Ah, weddings. Blushing brides, pretty flowers, tearful moms, cute flower girls, charming speeches, open bars, morally flexible bridesmaids....we all know the drill. Adams-Hanger '09 promised, and then Adams-Hanger '09 delivered. Except for the morally flexible bridesmaids part. Which, quite frankly, I'm pretty happy about, considering that my younger sisters comprised half the bridal party.
But the glimpses of our wedding that you've seen in People and Us Weekly only tell half the story. Because you only see what we want you to see, I fear that there's just no way you could know the nitty-gritty details, the accidents, the tragedies, the folly that came along with this event. And since you've all shown such loyalty from the start, I think it's only fair to give you a glimpse of the seedy underbelly of Adams-Hanger '09.
Let's start with my ill-fated venture into men's cologne modeling. I think it was Vanity Fair that referred to this shot as "Recession for Men." Well screw you, Graydon Carter. I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that tragic tie hang up...
Next we have maybe the saddest element of the whole thing... you look at this picture, and you see a ridiculously cute flower girl, being ridiculously cute, and getting some help from the crowd. But if you look at the bottom left corner, you see the problem: clearly, my mother forgot to wear pants. An understandable misstep, given how hectic wedding days can get, but nevertheless regrettable.
Here now, we see another chance I took that failed. OK! zeroed in on my head and asked "Was Trevor late for a casting of Rockstar: A Flock of Seagulls?" Perez was somewhat nicer, captioning with "Hanger....so hot right now." I thought the Mugatu reference was kind of flattering, actually. US Weekly, unfortunately, ran it next to a picture of Kate Gosselin's hair in a "Who Wore it Better?" feature, where I was predictably trounced 74%-26%. Oh sure, put me up against a woman who's husband just cheated on her in front of the entire country...that's really fair. What was the nutjob doing on a North Carolina beach all last week, anyway? Trying to steal our thunder? Whatevs....suck it US Weekly, you just lost both Adams-Hanger '09 subscriptions.
Finally, we have the ultimate fashion faux-pas. A relative, who we'll call Frank, inexplicably wore a BLUE SEERSUCKER SUIT (!!!!) to the wedding. Seriously, to a beach wedding?! Come on! Why not just go the whole way and wear a white lace dress, Frank? Maggie's mom had him killed. True Story. One of the best sunset photos we have is ruined because you can clearly see her pushing Frank's body out of a rowboat into the sound. Then she had every photo of him at the wedding destroyed. Welcome to the family, Trev! I hear there may be one pic of Frank circulating on the interwebs, but it's probably super grainy and looks like something taken from the Cold War era CIA file, or a Loch Ness Monster hoax.
All kidding aside, I can't believe how much fun I had at my own wedding. Like, exponentially more fun than I've ever had at anyone else's. The whole day/weekend/10 days were incredible. Let's just hope my mom wears pants to the next one...
I'd like to start this week's F-Word Friday by issuing an apology. Back in late March, in a blatant and transparent attempt to diversify and expand wedding blog readership, I wrote a post that touched on vampires, sex, rock 'n roll, more sex, basketball, and still more sex. And it worked.... we quadrupled regular male readership from 3 to 12, and even got a couple of them to comment. And how did I say thank you? With consecutive F-Word Fridays about men wearing skirts, shoes, and...that other topic that I can't really tell you about, cuz it's still a total secret. I don't know what to say other than "Gentlemen, I'm sorry."
So this week, in the second-to-last F-Word Friday, we're making amends. We're giving back. We're talking beer.
Our "rehearsal dinner" Saturday night is a barbeque cookout in the yard of a big beachside house overlooking the ocean. Pulled pork, boiled shrimp, coleslaw, cornbread. Checkered tablecloths. Footballs, frisbees, and volleyballs flying all over the place. With any luck, it will look like something out of a beer commercial. Which means one thing: we actually need beer. But not just any beer. I mean sure, we could probably throw a couple of cheap brand-name domestic kegs at this crowd and still get the desired response, but Maggie and I (but especially Maggie) have a hint of beer snob in us. So I spoke to a friend who happens to work for a brewer in Montreal, laid out the scene for him, and asked for some help.
Visionary that he is, my budding brewmaster buddy came back with a truly inspired idea.... he showed us a list of six microbrews he could personally vouch for, three of which are from Connecticut (my home state), and three from NC, and thought we should pick one from each state to throw even more local fare into the mix. What's more, he found a local liquor store on the Outer Banks willing to order en masse for us. From these suggestions, we chose the Duck Rabbit Amber to represent the Tar Heel state, and an IPA called Sea Hag from New England Brewing in Woodbridge, CT (we passed on the Thomas Hooker IPA in spite of the obvious temptation to supply ourselves with an unending littany of "Hooker at a wedding" jokes). But our friend wasn't done. Knowing as all good brewmen do that a large cadre of rehearsal attendees will steer clear of the fancy microbrew, he even suggested we provide Lone Star to placate the Coors Light crowd, and allow us to run up the tiniest of Texas flags in spite of ourselves. (And before any of you locals say "wait, how can you pick Lone Star over Shiner?!", try to remember that Shiner sucks....too many Texans blindly love Shiner just because it's from Texas. It's the Dallas Cowboys of regional pseudo microbrew. Lone Star may be no better, and might even be worse, but I simply refuse to perpetuate the Shiner myth any longer. Not only that, but Lone Star is an infinitely better beerpong beer than Shiner. And there will be beerpong.)
