Holy Matrimony

A day unlike any other; where the celebration of family, friends, and of enduring love revolves around the infinite beauty of the bride and her commitment to the groom, the intrinsic beauty of their relationship with each other, and their respective relationships with friends and family. Maybe a wedding doesn't write an enduring lifetime of happiness in stone, but at least the singularity of that day's happiness is. Surely, never has it been the day that lurking psychoses and curious resentments manifest themselves in the form of a sudden, inexplicable, drunken, unilateral family tirade that is thrust upon the childhood friends of the bride... Or maybe I haven't been to enough weddings.

Never noted for my ability to edit my own behavior, especially under the spell of an open bar, I can at least be thankful for my sanity (as far as the reluctant owner of an inexplicable black eye won at a different wedding a few weeks ago can be). Regardless, I do fancy myself an astute critic of others. As such, conveniently, my glass house is made of cardboard.

Despite empirical evidence to the contrary -like the acquisition of his own black eye by my second in command, Mortimer- we did manage to escape this wedding of horrors with our dignity intact, though under the shroud of early morning darkness, in order to avoid a mob of bloodthirsty yocels that would congregate, pitchforks and torches in hand, at our hotel room doors if we'd have stayed until sunrise.

It all started in the early evening of the night before, after a beautiful ceremony and a serene cocktail hour. Apparently, people began having a little too much fun. One of our compatriots had mysteriously come into posession of a tamborine. After banging the thing up over his head, and dancing around to the delight of the crowd, he began passing it off to others. The chosen would dance in the middle of a circle of clapping people, encorporating the tamborine as he or she saw fit. Amongst the chosen was an assortment of smiling geriatrics, the bride's family, the bride, the groom, and the two of them together. I vividly remember taking a step back to reflect upon the beauty consistently on display at this point during weddings. Time slowed down as I wheeled my head around the room, helplessly smiling in the glowing light of friends and relative strangers alike.

At some point the cup of formerly repressed resentment runneth over. Whether it was the brief but benign altercation between Moose and the bartender who had refused to serve her a beer at 10:01, or the ongoing revelry taking place on the dance floor, a convoluted and contrived line had been crossed. Though we didn't realize it at the time, there would be no turning back.

The sister of the bride pushed a fellow bridesmaid to the floor in her quest to make sure the dancing became less... dancy (?). As she curiously put it, "This isn't your wedding!" This bridesmaid on bridesmaid violence would be a precursor to a sequence of unprecedented behavior that saw the high school friends of the bride become the subjects of derision for what was officially declared to be willful attempts to overshadow the bride. This is more commonly known as dancing, smiling, and laughing.

After growing weary of the hostile stares flying around the room at the after-reception party, perhaps 12 to 15 of us ended up walking back to the hotel on the other side of the property. Little did we know, we had been followed by the bride and her mother. Our numbers briefly cut in half, I soon ordered my second in command back to our room to round up the balance of the exiled. To his surprise, the bride's mother was in the otherwise empty hallway with her ear pressed up against our hotel room door. He'd arrived just in time for the fireworks. Bride and mother burst into the room, slurs lobbed and fingers wagging, "Fake friends! Fake Friends! Why don't you all get the hell out of here! We don't want you here! Fake friends! You're all fake! We can't believe you! You've ruined this wedding!! You've ruined this wedding!!" Jaws fell to the floor. Tears were shed. No one was given the chance to respond. Nor could they have. The spectacle later culminated in the bride's father, from his room next door, punching our shared wall, screaming, "Fuck you! Fuck you all!" intermittently turning to his wife and daughter and adding, "I'm going over there! I'm going over there!"

Eventually, I assume, they went back to their after-party to salvage what remained of their daughter's special night. Conversely, we set our alarms for a 6:30 a.m. escape. I'll tell yah, the last time I was that quiet on a set of stairs, I was afraid of scaring Santa Claus away before he delivered our presents under the tree. This past Sunday morning, however, I feared being stabbed to death.