THE PARTY SCENE - Shower Daily If Possible

The one piece of advice I can give as a 100 percent–sure thing is to encourage your fiancée to have or attend as many bridal showers as possible. Once you’ve acknowledged that everything you receive and all the accolades are for her, you can sit back and increase your worldly possessions, safely out of sight, in your boxers on the sofa. Most gifts come off the registry you created together, so you might even get something you want, if you were crafty in the registering process.

My impressions of showers, from the perspective of someone who heard the details, are that they are an opportunity for (in descending importance):

1. Holding a group intervention to discourage the bride from going through with the wedding, if the attendees feel that is the correct way to go
2. Telling the bride-to-be everything that is not blissful about marriage and revealing what the warning signs are, in the form of a game
3. Giving advice on how to manipulate husbands into doing what they should be doing
4. Reinforcing the realization that all men are morons and that, in the long run, all you can really do is laugh off repetitive stupidity
5. Contributing lots of advice on what they don’t like or would change about your dream wedding
6. Getting away from their significant others for an afternoon of refreshing cocktails, cake, and finally, enlightening conversation
7. Giving you a gift in the hope that you don’t take any of their advice in the wrong way

Needless to say, reason one was completely unnecessary, as I am quite a catch, probably due to my mom’s secret, productive house-husband training. She is a retired special education teacher, and I believe that may have been a more suitable title for her work on my brother and me. I can wash clothes by color, make excellent loose meat sandwiches, and operate a vacuum. That last point will be contested by Christa, as I believe about everything outside of the toilet bowl can be cleaned with a vacuum. She disagrees.

Here’s a sample conversation on this subject:

“Did you dust? They (my parents) will be here in an hour,” she said, concerned about our home’s appearance.

“I vacuumed,” I stated, confident in my accomplishment.

“That’s not the same.” She sighed in disbelief, knowing her workload had increased.

“It’s better,” I claimed. “I didn’t push dust around; I sucked it up. The dust is now in the vacuum.”

“For whatever reason, in our society, the cleanliness of the house reflects on my abilities as a homemaker, not yours. I don’t have time to explain this to you. Your parents are coming over, and your mom will notice. She may not say anything, but she will notice.”

My mom’s training may have worked, to some extent, but I apparently missed the lesson regarding dusting with a vacuum as a sign of inferior homemaking. She probably assessed my talents for homemaking early on and decided that it was not a battle worth fighting. Back to showers.

Shower objectives two, three, and four usually involve games that use index cards. People write down their advice on these anonymous cards, and then the bride reads them aloud, in what is called the “Circle of Trust, Sympathy, and Advice.” The cards offer such gems as:

“Aspirin and bourbon are synonyms for love and devotion.”

“An attentively listening husband is either asleep or dead.”

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but all your effort usually amounts to shit.”

In fact, I made those up, because, had I seen the actual cards, their hints and trickery would no longer be useful.

Inevitably, shower conversation turns to how the wedding planning is going. As the details are relayed, the bride will politely, or out of obligation, ask for feedback or advice. In our case, whatever feedback Christa received could be absorbed, processed, and passed, unless it became clear that The MOB or The MG seem to be strongly opposed to something. The MG and MOB acted as a consulting firm to our wedding planning organization, infiltrating at all levels to recommend revisions in strategy. No matter how off-base these recommendations were, they had to be considered, because, in our wedding organization, our consultants were significant contributors to the budget and not the budget drains consultants normally represent.

Cake and cocktails need no explanation. I’d put on pants for cake and cocktails. Heck, I’d take pants off for cake and cocktails, not as a profession, but tastefully in a controlled environment, perhaps. I like presents too.

On the day of a shower, the groom’s part is minimal, but he must contribute beforehand. He must help pick out, or glowingly endorse, the new cocktail dress that is needed for each event. He must also describe the interrelationships between any of the guests the bride doesn’t know, relative to those guests she does. Christa asked all the female follow-ups: Married or single? Children? Interests? Is my dress an inappropriate pattern, given her history of voting Republican?

