Wedding Essays

bellview--hope you like waffle irons!   

Home | Movie Reviews | Video Roundups | Essays | Game Reviews | Subscribe | Mailbag | About | Search

The Destination Wedding, Taqueria Style

3/14/06

Let's put it right out there, because many of you reacted the same way when I told you that I was, in fact, going to a destination wedding (i.e., a foreign location where neither person is really from) after swearing off the idea of going to a destination wedding, well, EVER:

In the past, I simply didn't have the cash-money to make the trip.  Now, in a little better financial standing, I was able to swing the grand-or-so required to make this vacation.  I also had a crazy nine-month heads-up, so with that much advance planning (I mean, we pretty much had costs, locations, and dates lined up well before fall) it was easy to budget for this bad boy.  And, let's be honest--it helps that this is the ONLY wedding that I have officially been invited to this year, after doing six weddings in '05.  Throw in the love I have for these people and bam--let's hit it!

All of that led to this past weekend:  my friends Jeannine and Zak tying the knot, both born and bred gringos, in Puerto Vallarta, on the west side of Mexico, a few miles north of Jacinto, home of the world's best tequila.  Strangely, I have been to a few other parts of the world but had never come that close to going to Mexico, save for the nuptials that I missed a couple years back for my friends John and Tiffany, who I think swore off talking to me the second they heard I was going on this year's Mexican voyage.

So, as best I can, let me recap my three days in Mexico.  Here's the important thing--I didn't come back with Montezuma's Revenge.  Uhh, maybe.

---

Thursday:  "Meat on a Stick"

I rolled into Puerto Vallarta last Thursday afternoon to a shower of praise from no one and a fanfare of fresh tumbleweed.  Save for the bride, groom, and my friend Laikisha (also known as "L-Boogie"), I knew exactly no one going into this weekend.  For me, that is never really a problem--I typically get along with everybody, and I make friends fairly quick-like--but knowing almost no one from the jump meant that I had to constantly be wearing my game face in order to give the good people of the world my best impression.

I hopped a cab after clearing customs, driven by a man that proceeded to break every speed limit in town.  Puerto Vallarta (PVR) at first glance is Fort Lauderdale with a surprisingly high number of darker skin folk strolling around.  Shocking, eh?  The ride from the airport in its first 5-10 minutes isn't exactly sexy, as we rolled through some construction areas and hotels that were far from gleaming.  But, as you get to the Malecon--what appeared to be "The Boardwalk"--and roll further south through town into Old Vallarta and on to the resort hotels that populate the area just south of PVR, things pick up considerably, and by the time we got to our hotel, Club Playa Fiesta, I was likin' the sights of the hotels that sit on the PVR beachfront.

After checking in and taking a phat nap (I did get up at 3:30 AM EST to make my flight Thursday, for chrissakes), I woke up and met a lot of the teammates that I would be spending my time with this weekend.  Since I was coming out of a long, jet-lagged nap, I don't remember many of the details here, but I do know this:  the women were going to take Jeannine out for a dinner on the beach, so the guys were going to take Zak out...to get some meat on a stick.

Jimmy, husband of Melanie (a member of the bridal party), was the chief instigator of the meat-on-a-stick rioting; Jimmy would remind many of you of what makes me such a sick food bastard, because both of us love eating local specialties no matter how good or bad for you those specialties might be.  Jimmy was hell-bent on eating at taquerias and other free-enterprise Mexican food stands in PVR; I was lapping this shit up like nobody's business.  So, about ten of the guys went out to find some meat products while the ladies were at a more civilized dinner, and while there might be something refreshing about eating well-prepared salsa over fresh-made quesadillas in a beach setting, not much turns me on more than eating in a shitty taco hut run, built, and enjoyed by Mexicans.  Honest-to-God Mexicans, not Arlington, Virginia Mexicans, who suffer by eating the scraps at your local Cheesecake Factory; honest-to-God Mexican restaurants, not Rio Grandes serviced by an Asian/Latin/Caucasian mix and offering a $11 Mexican platter of two shitty fucking cheese quesadillas, beans refried by some white guy in the kitchen and rice dumped out of a plastic container by some black guy that is filling in for the only real Mexican guy on the staff.

No, motherfucker--I want to eat Mexican FUBU-style (For "Us", By "Us") right under the noses of the good Mexican people...and Jimmy's head was in the right place when we sat down to have steak, chicken, and pork tacos at a place in the middle of downtown PVR.  Retail value of each taco, converting pesos to dollars:  about seventy-five cents.  That, my friends, is eating Mexican in Mexico!  And, better than that--I had to speak Spanish to order, and I got to drink Sol and Tecate to wash it all down!  Yes, my friends, YES!!!!

After we loaded up (if I'm not mistaken, all of this cost less than $10 per man), we went over to a gringo-friendly club nearby called Zoo Bar where we ordered tequila shots while we waited for the ladies to finish up their meal.  This much I know, people--we ordered two VERY large bottles of tequila and about a dozen bottles of water, and for about $120, we yielded about 80 shots and this was some good tequila.  So good, in fact, that for just a minute, I realized that I was happy I was only going to be in PVR for three days, because staying there longer might make me a tequila drinker, the shit was so good.  I honestly didn't realize that tequila could actually taste good.  Call me American, but in my mind, I think of moonshine almost immediately after hearing the word tequila, because in my formative drinking years (mine came late, say in my early 20s) I associated tequila shots with pounding urine samples, which wasn't exactly the most appetizing thought in the universe.  Hence, I swore off tequila early and it's not a topic I revisit frequently.

But, in Mexico, I found myself liking the taste and the smell of tequila a bit too much.  All of this made the dancing at Zoo Bar even better--that, and the sick number of hot women working the dance floor at the club.  Fortunately, the air was rife with spring breakers, and in accordance with my own personal standards & morals (i.e., "don't bang a 19-year-old", "don't get the digits of the hottie who just exclaimed 'I can't WAIT to travel abroad next semester!!'", etc.), it was easy to play it hands-off.  Almost as easy as it was for Zak to get home and toss his nuggets back at the Fiesta, because he went about a dozen shots deep into the tequila mixed with about a half-dozen pork and steak tacos.

I didn't major in math, but I did minor in logic, if you know what I mean.

---

Friday:  The Canopy Tour

Dave, one of Zak's groomsmen and the resident day trip organizer for our PVR excursions, mentioned to me before everyone got sloppy Thursday night that there would a 9 AM trip to a canopy tour on Friday morning.  Total cost: $70.  I figured I needed to do at least one of the excursions--I couldn't really afford a $150 fishing trip or a snorkeling trip for the same--so I joined up in order to check out what all the hype was about behind doing these tours.

It didn't take long for me to figure out why.  Basically a long series of high-speed zip line runs, canopy tours are bigger in this part of the world (my guesstimation, not based on any real facts) because the scenery while you are zipping along is pretty damned cool.  We happened to do our canopy tour on the same range in Mismaloya where parts of the film "Predator" were shot, high above the PVR downtown area.  The mountains and the sights below were pretty cool to look at, especially while hanging onto a pulley that allowed for us to rush along each 200-to-500-meter line at 30-45 MPH.  What a rush; as someone that has not gotten a serious badass rush from something like bungee jumping or skydiving, zip lines will have to do for now but I thought they were pretty cool.  That, combined with finishing the course with a cold cerveza and a silly picture of me zipping down my first line, made my canopy tour pretty cool.  I even got my only true workout on the trip, because hiking through the trails up to each zip line entry point in 85° heat made me shed a pound or two in-between taco stands.

After finishing up and doing a quick tequila tasting at a spot near the entrance to the canopy tour course, I came back to the Fiesta and crashed the fuck out.  That evening, I got to spend much more time with the collected team members; Jeannine and Zak have an impressive set of friends, a group that was truly a solid mix of personalities, cultures, shapes and sizes.  The rehearsal dinner was really just a big dinner for all invitees Friday night, so after the wedding party did their run-through we had a great buffet dinner on the pool veranda before we broke out and did plenty more hangin' out on the homemade dance floor that was placed over the pool.  Man, I love the random dance party, and so did nearly all of the wedding couple's friends--sure, the music was hair-band heavy (Jellybean, we missed you), but in the right environment, I can get into "Shook Me All Night Long" if I know that you are gonna mix some Tribe in there for good measure.

I also love meeting the locals, and the staff at the Fiesta were some good folks, people who (naturally) spoke much better English than I spoke Spanish, although I wasn't too shabby.  The people I met in PVR in general were good people, very accommodating, very open folks.  Like any beach town, the folks in PVR were crazy laid-back; we had to beg the guys at dinner Thursday night to give us the check, they were so lax about us taking up the most table space at their restaurant.  But I enjoyed watching Mexicans interact with each other the most from afar; the manlove in the air was fantastic (reminded me of Italy, a little), watching parents interact with kids was a bit of a contrast to watching American parents deal with their kids in terms of how they talk to them.  Picking up the non-verbal, even a three-hour window of time spent waltzing through the streets the following day with my new friends Stacey & Alex (wahoowa) showed me how the Mexicans care for each other as people--at least, in this town--and how it differed from going to the mall on a Saturday morning and watching parents treat their four-year-old as they make mistakes or slow the hurried parent down.

