Saturday, March 07, 2009

Wedding Blog: Wedding Day

The day I was to be married, Saturday, February 14th, 2009, I woke up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat. Was I sleepless, tossing and turning in bed, nervous about the wedding? No, what woke me up was the sounds of my roommate tossing his cookies in the bathroom. I felt really bad for him at that time and checked to make sure he was going to survive at least through the wedding. And the room, despite the fan being on, had no air circulation whatsoever, so it was hot as hell. Another big "plus" for the hotel we were staying at :o/ . I quickly fell back asleep, however, once Stefan confirmed that he was feeling five pounds lighter and marginally better than when he had gone to bed.

My alarm clock was set to go off at 8:30am and it went off to my annoyance. I got up, took a "shower" (lukewarm water dripping from a "shower head" in the bathroom :o| ), and then headed over to the grocery store to pick up some drugs for Stefan, since I knew it was going to be a rough day for him. I also picked out a cheap twist-off-cap bottle of white wine that would be used as my anesthesia prior to the wedding ceremony.

I was amazed that at this hour in Miraflores, the streets were completely empty and the only people out were the gardners grooming the parks. I was pretty surprised, but didn't think anything else about it since this is also the case in New York City on the weekends. The city doesn't move until noon. This is Latin America, afterall, the clock is on "island time".

Anyway, I got back to the hotel, fed Stefan some cheap South American pills that I hoped would help, and checked the time. It was 7:45am. Son of a bitch. The alarm clock on my cellphone has had a bug since the day I bought it. Even the my 7:00am alarm is set to go off on Monday-Friday only (for work, obviously), it goes off on the weekends as well. Tell me that THAT'S not annoying :o| . So, I had some free time to waste before everyone else got up to go to breakfast.

After piddling around on the computer downstairs, the masses woke up and we went to our Cafe Manolo for breakfast, like we did every day. I felt pretty zen-like that morning, and that was before I started on the bottle of wine, which was opened after breakfast about an hour before the noon ceremony while I was getting dressed. There's no good, plausible reason to feel nervous in front of 150 people while you are getting married in a foreign language when wine is cheap and readily available to any paying customer at the local grocery store. It woked during my civil wedding, and it worked at this wedding as well, so a few glasses (or gulps from the bottle, as in my case) of it before a wedding comes highly recommended from your's truly.

Anyway, the phone rang and I was beckoned downstairs by the photographers. They wanted to go up to my room to take pre-wedding pictures and I said "uuhhhh....that's not a good idea", and not only because my roommate had been throwing up all night. The rooms in this hotel are not what you want plastered as your background through sickness and health until death do you part. Of course, downstairs had an authentic vintage look going on that would work well in the East Village in some hipster cafe (think "DT-UT", New Yorkers), but it was that: authentically vintage. As-in, dark, ratty couches, ancient computer, torn up walls, bad carpet, etc. But still, it was better than the rooms and, in fact, it turned out pretty nice in the pictures. I looked like a British aristocrat in my library or study, so that worked out well.

Somebody was supposed to pick me and my parents up in a black car while the bus was transporting our guests to the church, but I didn't really know who it was going to be, when they were coming, or whether they planned on taking me hostage on my wedding day, but sure enough, a nice fellow came and somehow communicated in Spanish to me that he was there for us (and was going to take us to the church). The bus also arrived on time and everything seemed to be in order. It was almost too efficient and unstressful for me to believe.

When we got in the car, the driver gave me the cue card of the things (in Spanish) I was supposed to say in the church so I had the first cram session that I've had since I graduated from college to try to pronounce the words in front of me, whether I knew what they meant or not ;o) (actually, I did know what they meant; basically the same as in English).

We got to the church pretty early, so we were all just hanging out and trying to stay cool. I wasn't really sure how everything was supposed to proceed, but I figured that our wedding planner should be involved at some point and tell us when to get started. About thirty minutes later, she showed up and quickly threw some flowers on us gentlemen, handed the bridesmaids their boquets, and then got everything started. One of the groomsmen was Erika's cousin's husband that I knew and he was trying to tell me something, but I kept telling him to go talk to the wedding planner because he needed his flower. It turns out that two of the bridesmaids didn't turn up on time, and he was trying to tell me (I think) that he didn't need a flower since his bridesmaid partner wasn't there. Of course, I didn't realize that this was the case until he and Stefan walked down the aisle together, mano-y-mano sans bridesmaids.

