Last weekend, I was home in Florida for the wedding of my best friend from high school, John. It was an awesome wedding – a small gathering of about 100 people (99 white folks, and one brown dude) at the Baughman Center at UF, followed by an afternoon reception at the Thomas Center in Gainseville.
I was one of John’s groomsman, along with his brother, Andrew, and his close friend from college, Kellen. It was my first time being a groomsman, and it was incredible. Basically, you get to dress up, be as close to the center of attention as possible, and then get congratulated and thanked for doing nothing other than standing around and drinking a lot. In any case, the weekend was one of the funnest I’ve had in a while, and here are just a few of the reasons why.
We drank a lot.I mean, that’s what weddings are for, right? And I’m not talking about just drinking at the reception. John gave us our groomsman gifts – flasks with gators on them – before the rehearsal. I drank en route to the chapel, at the rehearsal dinner, at the family desert thing at the hotel afterward, at the hotel bar, and at Gator City, a typical college bar featuring 80′s night on Fridays and a bevy of girls surprisingly receptive to the “Haaaaave you met (name of friend)?” line from How I Met Your Mother. At one point, one girl even told me I was “the ballsiest person in [our] group”, a statement rather surprising given what most of you know as the nightmare that is any interaction I have with women. So yea, when a girl calls ME the ballsiest person in the group, its safe to say we drank a lot. And that was the night before the wedding.
We were borderline predators. I mentioned before that it was a small wedding. 90% of the guests there were the bride (Robyn, by the way) and groom’s extended families. A whole lot of aunts and uncles, and no eligible bachelorettes. With little to work with, Kellen and I tried to focus our attention on whatever we could, which turned out to be some of the, uh, underage cousins in the family. Cousins who – um, how do I say this delicately – had not yet become fat or ugly.
Mind you, we did nothing beyond make conversation and later have discussion on relative rankings, but try as we might to remain uncreepy, our cause was not helped when the sister of the groom, who’d been listening to our rather loud conversation, turned to another gentleman seated nearby at the hotel bar and said, “By the way, they’re talking about your daughters.” AWK. WARD.
But just to clarify, Dateline, nothing happened.
We were goofballs. Weddings are supposed to be a formal celebration of the most important day of two people’s lives, but us groomsmen wanted no part of that. Though we obliged in the traditional bridal party pictures, we took it upon ourselves to suggest ridiculous pictures at every point. Pictures like this one, where we tried to mimic the pictures of olden times where no one smiles, but rotated the groom’s glasses around the bridal party (I’m wearing them in this one):
Or this one, where we stole someone’s bike outside the chapel, simply because it was there (they were not happy about that):
Or this one, prompted by I’m not sure what:
Or this one, which is when things just got ridiculous:
And these are the tamer ones. There are countless more that have yet to be seen, many of them involving Kellen and I doing things so ridiculous that the photographers were convinced we were more than just friends.
We were assholes. The bridal party arrived back late to hotel after the afternoon reception, having made some pit stops in the limo on the way back to take some additional pictures. When we got back, several of the other guests already there told Kellen and I about some other event going on in the hotel. “There are a bunch of people in tuxedos and gowns milling around, you’d fit right in.” Not believing them, but nonetheless still in our own tuxedos, we decided to check it out and found our way over to a silent auction taking place in the hotel corridor, with the well-dressed guests making their way into the ballroom. We followed suit, made a beeline for the open bar, grabbed drinks, then decided to figure out just what it was we were attending. As guests took their assigned seats, we stood shamelessly along the wall. The ceremonies kicked off, and we realized we had in fact crashed a $150/plate fundraiser for the American Heart Association. Woops. Not that our guilt stopped us. We refilled our drinks twice while there, and came back again later in the evening for another round.
We were shamless. (Or at least I was.) The majority of the other wedding guests had been spending the evening socializing in a patio area near the pool, and sometime after our second trip into the AHA fundraiser, I decided that – right at that moment – the pool needed swimming in. Since Kellen and I had been staying at the groom’s house on campus, and thus had no clothes available, I decided that the only reasonable course of action was to take off running, strip off my tuxedo, and dive into the pool in only my boxers. Yup – in front of the bride and groom’s entire families. This set off a ridiculous chain of events – Kellen jumping in wearing almost his entire tuxedo, the cousins going back to their rooms to put on bathing suits, the groom’s mom being tossed in, the groom being tossed in, etc. All in all, a three hour late night pool party, all because I decided to get near-naked and take a swim.
We were assholes. Again. At some point in the night, the pool party started winding down. The older folks went to bed (except for one, who we later found out, was there to keep a watchful eye over Kellen and I), and eventually us younger ones decided to call it a night as well.
Slight problem.
Kellen and I were staying at the groom’s house, but had forgotten to take a key to the house with us when leaving in the morning. And the only person with said key was, well, the groom. So after loosely putting our tuxedos back on at 1am, we did the only thing we could, disturb the newlyweds on their wedding night. Man, that conversation was fun.
[Bang bang bang bang]
Kellen: “John, open the door! We know you can’t last this long!!! We need the key to your house!”
[bang bang bang bang, groom eventually opens door wearing nothing but jeans]
Me: Dude, you naked under those pants?
John: What? No.
Me: [holding up wet boxers and grinning] I am!
John: Get out of here.
Lastly, we were stupid. Lacking any foresight, we rode around in a limo all day not realizing that at some point we’d have to find our way back to the car parked at the chapel. Lacking any cash at all, we couldn’t call a cab to pick us up from the hotel. And so we walked. Like a billion miles across campus. There we were, a dry-heaving, freeballing Indian guy, and a bare-chested, one-shoed white guy, roaming endlessly through the deserted streets of Gainesville back to our car. Like complete idiots.
I’ve spent a lot of time with my own extended family lately, and like folks from the motherland often do, they constantly ask me why I have not yet gotten hitched myself. Its weekends like this that demonstrate that I’m, quite frankly, years away from achieving the maturity level necessary.
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(Quick disclaimer: The first two pics above – the ones with the blue border – were taken by the wedding’s official photographers, IMJ Photography (see their post on the wedding here) and are in no way any works of my own. Just want to make sure I’m not stepping on any toes.
Also, if you’re in the need for a wedding/event photographer in Florida, definitely give them a call. Monica and Jacob were fun to work with and very accommodating to the unusual requests Kellen and I came up with.
Yes, this is me using a shamless plug to avoid upsetting them for using their pictures.)
