Wedding Weekend

The weekend got started a little early on Thursday night: Jamie’s Bachelorette Party.  Chris and I got to Lips 10 minutes after the appointed time, and no one had been seated yet.  We chilled out by the bar until everyone in the restaurant was shown to their tables. Dinner itself was pretty damn tasty, as food at Lips usually is. The night itself is a bit of a haze, all I really remember is getting a rise out of Tootie not knowing all the words to the songs she was performing, Jamie being drunk off her ass, and having a big chocolate penis-shaped cake for dessert.

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The Friday in between the bachelorette party and the wedding day was an uneventful one spent at home. It doesn’t even deserve this sentence.

Saturday, I got to Chris’s place late. The time scheduled for the wedding was 2pm, and we didn’t leave his apartment until 2:30, since Dani needed time getting herself ready. We got to the wedding site, a small park tucked away in the hills on the edge of Clairemont Mesa heading towards Pacific Beach.  When we got there, Frankie was finishing getting everything setup. There was a good mix of friends and family of the couple to be wed.  When we walked up, everyone asked why Chris and I were dressed up, since the wedding invitation said it was a very casual dress affair. Chris and I explained that it was still a wedding, and we dressed appropriately.  Everyone else was dressed in street clothes.  Even Frankie was in jeans and a polo, while Jamie was wearing a tie-dye looking day dress. 

I made my rounds and said hello to everyone there I knew while avoiding Mike and Fernando: Daniel, Justin, Paula, Robert, Ben, Margaret, Jamie’s mom & dad, etc.  At one point, Mike came up to say hi to Chris, at which point I just threw on a stoic face and didn’t acknowledge him. During one of the small bits of awkward silence, Chris told us to "be friends again", after which I had to tell him curtly to shut the fuck up. We were there for awhile and things still weren’t ready to go, so Chris had the brilliant idea to go have a cigarette on the swing set.  That turned out to be surprisingly fun. 

Mr. Cool Guy, Being Cool. 

When we walked back to the wedding party, everything seemed to be ready to go. The wedding itself was fitting, but felt very awkward for me.  Everyone just amassed in a random spot, and Travis began officiating the ceremony. Jamie was still wearing her tie-dye dress, and Frankie was still wearing his jeans and polo. Throughout the whole thing, everyone kept giggling and laughing, like when a line of the vow was to "…respect him both in private and in public…" and Jamie started laughing and took a shot out of a bottle of Jagermeister that Paula offered her. It just felt wrong that a wedding was such an extremely casual affair.

Towards the end of the reception, Jamie decided to throw the boquet. I hollered for all the gay men and single women to gather around, and the boquet was tossed: Chris pushed me out of the way, but Mike pushed Chris right after; it was like some gay domino effect. Chris tried to wrestle the boquet out of Mike’s hands, and I helped him. About five minutes later, Paula snuck up to us and asked us to get some of the wedding cake on Jamie’s face for a photo. Not one second after that sentence was spoken, a gaggle of us gays swooped up frosting in our hands and accosted Jamie’s face. At this point, I was now covered in sweat, grass, and cake frosting. Not fun.

Such a beautiful bride to be.

The reception came to a close, and we were some of the last people to leave. Apparently Daniel was there with Mike, so when Mike decided it was time to leave, I gave Daniel a hug goodbye, and felt something squeeze my hand. It was Mike. He started to walk away, and I asked him “what the fuck was that?” He said “just saying bye, you know, being nonchalant about it.” I then told him “No, either give a proper goodbye like an adult, or don’t it at all," at which point he gave me a hug and said goodbye, which caught me off guard. Before departing, Chris and I took the time to snatch the wedding guestbook and log our names and accompanying drawings for the bride and groom. After leaving, we headed back to Chris’s house. Chris wanted me to go with him to Kiet’s housewarming party, and I decided that I was going to go ahead and head home to clean up first. In a stroke of bad decision making, I decided I was fed up with my hair and had Chris cut it. The result…could definitely have been a lot worse. It’s not bad, but I’m not going to pretend he didn’t mess up.

I got home, showered, and headed back to Chris’s. One of his co-workers showed up to go with us to Kiet’s party. When we called to see what was going on, it turned out that everyone was planning on leaving Kiet’s in thirty minutes to go out. I didn’t feel like going out, so I just headed back home and had a quiet night in front of the xbox.

To sum it all up:

CONGRATULATIONS, JAMIE & FRANKIE!