So the wedding ceremony music started while I was chilling down at the first pew, enjoying the lingering effects of the two cups/gulps of white wine I had drank two hours before. Erika had arrived and was quickly ushured down the aisle by her dad, and then it was game on. Naturally, she looked stunning and was more nervous than me, but that might have been the wine. She ever whispered to me during the ceremony, "Haines, you smell like alcohol". Who, me? ;o)

The ceremony went as ceremonies go, which was good considering the words that I had to read from the priest were actually DIFFERENT than my cue card had been. That could have been bad if he hadn't held the book up for me! I followed Erika's lead with the whole standing up, sitting down, standing up, kneeling down that is involved in Catholic churches. The only awkward part was that he pronounced us man and wife and I thought I got to kiss her then. But then he kept talking and I asked Erika, "Wasn't I suppsed to kiss you?" She thought I was supposed to as well, but the priest kept talking and I was thinking how strange it would be to have a wedding ceremony without that pinnacle moment. A few minutes later, the priest said something, Erika grabbed me and said, "Kiss me!" and that was that!

After the wedding, we had personal pictures and were congratulated by everyone outside the church. One unfortunate thing is that I had gotten a new pair of glasses the week before that didn't tint when I was outside in order to show off my beautiful blue eyes (not!) and not have wedding photos with moderately-tinted "Hello, I'm Justin and I am a child molestor" glasses. This worked out well, except that it was like 1:00pm in the middle of the summer, and the sun was BRIGHT! Unfortunately, in some of the pictures, there is a hint of grimace on my face: Not because I now had a ball-and-chain, but because of the sun that was scorching my retinas. Sun glasses would have been a good idea, I guess....

Then, it was off to our Benz to whisk us away for some pictures. It was nice and and cool inside there and we found a chilled bottle of champagne waiting for us, which was a wonderful touch and definitely appreciated in order to hydrate us for the long photo sessions in a nearby park and in the photographers studio before we got to the reception. We didn't get there until almost three o'clock though, so people were eating, drinking, and being merry (especially Erika's best friend, who was righteously sauced beyond recognition when we got there and throughout the whole night. Well done! :o) by the time we arrived.

We did our wedding dance (a Waltz that we got one and a half steps into before we gave up), danced with relatives, sisters, mothers, etc, (during which we fended off Erika's best friend from interrupting) and toasted each of the tables with champagne before we got to sit down to eat something, with a plate of food magically put on my table setting by some unknown persons. I scarfed down my food (which was surprisingly good for a buffet) and enjoyed being at the center of attention for the rest of the night. I don't remember the exact order of things, but we:
  1. ...had Erika's 9-year-old cousin perform a Marinara dance or two for us with her dance partner. She competes nationally in this dance and it's unbelievable that kids can dance like this!
  2. ...danced to Latin music all night (all-good, despite my requests for some gringo and samba music).
  3. ...brought out "cotillon" (costume hats, ties, balloons, etc.) when people started getting tired, which made the party CRAZY on the dance floor.
  4. ...busted out Cuban cigars (thanks Stefan) that I had a few puffs on before it got handed on to someone else for the rest of the fire (Faryn maybe?).
  5. ...dealt with intoxicated bridesmaids trying to take advantage of Stefan in his feeble state.
  6. ...had great interaction between Peruvians and gringos, especially at the end of the night when my sisters and her friends started drinking one-liter glasses of beer :o)
  7. ...unfortunately had the music shut off at about 9:30 because we were at a private residence and everyone was drunk enough anyway :o)
At the end of the night, there were plenty of stories of drunk debauchery, but due to new restrictions on Freedom of the Press in my household, I think I better hold off on ;o).

Multimedia evidence:
J. Riley, obviously words won't do it justic, but it was a great wedding.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:48 PM EST

    Congrats Justin and Erika. The pics are all wonderful, and I am throughly enjoying reading all the stories that have been posted.

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  2. Anonymous6:11 AM EDT

    Um I did not end up with the cigar....that would be Erika's dad. And by dealing with intoxicating bridesmaids hitting on Stefan...Summer and I were not part of such shinanagins

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