THE DINNER SHOWDOWN

The rehearsal dinner is a dinner, but it is not a rehearsal. This is the real deal. The MOG (mother of the groom) has the honor of opening the formal festivities for the inner circle of guests and setting the tone for the events to come. She also has the advantage of only having to accommodate a quarter of the guests. The MG was all over this one. She started touring possible rehearsal dinner sites, when we were still in San Diego.

This allowed her to fill her own suggestion box, instead of ours. The only restraints we set were to avoid outdoing the reception itself and to try not to serve the same food. She did everything, short of monogramming moist towelettes for everyone after the meal. This was the event that, hopefully, illustrated: “had you taken all of my suggestions, this is what you could have expected.”

The dinner was scheduled to follow the rehearsal, with a cocktail hour preceding it. We were a little late, because we had to retrieve all the gifts from the hotel. It was our day, or at least the practice run of our day, so a stylish, celebrity-late arrival was not uncalled for.

Our two big concerns were, first, whether we had forgotten anyone who needed a present, and second, what we were going to say for our toast. We had gotten everyone and their mothers a present, so surely we were safe on the first item. The second item had consumed a great part of our car ride to Bloomington the previous day. It was a typical conversation, where it took me about twenty minutes to contribute something useful. It was not that I was silent. I just didn’t say things that she thought would be appropriate, since the minister—and other people she didn’t know yet—would be present, and good impressions are important.

At some point down the road, I became useful and helped a bit with a toast that was somehow humorous, gracious, and sincere, all at once. This was mostly her doing, as I may be able to get one, maybe two, of these qualities at any given time, but completing the trifecta is beyond my social abilities.

Let me provide an example from the meal. After the cocktail hour, when everyone had made it to their assigned places, my father kindly asked Jimmy, our minister, to say a prayer before dinner. It was a great prayer. I don’t remember all the details, but it had blessings and thankfulness for everyone coming together for such a festive occasion, maybe something about nourishment. It concluded with his “amen,” followed by the communal “amen.”

Right after that, that I exclaimed, “Yeah, that’s why we got him!”

This was sincere. We were both happy with our good fortune at having Jimmy presiding over our ceremony. I chose to vocalize it at that point. I felt this was humorous, in and of itself, but by immediately following a prayer, it became the kind of humor that, consciously or not, people were a bit hesitant to laugh at. Perhaps, they wished to stay in the Lord’s good graces a couple minutes longer than I. This slight discomfort only added to my personal enjoyment of the moment. Now graciousness, as characterized by tact and propriety, was not abundantly apparent in that moment. Jimmy actually enjoyed it. My dad had that parental look of half-smiling while shaking his head.

The dinner proceeded without a hitch after that. We toasted, thanking everyone, especially The MG and The MOB, for all of their suggestions and recommendations, then distributed what seemed like 137 presents or so.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival