Blame the Damn Cowlord

Back by popular demand, here’s a second installment of On Location: The Wedding Reifmotsinger. Why? Because Popular Demand ganked my car keys, and he won’t give them back until I publish more tales of matrimonial hilarity that took place on a hill constructed entirely using chapels. Yeah, apparently they haven’t heard of “dirt and grass.” Weird.

(Who likes bullet form? You do. You like bullet form.)

· I totally wasn’t kidding when I said we played 6 games of Madden to get ready for the wedding. In fact, there was an instance where Dave and Alison wanted their photographer to take pictures of both sides getting ready for the ceremony. For a bride, this is easy. The adding of makeup and a dress, as well as getting one’s hair done, provides many an opportunity for a shutter click. But with guys, it involves putting on a suit. Done. In fact, it was a mere 34 minutes before our time to go when we realized that we need to get ready. Three of us (Nordberg and the Prodigal Roommate), showered, shaved, and donned penguinesque attire with minutes to spare. Heck, we even got to finish that goal-line stand that the Jets had worked so feverishly to prevent. So when the photographer was ready to snap, he, uh, kind of missed the moment. So we did the next best thing: MADDEN. Now, we wanted everyone to look like they were have authentic fun and smiling genuinely in the pictures of us playing video games in tuxes, so I ran the perfect play: 27 QB Vanish. John Madden never expects 27 QB Vanish. It when you snap the ball and then make sure the QB runs a minute off the clock by running in the complete opposite direction of the goal. The only danger with such an audible? 27 Groom Vanish at the time of the wedding.

· The Bouquet Toss and Garter Toss go hand-in-hand as the turning point in the wedding. The Bouquet toss always is full of anticipation, as many a young lady looks to snag the airborne flora from their nearest competitors. Those most aggressive in the reception attempt often win, and this group is often composed of 1) bridesmaids who REALLY WANT TO GET MARRIED AND FIND MR. RIGHT (NOW), 2) people actually scheduled to get married next, or 3) Carolina Panthers WR Steve Smith – he catches everything. That’s the bouquet. For the garter, it’s the goal of the guys to look cool while catching it, yet show as little actual enthusiasm as possible. This typically results in 5 seconds on complete non-action, followed by the closest proximity guy to the falling garter making a shoestring catch to save face for the entire group. Wedding tradition dictates that spiking the garter results in a 15 yard penalty, enforced on the ensuing kickoff.

·There was a sequence late in the reception where the DJ (whose name is actually B.J. I kid you not.) played the following sequence of songs. 1) Devil Went Down to Georgia. 2) Cotton-Eyed Joe. 3) Shout. It was at the point when we were gettin’ a little bit louder now that I realized something. B.J. the D.J. was out to kill us all.

·Ah, the Crazy Taxi Girl. Lemme explain. Many of the wedding guests were staying at a hotel a few miles away, but the bride and groom had arranged for an end-of-evening shuttle to transport them back there. The first one came and promptly filled up, leaving many a Monrovian behind to wait for it to return. Now assuming that the driver of said shuttle is not a member of the Andretti family, we could expect reasonably 30 minutes of downtime. For one in our midst, that was not worth losing in quantities of sleep, and decided to call for an independent van shuttle to transport the rest for a small fee. (I won’t say who, but his name may be awfully similar to Damn Cowlord.) 20 minutes later, the Tar Heel Taxi pulls up, with more than enough room to transport the remaining survivors off of Wedding Island. One problem, the skipper riding shotgun of their fateful passenger van was a drunk UNC girl who eschewed a traditional greeting like, “Welcome to the Tar Heel Taxi, where can we take you?” for the more festive “HURRY UP, BITCHES! I’M F’-ED UP!” (Censored for our family audience.) You see, the Skipper (as she will be known until someone comments with her actual name) isn’t on the Tar Heel Taxi payroll. But her friend and driver, Tyrone, is. And Tyrone can give the Skipper a free ride to a wicked party if he takes someone else for a fare in the process. How does the Skipper do her part? By passenger-wrangling of course. Meanwhile, back on our end, everyone’s a tad petrified over the Britney Spears on Red Bull hanging out of the van’s window. Would YOU admit you ordered her services? (Fortunately, the Cowlord was nowhere to be seen.) With each individual denial, she got feistier and (somehow) drunker. Liz claimed amnesia. Nordberg politely declined an invite to her raging kegger. I calmly explained that I was staying at THIS hotel and had no reason to go elsewhere. And while she stared at me trying to decode my Platonian logic, a 40-year old man wearing khakis but NO SHIRT walked through my vision in the lobby of the swanky Carolina Inn. And since the Skipper was wearing a dress that could be mistake for just a shirt and lacked much leg coverage, I did what any other tired groomsman at 1 AM would have done.

