A Whirlwind of Events

Preparations were all in place. The month prior to the weeding, we'd got a lease on a one bedroom apartment in Tulsa. We got some furniture moved in so we had a place to sit and a place to sleep. I'd been living there since we'd gotten the apartment, so I was acclimated to the environment a little bit anyway. Not that it still didn't take a little while to get used to all the noise in an apartment complex anyway.

For my part of the wedding, I had the male role of "stay out of the way," so I don't really have any fascinating stories of the preparations or much of anything because I did my job so well. We had a couple of showers that I was able to attend: one held by my parents' church and another held by the Queen's family. She had her own personal shower where she got a myriad of pretty little things I've seen her in now and then.

She did have me make a couple of mix tapes for the reception (that we didn't use) as well as one for the pre-wedding music (that we hardly used), but that was my big responsibility: the music. Apparently she fell for the impressive size of my collection. It's pretty big.

Some might say I had the most boring bachelor party in the world, but you know, everyone has a party that's for them, and mine worked perfectly for me. We stayed up all night watching bad movies and then played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, and let me tell you, when getting a question right gets you another turn, playing that game with the people I played with made for some very, very, very long turns. Anyone who knows Star Wars well enough to know what an Ugnaught is is bound to know the basic stuff inside-out.

The Queen indicated that she thought it was incredibly boring, and even though Darth Vader did bring beer, no one ended up drinking it. Welcome to Geek Central. Now, he should have brought Mountain Dew or Bawls or something else caffeinated. THAT would have been completely finished off.

I took off the day before the wedding as well as the week after. The day before the ceremony, we set up the church and did a rehearsal so we all knew what was going on. I remember it being very exciting that it was actually going to happen, but even that close, it still seemed like something we were only toying with, maybe because it wasn't REALLY happening during the rehearsal.

That night, we had the rehearsal dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Tulsa, which is a pretty good Italian restaurant in the downtown area that had a room large enough to hold EVERYONE. It makes for one of the very, very few times that both families have been together, and other than the wedding (and the birth of three little girls for which most turned out), I don't believe it has happened since.

The day of the wedding I was actually scared to death that I would oversleep even thought the wedding was scheduled for 2 in the afternoon. Fortunately, I never oversleep for things I'm excited about, so I was up in plenty of time to shower, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and...well, I'm the guy, that's about it for me. Oh yeah, I shaved. Ta-da!

I heard the Queen got up about 2 or 3 hours before I did to start getting ready, but women take a lot of time to get themselves ready. Now, the Queen starts with a hot palette to begin with, so the more time she spends on herself, the more the boys go gaga over her because she just keeps looking better, so the fact that she spend all morning getting ready made her the brightest star in the building, which is naturally appropriate since she was the star of the show.

I got to the church at 11, which is when I was told to be there to ensure everything was completely ready...or rather, that I and my guys were completely ready. We ended up changing in the choir room, which was an odd choice for a changing room, since there is a glass door to the outside. Anyone who chose to be on the backside of the building would have gotten a brief, yet boring, show of a few guys changing.

After the change, we were waiting around....and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. Well, I found my way to the drum set and announced my new song..."Baby." Now this was a joke I'd made up some months before, but I'd never found my way to an actual drum set to play it. The gist of it is that I played a basic R&B beat on the set, and every 4 bars I would sing out "Baby..." Repeat ad nauseum.

It wasn't too long before someone showed up in the doorway and said we were being too loud. Oh well. So I moved over to the piano, and started in on a simple rock beat and chord progression that I made up as I went along. Farmer, who was one of my groomsmen, tooled around on the organ after I told him the progression I was playing. Engineer played quietly on the drums for awhile. It was fun.

Then it was time. We got off the instruments and got our game faces on. We went out and stood by the minister to watch the girls come in one by one. The Engineer was my best man, with Farmer and Darth Vader as the other two groomsmen. In reverse order, my sister, who I've discovered hasn't been named yet so I'll call her Vaughn (it's a thing with her, and God bless her, she is a geek), came in first because she was 12 at the time, and Darth Vader is short. She was followed by The Queen's friend for years who does CG special effects for movies (you've seen her work in the first Harry Potter movie, Star Wars II, Stuart Little, and the list goes on and on), and finally the Queen's best friend since college who was the maid of honor.

Finally, the Queen came in with her father shining bright as the sun and lighting up the whole room. This was when it all became very exciting because until that time, it wasn't REALLY happening. Now she was here in that dress looking so beautiful, and I knew it was really going down right then. Her father gave her away, and I walked down to take to the pastor to conduct the ceremony.

Emotions ran very, very high on the ceremony. Everyone said they did all right until The Engineer lost it and started sniffling through the whole ceremony. I could hear him behind me, but the poor girls had to watch him. You have to understand that he and I are only 18 months in age, so for all intents and purposes, we grew up like twins. When I got married, and for the first time, I was really leaving home, it meant he was actually on his own. Well, not really. We remain very, very close and see him a couple times a week.

The excitement, though, was incredible. I was very happy to have the Queen as my wife (a term that took a little time to get used to), and I've never regretted it. We were announced and it was done. Time to go to the reception...well, no, that was everyone else. We had pictures to do.

So we got pictures of us, the parents, each section of the family, the wedding party, and while it took a little while, we were still high on the moment, so it really didn't matter.

We went to the reception and greeted everyone as they passed on their congratulations. We took a little bit of time to cut the cake, which was awesome. It was white with Italian creme and tasted like a dream from (I believe it is (or was) called) Anne's Bakery -- the Queen will undoubtedly correct if I'm wrong.

Then I learned something about being the groom at a reception. You see, one reason going to weddings is cool is all the food they serve as well as the incomparable cake. I knew about the food that was going to be there, and I was very much looking forward to eating some of it. Well, as the groom of the wedding, sitting down is not an option. There were so many people there that our task was move among them and be the guests of honor that we were. Obviously, I have no problem being the center of attention, but part of me was bummed that I didn't get to chill much there and nibble a bit. All right, I did nibble as we walked about, but I didn't get a plate.

The Queen said I could have with no problem, but to me, it seemed to be rather odd to have done so to be walking about with a plate talking to everyone with a mouth full of food.

Before we knew it, it was time to go. Everything moved like a whirlwind since the ceremony began from getting up in the morning to the playing with my buddies to the ceremony, the reception and now, onward to some quiet time. We went into a room away from everyone and changed into our traveling clothes. The Queen had a suitcase she was going to take on the honeymoon to put in my car, which we were taking to Colorado to spend a week.

My car had been tagged by the over-zealous party guests, so we drove off to stay the night at a local Day's Inn. Everyone else was going to help clean up and take whatever gifts we had gotten to our apartment. But it was over. We had done it. We were married, and the happiest pair of campers in town.

So we got to the Day's Inn, and (I'll be honest) completely passed out. Who knew the day was so hard on both of us, but we were both dead tired. We woke up a few hours later and finally ate a meal. Neither of us had had anything that entire day but a little cake, and whatever snacks I swiped from the tables at the reception.

But the rest of the night is none of anyone else's business.