MAKING SWEET MUSIC

While in town for this final round of planning, we picked up a brochure for the Lotus Music Festival. This international music festival is held annually in Bloomington. A few blocks are closed off to accommodate the festivities, including the ones that would be most convenient for our guests to travel by foot, from the church to our reception. So they smell a little pot on the way to the reception? It will make the food that much more sumptuous. It’s always a festive atmosphere. This thought did not bother us.

But scheduled right in front of the building housing our reception was a “bring your own percussion instrument” traveling jam session—coinciding perfectly with our reception. Coordination and rhythm are not hallmarks of us white Midwesterners, and chemically lowered inhibition only increases the odds of this shortcoming being put on display. Certainly, one traveling member will bring a power tool, and another will know where a plug is. I am picturing the cast of Stomp with all their instruments in tow, repetitively falling down a very long flight of stairs.

We mentioned this to our minister during a meeting, and he said, “It will just add to the festive atmosphere.” We hoped so.

Let us pray: Wherever you draw your faith from, Father, let it, and our love, bestow the gift of pleasurable sound to the frying-pan orchestra that will welcome our marriage into the real world. For thine is the power, and mine is the worry. On Earth, as it is in Bloomington, give us one day of peaceful wedding. Amen.

I told myself that this was a building block of my character and slept well that night, realizing that, if I ever need to perform multiple self-invasive surgeries at the same time, I will have no fear, for I have planned a wedding.
- 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

NO FLAMING LOVE SONG

“We don’t have a song,” Christa stated, perturbed by this fact.

“Pick one,” I offered.

“It doesn’t happen that way,” she returned.

Believing in fate means you don’t search for a song; a song finds you. We had been together for a while but had never officially adopted a song. We never looked, but we weren’t supposed to. At some point, there must be a moment when you get a song. We had moments, pre-engagement, where we talked about our wedding, and the fact that we didn’t have a song seemed to become more critical.

“”What will we dance to?” she asked.

“Something nice,” I said.

“Or maybe we won’t need to, because we shouldn’t get married, because we weren’t meant to, because we don’t have a song!” Overreaction bells go off!

Eventually, not having a song passed some inflection point, and it suddenly became a sign that perhaps we weren’t as meant to be as we thought.

Signs are interesting phenomena of wedding planning. Signs happen everywhere, all the time. Anything, when interpreted properly, is a sign. In this example, not having a song due to not ever seeking one—and having a continental divide between our preferred musical tastes—was a sign that cast doubt on our soulmate designation. I don’t know what was so important in her life that Mötley Crüe’s “Dr. Feelgood” wasn’t taken to heart.

There were times where we tried to force the issue. We would discuss songs we liked individually. She even humored me by asking what some of my favorite songs were about, lyrically speaking. I answered, “I’m not really sure, but the music has energy. Doesn’t it make you want to move, get excited, have pyrotechnics everywhere?” No matter what the argument, it was always inappropriate for our song. Even I knew we had to be able to modestly slow dance to our song. Or maybe she told me.

I listened to her songs, and they were more pleasant and nonpyrotechnic. She apparently pays attention to the words and the story they portray. Who are you with your musical message of love and hope? I can listen to a song with lyrics that either make no sense or are just bad, but if the singer makes it work with the instruments, and it makes me want to light things on fire, we have a winner. She will tolerate what seems to be music meant to make you squirm and not want to be in a confined space, in order to hear the story of everlasting love told by the singer. You can be assured our song will have a good story being told and much less emphasis on creating spontaneous arson.

Then one day, some day like any other day, we were watching the classic How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It had a wonderful number, at the point where Kate Hudson’s character, several days into her how-to project to land a man and chase him away in ten days with the dating blunders women make all the time, was returning from Matthew McConahey’s character’s parents’ house via ferry. She had just realized, in trying to repulse this gentlemen caller, that she may have found the real thing. They share an intimate moment with a single cola beverage, and he gives her his coat. Cue music and listen to the lyrics, as they describe finding someone who makes you feel like you’re back at home, in the comfort and warmth where you belong, after a seemingly endless wait.

We replayed it, because we thought it was nice. We both said we liked it. I asked if it was our song. She said, “I think it is.” And it was done. We had our song, and we could dance to it, at a reasonable pace. “Feels like Home,” by Chantal Kreviazuk, one of the most unpyrotechnic songs I have ever heard, but I love it.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival