The Wedding, Part V

Saturday night/Sunday:
May 31 and June 1.
Written well over a week later (obviously, I mean, look at today's date).

We went way overboard on the catering, we realized, after we began to see it all coming in. You don't realize exactly how much food it takes to feed 100 people until you see it laid out on tables in front of you. Daisy has the invoice somewhere for it (I believe it's out in the living room) but needless to say, salad/breadsticks/spaghetti for 100 people is a lot of goddamned food. So much that by the end of the night, we still had two entire pans of spaghetti, probably fifty (or more) breadsticks, and four or five unopened family-size tubs of salad left over. 

Once the food was set up, we sat down to eat and hear speeches/toasts/etc. My mother had purchased all of the champagne the VFW hall had, out of her own pocket, and made sure everyone had champagne for the toasts. Several people spoke; our dads both spoke, most of Daisy's party spoke, all of my party spoke, and my old boss from Microbiology -- who had flown in to see me get married -- spoke at length about me as well. At the end of it, Daisy thanked everyone and spoke herself, then offered the microphone to me. I declined to speak.

If I had gone first, I would've said some words, but as I was last, I...well, everything I'd wanted to say had already been said by everyone else. I would've mentioned that our wedding day (May 31) was chosen because it's her parents' anniversary...well, dad touched on that and Daisy did as well. I would've thanked everyone for their time, help, and kindness in coming and showing us how much they cared, but Daisy and her parents did that. I would've talked about how much of an awesome person I was, but my own dad and old boss -- as well as my groom's party -- had already done that as well. I didn't want to repeat what had already been said, so I bowed out gracefully and declined to speak. This is highly amusing to some of you, I'm sure, as if you know me well, you know that I rarely, if ever, give up an opportunity to tell an entire crowd of people gathered in our honor how awesome I am and/or how awesome my wife is. I'd even had stuff I'd wanted to say as well, stuff I'd plotted out in my head days before. Beats to hit, so to speak. Since 95% of it had already been said and I basically blanked on the last 5%, I didn't say anything.

After the speeches were over...the dance party began.

I will mention now, and you will probably not be surprised by this revelation, but...I'm not much of a dancer. I am a rather sedentary person anyway, generally speaking, and the fact that I'd been wearing a very hot jacket, pants, socks, and incredibly uncomfortable patent leather dress shoes all day long didn't help matters any. Still, there's the traditional wife and groom dance, which we did, and then Daisy had her father/daughter dance with Dad. Apparently there's supposed to be some sort of mother/son dance in which I was supposed to dance with my mother, but nobody really told me about that, and because of that it's not like I had a song ready to go. I knew about the father/daughter dance, because that's a huge traditional thing.

It really didn't matter that much anyhow; I slow-danced with my mother later in the night anyway -- to some song that she really liked but I'd never heard of, some country song. It was sweet and touching, and she cried into my shoulder all the way through it (which was to be expected, as I'm her only son -- her only child, period -- and I'd just gotten married).

I tended to stay on the outskirts of most of the party and dancing; I did dance some with Daisy, and I danced some with some of the people there, mainly my friends and members of my/our wedding party(ies), but for the most part I really just wanted to sit down, wanted to get off of my aching, swollen feet -- so that's what I did. Outside, too, where I could smoke and try to get some cool breeze, since it was hot inside the VFW hall. I'm not a huge mingler anyway, and I'm even less of one at large social gatherings. While I like being the center of attention (who doesn't?), that only goes so far until I totally need to get away from loud pumping music and tons of people. This is also another reason why I don't like going out dancing with Daisy, and the one time she took me out salsa dancing I described the experience as my own personal hell.

