Goin' to the chapel

Weddings aren’t exactly my forte. I’ve been involved with a few since graduating from college and have attended a few more as a guest, and while I’m always happy for the couple, my enthusiasm for the wedding is usually focused on the bachelor party, pre-wedding golf, or the reception.

But I also appreciate tradition, especially when it comes to gifts and celebrations. And so it is that without any help from my girlfriend, I can easily identify the first anniversary for a married couple as the ‘paper’ anniversary.

Almost a year ago, my sister Lisa tied the knot. I’d love to give her a fitting anniversary gift, and seeing has how I have none of that fancy paper money stuff to throw around, she’ll just have to accept my written word account of her big day as recognition and remembrance of the good times that were had..

Right from the start, I knew that this was going to be a memorable trip. Just the preparation was enough to put me on edge. (See the adventure that was picking out Kelly’s dress in my 'Behind Enemy Lines' post from last spring).

But as the wedding weekend rolled around, things only got more entertaining. Let’s start the action with…

THE HOTEL

I’m a history buff, so I was delighted to learn that we’d be staying at the historic Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel for a few nights. Kelly and I were the first two guests of the party to arrive, so we had to wait for a bit while our room was made ready.

I thought we had hit the jackpot. Not only is the main lobby an old-timey train terminal, but there were dozens of old pictures and historical accounts of the building hung up around the lobby. It got even better as we walked the grounds and I poked my head into the 19^th century train cars that had been converted into hotel rooms.

We finally made it to our room and took in all the glory of…

Any Holiday Inn you’ve ever stayed at. And that wasn’t a horrible thing (save for the history-induced 50 percent markup on rates). In fact, the room was worth every penny seeing as how the air conditioning worked perfectly and that three-day span was likely the warmest that Chattanooga had seen since the last asteroid struck Earth.

But still, they could have at least given us a train whistle for an alarm clock or some gas lamps in the room. You're a national historical site, Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Act like it.

Anyways, as the first to get settled, I did the responsible Anthony family duty of cooling down as much alcohol as possible as fast as possible. Kelly had been wondering why I had insisted on bringing as many watertight bags/coolers as possible and honestly couldn’t believe that I was actually going to fill up the bathtub and sink with ice to prepare for that night’s festivities.

I just love it when she’s so naïve and innocent.

Kelly couldn’t wait to speak of my crazy antics when my parents arrived, but she was met with a response along the lines of “how the hell else are we going to ice down the beer?” This is exactly what I expected and why I knew it would be a fun weekend.

As the day wore on, more guests filed into town and the party really got started. As I’m recounting this a year after the fact, I’m struggling to get exact details. Things drunkenly and head-achingly dissolved into…

THE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING

Surprisingly, I woke up in a great mood. I’ve long held a theory that the drinking gods take pity on people who party too much when they have good reason to. I’ve never been hungover after a birthday or after any of my graduations (Editor’s note: Sorry, mom and dad. I got trashed after my high school graduation). But god-forbid I have more than a couple of beers on a weekday night. The next day’s retribution is swift and unrelenting.

So Kelly and I took another stroll around the grounds of the Choo-Choo before eating breakfast in the dining room attached to the main lobby. I guess that all of the chickens and pigs of Chattanooga are kept at the top of Lookout Mountain as the $20 tab seemed steep for bacon and eggs for two.

Luckily, the 11 a.m. beers with assorted aunts and uncles took the monetary sting off of things. At least for the time being.

As a groomsman for the wedding, the next stop was a trip to the local Men’s Warehouse to pick up my suit. According to the latest census figures, the Chattanooga metro area is home to over half a million people. Apparently, this doesn’t call for more than one Men’s Warehouse as we embarked on a 30-minute joyride that took us around the entire city. Luckily, my dad was also along for the ride, so I got to hear all of the snarky comments without having to be the one to actually say them to my sister.

Having already been fitted for my suit a couple of months before, I was already prepared to shell out some cash for the occasion. But for the sake of more humor, I’m going to take my comments from the original fitting and fast-forward them into the timeframe of this story… I took a vacation to Las Vegas last year and have held the advertisements that seedy guys pass out on the strip. YOU CAN LITERALLY RENT A HUMAN BEING for 24 hours and it can cost less than renting a suit from Men’s Warehouse.

This isn’t an indictment on my sister’s taste. The suit looked great and the cost isn’t even in the top three of suits that I’ve had possession of for less than a day. But seriously, get your shit together, Men’s Warehouse. Dry cleaning doesn’t cost that much. Just rent out suits for $50 each and still make a decent profit.

The rest of the day went off just as planned. We went through the rehearsal at a tennis club where there was a great view of the Tennessee River as well as any and all LifeFlight helicopters going to and from the hospital.

The rehearsal dinner was delicious and the toasts/tributes were great, but a day full of trekking around a scorching Chattanooga left Kelly and I no energy to go nuts with the rest of the wedding party as night fell. This wasn’t the first time that I had started to feel like an old man, but it was the first time I enjoyed turning in early as we witnessed…

THE MORNING OF THE WEDDING

So, I didn’t totally avoid the sting of pre-wedding partying. When I got back to the hotel room, I found out that Roy Halladay had left a game early with arm issues.

Not one to let the biggest day of my sister’s life interfere with keeping up to date with my beloved Phillies, I spent the next few hours pouring over any report I could find online while finishing off the last of the bathroom sink bourbon that had been chilling on ice.

It was right around this time that Kelly started loving the fact that our room came with two beds.

The late-night web surfing left me a bit groggy, but it was nothing that a $7 bagel couldn’t fix at breakfast the next morning. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the maid of honor.

Seeing as how Kelly and I were up pretty early, I wasn’t expecting to see too many friends and family in the hotel restaurant. We enjoyed a nice meal, but ran into the boyfriend of a bridesmaid on the way back. I immediately assumed that he might be on a ‘God help me and make this hangover go away’ run. After all, we’ve all been there before.

But it wasn’t just a few aspirin and some toast that he was going back to the room with. The guy had an ENTIRE PALATE of Powerades in tow. Knowing that the target of his rescue attempt was an integral part of the wedding, I thought that I’d at least see if I could help. The guy assured me that everything would be alright, but also regaled me with an awesome story.

There had been talk of the wedding party visiting a karaoke bar after the rehearsal dinner, but that was where Kelly and I had decided to call it a night. Evidently, we were the only smart ones in the group.

Not only did about a dozen people crappily sing their way through late-90s girl band songs well into the early morning, but most managed to get well over-served in the process. Right around 3 a.m., Lisa’s best friend from our childhood days in Pennsylvania decided to toss her expensive, pre-paid, rehearsal dinner cookies into a tin beer bucket. The mile-long ride to the hotel was an assortment of screaming, tears, and more puking, but no sign of consciousness had been seen from the bridesmaid since then.

That story made my weekend. It was all that I could have hoped for. I appreciate the novelty of the ‘Hangover’ movies, but appreciated that this situation was as crazy as a fully functional family would get in real life.

I was wrong.

Kelly and I went to my parents’ room to recount the events of the morning, only to be greeted by even crazier news.

I have two little sisters. While one had spent the previous night trying to relax on the eve of her wedding, the other was busy getting sweet-talked by the Chattanooga equivalent of a Jersey Shore bro.

My non-about-to-get-married sister (who we’ll call Tricia, since that’s her name) convinced herself that inviting this stellar argument for late-term abortion to the wedding was a good idea. Having never heard of this guy before, my family was a little surprised, but welcomed the extra guest since we’re awesome people and readily welcome those whom we think will make our drunken good times even more fun and/or more filled with booze.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, which led us into…

PRE-WEDDING

Since we had gone through a pretty well-planned rehearsal, there really wasn’t much pressure on the hours leading up to the wedding. The closest thing to drama that we thought we’d encounter came from the best man – the groom’s brother, who was flying in from military duty just in time for the ceremony – but all of that went just fine.

As the groomsmen got to the tennis club where the wedding was being held, the only real hurdle was shooing away sweaty members. One crotchety old man actually had the (probably) saggy balls to claim that – despite the 48-hour heads up on the event - his membership dues entitled him to walk all around the clubhouse in his sweaty clothing.