So we're set to place the orders tomorrow. Cases and cases. Maybe even kegs. Hopefully enough to last for a few late nights and even into the following week, since Maggie and I are sticking around after everyone else heads home. Gotta have something to drink with your toes in the sand.
O. M. G. there's something I have to tell you, but you CANNOT tell anyone!! No, I'm serious, this is really a real secret. Because it's embarrassing! This is bad, even for me....I totally can't believe I did it. Actually never mind, I can't tell you. Nope. Because! Because. Because I'm ashamed, ok? I was only gonna tell you because I got busted for it this morning, and that jackass Kevin in accounting probably already put it on his Facebook status. What? No it's not ok if you friend him. Jesus. OKOKFINE, fine whatever, I'll tell you. Wait no, no I can't. Because! O-KAY! Fine, whatever, god. But you have to come closer....I can't even bring myself to say this above a whisper.
I went to a tanning salon last night.
I know! I know....I told you it was ridiculous. Um, because I had no choice, obvs. Have you been outside lately? Lemme answer that one for you....um, no, you haven't, because it's rained for like two straight months here. No! I'm only going to go a few times, it's not like I want to look like a Mavs Dancer. I just need a base, cuz you know i burn sooooo easily, and it's pretty freakin' tacky to get married with a sunburn, especially at a beach wedding. Besides, seersucker kind of washes people out sometimes, and obviously I'm a little bit porcelain anyway, and with a tan my eyes will totally pop. The salon? Yeah, it was pretty clean, I guess. I mean it didn't smell like body spray or anything...I definitely got dummer listening to the two girls behind the counter, though. They were tragic. Who, Kevin? Oh, he totally busted me when I was stretching and he saw how pink the underside of my arms were. Yeah it was pretty bad. Whatever, it'll totally fade into a nice bronze by the weekend.
Michael Jordan wore a new pair of Air Jordan sneakers every time he played a game as a pro. When a reporter asked him why (assuming it was a way to get more "game-worn" shoes out on the market to auction for charities or give to the underprivileged), Jordan said the philanthropy was a nice by-product, but that the real reason was more selfish. He said the universal truth was that everyone feels special when they're wearing new shoes, and he wanted that feeling every time he stepped on the court. And he's right.
Maggie, as has been well-documented, has a new pair of dangerously sexy red Valentinos for the wedding. They're outrageously, unfairly hot. On a scale of 1-10, they're at least a 14. And the bridesmaids, even the super-preggo Best Woman, are wearing fun new shoes too. I, admittedly, fretted over which shoes I'd wear. The choices are limited when wearing a seersucker suit, and I thought I wanted a pair of shoes that didn't feel out of the ordinary for me (I wanted to be comfortable wearing them, not just having them on, if that makes sense). But eventually I caved, and we found a pair of white bucks with navy saddles, which are really comfortable and very cool (thanks in no small part to the seersucker lining in the shoe). But the groomsmen, well, they were on their own. With a new suit, shirt, tie, belt, and pocket square already in place, we decided early on that basic brown shoes would suffice. What's more, knowing that they all owned brown shoes of varying styles, and that no one cares what shoes the groomsmen wear anyway, we just gave them general guidelines to help pick from their own shoe collection. Never mind that two of them probably only own one pair of brown dress shoes anyway.
So that was that. Until Wednesday, when my father, the Best Man/King of the High-End Outlet Mall/World's Most Interesting Man, rescued the groomsmen from the woefully shallow depths of their own closets. He managed to find above average off-white bucks on sale for next to nothing, and called immediately for permission to buy new shoes for himself and his fellow groomsmen. I was, shall we say, skeptical, but that night he sent me a phone pic of himself in full groomsman attire (complete with a large-brimmed hat that made him look like a stunt double for Elliot Ness), and damned if he didn't look even more like The World's Most Interesting Man than he already did! So now, even the groomsmen get new kicks for the big day.
What can I say? Our wedding party clearly understands the importance of rockin' footwear.
* Back in the late '80's, Nike launched a series of ads with Michael Jordan and Spike Lee. Jordan played himself, and Lee played his own alter-ego, Mars Blackmon, taken from his character in 1986's She's Gotta Have It. The commercials quickly entered the pop-culture lexicon, mostly for Spike Lee delivering now-classic lines (like the one in the title of the post). Jordan was certainly the best pitch-man of his day and maybe of all time, and this ad started it all, igniting the Air Jordan sneaker craze in the late 80's that got so out of hand people were actually killed for their sneakers. Jordan made more iconic commercials, like this one for Gatorade in 1992 (maybe my favorite commercial ever), but it was the shoes that put him on the map as a spokesman.
Before my maternal grandfather passed away in 2001, he and his two sons had an annual tradition. They, along with whichever older male cousins were handy, would pose for a picture at whatever family function worked best. They'd all be wearing kilts, and the photo would inevitably become a joke holiday card which read "Merry Christmas, from Men in Skirts".
I don't remember there being much celebration of my mother's Scottish heritage in my youth, but somewhere along the way, her side of the family embraced it fully. There were trips to the Highlands for Clan Cameron reunions. An uncle used his spare time to work up a detailed family genealogy that went back generations, and predictably to Scotland. And most of the men were married (well, re-married) wearing kilts. I myself don't have one. My grandfather offered to have a kilt made for me as a college graduation present, but for one reason or another it never happened. Which is why I'm wearing his seersucker suit instead.
All this also explains why we're having a bagpiper at the wedding. Of all the elements we're incorporating into the weekend, this is the one that puts the biggest smile on my mother's face. He'll play "Scotland the Brave" when my groomsmen and I make our way to the altar, and he's going to play "Brown Haired Maiden" when we walk back down the aisle at the end of the ceremony. Since the ceremony is outdoors, he's actually going to march me and the groomsmen to the altar from about 50 yards away, and keep playing as he disappears over the dunes and down the beach. Later, after he's played us back down the aisle, he's going to lead our guests from the ceremony to the reception across the street.
I think the whole thing will be a nice touch, and memorable on a day that will no doubt be full of things worth remembering. Plus, it seems appropriate to have at least one man there in a skirt...
I have two rules when it comes to buying lottery tickets:
1) The grand prize must be over $100 million
2) I never make a trip to the store with the express intent of buying a ticket
I'm a numbers guy, and the numbers aren't good. 1 in 175,711,536. Give or take. Having Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz burst into our ceremony like something out of a latin soap opera and ask Maggie to be their real-life Vicky Christina Barcelona, is hundreds of times more likely than winning the lottery. (If it happens, and Maggie decides to go, I'd be crushed but I would understand. I really would). Safe to say it's money you'll never see again. And sure the money goes to help fund public school improvements, but it's not even tax deductable. But there I was this morning, paying $2.75 for my ham, egg, and cheese sandwich, and suddenly staring me dead in the face: $109 million. So i took the change from my $5 bill and plunked down 2 bucks on a couple of quick picks.
So (because I'm a numbers guy), I immediately go through the thoroughly ridiculous exercise of figuring out what that payout would be (lump sum, after taxes, obvs) and decide roughly how much we'd spend and how much we'd give away and how much we'd invest and how much that would net us annually. It's an entirely subconcious exercise that just sort of tumbles through my brain.
And because I'm not much of a daydreamer, I don't often think about how we'd spend/give away/invest the money, but today I did, sort of. Because the closer we get to this little shindig we're throwing, the more the cost starts to come into focus. Budgets become bills, deposits become withdrawls, and the best laid plans of your life (finally) come to life. It can be scary, but it's also very, very cool. So I allowed myself a fanciful thought: if we won the lottery, what would we change about the wedding?
The answer is probably not much. Better alcohol. Maybe a more exotic tent lining. I'd push to hire a real coordinator so Maggie's mom is sure to get plastered. The guest bags would improve. Maggie would probably pay someone to proofread my F-Word Fridays to keep them from drowning in colons and other improperly used exotic punctuation. We still wouldn't pay $500 for lemonade out of principle. But it was a nice moment for me to realize that our reality is actually this good....that the stresses and frustrations that come with the planning process have been worth it, since we're really happy with almost every decision we've made so far. We're not there yet, but we're in the final stretch (five weeks from tomorrow?!), and it's going to be fantastic. For a couple of people who never had "dream wedding" fantasies, this one is still going to feel like just that.
But if no one wins tonight, I'll probably buy more next week. After all, there's always the honeymoon to think about...
Maggie and I finally had a conversation last night that we’ve been putting off for weeks. It’s a topic that’s been looming over our planning, but we haven’t really been willing to address it because there’s just not much that can be done. And yet, after getting some unfortunate news yesterday that (admittedly) we’d been expecting but hoping wouldn’t come, we can no longer avoid it…
Our wedding is in real danger of becoming, as Maggie so eloquently labeled it last night, a sausagefest.
I don’t know how this happened. I really don’t. Our invite list was full of wives, girlfriends, and even a few optimistic plus-1s. Now, impossibly, the RSVP list reads like a fraternity initiation. At this point, fully 2/3 of “my” half of the guest list is made up of males coming solo. Family members, college buddies, friends from Dallas… no one is immune. At this rate I half expect my mom to tell me she’s sending my stepfather by himself and she and my sisters are going to Canyon Ranch for the weekend instead. And you should hear some of the excuses. “Oh, she has to work…closing a big deal that weekend.” “Oh, she’s graduating from business school.” “Oh, she’ll have just given birth to our second child the week before.” Whatevs.
And as much as this scenario reminds me of some great stories from all the weddings we went to right out of college, it’s not like this is good news for the single ladies coming (holla atcha Beyonce!), because 90% of these guys are married now. I mean, we might as well just tell the DJ to play '80s music all night, hang up some streamers, and have someone spike our $500 fruit punch stand with Malibu, because this has junior high dance written all over it. In fact, let’s scrap our first choice song tournament and just go with “Stairway to Heaven” instead.
So, as a heads up to the other guests, I offer a few thoughts based on past experience. For example, no matter what they tell you, none of my friends:
a) made a ton of money in the early part of the decade and decided that what they really wanted to do with their life was work with animals and as such are now working for free as the assistant penguin feeder at the Bronx Zoo.
b) grew up on the Mississippi River and decided to give up the rat race to pilot a tug boat and/or the Staten Island Ferry.
c) make a living selling couch insurance/work for an ad agency test-marketing positive thinking/are or have ever been a pet psychiatrist.
If the past is any indication, however, they'll have a pretty nice little Saturday planned...maybe some streaking, most likely through the quad and up to the gymnasium. I don't know... I don't know if there's time.
