My Homes Away from Home

Each of the table names needed to be displayed in some way. They needed to be printed on champagne-colored paper and placed on a merlot background. The design needed to be self-standing and noble, yet not obtrusive or visually limiting to the guests. It needed a delicate, yet wistful font, while still proclaiming its place on our rented tables. It also had to include a lobster or, better, two, gazing at one another and offering a lifetime of companionship.

I pursued the perfect lobster throughout the great cyber-ocean. I was but a man and his mouse sailing the great open seas, past third-grade science projects and some very jovial man’s summer vacation to the Northeast. Then the great beast appeared before me, his head turned slightly away, but raising a mighty claw to toast the newest couple in the great crustacean community. He had an air about him that inspired great celebration at his arrival and instant attention when he implied a desire to speak.

I asked of him, “Kind Sir, of all the digitally rendered members of the animal kingdom, I sought you out for your nobility, your sincerity, and your very firm handshake that jolts anyone who makes your acquaintance. I would be most pleased and forever indebted, if you would allow me to place your image of transcendent love on our table-name cards.”

He tipped his big whisker, gave me a wink, and said, “I am a man of few words, where you obviously are not. I would gladly grace your table, just not from a pot.”

“You can’t cook a jpeg,” I started to say, but he had turned tail and flitted away.

I realize that I am only capable of rhyming in the pattern of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, but it doesn’t bother me.

I had composed, stylized, and lobsterized the table name cards. I made some demos on copy paper to show Christa and gave her four fonts to choose from. After examining a few iterations of bigger, taller, and not so fat but with quarter-inch borders all around, except the bottom, she said: “The real ones will be prettier, right?”

Oh, tread carefully, my love. Tell me again how hard you work at your “real” job, as I, the wedding elf, toil year-round for your one day of glory. Being crafty requires a focus only found by watching SportsCenter and reading the same job postings as the day before. I was strong and eventually had my champagne-colored (aka Office Depot ivory resume paper) prototype. Now I needed something red and sturdy to support it in a sawhorse form. This required a trip to Michael’s

Michael’s offers everything tacky in home decorating that you might get away with in very limited quantities. But at the store, it is literally growing off the shelves, in an effort to attach to you and transfer the crafties. Something like the cooties, crafties are mostly imaginary, invisible entities that can be transmitted from a vile subgroup of the human species or their possessions. Girls used to have cooties, but you didn’t have to specifically touch a girl to get them. You could borrow a girl’s pencil, and bam! You became the newest resident in Cootieville. In the same vein, you can catch the crafties, not only from the craft practitioners, but from their supplies as well.

I found some sturdy paper in red at Michael’s and brought it home.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival