Thursday: The beginning of the weekend’s wedding festivities. After work the evening was to be filled with Putt Putt and Go-Karts. We all went one round of Putt Putt. I shot a 41 easily beating all those in my party that included Katie, Pat, Colin, and I.
When we were finished with golf we meandered on over to the Go-Karts which would end up being the highlight of the night. Greg Sikes, a friend of the Hefferly family from Mississippi, ended up buying us several rounds and I think that everyone that went got to go at least three times, the little kids probably more. I got to go three times, once by myself, and twice with a passenger. On my first solo mission I did not place.
My first race with a passenger, the ever-beautiful lady of mine Katie, I snuck in for the win close to the end. In my second race with a passenger, the Bride-to-be Laura, we squeezed by Andy and his side-kick, one of the little Sikes’, I won despite Laura’s idea to slow down for Katie and Sarah in another kart so that she could pretend to hang all over me to make Katie jealous, haha.
Friday: We began this day’s festivities with rehearsal at St. E’s. It was pretty straightforward. In case some of you didn’t know, Mark graciously included me in the wedding party as one of his groomsmen. It definitely was an honor. Hopefully I’m lucky enough to not get asked by anyone to be a best man. I’ll just be happy with being a groomsman or getting invited to the wedding.
After the rehearsal, Pat and I stopped by Katie’s house and picked her up on the way to the Rehearsal dinner at the Ashmore Inn & Suites. The rehearsal dinner was a blast, it was catered by Bigham’s BBQ, served by Lora’s, Mark’s mom, prayer group, and attended by close friends and family. My parents were invited but wouldn’t make it into town until the day of the wedding.
Here is where Mark gave the wedding party their gifts. Each one of us guys got a large clear glass mug with our names etched into them. We are all still debating the actual size oz.-wise of the mugs. Some say 24-30, others claim at least 36. We will find out eventually, I’m sure.
There were several heartfelt and rousing toasts and times on the mic for various friends and family. It was pretty awesome to see each set of parents up there with kind words for Mark and Laura. It was close to midnight before we finally left the reception hall. I took Katie home and then we called it a night.
Saturday: The wedding day! It started off with going to Tuxedo Junction to try on and pick up my tux. I got up a little late and wasn’t going to make it to bowling on time at 10am but Laura didn’t check to see what time the place opened and wouldn’t actually open ’til 11am, so me being late wasn’t an issue. We all only got to bowl one game before lunch because of the amount of people present and the lady working the desk being one of the most incompetent bowling alley employees I’ve ever seen. We were the only people in the place! How hard can it be to get this stuff figured out! Yeesh!
After bowling a 127, yeah, I know, not that great, I had a slow start… we all went to Rosa’s for lunch and then it was on back to my house at 2pm to get ready and snazzed up, as my mom likes to say, for the Round #1 of pictures with Laura at 3pm in the church. After Round #1, the guys went to Gardski’s on Broadway for a beer and appetizers, I had the full plate of Fried Cheese, mmm mmm good. Round #2 of pictures, this time with the bridesmaids and then just Mark, started up at 6pm and we were done near 6:30/6:45.
Then everyone started showing up for the wedding at 7pm and we got the ball rolling. It was a pretty sweet wedding, easily one of the nicest I have ever been to. Travis remarked to me that it was the first time he had ever seen so many people go up for communion at a wedding and I had to agree with him. I thought it was a great sign of unity for those non-Catholic to come forward to receive a blessing from the priest. Another one of those special unifying moments that are important at weddings, I think.
Round #3 of pictures included ALL family, then each side of the family seperately, then each immediate family. Then pictures of the entire wedding party together and a few more candid shots. We all then promptly headed to the McInturff reception area at the University Medical Center.
The Reception was AWESOME! I don’t think I was able to sit down for more than 5 minutes total for the next 4 hours (the reception finally ended around 12:30am with the newlywed send-off). The food was good, the music was good, and it was fun getting to see alot of people I hadn’t seen in a while.
About half-way through Mark came up to me to get help with his marriage certificate. Here’s the story: Laura was using his digital camera at the apartment for getting ready pictures, blah blah blah, she told him she would leave the camera and the marriage certificate in the mailbox for him to pick up on the way to the wedding since they aren’t supposed to see each other. Well, Mark goes by and picks up JUST the camera out of the mailbox and leaves the marriage certificate in the mailbox. Later he tells Laura “I just thought it was some MAIL!” So I had to go back to the apartment during the reception and pick up Mark and Laura’s marriage certificate for the priest to sign.
Then later it was the groomsmen’s responsibility to decorate Mark’s truck, since that’s what they would be leaving the reception in. Well, we went to the CVS on 34th/Brownfield/Slide to pick up 3 things of white shoe polish, balloon string, and 12 oz. cans. The cheapest ones we found were Hawaiian Punch, so we got a 12 pack of that and emptied them out the window on the way back to the reception. We tied some to Mark’s trailer hitch and a few to his front bumper. Toopy and Toopie was written on the windshield and Magnum and Git ‘R’ Did was on the driver’s side windows. JUST MARRIED plastered across the back window. Tonight’s ‘tha’ night was on the passenger side window. Overall we did a pretty good job I would say.
We sent them off into the night with a long line of people throwing rose petals at them. After that I got a ride home from Travis and got out of that hot tux. All the groomsmen nearly fainted in the front row because it was so hot in those things after wearing them all day and partying in them. Once I got comfortable I went back and picked up Katie from her house to come over to my place for the after party.
By this time it was already 1:30am and the night was still young. It would end with the rest of our ladies leaving at 4:30am knowing full well that we had to get up for 9am breakfast with all our families before they left town. The after party at our place was attended by three of Laura’s old friends that I hadn’t met before and didn’t catch their names, Mike, Casey, Andy, Abby, Pat, Bonnie, Colin, Sarah, Nate, Alex, Katie and I. I’m sure I’m forgetting a name or two, but it was good, we played group Trivial Pursuit Genus 5 and then Scene It.
Sunday: No one had gotten much sleep, so by the time I picked up Katie and arrived at the hotel that everyone was staying at, everyone was dead tired. We had breakfast with my mom and dad and read the newspaper. We then went back to my house and they picked up Khaki, we said our good-byes and they hit the road.
Then Katie and I took a nap for about an hour ’til 11am. Katie continued her nap but I got up and helped clean up from the after party the night before. I got my tux stuff together and then I woke Katie up around 1ish and we all went to Popo’s to see Laura and Mark off on their honeymoon.
We then watched the PGA Championship with the fam at Popo’s, took our tuxes back to the mall. Then at dinner Katie made some fish, we ate, I came home, was in bed by 10 to call it a weekend and I konked out.
The weekend was ‘MASSIVE’ and everyone had a great time. Congratulations Mark and Laura. I will let you all know when I get pictures up from the weekend. Until then… Peace.
Hey - why is there nothing about ME in this column? LOL j/k
Good seeing you last weekend.