Not gonna lie to you...this hasn't been my most focused week. I can trace it back to last Saturday, when I played in a friendly 3-on-3 basketball tournament a friend of mine organized for charity. A few hours of hoops on a beautiful Saturday seemed pretty harmless. 24 hours later, and I could barely move. Naturally, it's an old back injury that I picked up in college while rescuing orphans from burning buildings. It happens once every nine months or so. (The flaring up, not the orphan-saving. That's much less predictable). Suddenly, anyone who saw Maggie and I walking from a distance would have thought I was her grandfather. Not cool.
So normally this means 36-hour discomfort, but apparently I'm over 30 now, and that means I take at least another two days to get back to normal. Which is even less cool. That's the bad news. The good news is that I have fun muscle relaxers, and it turns out Maggie has fantastic massage oils that I didn't know about but am so pleased with that I may throw my back out on purpose every few months from now on.
Anyway, between that and college hoops, plus the biggest hockey game in the 104-year history of my college hockey program (tonight against Groovy UVM, 6:30pm est, 5:30 cst, ESPNU), not to mention this whole T.I. jail sentence thing wreaking havoc on Region III of my Big Dance bracket (seriously, like that little nugget of info shouldn't have found its way into the hands of my scouting team?!)...well, it's been a nerve-wracking few days.
Thankfully, Maggie was a star yesterday when it came to invitation assembly, and I managed to keep my envelope-stuffing campaign flashbacks to a minimum. So that's a big check mark we can slap on the to-do list. And tomorrow we're off to a wedding, the last one we'll attend until our own. Given that we're just about two months away ourselves, I could see the two of us going tomorrow and being totally fixated on every little detail and comparing it to the lengths we're going to and the corners we're cutting. Thankfully though, this won't be the case, because the bride-to-be and my bride-to-be are wedding planning friends, and I have no doubt that tomorrow will be nothing short of spectacular, and everything the bride and groom hoped for. So I think we'll leave obsessing over details to other people and stick with the cyclobenzaprine and massage oils, cuz I'm getting my dance on...
As promised, this week we’re tackling one of the big questions of any wedding: the first dance. And yes, we’re doing this on the week when March Madness, that other big dance, kicks off. Maggie and I have been discussing the song choice off and on for awhile, and one might say there’s a lack of consensus thus far. So in an effort to pay homage to one of great sports weekends of any year, we’re going after this with an old fashioned, eight team bracket, complete with four regions featuring one of Maggie’s choices for first song against one of mine. For the record, each one of Maggie’s songs has appeared on a mix she’s given me, so you know I’m not making any of this up.
Region I (or as I like to call it: The Night We Met Region):
Maggie: Alright Tonight – James Blunt Sample Lyric: Do you want this one-night stand? Let’s take a risk and go play in the sand.
Sooooo….I think Maggie has mentioned this before, but the night we met, she was, um, difficult. Occasionally impolite. Sometimes flirtatious, often scathing. But I managed to steal a makeout at the end of the night, much to my surprise. One glance at this selection though, and I think we know why I got a little. Turns out she was looking for something more?! It didn’t go any further that first night though, because…
…baby needs to be romanced, pure and simple. Also, did you watch the video? Watch the video. It's four minutes and 15 seconds of pure Awesome.
Region II (or as I like to call it: The Forgetting Sarah Marshall Region)
Maggie: Dracula’s Lament – Jason Segal Sample Lyric: And if I see Van Helsing I swear to the Lord I will slay Him. He would take you from me, but I swear I won’t let it be so. Blood will run down his face when he is decapitated; His head on my mantle is how I will let this world know….how much I love you
You might not have guessed, because it’s a pretty wholesome blog, but Maggie’s got kind of a freaky side, knowwhati’msayin? Imagine that sung as a dramatic broadway ballad in a faux-Transylvanian accent. Total crowd-pleaser.
Trevor: Inside of You – Infant Sorrow Sample Lyric: And the world explodes I’ve never been down this road Teach me how to grow when I’m moving Inside of You
I’m sorry, what was your question? Define “romance” in 20 words or less? Um, pretty sure I just took care of that, thanks. I mean, I know this is a wedding blog, and so there is basically no male readership (hi Zack!), but seriously dudes, if you googled “March Madness” and wound up here by accident, you just hit the jackpot. Pick up some Whole Foods takeout for two with tiramisu for dessert, go home and light some candles, throw on this song, incorporate some Russell Brand pelvic thrusting for added seduction, and when she finally lets you up for air Sunday afternoon, take 60 seconds to come back here and say thank you in the comments section.
Region III(or as I like to call it: The Stuff You Didn’t Listen To Before We Met Region)
And while we’re doling out advice to demographics that will never see it here, here’s something for all you early teenage boys out there. You know that girl in your homeroom who’s definitely hot and super smart but kind of dresses down because she thinks dressing for boys is pathetic and reads a beaten-up paperback at lunch that's not on any syllabus by an author you’ve never heard of and you really want to know more about her but you’re totally intimidated? Here’s a glimpse into what happens when she goes home from school: She’s in her room pretty much the whole night. Periodically she yells out things like “MOM, is it really so difficult to knock first???” At any given moment, there’s a 70% chance she’s listening to side B of The Queen is Dead. And at some point in the night, either when talking on the phone to her best friend or writing in her journal, she will lament that the only two boys who “really get” her are: the guy she made out with for three days at the beach last summer who lives four states away and when it's really dark looks kinda sorta like Jordan Catalano; and Morrissey.
Trevor: Whatever You Like - T.I. Sample Lyric: Stacks on deck, Patron on Ice We can pop bottles all night Baby you can have whatever you like
It’s a little known fact that hip hop is huge in prep schools. It’s true. My high school alone had The Chronic halfway to platinum by the Spring of 1993. I think it’s because when people who can’t sing try to, they know they sound awful, but when people who can’t rap try to, they think they sound good because everyone knows that rappers might as well be tone deaf too. Plus, it’s so much more fun to know all the words to "Nuthin’ but a G Thang" than it is to know the words to "Ants Marching." But really, the perfect storm is when hip hop artists who can’t sing try to…then you’ve given people who can’t sing an excuse to go all out because the artist can’t sing either. Win-win. Maggie, for example, has never been much for the genre, but I sing the chorus of this song to her at least once a day, and she can’t get enough. Thanks T.I.!
Region IV (or as I like to call it: The Old Standbys Region)
Maggie: The Promise - When in Rome Sample Lyric: I'm sorry but I'm just thinking of the right words to say I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be But if you wait around awhile I'll make you fall for me I promise, I promise you I will
Sweet, sensitive, and totally catchy. An absolute classic. Used flawlessly in Napoleon Dynamite, which works well here because of the huge sleeves on Maggie's wedding dress, and because I hired Deb to shoot the wedding so we could cut down on expenses.
Trevor: Laid - James Sample Lyric: Dressed me up in womens clothes Messed around with gender roles Dye my eyes and call me pretty
Maybe one of the best 10 pop songs of all time. And it's really a perfect wedding song, when you think about it...it shows you're prepared for the highs and lows, that you understand the importance of keeping the heat in the bedroom, and that there's nothing wrong with therapy and/or boys wearing mascara. Plus, the song's called Laid for god sakes. Isn't that why people get married in the first place?
About a month after we met, Maggie and I had our first agreement. Not our first disagreement. That was the night we met. I mean our first agreement, our first meaningful shared opinion. It was about a song.
Shortly thereafter, we started giving each other music….I gave her a copy of my favorite album of 2005, and she responded with a goofy, eclectic mix filled with stuff I’d never heard that had me grinning and drumming on my steering wheel in no time. We realized that, minus a few exceptions, we had mostly similar tastes but somehow listened to mostly different bands. We kept on giving each other mixes, and still do. And they never disappoint. Maggie gave me my latest one earlier this week, in fact (and as per normus, it’s excellent. As for "as per normus," I just made that up, so don’t go using it around your scholarly friends). What’s more, we both love live music, and Dallas has some great small venues. In particular, I/we highly recommend The Palladium, The Granada, and HOB*, where we’ve been privy to more than our fair share of great shows over the past few years: Dylan, Morrissey, Counting Crows, Bloc Party, The Shins, The Bravery, Iron and Wine, Of Montreal, and maybe a dozen more, all with 500 or fewer people in the crowd. I’d go so far as to say the live music scene is our favorite thing about Dallas.
So, given our ingrained love of live music, we made the obvious choice when it came to our reception band: we hired a DJ. Because there are no bands on the Outer Banks full time, and paying to bring one in is obscenely expensive, we went with Soundwavz (love the spelling btw….they sound like a fictional band Zach and Kelly would have formed on Saved By the Bell). They were the DJ company that everyone recommended. Which isn’t saying much, since everyone in the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia recommends everyone else in the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia. And as far as I can tell, Don from Soundwavz is the Marlon Brando of the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia.
Long story short, we’re in charge of being very explicit about what songs we do not want to hear (there are many), and which gimmicks we actually want the DJ to employ (there are very, very few. Like maybe one). And by "we," I mean me, because Maggie has 412 other details to worry about, and I want to make sure I continue to do my .0024% part of making this wedding come together. So I’m pretty much going to put together a four-hour Maggie and Trevor Wedding Mix. It’s not easy. As John Cusack said in High Fidelity, “the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. ” But I’m on it, because as a rule I don’t trust wedding DJs. Even when he’s the head of the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia. Maybe we should have bought an Ipod instead…
[Voiceover: On next week’s all new F-Word Friday, Trevor takes a look at some possible choices for the first dance, March Madness bracket style. There might even be the potential for some reader participation, if he can figure out how to add a poll on Blogger. All this and more, next week on F-Word Friday...]
*The only thing that sucks about these shows is that they all seem more inclined to email your tickets rather than mail actual ones, so no fun ticket stubs to stumble across months and years later.
Maggie mentioned in a couple of posts this week that her ring is at the jeweler so they can make her wedding band to match. I’m going tomorrow to settle on mine, too, which reminds me of something that happened in Phoenix. Saturday night when most of the group was standing around at the restaurant having a drink and waiting for our table, I told the five guys I was talking to, all married, to take off their wedding rings so I could have a look. There was an impressive variety….different metals, width and thickness, and designs on each. The only thing they had in common, really, was a slightly roughed-up look that made them seem genuine and well-aged. They were all subtle, as one would expect from this group of guys. Some are more sport coat, some are more sports bar, but no one brings much flash to their personal style: the sport coats were neither crested nor embroidered/bedazzled (unlike, say, half the front row at a typical Mavs game), and there was nary an Ed Hardy t-shirt to be found (unlike, say, the other half of the front row at a typical Mavs game). But they all agreed that the wedding ring, along with the watch, is one of the few ways for most guys to, for lack of a better word, accessorize. Our parents' generation, it seems, was pretty much a plain yellow gold band generation. These days, you get yellow gold, white gold, red gold, platinum, engraved designs, beveling, two-tone, wood inlays, pounded facets, ancestral tributes, a whole bunch of bling, and on and on.
Symbolism aside, I’ve always been a little sheepish of ring as accessory. I have a couple large, fairly gaudy championship rings from college, one of which I wore occasionally in school until I decided it was bad luck. And living in Texas hasn’t helped, what with a state college with 40,000 undergrads giving out Super Bowl sized gold rings to everyone who graduates. I do have a thing for watches, but I haven’t worn one since my everyday watch broke almost 18 months ago. (Maggie was secretly very happy about that, btw). So I’ve been un-accessorized for 18 months, and have been mostly content about it.
But I’m really looking forward to having this ring. And that’s 99% symbolism, and my unabashed excitement about marrying Maggie. But it’s also 1% creativity and ever-so-subtle personal expression. In all likelihood, my ring will be pretty simple. Very simple, actually. But it’ll be one-of-a-kind, and all me, and that’s pretty cool. Way cooler than Ed Hardy, anyway…
1) What is the number of Vodka Red Bulls that can be consumed before the heart explodes: 17 - I don’t think the group drank 17 vodka red bulls combined over the weekend. It was all beer (and a lot of beer pong), with a smattering of whiskey. And few if any shots. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have friends that are past the shot-taking stage of their lives.
2) What is the ratio of beers consumed to golf balls lost: 6:1 - This depends on whom you ask. On Saturday, seven golfers and three designated drinkers consumed roughly 102 drinks over 18 holes, and even then there’s no way we lost 17 golf balls. However, yours truly, um, struggled a bit, and my 12 drinks to four balls lost did not help the cause. Whatever, I put my tee shot to within 4 feet on the 13th hole with a 55-year-old divorcee talking all kinds of smack from her tee-side front porch at the urging of my opponents. And then made the putt, thankyouverymuch. Maybe my finest moment of the weekend…
3) Likelihood of a hurricane: 12% - 72 and sunny the whole time. Just like the aforementioned bachelor party in Myrtle, only the exact opposite.
4) Average age of the women who talk to this group: 41 years old – This was, +/- 6 months, exactly right. As were implied predictions regarding surgical enhancement levels. At dinner Saturday night, we were seated between two tables of eight to nine locals all on the dreaded Girls Night Out and all 35 to 45 years old. We were very popular. Then, in a span of five minutes, a drunk friend of mine popped 2 buttons off of my shirt “for the hell of it” (leaving me looking like an extra from Mamma Mia....yeah, i've seen it), and the long-haired roguish hunk from Lost walked in to the restaurant to have dinner. You could just stick a fork in us right there.
5) Number of times Credit Card Roulette rears its ugly head: 5 times – Never happened. Was only even suggested once, and quickly dismissed. Biggest shock of the trip.
6) Number of times the phrase “I/you/we are too old for this” is uttered Sunday morning: Pass – Honestly, we were all too hung over to speak. It was mostly a series of grunts and nods. But the sentiment was there.
All things considered, it was a fantastic time. It was very cool to have my best friends from college meet my best friends from Dallas and have them all get along like I’d imagined. What’s more, I think it sets the stage for a great wedding weekend in May, complete with plans for a “Playing with the Boys” style volleyball game/montage to impress all the wives. Speaking of, my dad more than held his own, taking home the Pete “Maverick” Mitchell Award for best wingman. And my future brother-in-law was a beast, although he was struck with a curious case of homesickness Saturday night?! Must have been missing his increasingly pregnant better half something fierce! He did, in his defense, put on an epic drinking display on the golf course that day, and he should remember that there’s no shame in not keeping up with a Republican from DC wearing seersucker shorts with lobsters embroidered on them. [ed. note - And *swoon* goes The Hops].
And on that note, I should offer a thank you to the three lovely ladies inhabiting the apartment I returned home to Sunday night for putting up with my incoherence and inability to make myself useful by either properly pouring champagne or bringing the funny. Your patience was much appreciated.
With that, I think I’ll call it a day, and head home to take care of Maggie, who’s at home and apparently battling a terrible case of ranunculus…
I was going to start this column with some sentence along the lines of “Look out, Scottsdale! My boys and I are about to descend like vultures on your fair city, and tear it up! You’ll never be the same! Wooooooooooo!”. Of course, that would have been terribly, unforgivably lame, and probably would have cost me at least half of my four (4) regular F-Word Friday readers (love you guys!). And furthermore, it would have been textbook hyperbole. There are 12 of us going, ranging in age from 28 to 59, with a mean age of 31. There will be a grand total of two single guys there. Everyone else is married or getting married. These days, the descending is less “like vultures” and more like “on an escalator,” and the only places we’ll be tearing up are a couple of very nice golf courses.
But fun will be had. Dinners will be expensive and laughs will be cheap. And almost entirely at my expense. I have a nervous energy, and I think this must be what the hours leading up to your own roast must feel like. And I’m brimming with questions. For example:
1) What is the number of Vodka Red Bulls that can be consumed before the heart explodes: We’re not talking the medical version of exploding, where a valve goes or something. We’re talking leaping out of your chest and running as fast as it can in the other direction. I’m guessing that number is 17
2) What is the ratio of beers consumed to golf balls lost: This is a very athletic group. And they’ve always been good at holding their liquor. So normally I’d put this at something like 12:1 beers:balls. But something tells me the odometer might be a little higher than we realize. 6:1
3) Likelihood of a hurricane: An unusual question, to be sure, but considering that the guy who planned this weekend also planned his own bachelor party in Myrtle Beach four years ago and managed to pull it off in spite of the mandatory hurricane evacuation order the state issued for that weekend. You know those movie scenes where everyone is fleeing the city and traffic outbound is at a standstill, and the hero is driving the only car on the inbound side of the road? That was us, in a cab. 12%
4) Average age of the women who talk to this group: I have it on good authority that during these late winter months, Scottsdale is the epicenter for single women of…how can I put this delicately…a slightly older demographic. That’s right, it’s the Cougar Capital of America! I find it hard to believe after having spent my share of nights drinking at the Dallas Ritz Carlton bar that Scottsdale has anything on Big D, but I’m eager to know more. 41 years old
5) Number of times Credit Card Roulette rears its ugly head: Honestly, this could happen anytime anyone has to pay for anything. None of my friends are degenerate gamblers, but they can’t help themselves when it comes to this game: 5 times
6) Number of times the phrase “I/you/we are too old for this” is uttered Sunday morning: Vegas won’t even put odds on this. Pass
Last week we talked about the tuxedo, and I alluded to the seersucker suit I plan on wearing on the big day. Which is what I had planned on talking about today. That and what the groomsmen are wearing, since we just decided that. It’s going to be a stone khaki suit with a big check gingham-ish blue and white shirt, and a solid linen navy tie with a red pocket square with white dots. They’re going to look goooood.
Which brings us to today’s revised topic: the groomsmen. This is particularly relevant since next weekend is the bachelor party, but also because it allows us to examine a common wedding stereotype. You know how everyone says that the goal of every wedding guest is to make sure you look good but not better than the bride? Well, the same is not true for the groom, which is fine. I assume most grooms get at least a little vain on their wedding day (and I’ll readily admit that my vanity began long before this wedding and will continue afterward), but no groom has any interest at all in upstaging our better half, and I’m no different. But here’s the thing: I have 4 groomsmen, and I run the risk of being the 5th best-looking guy in my own wedding party. I mean, that’s a little awkward, right? Not only that, but they’re all subtly different, so there’s something for just about everyone.
Without further ado…The Groomsmen:
The Brother-in-Law: Let’s kick things off with Maggie’s brother Lane. Classic southern male. Tall, rugged, loves to fish and hunt. Dead ringer for a young Harrison Ford. Has the big pickup truck that he looks born to drive (whereas I, in the same truck, look like Mike Dukakis driving a tank). Big accent. Talks. Real. Slow. Then says in 12 words what I had been trying to say for the last 12 minutes. Loves to drink with the boys, yet is always in the running for World’s Greatest Dad.
The Other Brother-in-Law: Or soon to be. Alex and I were teammates in college. Played the same position. He was an All-American, I was on the bench watching. He’s still playing professional hockey at 32, and has spent the last two years being the most popular foreign athlete in several small European countries. He has a bronze medal from the World Championships. He’s really funny and smart, and he’s impossibly good-looking. Seriously. Think Pierce Brosnan or Dermot Mulroney, only without the metrosexuality. True story: right after college, I was dating a girl in Boston who wasn’t Maggie. So we’re out at a bar with four of her friends, standing in a circle at the bar talking and waiting for some of my friends to come. So in walks Alex, whom these girls have never met. I wave so he can find us at the bar, and the girls turn and see him and go silent, except for some hyperventilating. Then one of them turns to me and says “Wait, you actually know him?!” Oh, and three years ago he started dating my younger sister. They’re getting married next year.
The Rabbi: Travis = not an actual rabbi. Not even Jewish. Not so much religious at all, as far as I know. But “Rabbi” is the term Wall Street uses for mentor, and it fits here perfectly. He’s only four years older than I am but he’s twice as good as I am at the same job, and he casually refers to himself as my Yoda, since every prediction he’s made about my life since the day we met has come true. For example, he told me I’d become nearsighted staring at trading screens all day, and I bragged about my 20-15 vision. Eventually, I had to ask his advice on local lasik surgeons. And after he met Maggie for the first time, he told me I’d be engaged in 9 months. I laughed him right out of the room, and eight months later asked for the phone number to his diamond guy. And if that’s not bad enough, he looks exactly like David Beckham. I mean exactly, right down to the four-too-many tattoos that look dumb on everyone else and uncomfortably cool on him. And he coaches his four-year-old daughter’s soccer team.
The Dean: My father, the Best Man. If I had a dollar for every time a woman met my father and then said to me some variation of “well I certainly see where you get your charm,” I could buy America out of recession. We are alike in almost every way, except he’s older, more seasoned, and has a better tan. Plus, he’s a much MUCH better writer. Not only is he coming to the bachelor party, but I guarantee my friends are more excited to see him than to see me. He’s like the love child of a pre-shotgun Ernest Hemingway and The World’s Most Interesting Man from those Dos Equis commercials.
So there you have it. I couldn’t ask for a better group, even if I’m way over my head standing next to them.
And don’t even get me started on our Master of Ceremonies…
Liz Lemon (yelling): "Why are you wearing a tuxedo?"
Jack Donaghy: "It’s after six, Lemon. What am I, a farmer?"
The biography that posted last Friday as an introduction to this weekly feature was, well, ridiculous. As are all third-person autobiographies really, despite Facebook’s insistence to the contrary. But the one I wrote was particularly absurd. The details are almost entirely fabricated. But the timeline, and the locations, are all factual. I was born in Philadelphia and raised in a quiet upper-middle class Connecticut suburb. I did go to boarding school, and after a year off I did enroll at and eventually graduate from Yale. All of which is largely irrelevant to a wedding blog, except for one reason: it’s my belief that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in, and am really quite fond of, the tuxedo.
Maybe this has nothing to do with my adolescence and education. And one certainly need not go to boarding school or college to spend several nights a year in formalwear. But with the exception of the black-tie charity events of my adulthood in Dallas, nearly all of my nights in a tuxedo came via school, and came often. There were formals, cotillions, and debutante balls in high school (which we all knew was just an excuse for us kids to play dress-up). In college, there were the formal cocktail and Christmas parties in NYC, and nearly all of my best friends from college had black-tie weddings. And I always have a great time. Everyone looks fantastic (aside from the occasional extra from a Growing Up Gotti prom episode). Honestly, I wish I had more occasions to wear one now. I owned my first tuxedo in ninth grade, and have one in my closet now, ready to slip on at a moment’s notice.
But we’re not having a black-tie wedding, and that’s a good thing. The cliché, as we all know, is that the bride plans everything because she’s had her heart set on xyz since she was 5. And that’s true for some weddings, I’m sure. But neither one of us is the kind of person to impose their aesthetic on the other….we’re not that couple. The wedding should be all about who WE are, together. It’s not hers or mine alone. I love the vibe we’re going for, and think we’re going to get it. I love the idea of wearing seersucker, and not as a gimmick but as something I’ve worn before and something that will feel very much like me. Besides, Maggie and I have gone black-tie before, and will again, if only because Maggie looked so utterly devastating in her dress the last time it happened. And, well, because after the wedding the tuxedo is going to be a little jealous....
I am cheesily excited to announce that starting next week, my hilarious and handsome and witty and mischievousf-word (you know we hate the term fiancé) is going to join us on Eat, Drink, Marry for a little something we'll be calling... F-Word Fridays.
The F-Word is hard at work brainstorming ideas for his first column, so in the meantime, let's get to know him. Here's the bio he wrote for our wedding website, which should let you in on two things:
He'll do anything to make me laugh
He never, ever exaggerates
Enjoy!!
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Trevor was born in Philadelphia in 1977, and moved to Guilford, CT two years later, where he spent most of his time studying the Classics and perfecting Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture on the glockenspiel. After a shocking performance (from memory) of The Raven at his 8th grade poetry recitation, his parents felt it best to send him out to “see the world,” and as such sent the 13 year-old Trevor to The Taft School, an exclusive boarding school an agonizing 35-mile drive from the place he’d called home for 11 years.
Rather than sulk in his new and unfamiliar surroundings, Trevor set about to reshape the 100-year-old school in his own image. He would go on to letter in seven varsity sports (winning league championships in both squash and wrestling on the same day as a sophomore), successfully rig the election that saw his roommate chosen as student body president, and write most of Taft graduate Mary Chapin-Carpenter’s 1992 quadruple platinum album Come On Come On. In the winter of his senior year, he took up ice hockey in an ill-advised effort to impress a pretty, young English teacher from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. His love would remain unrequited, (and let's be honest, what with the litigation, the notoriety, his deportation to Canada and that country's subsequent refusal to accept him...well let's just say it was a lot for any 17-yr-old to handle), yet his newfound hobby would provide the next direction in the precocious young man’s life.
Still far too tall and skinny for his own good, Trevor left Connecticut after graduating, embarking on a 1-year spiritual journey composed entirely of playing hockey and organizing mortgage files in Waterloo, Iowa. He then parlayed his hawk eye experiences into acceptance at Yale, erroneously claiming that being a 5th generation legacy had nothing to do with his getting in. There he majored in hockey, beer, and co-eds, graduating in 2000 with the predictable degree in….wait for it….political science! He is not, nor has he ever been, a member of Skull and Bones. So far as you know.
After spending 5 uneventful years in Dallas as procurer of “goods and services” for the Dallas Cowboys, Trevor made a stunning debut into American politics by single-handedly engineering the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives from his 1-bedroom apartment in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His time in the Land of Enchantment was not all business, however. It was there he met the love of his life, a fiery young brunette named Maggie Mae. Several trips to various beaches, sushi restaurants, and strip clubs later, Maggie agreed to marry Trevor, so long as he gave her the famous Hope Diamond for their engagement. He did.
Unlike most grooms, Trevor has taken an active role in planning his impending nuptials. “Having done very little creatively other than invent most of the previous 4 paragraphs, I’m looking forward to seeing my creative vision come to life," says Trevor. “Not to give away too much, but think Albert Speer-meets-Pablo Picasso, only with lots of pretty flowers and bright silks. Exciting, right?”