While many others got drunk via the cash bar, I didn't; for one, the mere thought of ingesting more alcohol after my bachelor party made me internally retch, and for two, I just wasn't interested. One of our friends bought me a beer right at the start of dinner, and Rae later bought a round of Jack Daniel's shots for several of us, including me, but that's all I had the entire night except for two bottles of water. I just wasn't "feelin' it," I suppose. However, I did get to see many people I know -- including family members and really close friends in my party -- get sloshed and/or bust some serious moves on the dance floor. I desperately hope someone got pictures of some of that. I had a bunch of people come in from out of town, though -- some of them from pretty far away -- and I really just wanted to relax and talk to them, spend some time with them. It's so difficult to do that when everything is all crazy and the music is pumping and loud, and I didn't want any of them to feel neglected or like I was ignoring them at the wedding they came to for me. I did that as much as I could -- Jane and I sat outside for a good hour or so, and I did the same with April and her husband. I spent a good amount of time talking to my former boss and his wife as well. There was so many people and I was so overwhelmed, under-rested, and fried that I I couldn't have possibly spent time with all of them no matter how hard I tried; I would've fallen over and passed out on the dance floor due to exhaustion.

I wanted to mention the cake as well, for it was amazing -- Daisy's oldest sister made it for us by herself, painstakingly decorating it and making three layers in different flavors, covering it all in a beautiful (and tasty) fondant so that it would look even and beautiful. The bottom layer -- which I ate the most of -- was two layers of chocolate cake with either strawberry or raspberry (I can't remember) jam between them. I don't remember what the middle layer was, but the top tier was much smaller and it's the one we saved in the freezer to eat on our anniversary. It was all vegan, as well (obviously) and Daisy and I were eating pieces of the chocolate/jam cake up until earlier this week, even.

The kids -- our nieces and nephews, and one cousin -- had a lot of fun during the dance portion of the reception, and their boundless energy awed me. They were running back and forth almost the entire night, almost nonstop, and giggling. Even the toddlers. Daisy and I just watched them with tired eyes and secretly, internally were both glad that we had paid the cleaning fee so we didn't have to clean the place after it was all done.

Around 9PM or so -- right as it was getting dark -- people began to filter out, going back to their hotels and homes. By 10, when we were beginning to wrap things up, more than half of our guests were gone. We had the place until 10:30, and we brought up the lights at around 10:10 so we could start cleaning up. We didn't have to do anything, mind you, but we did have to put the gifts and the food in the car(s), take down the arch, lights, speakers and sound system array for the music, and gather up anything else we'd brought with us. Our wedding parties wouldn't let us help at all -- we tried, and they told us to go away, this was our wedding and everything was going to be taken care of. April had left her jacket (the spare I'd given her to wear in the wedding), and had texted Daisy to tell her that she didn't need it. I ended up giving it to one of Daisy's bridesmaids to take back home with her, as she said her mother could wear it -- which I think I mentioned before.

Our collective parents were amongst the last to leave -- Daisy's parents slipped out quietly, and my own parents left as our parties were cleaning everything up and moving stuff out to the car. It was the last time I'd see my parents before they left; in order to get back across the country and back to their jobs, they had to leave early on Sunday morning, stop at a halfway point hotel on Sunday night to sleep, and then drive the rest of the way back to West Virginia on Monday. That meant, obviously, they'd miss the gift-opening brunch the next morning at 11:30 at the parents' house.

We checked and double-checked everything once everything had been loaded into Daisy's car (now overflowing with stuff) and made sure we hadn't left anything behind. We tried to tip our security officer -- who had been guarding the door all day/night for us -- but he refused the tip. Daisy instead thanked him graciously and gave him a big hug, which I thought was sweet.

Our original plans at that point had been to go to Night Flight Pizza for a post-wedding meal. The lady who owns the place adores us, and knows Daisy well (though she's been getting to know me a lot better over the course of the past year or so too). However, both of us were exhausted and desperately just wanted to go home and go to bed. Because Daisy's dress was massive, thick, and voluminous, it was way too large for her to be able to drive with it on, so I took the wheel of the car and got us back to the apartment.

It was only then that we realized we had all of the food in the trunk of the car -- the remainder of the catering I mentioned above -- meaning all of the family-size salads, two massive pans of spaghetti, all of the leftover breadsticks, etc. And we had absolutely nowhere to put it. Our refrigerator in this place is tiny. I'm almost a foot taller than it is. And it was full of our normal food. We didn't have room for four tubs of salad, each almost as big as a car tire, and a tub of spaghetti that would take up 80% of a shelf in the fridge. We realized this as I'd pulled the car in front of our building's door for the moment to make things easier to carry in, and across the lawn from us on the bottom floor of the other side of the complex (so, maybe 30 feet away) was an older man sitting outside on his patio watching us -- in full wedding clothing, mind you -- panicking about what the hell we were going to do with basically half the food we'd had catered.

So, we did the most logical thing possible our exhausted brains could come up with -- we asked him if he wanted some of the food, explaining our situation.

"No thanks," he said, "but, congratulations."

I thought it was funny and/or sort of surreal.

We ended up taking a lot of it over to Daisy's office -- yes, her workplace, her office, on our wedding night, at 11PM, so that the night shift people could eat and so that the dayshift would have something the next day. We were, again, still fully dressed in our wedding clothing while we did this, mind you. We dropped off everything we could, leaving all of the salad there but one container of it, and we kept one of the tubs of spaghetti and most of the breadsticks as well (the latter two foods are now in the freezer in bags so that we can eat them later). Then and only then could we come home, take some of the stuff inside, and get the hell out of our formal wear.

People often make somewhat racy assumptions or ask personal questions about the wedding night, how it went, etc etc. I'll tell you exactly how our wedding night went, and will make no bones about it: we got out of the wedding clothes and piled them all on Daisy's desk in the computer room, we cleared space in the fridge to cram the leftover food in there, and Daisy laid down exhausted on the couch while I checked Facebook -- which was blowing up with pictures, messages, congratulations, etc. I listed myself as married to Daisy, and went outside to smoke on the porch. When I came back in, Daisy held up her phone to show it to me, and it was on her Facebook profile where she'd already changed her name.

"I changed my name," she said, and then dropped her arm; no more than 30 seconds later she was snoring on the couch.

I stayed up a bit longer to wind myself down and, really, burn myself out, and then I got Daisy off the couch, we stumbled into the bedroom, and...slept. Like rocks. For many hours. And that was our wedding night.

The next morning, of course, we did have to wake up -- no matter how difficult it was to do so -- and dress ourselves to go over to the parents' house for the gift-opening brunch. Most of Daisy's party was there, though none of mine came. I assume they were all still sleeping off their hangovers and/or had already begun their treks home. April and her husband, as well as my parents, had already left town by 11:30 AM. Rae was in town for a few more days afterward, but she wasn't awake. Jane had gone to the Omaha Zoo early that morning, and I have no clue what happened to Dan and Amanda, though I had told them that they were more than welcome to come get brunch and do the gift-opening stuff with us.

Mama had made muffins for everyone -- they were ready and done, and people were eating them when we arrived. Most of Daisy's party was there, and of course her sisters, their husbands, and our nieces and nephews were there as well, so it's not like it was an empty house. We went through our gifts and cards one by one, and got a lot of really nice stuff from people. Two of my friends from the university (the only ones not in my party to actually come up from Wichita) got us a beautiful owl-themed salt and pepper shaker set, for example. Mama had made us a wedding quilt, as did her own mother. We got a wireless router for the house and reusable K-cup filters for our Keurig. We got glassware and dishes, a Rubbermaid food storage set, mugs and knives, etc. We got a lot of cards containing checks and gift cards to various places (the majority of which we've either already deposited into our checking account or we've already used at the stores the cards were for). There are a lot of things we received, and most of it is still sitting here in the computer room with me in its boxes and bags for us to go through once we can actually get some breathing space and some time to sort all of it out/begin sending out thank-you cards. I'm not lying when I say that every day since the wedding, we've had something else to do or someplace else to be -- newlywed things to sort out and take care of -- and Daisy went back to work a week ago, so we're juggling all the things to be done in-between her shifts and her days off; most of said things we both have to be present for.

So. The after-wedding gift brunch was fun, relaxing, and quiet. We were finally beginning to feel like a little of the proverbial weight had been lifted from our shoulders. Understand, please, that we had been running, both literally and figuratively, for many days on end leading up to the wedding, what with my move and the setting up of this place as well as the coordinating of the wedding, its guests, the timeframes involved, etc.

However, we'd planned beforehand -- long before the wedding -- for all of us married people (with the exception of the parents) to take the kids to the zoo. We had originally planned a different day, but due to travel schedules of people leaving town, that Sunday after the brunch was decided to be the best time (and/or the only real time) where all of us would be there and available with no true plans. I mentioned in a post waaaaay over a week ago now, briefly, that we did this trip. Altogether there were all of us adults -- me and Daisy, as well as her sisters and their husbands and her cousin from Nova Scotia, and then the combined total of seven children between all of them. That put the grand total of people going to the zoo, all together and all at once, at fourteen people. Three vehicles, fourteen people, seven of them children all under ten. Logistically, this should've been a nightmare, but it actually went much more smoothly than I'd anticipated.

The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha is world-famous. In the midwest, especially anywhere in the immediate tri-state area, if someone says they want to go to a zoo, it's the one they're talking about. Yes, Wichita has a zoo. Yes, Kansas City has a zoo. I'm sure they're both fine zoos. But this zoo was, and is, amazing. It's definitely earned its reputation. Jane had gone there early in the morning, and had just left and had gotten back to her hotel room when we arrived with our caravan of people. Mama and Dad had decided to stay behind at home; Mama I'm sure was exhausted and more than likely wanted some peace and quiet for a bit, and Dad was "babysitting the ham," as he said, which would be our big family dinner that night.

Mind you, I've not been to a zoo since...1984. No, seriously. And that was the Pittsburgh Zoo. Yes, I remember it, but I was way, way too young to get anything out of it or truly enjoy it. I just remember that it was 1984, I saw polar bears, and that a group of us went together. And we got McDonald's afterwards. Yeah, seriously. So, naturally, upon arriving at the zoo here, I was immediately awed and took the mindset of a child (as, well, come on -- all of you know I am a big kid anyway). I got to be twenty feet from a massive giraffe. I got to have giant fruit bats swoop down and almost get in my hair. I got to see lots of penguins and sharks and jellyfish in the aquarium. It was, simply put, awesome.

However, in the afternoon the clouds began to roll in thickly. As we finished up with the giraffes, everyone with smartphones (so, everyone but me) got text alerts that the city was under a severe thunderstorm warning, and it was moving our way. The Lied Jungle, which is a massive complex where (surprise) jungle animals live -- monkeys, tapirs, the aforementioned bats, etc etc -- would be our last stop for the day, as we needed to get inside somewhere before the storms hit. The jungle building has a glass ceiling, but an opaque one. We could see the sky getting darker and darker through it, and finally -- maybe 1/3 of the way through the jungle complex itself -- we heard the storm hit.

Mind you again, it is loud in the jungle complex, what with the monkeys, birds, the waterfalls, and everything else that makes noise in there -- including the people. It was raining/storming so hard outside that the storm drowned out most other noise -- it was just a dull roaring of thunder and rain on plexiglass ceiling.

And it didn't stop. It didn't stop for hours. When we all left the zoo, we had to protect the babies as much as possible because it was some of the hardest rain I've seen in a long time, and being out in it for even thirty seconds meant that you were soaked to the bone -- so much that we were freezing and had to come back to the apartment and change our clothes/shower before going back over to the parents' house for dinner that night.

We got six more inches of rain two days later, by the way, but that's a story for the next post -- the aftermath of everything since.