Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Really, Really Long Weekend

As most of you know, this past weekend was my Sister-in-Law The Elder, AnchorGirl's, wedding. AnchorGirl and CopGuy are absolutely perfect for each other, down the part where he's rich and she's gorgeous and they are adorable together. AG asked me to play the piano for her wedding, something I'm pretty comfortable with, and capable of doing. Brian was asked to be an usher, something he had absolutely no clue about but managed to do quite well in spite of my meddling. Before I get into much, rest assured that AnchorGirl and CopGuy were married off perfectly, she looked amazing, and she thinks things went swimmingly. She couldn't be more wrong. Unfortunately, due to her not-so-minor celebrity status, there will be no pictures of the wedding on this blog. She has plenty of stalkers already, and we were all just impressed that no one crashed the wedding. I really, really wish I was joking or even exaggerating. :( Friends and family will see pictures privately, I promise.

This weekend can only be summed up as a SNAFU. Complete and total snafu. I should have known something wasn't going to go right when my nose began to bleed as I was getting ready to leave. It took the better part of two hours to get it to stop, and then it was on a hair trigger. We left the Burg around 7:30 PM, planning to halfway to Louisville before stopping. Brian and I do a great job traveling together, and really enjoy it. However, I believe in making reservations. He doesn't believe in advance planning. So we started looking for a hotel in Beckley, West Virginia around 10:45 or so.

No luck. We made it to Charleston, West Virginia. This has the distinction of being the state capital, the home of Brian's Mamaw, and Brian's illustrious birthplace. We enjoy the trip through occasionally. Here's a look at our route, so you can see where we were headed.

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We stopped in Charleston, and I went into a hotel. The parking lots of the twenty-odd hotels in that complex all looked full, but I'm optimistic. The lady behind the counter told me that they were full, as was every hotel at this exit.
"Is there something going on in town this weekend that we didn't know about?" I asked.
She positively snorted.
"It's a Jehovah's Witness Convention," she managed to get out. We proceeded to share a five minute laugh, this lady I'd never met and myself. As the night progressed, we learned that every hotel within a one hundred mile radius of Charleston was booked up. As Brian pointed out, it would suck to be one of the non-JW guests in those hotels, or a desk clerk. I bet it was quiet in all their neighborhoods this weekend, though!

We finally ended up in Huntington, West Virginia, home of Marshall University. Which is where AnchorGirl matriculated. Which is a mortal enemy of our own, beloved WVU. Turns out they were having a freshman orientation weekend, so we got literally the only hotel room in the entire town. We found it around 2:30 AM.....

Friday we fell out of our rock-hard bed and continued on our way to Louisville. We stopped for lunch in the erstwhile home of Billy Ray Cyrus, Flatwoods, Kentucky. Woo hoo. Before you ask, we did not see Hannah Montana, thank God. We arrived at the hotel in Louisville in time to grab a quick shower and head off to the rehearsal. I wanted to get a chance to practice before I had to play, especially considering I was going to be playing a keyboard, which feels strange.

We arrived at the country club to discover a few things:
1. There was no keyboard ("Oh, I didn't realize you'd need that for rehearsal tonight")
2. It was an outside wedding....on a golf course
3. NO ONE had a clue what was going on
4. The wedding director was a bridesmaid, which meant that she would be up front, NOT directing the wedding.
5. The main minister had even less of a clue than everyone else
6. It had rained for three days in Louisville, leading to a mudhole and squishy ground that ate my high heels

Dinner, however, was wonderful. We headed back to the hotel, where I attempted to help our friend, Ford Maverick's Sister, dye her hair. Or rather, re-dye her hair after it got screwed up. See a trend yet?!

Saturday we were up early, and I paid some lady $50 to tease the utter life out of my hair, giving me hair big enough to attend a good Southern wedding. I headed back to the hotel and joined Brian in his continual search for the perfect A&W frosted mug of root beer at their fast food chain. I think it's a lost cause. After much practicing on a pitifully small keyboard in the hotel, we dressed and tried to corral the masses into three cars to caravan over to the country club. Where we discovered a few things:
1. The DJ was an idiot
2. There was no water available for dressing wedding participants
3. There was no table outside for DJ equipment
4. The club was staffed by rude people who refused to help
5. The main minister had changed the service without explaining it to Reverend Father In Law
6. Main Minister Clueless had sequestered himself in a room and refused to speak to anyone
7. There was NO POWER at the wedding site

Problem number seven continued until 6:10 PM, 20 minutes before show time. We were frantically making arrangements and covert plans, determined not to let AnchorGirl know what was going on. Finally, it was discovered that her new father-in-law is a retired electrician, and he was able to do what ten other men were not: fix the power. Thanks to him, Ford Maverick with his utility belt, and Brian's computer savvy, we had a wedding. Good grief. Needless to say, we were all determined to enjoy the reception!

Things that cracked us up, once we could laugh about it:
1. The wind stole my music. Ford Mav's Sister had to be my paperweight, and she did a great job
2. There was a hawk stalking the wedding party. It swooped down in the middle of the vows, calling loudly. I feared for the flower girl....
3. I can handle a golf cart amazingly well
4. Golf carts make a horrible noise as you back up
5. Gold balls TING off of golf clubs
6. Both 4 and 5 happened throughout the service
7. It costs $35,000 to be a member of this country club. Holy cow.
8. The DJ took lots of pictures...of all the female guests under the age of 21
9. If you rent a tux and need to return it to the groom's father, you should take clothes to change into. Otherwise, you might have to drive home in your boxers unless you return it the next day
10. If you tell the groom's mother 100 times that she is not first to process down the aisle, she will still manage to go ahead of the mother of the bride
11. This same lady will refer to herself as the mother of the bride at least five times

After a 10 hour drive, we arrived home Sunday night around 11 PM, exhausted. However, it was good to see everyone, and we'll do it again in a month or so when they have a WV reception. Eesh. We'll also do it all twice more this summer, hopefully in a more organized fashion! I'm off to sleep....

2 comments:

agoodwitchtoo said...

Flatwoods, Kentucky... I have a picture of me in front of that sign from way back in the day when Billy Ray still had his mullet :) I've got kinfolk there dontcha know.

That was definitely a big ol' SNAFU!

butnsmome said...

Hey, Billy Ray could have done the music and had the hawk do backup; oh wait, the golf cart had that covered with the clubs :)

This is the No. 1 SNAFU of the year!