Friend's Wedding Redux

It's a quiet (for now) Monday night at the library, and I've returned from our grand adventure to the Palmetto state. It's taken a whole day, but I'm finally feeling rested and recuperated (at least physically -- definitely not fiscally). And here's the experience I had at my friend's wedding in South Carolina.

We arrived on Thursday with enough time to check in and relax in our room before meeting up with the rest of the wedding party and the groom's extended family at my friends' house. Johnny and I sat around drinking and playing Egyptian Rat Screw with the groomsmen (who were a bunch of fun guys!) until the bachelor/bachelorette funtimes started. And oh, what times were to be had. My friend and I got back to my hotel room at 1:30 a.m. after many drinks (including a "liquid marijuana" and an orange slushie made with Everclear called "Tiger In Your Tank"....). We ended the night with some dancing (I use this word loosely. It reminded me of that dance scene in Zion in The Matrix Reloaded...). There was some grinding involved. I believe that's what the kids are calling that these days? The Bride fell asleep on the chair in our room and didn't even wake up when Johnny came back at 4 a.m. But I did. And I felt sick as a dog. J walked me around outside the hotel to help me get some air, and we sat out on a bench on the street in Greenville before dawn, with me in my nightgown and his hoodie and sobered up. Good times. Well, not the drunk parts. But I can say that I've had enough bacheloretting to cover my wedding, too :P

Friday was full of many events, including me rushing around with a hangover trying to find a place to get my nails done at The Bride's behest. I did - and despite the cost, I enjoyed the heck out of my mani-pedi. I haven't had either since I got my new job (so, since July), so it was a good excuse to enjoy that (especially the massage chair).
Bride-friend was pretty stressed about the rehearsal, but we got a good look at her venue and I got to meet the rest of the groom's family (there were tons of them -- just a few folks from my friend's family). At this point, my suspicions were confirmed that J and I shared very little in common with these upper middle class Irish Catholic folks from Ohio, but we got along spectacularly with them anyway, so I was thrilled :) We then went to the rehearsal dinner at a restaurant called Smoke on the Water downtown. The food was some of the best I've ever had in my life, and I guarantee it was at least $50 per head with over 50 people in attendance. Hoooooo boy.

The wedding day went by in a blur. My friend was wonderfully not-stressed, but I felt like I didn't do as good a job as an MoH as I could because I noticed that pretty much any time I opened my mouth, she wasn't going to be receptive to anything I had to say (mostly in the form of looking at me like I was stupid), so I kept my talking to a minimum. But - at the same time, I realized just how much I've reinforced her attitude in that way over the past year. Any time that I've felt the tension between us rising, my strategy for dissipating it has been "just own up to whatever it is being your fault, whether it really is or not, just accept responsibility for it and play it off like you've been dumb." And guess what -- that really does make people think you're dumb. Lesson learned. Not sure how I'm going to get myself out of this, but at least I'm seeing what's going on now. And keeping quiet did help her stay grounded, I think, and kept my mouth from getting me into trouble, so it turned out to be a good decision.

The wedding was beautiful - very lavish, coordinated with perfect smoothness, and I couldn't believe how little my friend actually had to worry about. Makeup and hair people came to her! Her transportation came to her! Cake and food and liquor and decor and flowers magically appeared at the venue! A trolley even came to take all the drunk people and the wedding party back to the hotel! It really was dream-worthy. I see why brides pay to have these things taken care of. I think that's what I got the most jealous of the whole time. But it was so much fun and I was so happy for them that it didn't really phase me :) I felt really free once the wedding rolled around, knowing that the whole process leading up to it was finally off my shoulders and that the situation was coming to fruition. I saw how all of her stress and hard work and even her friction with others had produced a day and an event that was pretty freakin' fantastic. Still not sure how I'm digesting that. I mean, I don't think being mean to people = getting what you want. Mostly, I'm just taking away the good memories and closing the door on this chapter of stuff in my life. It was the best way I ever could have imagined it ending - better than the best way, even. It was one Really, Really Good Time.

I definitely experienced some bride-envy in that form - the form of "dang, I know I could never afford _________," whether that blank is filled in with "food like this," or "tablecloths," or whathaveyou. It doesn't help that this trip completely broke me. I'm living off a loan from Mom until my next payday. I added it up and realized that I've spent over $2K on someone else's wedding. That's kind of rough, when that's almost half my own wedding's budget. But at the same time, I've been getting some ideas for making a little extra money, or at least recouping the damages this did to our wedding budget. Hellooooo selling all my Paganalia on Ebay and putting some old furniture on the local Swap Shop radio program! I think I can recoup at least $500 -- maybe more, if my family members have anything to donate to the cause. And I'm thinking about trying a new grocery shopping/cooking strategy to spend less than $200 a month on food, which might help me put away another $100 each month for the wedding.

A few more quick thoughts:

• I saw the space-to-people ratio at my friend's venue and got a better idea of what's needed. We will have to get really, really lucky to fit all our folks into our church/fellowship hall. But if there's too many, we can always spread outside and go down to the river.
• Speaking of the river, if we do have a rehearsal dinner, it would be so much fun to have a picnic out back behind the church down there. Or maybe at a picnic area on the Parkway, or a local park. That's something that we could probably afford and that would be tasty and fun and awesome :D
• My flowers will indeed be awesome because they won't be wilting before the ceremony starts like my friends' were.
• I'm really excited about some of our details now - like our unity candles - that my friend didn't bother with. Though she had the ease of having stuff done for her, I would have been so sad to miss out on the fun and involvement of making a lot of the things I'm making - I feel like I'll have something to do with every part of our wedding, and that makes me happy.
• J and I are both thinking we do want at least one small cake. And J definitely wants disposable digital cameras spread around. I couldn't get much of a read on what else he liked/didn't like (he definitely doesn't respond when you ask him straight out "so what did you like?" -- just had to pick these things up when he'd come right out and say them with no prompting).
• I am free and clear with all my details - there will be no "stealing" involved :P The venue did provide some mason jars for people to drink out of and my friend was scandalized. When I drunkenly asked her (by then a little too far gone to remember that whole keeping my mouth shut thing) if she'd be mad if we had mason jars all over our wedding since we'd already planned on them, she was tactful enough not to tell me I was crazy and/or drunk and/or tacky. Hooray!
• I got inspired to think about wedding music (my friend's was traditional up to the end, when she blasted some AC/DC) and found a bunch of bluegrass-y things to run by Johnny for the ceremony. I so so so so so want our recessional to be an instrumental banjo version of Rocky Top now.

On that note, I think that wraps it up... at least, the thoughts I can remember for now. There'll probably be more! I think my next wedding planning adventure adventures are going to involve making a little dough via the internet and the Swap Shop, my bouquet and the boutonnieres, and finally some bunting action. Woo!


80's HAIR!