If the groom were helpful, I learned, he would also go out during the shower and buy some pretty thank-you cards, but nothing like the ones we’d sent for the previous four thank-you-card-necessitating events. Each must be unique, and trying to economize is to no avail.

“We have five of these left over from event one for the new guests, and I got these for the veterans,” I said.

“First, those are unattractive, and second, you can’t send different notes to people from the same party,” she returned.

“They aren’t going to reconvene and compare them, are they?” I asked in disbelief.

“It’s just not right. Once you evolve, all will be clear.”

I still await my moment of clarity. But this is clear: bridal showers equal maximum presents for minimal effort. I recommend having them elsewhere to minimize the vacuuming—I mean dusting—needed.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

On the Road to Recovery

If you’ve ever driven on Highway 65, south out of Chicago towards Indianapolis, you probably know that there isn’t much to distract a bride-to-be from recalling the nightmare possibility of throwing a copycat wedding. I can’t possibly know the true depth of the emotional torment she endured that fateful day, but I am going to say that she had no intention of giving up. I simply had to be aware that she might freak out, from time to time. And it was my job to comfort, console, and swear to her that I wasn’t going to do anything personally that might negatively affect the most important day of her life.

If Corey and I hadn’t been friends since high school, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Yes, I was to blame. So if there is one thing I could change in my life, I would go back to my junior year of high school and, while at lunch, say to you, Corey: “I don’t like you because you dress funny. You like Arby’s Horsey Sauce, and I heard you listening to C&C Music Factory in your car on the radio. Don’t even think about trying to keep your other friends, because I already told them about the Horsey Sauce.”

I guess there might be other options, but really, what is a long-term friendship really worth, compared to a five-hour drive with your fiancée where you have to plan your whole wedding over again. I am laughing, but only to keep from weeping.

We needed to revisit everything we had come up with to that point, and luckily for us, we had five hours of nothing but open road to do it in. I tried to get a sense of her desperation by starting with some of the more radical changes we could make.

“Do you really want to consider postponing it?” I asked.

“No. My parents have spent too much money already,” she replied.

The first half of this answer I was happy with. She was committed to getting married on “our date.” The second half made me feel not as good, because the commitment to our date wasn’t based on the everlasting happiness of marrying me but, instead, on the financial sacrifice of her parents.

“Would you rather elope instead?” I asked.

“No. We’ve already committed to too much.”

I already knew it really wasn’t about me. Now she was getting the feeling that it might not even be all about her, a good indication that it was time to move on to lighter topics.

“The difference will be in details. What concerns you the most?” I inquired.

“That everything will be the same.”

“So let’s add some flair, or perhaps flares! Roadside flares have a nice pinkish hue.”

“Not helping.”

“Sparklers!”

“Honey, I’m being serious.”

Weren’t we all being serious? What about “flames, anything flaming,” didn’t convey how serious I was and how much I thought a drastic overreaction was necessary at that moment? Sometimes by over-overreacting to her possible overreactions, I can begin to establish a renewed grounding in the possible.

The conversation turned towards trying to find things that were different, so we had a base to work from. No one was going to confuse Bloomington with Chicago. The churches were of different denomination and design. The reception sites were vastly different in scale. We would like to call ours cozy and intimate. Our Save the Date cards were written by our cat; theirs were not. We still could have Brad and Jen show up. I knew they didn’t have that kind of celebrity power in attendance.

We worked on our uniqueness to try and incorporate it into the day. I learned that, although watching television was important to us, having TVs at the reception would take away from the proper focus on us. We had to look to a more involved recreational habit. We then came up with games. We needed to have games with audience participation.

“Let’s do team charades!” she said, with a hint of wickedness in her eye.

I should have seen this coming. The MOB’s “wheelchair” has been etched in Norris family legend since its origination several years ago. (Imagine a duck–steam locomotive hybrid trying unsuccessfully to perform the illusion of walking down stairs behind a sofa, when there is no sofa.) The enthusiastic calls for reenactment have created an apprehension within The MOB that prevents her from utilizing her full potential in charades games. Given Christa’s desire to cause apprehension within The MOB, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to enforce charade participation.

“I’m listening. What is the purpose?” I asked.

“To determine who gets to eat first, and the whole table has to participate, especially my mom!” she exclaimed.

This idea had just enough practicality to build on. Snaps for Christa.

“I do not question the entertainment value. We need to come up with enough eight-person charade topics, so that most tables can participate.”

Somehow this was harder than we expected. We came up with synchronized swimming. This led to other synchronized events, such as cheerleading and team-dance tryouts. After that, our ideas (more likely mine) became a bit more unsavory, such as a family picnic attacked and mauled by bears. I thought maybe a car crash with injuries, figuring my dad could come in at the end and pass out his business cards for personal-injury law services to great applause.

Deciding against charades, we sought a less physically involved game that gave each table a reasonably fair shot at winning. Then we thought that, since this was our day, we should make the game about us. We figured we could use ten obscure facts about Christa, me, or Mr. Puddy. The table that identified the most facts correctly would get first dibs on the grub. All we had to do was make it misleading and not favor any particular group in attendance. Our diversity began to hurt us. The search for facts that would be misleading was hard.

“So what do you have that would be a Drew thing. Any history of vandalism?” I asked.

“No.”

“School suspensions?”

“No. I was good,” she stated.

“Underage drinking, high school football, and a Mr. Microphone?”

“No, and don’t tell me. I prefer we leave that Drew in the past.”

“All right. What do you have?” I inquired.

“Did you sing in church tour choir?” she asked.

“No. I’ve been in the building a few times.”

“Did you get recognized for perfect attendance?”

“No. I was probably close a couple times. Did you do anything not quite right? Cross-dress a day in high school, even violate the dress code slightly, if you had one?”

“Sweetie, I am innocent and pure and only do good things,” she replied.

“Yes, I believe you entirely. But in your innocence, did you eat anything strange? Pencil erasers, milk cartons, or dog biscuits?”

“Nooo, did you?”

“Of course not. That was just a random sample of oddities that popped into my head.”

We hated being frustrated so soon in our wedding redesign. I added to this by stating the DJ would have to be in charge of grading the quizzes, and he wouldn’t have that kind of time. I also didn’t believe for a second that anyone we invited would follow the honor system in times of hunger. We needed simple answers, where it would be obvious who was closest to the correct answer, and all of the answers could be ranked. This meant games more like The Price is Right.

We needed to come up with numerical questions that didn’t favor anyone in particular. We briefly thought we could have everyone guess the prices of aspects of the wedding, awarding the closest guess, without going over, the next ticket to the feed line. Maybe I should say I thought of that, then learned it was tacky. But we were onto something. It was just a matter of refining what those questions would be. We assumed that we would have thirteen or fourteen tables of guests. She said we had to let the tables with our parents go first. So if we rewarded two tables per question—and considered the last few tables to be the losers and sent them to the end of the line—we only needed four questions. Surely we could come up with four questions that were unique to us, yet abstract enough not to favor anyone greatly. We came up with two.

How many months were Drew and Christa dating before they got engaged? (Answer: forty-six)

On a scale of one to one hundred, what is Drew and Christa’s biorhythmic compatibility? (Answer: forty-four, we used the internet for this one, it takes seven days and planetary knowledge to do by hand.)

How sad was that? During the rest of the drive, we solved some other minor aspects of our change plan and admitted that certain things needed to go on as planned. We returned home to a disgruntled Pu.

We told him our problems, and he sneered, “Have you no respect for the mastermind? Your invitees don’t care about you. That is my picture on their fridges, not yours. Ask your questions about me, about my spots and how gracefully I’m aging.”

I heard voices and obeyed.

How many black furry spots does Mr. Puddy have? (Answer: eleven)

If the glorious Mr. Puddy were human, how old would he be? (Answer: thirty-eight, but varies by website)

And the Drew and Christa useless trivia challenge was complete. It felt like we had just survived a tornado in a trailer park. We were disoriented and disheveled—but knew fate was on our side. I was so grateful for Mr. Puddy’s assistance at the end that I told him I would name the dining tables after him, since cities were now out of the question. Mr. Puddy, Niles, Humpty, Poobers, Pu-Snicks, Whubbers, Smoochie Face, Fur Bucket, Love Muffin, Pu Dinkles. Then I was vetoed.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

CELEBRATIONS REAL AND FAUX - THE COMPETITION BEGINS - The Day That Almost Changed the World

Saturday, August 7, 2004

The wedding day of our friends, Corey and Laura. It started with a modestly early-morning Cincinnati wake-up, since we had to drive to Chicago to attend the festivities. We were going to shower at the hotel when we got there, so we went pretty much from bed to car. After napping until Indianapolis, Christa was eager to discuss all the things we could about our wedding. I’m certain we covered about everything. She was also excited to see how Corey and Laura’s would turn out, now that she was so up to date on wedding style. Neither one of us was fully prepared for what we would find when we got there. I may have been slightly better disposed to absorb and deal with it.

We arrived safely and checked in. We cleaned and groomed. We went through the routine.

“Which shoes? Hair up or hair down? Did you bring the gift? Did you remove the price tag?” Christa asked.

They come that fast, and you must always be on alert. It is easy to misfire a response and get yourself in trouble. Surprisingly, I did just that.

“Yes, I even gave the tissue paper some pizzazz and signed the card for us,” I replied regarding the gift.

I had demonstrated artistry and initiative.

“You signed my name!” she exclaimed, stepping out from in front of the bathroom mirror.

I sensed danger, not sure of its nature. “Of course. It’s from both of us,” I replied.

Reaffirmed unity. I thought I had really accomplished something.

“No. Now it’s from you and your fiancée, who didn’t care enough to sign the card herself. They are going to hate me.”

Internal alarms go off.

“I can…”

“It’s too late. Just remember that I try and make my friends like you,” she replied, returning to the bathroom.

I was not sure whether she was referring to my actions causing dislike—or whether her friends really didn’t like me.

Are you getting the feeling that this eventually became a fantastic stress-free day? How could you not? Let’s continue, shall we?

We arrived at the church, meeting and greeting friends along the way. We were seated.

“Do you like this church?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s very nice,” I replied.

“Do you like it better than our church?” she asked, not for knowledge but for reassurance.

“No,” I stated definitively.

First, don’t ever like someone else’s something better than yours. No matter how obviously the statement favors the alternative, you must stand by her. If her dream wedding isn’t your dream wedding, then you’d better make it yours. If she favors it, Purple Passion in Dixie Cups beats champagne hands down. This is a wedding-planning helpful hint that really should be used every day of your life. When the question starts with “Would you rather,” be sure to go with the option that relates to her, and don’t spend too long thinking it over. She may compare winning the lottery to eating her burnt grilled-cheese sandwich. Just reach for the milk and dig in.

We made trivial small talk in our pew. The ceremony began.

“Those bridesmaid dresses are just like mine, only they’re scarlet instead of merlot, and they have spaghetti straps and a slightly different design,” Christa said.

“They are not really the same then,” I stated.

It is a bit selfish to want your friends’ wedding to be lovely, yet have yours be slightly better. But remember—this is war, perhaps a cold war, but a war nonetheless.

“But did you look at the bouquets? That is the style I wanted, and there is no greenery, like I want. We need to add flowers to ours,” she said.

The entrance of the bride was upon us, so we whispered a bit.

“Ooh, that’s a good song. It’s not my song, but that’s a good song. She looks beautiful. I like her dress. Do you like her dress?” she asked.

“Yes, it looks lovely.”

“Better than mine?”

“I haven’t seen yours.”

“Good. I’m just testing you. She has my bouquet too. Only mine will be slightly darker.”

We respectfully observed the rest of the ceremony. I did notice that they had some churchly person presiding over the whole thing. I wonder where that idea came from. We exited the church, milled around, and did the send off. A small group of friends headed to a bar to pass the time, prior to the cocktail hour and reception. Christa and I engaged in small talk and regained a resting heart rate. I believe we had remained competitive, thus far. We headed back to the hotel for the cocktail hour.

As we approached the designated room, we spotted the frame. Yes, the Pottery Barn with wide matting, perfect for signatures frame. And they had put it on an easel resting on the floor. Damn you two. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who get the Pottery Barn catalog, even though they print it with our name on it. And they put a picture in the middle of it, of them. Of all the people in the world, they chose themselves. Look at them all smiling and happy. They are laughing at us.

“We are putting ours up on the table, and we are going to use a black-and-white picture,” Christa said.

She had begun to reestablish the subtle distinctions that would win the war. The frame had been resting on the floor, leaning against our dining room wall for months. If we had only saved the receipt, we could have proven we were the winners, the originals. We should have dated and notarized our idea list, then had our patent attorney fax it to their planning headquarters, back in April. That would have prevented such blatant acts of infringement.

At that point, we needed a stiff drink. I am going to say “we” a lot during this passage, because “we” are a team, each with our own strengths and weaknesses. And “we” share a desire to win this challenge of superior style and uniqueness.

As I reached the bar, I saw a small framed print of their specialty cocktails, with cute little names. Why are you punishing us, Oh Lord? We were the ones with a specialty cocktail. Yes, a specialty cocktail. They have four. Not only are we copying, we apparently aren’t very good at it, since we were only planning for one. I almost refused to drink them, but quickly thought better of that plan.

I turned from the bar, specialty cocktails in hand.

“Is that a goddamned slideshow?”

I may have said that out loud. Across the room, running ever so innocently on a TV monitor on a rolling cart, was a slideshow with, you guessed it, pictures of them growing up and dating each other. It made me sick. I bet, if I had walked over there, the slideshow would have been accompanied by some wonderful, loving musical tracks, perhaps some of their favorites. I wished I had eaten something unhealthier that day, so I could run crossing patterns in front of the monitor, strategically passing gas to deter anyone from the vicinity.

A couple of specialty cocktails into socializing as well I can, we got the dimming-of-the-lights warning to head to a different room for dinner and dancing. Two rooms? Aren’t you a couple of fancy britches? We walked up or down a flight of stairs to arrive at the guest-tag table, where we learned we were sitting at Atlanta, Georgia. Little boy and girl genius had named their tables after places that meant something to them. Who reads these bridal magazines and only uses all the good ideas? I bet they will type up a cute little explanation of Atlanta as well.

We moped over to our table, nodding to a couple of people as we went. We arrived, and they had centerpieces of flowers floating in a glass bowl with some accent candles. And look, an explanation of Atlanta, Georgia. Apparently, it’s where they conceived of the plan to have a wedding just like ours.

“That’s my centerpiece idea. We are planning the same wedding. We have to postpone, because we need to change everything,” Christa said.

We had hit bottom. No one wants to attend the same wedding over again, and we weren’t going to give the contingent of twenty-odd mutual friends a chance to do just that in six weeks.

“There is not a chance I am prolonging the planning process,” I said.

“Then we should have gotten married in July,” she replied.

“We are forty-three Knot checklist items behind schedule now. There is no way we could have done this in July.”

“Then you better get me something to drink.”

I headed over for some more specialty cocktails. Then I saw it, an ice sculpture that Laura had designed, that you poured drinks through to chill them. It was standing about five feet tall on the bar.

I bowed and said, “Point given.”

We are not even going to try and top that. I may be able to configure a beer bong to incorporate a cowbell somehow, but I’m not touching the ice sculpture. How did we miss the section on mocking gestures of excessive grandeur? Now it was our wedding, only better.

I returned to our seats with the drinks. Christa had begun to recap all of the similarities to other members of our table and was receiving kind words of encouragement. The problem was that, even if other people didn’t remember, Christa would, and that was the issue.

At some point later in the evening, they rolled the cake out onto the dance floor to do the ceremonial cutting. Could it possibly be white, stacked, with ribbons around each layer, and flowers on it? Yes it could.

“That’s our cake,” she said.

“It is similar to the cake we haven’t ordered yet but think we want,” I replied.

“We really have to start over. I don’t want anything like this.”

“Seriously, if your dream wedding is similar to hers, that is not a bad thing. You just have similar taste.”

“But she got to go first. Now it looks like we are doing the same exact thing,” she said, frustrated.

“Our male friends won’t notice, that I can promise you. The females have to know that you can’t plan a wedding in six weeks, and some of your plans, if similar, had to have been already in place at this point.” I tried to calm her.

“I don’t want our wedding to be similar to anyone’s.”

This is the ideal: nothing like anything that has ever been done, yet better than anything anyone has ever seen, on your first try.

“You forget we have a secret weapon,” I said, trying to be energetic.

“If you say anything about you being a wonderful fiancée, it’s not the time.”

“No. It’s Mr. Puddy, but thanks for your vote of confidence. People put our Save the Dates on their refrigerators, because of the power of the Pu. We shall use this power to our advantage.”

“You’re not really helping any.”

She was frustrated. And I was trying my best methods of distraction and diversion.

“If that DJ starts playing dance music, I will walk right out of here!”

He did, but I stayed. We got our dance on and eventually headed back to our room, as the reception closed down. As we lay in bed, she reminded me again that she really wanted our wedding to be unique. I told her that they can’t change theirs now, and we have six weeks to make improvements. Mr. Puddy and I would hole up in the office and have some intense strategy sessions. I guaranteed that everyone would know it was our wedding. I told her that she had my heart, until it ceases to beat, and my soul until the end of time. She liked that, and we made a note to include it in our vows. I think she slept after that, although my specialty-cocktail-induced slumber probably prevented me from registering any restlessness from her.

Postmortem: now that our day has passed, we can reflect lovingly on both ceremonies. Corey and Laura had a beautiful wedding and reception, as you would expect from two obviously stylish and elegant people who unknowingly stole so many great ideas from us. However, we did falsify our documents so that our ten-year anniversary party will be two weeks before theirs. Suckers!
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival

THE CAUCASIAN CURSE

How do you make a wedding reception enjoyable for everyone? How do you bridge the gap from your friends to your parents’ friends? Who has the power to determine who will be cutting a rug that evening? Obviously we do, but we tried to be considerate of those who might not have the shimmy they once did or who simply don’t understand the importance of big pimpin’ and spending Gs. We were searching for a way for all the people in attendance to shake a leg. On a particular car ride home, we discussed the mood of our reception, and we agreed that everyone should have the opportunity to dance, if they felt the boogie within them. It then became a matter of creating an environment that would encourage participation of all ages, yet wasn’t like listening to AM radio.

“Will your parents do any dancing?” I asked.

“Probably not much. My mom’s brother will probably make her dance with him, and my dad sometimes makes his dancing face. Will yours?” Christa replied.

“Should I even ask about the dancing face?”

“It’s a tongue over teeth thing.”

“The Caucasian curse has many facets. My dad is encumbered by his center of gravity, which he prefers not to move abruptly,” I replied.

“But will they dance?” she asked again.

“Possibly, but not to anything from later than 1983 or so. My dad likes Neil Diamond, and they used to play ABBA and the Pointer Sisters when I was little.”

As we scanned for radio stations, we came across an oldies station playing “Think,” by Aretha Franklin.

“This is what my mom would like, songs from when she was in her teens and twenties,” I said.

“Why don’t we play oldies? Everyone knows them. They are easy enough to dance to and wouldn’t be objectionable to anyone,” she said enthusiastically.

“Young and old could celebrate equally. The older crowd will probably leave early anyway. Then we can resort to the classics of our generation,” I replied.

Now it seemed only a matter of time before we determined whether the older generation would view the younger as dance-floor compatriots or another spectacle to view from afar. You can lead an older, yet still productive, member of society to the dance floor, but you can’t always make them shake it. And especially not like a Polaroid picture.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival