A Wedding Ten Years and Eight Hours in the Making (Part II)

The Next Morning: We agreed last night to meet for breakfast at about 10am. I'm up at 9 to watch a little Sportscenter and head down early in case anyone else is downstairs. Then I realize one little detail that I forgot...a wedding card. You see Erin and Josh registered online and offered shipping directly to their address. Painless, absolutely painless, but no reminder for me to get them a card. Luckily there is a Rite-Aid right around the corner. Greco and I go down, I get my card, he gets cigarrettes. The counter girl excitedly tells us "Wow, you have the exact same change." I guess when you're a counter girl at Rite-Aid, anything that helps you get excited is worth saying out loud.
We meet for breakfast and Horse wants to go to a diner a couple blocks down the road. Finding out that it wasn't within walking distance we decide to eat at the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Most everyone gets the buffet, but I can never go out for breakfast and pass up Eggs Benedict. Here it's called the "State Street Special", whatever, I order it. Well, the buffet crowd goes up twice, and are shocked to find out the food sucks. Above and beyond how buffet food usually sucks. We're talking egg shells in the eggs sucks. Which I would be laughing about but it's been 40 minutes and I still don't have my Eggs Benedict. When I get it, it is nothing to write home about. This may have been my first bad breakfast. Then again it's one of my first sober breakfasts in a long time. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not. Maybe we should have gone to the diner.
Time to put on the tuxes and meet in Josh's room for the first of many pictures. Then we head downstairs where the ten person limo is waiting. I start a clapping session all the way down the elevator. As we hit the ground floor there is only one thing that can be said. WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE! Classic me. I must say... I stepped up.
The Wedding: Of course the ten person limo isn't meant for ten people and we are all quite close on the ride over. It's a pretty warm day and we are all pretty thirsty so we stop in the convenience store across the street from the church. The staff at the convenience store look at us funny, even though 1) we're across the street from a church and 2) it's Memorial Day weekend. None of us had the exact same change though so nobody said anything.
Now if you've ever been a groomsman in a wedding you know your job is to usher ladies down the aisle. We are given very few instructions, just seat them on the side they request. It's awkward at first because traditions have dissipated and the idea of walking old ladies three rows sounds silly, especially when they walk right by you. Coach and Paul are reluctant ushers, however EZE seems to walk down every attractive woman down the aisle. Lucky bastard. I walk down a couple of the "Virginia Girls" (more on them later) but they were the only ones under 50.
As with most weddings, the bride's side is packed much deeper than the groom's. The groom's side always just shows up for the reception food and a few drinks and goes home.
The ceremony begins and unlike Erin's mother, father, sister or anyone that would be forgiven for doing so, Josh wells up as Erin is walked down the aisle. He recovers smoothly by saying "My contact, My contact". The line was so good, I choose to try to believe him and try not to bring it up everyday I see him from here til death.
One prank gone half-wrong. Horse put tape on the bottom of Josh's shoes spelling HE on one side and LP on the other. So that when Josh and Erin knelt for communion, the word "HELP" would appear on his shoes. Unfortunately the right shoe's tape rolled up and only HE on the left shoe was readable. Needless to say the bride didn't find this as amusing as you just did.
Speaking of communion, it is one of those awkward things at a Catholic wedding for non-Catholics. Now Amin and Coach are Jewish and are not taking communion, but other than them I am the only one. While Amin and Coach look like Jews and it's obvious to everyone why they aren't eating the free crackers and wine, I have no excuse except for the fact that I am a Satan worshipper. I'm not, but to anyone there I could have been. The point is, what to do? I knelt when they read the prayers. Said amen when people said amen. But I didn't take the crackers and wine. I'm sure whatever I did I'm going to hell for because I was still thinking about the bad hotel porn I wasted money on the night before.
One more thing, I didn't know anything about the people doing the readings this time. At EZE's wedding it was fun trying not to laugh at the person reading Ecclesiastes after being told he was the guy who had his nuts covered in shaving cream and set on fire at the bachelor. If I get married to a Catholic and my bachelor party is in Vegas, I'm giving a reading to that got a hooker, just for the irony.
So Josh and Erin get married and we hang around for yet more pictures. In front of the church, in front of the park. Highlights include the flirtatious divorcee almost falling face first in my lap which she says would "be great for him, bad for my makeup". Don't know how to respond to that. And a picture of Erin with the nine of us, which took me back to a pleasant night in Syracuse. Also we took a picture in front of one of the fifty frogs outside buildings in Erie. Another great idea probably around 1996 when they decided not to paint over the Bicentennial bridges. "Mr. Mayor we have extra money in the budget and we need to spruce up the city, what should we build? An inner-city school, a convention center, a park"..."No, none of that let's put up sculptures of frogs everywhere, that will be a hoot!"..."Sounds good Mayor McCheese".
The Reception: Tracy and I make our way to the reception to the Sopranos theme song. We were told to go out there and just do whatever. Tracy does I don't know what and I just play along. A video montage of Josh and Erin plays to Shania Twain's "Looks like we made it". Guess my hopes of not hearing that song at a wedding reception once in five years were too ambitious.
At the head table you get to the buffet first and at a wedding of 450 people there is nothing more fun than going to the back table of your friends and telling them how good the food is and how full you are. Its as much fun everytime I do it. Really. Yes, I'm an asshole. The drinks consist of whiskey sours and Coach's concoction which he is calling "Kliqness" made of rum, pineapple juice, peach schnapps and some other stuff mixed in there. Even though it comes out pink, it is really good.
Erin's roommates breasts and Erin's roommate continue to dance and flirt with Greco. He probably should have taken her upstairs early on. Brock and the flirtations divorcee are inseperable. We find out that Josh in the 6th grade adopted the nickname "Hugs", get it Hughes...Hugs, Josh...part gay. It all makes just a little more sense now. It's also revealed he had the New York Mets logo shaved into the back of his head in Junior High. Ah the things you can learn only at a wedding.
What could be more fun at an all-white wedding than an all white dance-off. Josh's friend DJ, fresh off of hooking up with the bartender at Calamari's by the way, and Vabilla. To Bill's namesake's song, it doesn't seem fair, but somehow DJ manages to steal the dance floor. The Kliq's contribution is a request for Ruff Ryder's Anthem, to which we all mosh and slam dance at the same time. Needless to say any pictures of this are not being sent to the SU alumni magazine. We end up scaring the entire party off the dance floor and a good half of them back to their homes. Proud moments.
The reception winds down and I get introduced to Lisa, one of the "Virginia Girls" a third grade teacher from Virginia who teaches at Erin's school. She seems nice and I seem drunk and we both seem at a wedding and you know where this is going...or do you?
The Hospitality Suite: After the reception we go to the hospitality suite for the afterparty. I talk to Lisa some more and Erin informs me that if I want to hook up with her I can. Thanks Erin, until now there was so much confusion and mixed signals. She says "I really feel a connection to you", at this point I could feel a connection to a water buffalo if it showed interest. Beers is playing DJ using an Ipod. The rest of the guys are playing Texas Hold'em. Lisa wants to go upstairs to "exchange e-mail addresses". She keeps talking about her opinions on people and life and blah,blah, blah. We get to my room, gives me her e-mail address she proceeds to kiss me, tackle me to the bed, and dry hump me like a mechanical bull. She then asks me what my passion is (oral sex, receiving it specifically), she informs me that her passion is teaching. About then I notice something. I'm starting to feel really full and somewhat tired. I tell her I'm feeling somewhat full and really tired and she proceeds back to her room. I go to the bathroom, thinking I have to piss and blllleeeeeaaaahhhh. PINK KLIQNESS EVERYWHERE!!!! Half of it made it into the toilet...maybe. I look in the mirror and realize I am wasting one of the few weekends I have left with my friends for some easy action. I step up and go back to the Hospitality suite.

The Conclusion:
Texas Hold 'Em is still playing...
Josh is upstairs consummating his marriage with hopefully more than "Hugs"...
Jeff throws a fit when Bill gets his pair on the River (or is it the Turn, or the Flop?)...
Kathman is on the balcony smoking rolled cigarrettes...
Brock is probably banging the flirtatious divorcee...
EZE is thrilled because his wife let him smoke a cigarrette...
Amin is dancing in his seat to Digable Planets...
Vabilla looks like Michael Corleone with his full tux still on and a cigar in his mouth...
Coach is congratulating me on making it back downstairs...
Beers is still playing the Ipod, three hours after his wife left upstairs upset and...

I am back in the Hospitality Suite with my best friends. Realizing in the five years since we were all in college, nothing has changed.
No place I'd rather be. Classic weekend with classic friends.

Worth the ten year wait.
Worth the eight hour drive.