal dinner for 30 people at a restaurant not used to serving that many at once), we got a little creative with the nametags Kelley’s friend Dan had gotten. He apparently couldn’t find proper nametags at the grocery store (there being no close office supply store at the Maine/Canada border), so picked up a stack of the store’s special pricing stickers. We all tried to figure out what kind of “special pricing” the bride and groom were under, with the result that their nametags were emblazoned with the legends “Low mileage,” “Original woodwork intact,” “Available for a limited time only!”, and “Make best offer.”
The wedding itself was smooth, with two exceptions. The flower girls had been told to get rid of all their flower petals, resulting in a much lengthier than expected trip down the aisle and a lot of banging on the bottom of their flower baskets to dislodge the remaining petals. And the bride dropped the groom’s ring. While picking it back up, she said, “All you folks with video cameras can use your fancy digital rigs to edit that out!” Not a chance, Kelley. The highlight of the reception was probably the minister returning in full Elvis regalia, though the bride dancing with her father to a recording of his college group singing a song he had arranged many years before was a close second, as was the ten-year-old cousin who kept telling Lisa she had to come dance with him when the DJ played the Britney Spears song.