In a fix-it-all trend that was just beginning to come to me, I politely informed him that if he really needed to have a Snickers so badly that he’d walk through the middle of my sister’s wedding, I’d be all too happy to insert it where it would eventually be exiting anyways.

Problem one: Solved.

All of the essential members of the ceremony – who had come from as far away as South Dakota – seemed to have no trouble getting ready for the big moment.

The same couldn’t be said of a guy entrusted with knowledgably driving people about two miles across a city that he lived in.

In a proactive effort to keep over one hundred people from travelling across town in the blazing heat (read: from driving through a foreign city while thoroughly plastered), a shuttle was hired to take guests from the Choo-Choo hotel to the site of the ceremony.

Just under an hour before the ceremony was set to begin, there was still no sign of any guests. At just about that time, frantic phone calls began to pour in to the parents of the bride and groom.

Apparently, the guy tasked with driving the bus to and from the hotel/ceremony couldn’t handle the monumental task of making about three turns while covering less ground than a 5K. Numerous attempts to talk the driver into the location failed, leaving plenty of guests stranded on the shuttle while even more waited to be picked up back at the hotel.

Seeing everything quickly falling apart, I came to the realization that I was going to murder lots of people if I had to keep standing outside in a suit in 185-degree heat (I’m pretty sure that’s accurate. Check the almanac). There was a grandfather – whose will I’m likely in – that was stuck out in the heat, so my only option was to spring into action. After about 10 minutes of searching, I ran down the wayward shuttle, getting the first wave of guests to the ceremony and ensuring that the rest would be there in time for the vows.

Problem two: Solved

While my impromptu chauffeur impression kept me away from the ceremony site, I wasn’t able to see what exactly went on. What I do know is that the slight delay in all of the guests arriving somehow caused (A) the pictures to not be taken at the right time, and (B) my sister to have to walk across clay tennis courts to make her grand entrance instead of easily walking down a stone path.

Since this was a late evening wedding and all of the pictures were to be taken outdoors, daylight was getting sparse. There was a constant shuttling of groomsmen, bridesmaids and wedding guests all around the ceremony area that tried to get everyone seated while also making sure that Lisa and Ryan didn't bump into each other during the madness. To make matters worse, the photographer didn't have an exact plan as to what poses and settings she wanted, wasting even more time.

By the time I returned from getting the shuttle in order, my parents were set to murder the wedding planners, who were on one of their first jobs and clearly over their heads.

There are no assault/battery/murder charges currently pending that I know of, so I consider my pep talk to my parents as…

Problem three: Solved

Once the guests had all arrived, everything went perfectly. It was a picturesque sunset wedding on the banks of the river and the bride and groom couldn’t have had a more perfect moment to start their lives together.

That’s a little gushy for me, but I wanted to make sure that I captured the great romantic moment. It’s important to stress that it was a storybook moment so that we can distance it from…

THE POST-WEDDING

This is what we all came for, right?

I mean, it’s great to see someone you care about tying the knot, but how often do you get to go to a party where someone else (Hi, mom and dad!!!) has shelled out a ton of money for food and drinks and you don’t have to feel bad at all for gorging yourself and not even offering to throw in a few bucks?

Not only was the wedding food served buffet style, but my sister had the good taste to make sure that all of the food items came in their mini form. This was solid planning. Not only was I able to try a little bit of everything, but the shame of eating three pounds of food goes away when everything is bite-sized. How can I be a disgusting garbage disposal of a human being when I’m only eating one shrimp or 1/3 of a normal sized crab cake at a time.

As for the alcohol situation, I had spent the morning helping my dad haul all of the booze through the reception area. After making about a half dozen trips from the car, up the elevator, and into the kitchen with case upon case of beer and wine, I was drenched in sweat – and absolutely confident that we hadn’t brought enough alcohol.

Sadly, that thought came to fruition right as the night turned sour for a few of us as we got to really bond with Tricia’s date. This person – let’s call him Chad McDouche – had shaken a few hands of family members upon arriving and managed to make it through the ceremony while keeping up the appearance of a fully functional adult.

Unfortunately for Chad, the free beer was just too much to handle.

After fulfilling all of my obligations in the wedding party’s picture session, I headed straight to the bar. Upon receiving my first drink, I saw that Chad had already single-handedly put a good dent in an entire case of Bud Lights. It was at this moment that he decided to make a good impression on the brother of his date.

I’m a very accepting person and have never said one word about any guy that my sisters have ever brought to the house. This is mostly because my sisters are well-adjusted people who make good life choices and, therefore, associate with good people. I’ll give Tricia a pass on her pre-wedding excitement in thinking that her super-bro of a date was a good selection, but that wasn’t going to stop me from raising a warning flag.

I informed my parents of the overwhelming levels of general assholery that Chad was able to project in our brief conversation and said that we should keep an eye out.

In a rare instance of me being 100 percent correct on something, Chad proceeded to steal the show in the worst way. After finishing off a Gatorade cooler’s worth of beer – leading to the booze shortage that I had feared – he then figured that the wedding reception for one of my sisters was the perfect time to openly grind on the other sister.

This finally got my parents on the same level of uncertainty about Chad as I had been. Things got worse when the bouquet was tossed and Lisa – in the only showing of athletic competence that she has ever had in her life – nailed Tricia right in the numbers with her toss. Chad thought that it was his day and was clearly planning some ill-advised show with my little sister if he caught the garter.

I had never spent more than the occasional meal with my now-brother-in-law Ryan, but he earned my lifelong respect when we shared a look and nod and immediately understood that there was no way that this dickhead was going to get anywhere near that garter.

Once Chad was denied his moment in the spotlight and was further dismayed by the low levels of beer remaining, my parents had finally had enough. Thanks to having done my part in draining the wine and beer, I was incredibly eager to deliver the news to Chad that he was no longer welcome. Unfortunately, my mother – having already put up with last minute changes and inexperienced planners – was ready to get an entire day’s worth of angst off of her chest. I watched gleefully from the steps as my 5-foot-3 mother put a drunken 6’4” amalgamation of beer, pot, and bro bibles in his place and kept him from even thinking about rejoining the party.

With an assist from mom in the parking lot and my dad and some family friends readying themselves with blunt objects, I proclaimed problem four to be solved.

As elderly relatives vacated and the caterers and DJ were paid, things led quickly to…

THE AFTER PARTY

Despite the rental on the reception site running out at 11 p.m., there was never a doubt that this party was going to carry well into the morning. That’s why my parents had already booked a party room back at the Choo-Choo. Not only was there a new place to carry on at, but it was adjacent to the hotel beds that we’d all be passing out in. Brilliant!

Unfortunately for everyone still in a partying mood, the low alcohol situation remained.

Luckily for everyone, I still had some clutch moves left in my arsenal. I had already been dispatched once during the reception to track down cigarettes. Seeing as how we were in downtown Chattanooga and I had no idea which stores sold smokes, it was quite the challenge. I finally found some and had the foresight to ask about places to buy more beer, since nearly everything closes before midnight in that godforsaken town.

As a couple of dozen relatives made their way back to the hotel, Kelly and I found a gas station that was still open. We came back with plenty of ammo and party number two was a go.

Problem number 5: solved.

I swear. I should open up a best-man-for-hire business. When faced with the wrath of an unhappy bride, I get results, dammit!

Our beer-finding heroics gave another couple of hours of life to the party and – once the hangovers hit the next morning – probably contributed to an extra few hundred dollars of sales at breakfast for the hotel.

In the end, even the hardest partiers succumbed to the heat and humidity (and maybe those strong scotches that the other groomsmen and I had begun the day with). The rest of the night is a haze, but I know that we sent Lisa and Ryan off like champs, and that was the only thing that mattered.

The whole wedding weekend was one hell of a party, but I’m glad that we only have to celebrate the date from now on and not put on another spectacle each year.

I mean, I’m up for it, but I think that Chattanooga has had enough Anthony family weddings for quite some time.