I told the Skipper that the Man in Khakis looks like he needs a taxi.

On Location: The Wedding Reifmotsinger

Anytime you ask my old roommates and me to wear tuxedoes on the weekend, you know that some hilarity will ensue. After spending my Saturday serving as an official witness to the newly christened Mr. and Mrs. David Reif, I realized that the best part of weddings are the stories that you can treasure for years to come. Now Dave, the guy WM ResLife thought I’d be able to share clothes with back in ’98, doesn’t have the best memory, (he once left his brother Peter in his dorm closet for 5 consecutive months), so I thought I’d give him one more wedding gift. Candlesticks, you might suggest? Nay. The following is a re-cap of his truly blessed matrimonial event. I give you YAB’s On Location: The Wedding Reifmotsinger.

(now, in bullet form!)

• As a means to relax the Groom, the Groomsmen decided to take the Groom on a leisurely walk around campus. According to Nordberg, one of UNC-Chapel Hill’s most famed landmark is something known as “The Well.” From name alone, this seems like a place where freshmen and star-crossed coeds can wish for good grades and love. You know, throw some of your parents’ money in the deep chasm of water, and take the easy road to success. Surprisingly, Nordberg sits on a throne of lies. The Well? It’s a frickin’ water fountain in a stone gazebo. I love Complete Opposite Day.
• Following the walk, we played some Frisbee on a quad-like area not far from “The Well.” On a football day like Saturday, not many Tar Heels spend their day relaxing in the grass catching up on their P-Chem text reading. In a vast expanse of green, in fact, only one girl chose this to be her Saturday morning activity. And somehow, in the expansive green acres, we nearly hit her nine times.
• Weddings are held later in the day for three main reasons. 1) So wedding guests do not have to get up at the crack of dawn to arrive, 2) So that the bridesmaids can spend 6-8 hours getting ready with hair, make-up, and dresses, and 3) So the groomsmen can get in 6 games of Madden football on Playstation 2.
• If you are planning on having a wedding soon with more than 100 people in attendance, ask plenty of your buddies to be groomsmen. We worked on a 4-man rotation to usher everyone to their seats, and it was like running laps back in high school track. Forget the champagne toast; can we have Gatorade instead? (In return, we promise not to sweat orange on our tuxedos.)
• When you’re a Groomsmen and not the Groom, taking wedding photography is WAY easier. Dave and Alison’s photographer was British, which somehow made him seem 41% more qualified to do his job. By the mere nature that you’re donning a tuxedo, you feel compelled to put on one of those “knowingly-vacant” stares into the distance. With our attire, you can also add an element of “I’m quietly content that Dave didn’t pick magenta vests.” Thanks, Dave.
• A standard reception staple in the entrance/announcement of the wedding party. Typically, it’s a walk, stop, smile, continue walking procedure. However, the emcee mentioned the word “pose.” Uh oh. Nordberg and Meg opened the show with a Marilyn-Heisman duo, and then while I did not see Dan and Carol, Spud did what he does best and spun and dipped Jessica. Farid and Zoe, whose great idea this was in the first place, did not disappoint, and then that leaves Condon. Fortunately, Amy was quick on her feet to come up with a minor dance move that we could pull of in a no-huddle offense. You don’t want to end it like the Phillies bullpen is right now. (Apologies for mixing sports analogies.)
• Later on in the wedding, Dave was wearing Alison’s veil as if it were a cape. Verdict: Massively dorky. However, there was an occurrence earlier when Alison’s 90-year old grandfather was dancing whilst wearing said veil. Verdict: Adorable. That’s the advantage old people have; anything they can do will come off adorable. Imagine an old man hobbling into a bank and robbing it – wouldn’t that be the absolute cutest thing on the evening news? Hell, yes.