Marrying Billie in Philly: The Bill Procopio Wedding Blog

As I get days away from my 30th birthday and my friends reach the milestone, its impossible not to think about how the next 30 years will be different from the first 30. Weddings bring these thoughts to the forefront like no other event. So when my friend Bill (known in my blogs as Vabilla) invited me and my friends to his wedding in Philadelphia, my friends who I have been seeing less and less without occasion, I wondered just how much would change this weekend and after.

The Man of Honor is Bill Procopio, Billie, Vabilla Ice, at one time he heckled this blog as the “Angry Reader” (hopefully that’s a revelation) but he is a pleasure to be around in person happy go lucky easy to have conversations with and will make you laugh now and then. His fiancée Alison is a beautiful woman whom probably saw Vabilla once but thought his friends (us) were tools so didn’t introduce herself to Bill until after we dispersed. There were three all SU couples at this event who had met each other AFTER graduation. That says something but I don’t know what. I’ve gotten to know and adore Alison as well other than one comment about my sparse use of profanity she has been a doll to me. Couldn’t wait to be with them on their wedding day…

Friday August 10

I hope everyone feels the way I do before one of these weekends. Anticipation with almost no chance of disappointment, ten guys getting together with no drama exchanging laughs interesting conversations and healthy amount of dick and fart jokes that remind us that while we’re all long out of college, those days are not forgotten.

In the rush to meet everyone I make perhaps an unwise decision. I forgo the Mass Pike and take I-95 all the way seeing some traffic. I was met by equal if not more traffic and to make a long agonizing story short, I made what is usually a 5 hour trip, 7 and a half. Although arriving late does make your entrance a little more grand as almost my friends and their wives are there to meet me.

Josh and his wife Erin, Paul and his wife Kate, Coach and his wife Stacey, Dan and his girlfriend Kristin, Smokey and his wife Krista, Coach’s friend Matt and his girlfriend Rachel, Bill’s friend Devo and his wife Amanda who I knew from my houseboy days at the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house and of course Vabilla and his lovely fiancee’ Alison.

Erin is the first girl to greet me and in her intoxicated state let’s me know that there is a single girl in the wedding party and she’s fresh off a divorce and ready for post wedding action. You can always count on the Hughes’ to look out for the wheelhouse. Apparently she and this bridesmaid were exchanging post pregnancy stories.

After greetings a man by the name of Christian says that I have “some catching up to do” and buys me two shots of tequila which I would feel all day the next day. Once everyone is gathered people convene in Josh’s room for some more catching up and laughs before calling it a night. Someone brings up going to see the King Tut display at the Franklin Institute the next day, which sounds like a good idea, although if you get tequila in me and my friends together anything sounds like a good idea.

Saturday August 11

The Nathan Procopio wedding is a half Jewish half Italian ceremony following the Jewish tradition of taking place at dusk. This means there is plenty of time to kill between the time we wake up and the ceremony. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you feel about dead Egyptians, King Tut is sold out forcing us to make alternate plans. Over breakfast with Coach and Stacey we decide to be tourists in Philly. Taking the Phlash (trolley bus that stops at all the touristy stops, it gets you where you want to go in a flash but since its in Philadelphia it’s a Phlash, get it?.)

So what’d we see? If you guessed the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, you’re right. I put the Liberty Bell up there with Plymouth Rock, the world’s largest rubber band ball in Kansas City, and Albany. If you’re close you feel like you need to see it, but once you see it, there’s nothing left to do but go back to where you came wondering what the big deal was.

I passed on Reading Market as it doesn’t occur to me that it might be exactly like Quincy Market in Boston. Perhaps it was how excited the wives in the party got at the sound of the word Market and join Smokey, and new arrivals Horse and Kevin for another Philly favorite cheesesteaks. Go to place called something Jim’s and while I liked my cheesesteak better than the one I got at the more famous Geno’s, I could easily name ten lunches more worth waiting an hour in line for than a cheesesteak but when in Philly this is what you wait in line for.

It’s easy to notice that the groom Vabilla is palpably nervous. While I’ve never been married myself, I’ve never understood what there is to be nervous about at a wedding. Most of the time the marriage license is signed so to back out would mean getting out of red tape, so that’s unlikely. With the money spent you can expect everything to be ready on time. Everyone in attendance is a relative or friend of yours so any embarrassments would be easily forgiven. In fact I would think an event like a wedding would be so regimented that even if anything did go wrong, it’d be easy to overcome. Not sure why Vabilla is so nervous, but he is.

Finally meet up with Beers who had in e-mail vowed to quit drinking, prompting us all to wonder why. We arrive at the ceremony in charter bus and are greeted by something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, pre-wedding drinks and hors d’oeurves . The explanation for this is simple, most weddings take place in churches or synagogues where drinking before hand isn’t thought of but Vabilla and Alison’s wedding is taking place outside a reception hall in downtown Philadelphia. I imagine the wedding would’ve taken place somewhere inside the hall if it rained but the weather was perfect and Vabilla and Alison got married with the City of Brotherly Love as the backdrop.

The service was lovely, even though myself, Beers, Dan, Horse, and Smokey couldn’t find seats and we could barely hear Vabilla and Alison. They exchanged their own written vows in a unique move which may or may not have been ripped off David and Donna’s wedding in the final episode of Beverly Hills 90210. I love you forever, I love you forever, I do, I do candle, kiss, Bill and Alison are married…did someone say cocktail hour?

Ever since Paul’s wedding, cocktail hour has been my favorite part of every wedding I’ve gone to. And those with sushi bars always have a fond place in my memory. Well some port in Maine is missing its seafood because it’s all at THIS COCKTAIL HOUR. More varieties of shrimp than Bubba Gump can name, lobster tail and a sushi bar with California Roll, Spicy Tuna, Salmon all in rice to be consumed in nostril flaring Wasabi and Soy. Ahhhhhh! I visited the sushi bar four times rivaled only by my cocktail hour compadre Coach, we went up enough to irk the sushi chef until he gave up and stopped making any more sushi.

As we get in our seats the bridesmaids and groomsmen are introduced to the Chicago Bulls intro song to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows Vabilla. Vabilla and Alison come out to the theme song from Beverly Hills 90210 then perceive to do a dance routine that involved Vabilla swinging his new wife through his legs then doing some kind of kick over head right before she pops up. THAT was what he was so nervous about.

Beers reveals this his quit drinking e-mails were nothing but a ruse, a cunning attempt to trick us. He fooled me.

Josh challenges Jeff by saying that his college alter ego Horse is as good as dead and that he’ll never be as “cool” as he used to be. This challenges Jeff to channel Horse through several Coronas.

As for the divorcee, usually at weddings the single people know right away who each other are and will make eye contact and smile and socialize with purpose towards each other. None of that was happening and as my friends got drunker the less coy they were about their hopes of us getting together. At one point Horse slurs to her “you HAVE to meet Derek” and we got introduced for the fourth time. Wedding hookups are awkward and almost never happen under these circumstances.

Not that Horse was capable of being coy about anything. Shouting out during a particular slow song “Bill this sucks!” he meant the song but that didn’t matter to his wife Meg who gave him a look that I won’t forget anytime soon.

At the last song I finally dance with Amy (the divorcee’) we make small talk but nothing more than that for the third wedding blog in a row there is no juicy hookup story. I’m sorry.

The night ended triumphantly as Bill did one final dance to Ice Ice Baby in front of all his friends and family. If I get married before Bill is crippled, I expect him to bring back this return at my wedding.

Anyway, the fun continues to the charter bus back to the hotel as we sing songs like 8 year olds on the way to camp. And as usually happens on these weekends, the nights don’t end early or easily. In fact after the party was the hotel lobby groups of us drinking beer talking fantasy football paying too much attention to a talkative single girl (nope, didn’t hook up with her either). A group of people getting together to celebrate life’s changes and the things that will never change.