I was beginning to like this place, although I knew even Friday night that I would have conquered all there was to see in this town with even one or two extra days here.  Luckily, Saturday was all about the wedding.

---

Saturday:  El Mariachi and the Fire Dancer

Stacey, Alex and I finished brunch Saturday morning and took the bus into town--along with L-Boogie, Jimmy and Melanie--for 5 pesos, or about 49 cents.  In other parts of Mexico, there would be no way I would take the bus anywhere, but in a town where there is basically one main road that goes in and out of town (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly), it was easy to make my way in.  We did some walking around town, and after walking uphill to a rooftop restaurant that overlooked all of downtown PVR--well worth the hike--I took my leave and came back to the hotel to rest up for the evening activities.

The kicker about doing a destination wedding is that you have to do it in a place where you think you can truly find a locale, a price and unique amenities that will set it apart from doing your wedding in a place like lovely Rockville, Maryland...and, you have to be able to convince your close friends and your family that it's all worth it.  It was cool to see that Zak and Jeannine generally had great success convincing those close to them that they should come down to Mexico...and, by keeping the invite list small (I think there were less than 50 people in attendance, perfect in terms of having the chance to meet everyone that made it down), you can carve out a truly intimate experience for the people.

(It also sounds like doing a destination wedding is a great way to keep those in your family that you DON'T want at your wedding to not show up...but, that's for another essay!)

Game time was set for 6 PM for the wedding...and, even under slightly overcast skies, the sky and the scene were near perfection, thanks to a cool spot at the hotel for the ceremony, where you could look out over the ocean while waiting for the wedding party to stroll down the walkway that led from one of the hotel suites to the altar that was set up at the end of this raised platform.  Oh, and to our left:  a 10-person mariachi band, which played a mix of traditional Mexican cuts and "Here Comes the Bride", which just sounds whoop-ass cool on violins, guitars, and trumpets played by guys wearing black chaps and white vests.  The ceremony was great, and after the 20-minute shindig was over, it was back down to the pool area for more time with the mariachis and lots of fresh salsa, chicken skewers and shrimp cocktails.

Dinner was celebrated over another round of tequila shots (it may have been two, three, or eight, depending on who you asked at which table), a beautifully meat-laden meal, crashing waves off the rock beach below and the kind of laughter that comes from people who have enjoyed a few days hangin' out together.  That's the part about the destination wedding that you can't really have back home--you trap the people in one place for a few days, and they are just going to be better friends by the end of the whole thing...which for me was great.  2+ days bonding led to this night, where I could relax, drink, look good (people have to take time out to do that, you know) and watch four bad-ass drum players and their fire-dancing buddy rip the chances of every single guy working on every single female right out of their hands.

[insert sound of record scratching here]

Yep, this was the part that had me howling the most: somebody decided that it would be a good move to let these bad-ass congo-playing dudes show up, roll in to play two or three continuous-beat cuts, and have their buddy take off his shirt--even the straight guys at the reception were commenting on this guy's athletic build--while twirling a big pole around his body while it was lit on fire.  I wish I had more pictures of the women that were lapping up this event--no one could even figure out why the Fire Dancer and His Posse were there, save for the fact that it just looked really cool--because if a guy was working on a female at this point, Fire Dancer was playing the role of Magua from "The Last of the Mohicans", ripping the heart out of any guy that thought he had game.  Upon Fire Dancer's entrance, I quickly took my seat in the ether, lest I risk any more loss of shame than necessary.

After all of this, it was a great dancing chaser, complete with dancing, stogies (for others, not I), an open bar, a dance party in the pool, about three packs of Tecate, a hot tub, my iPod and lots of nearly naked people by 2:30 in the morning.  Since I had the late-night tunes, I closed out the night in the hot tub by myself, and as I danced out the last few songs in my on-the-fly mixtape, I couldn't shake the thought from my mind--

Damn, maybe I need to go out and get myself a Mexican resort?

---

Sunday: The Aftermath

My flight was at 2 PM on Sunday; the worst part about any vacation is that awful trip to the airport, where you realize that you're about to spend your entire day in transit and you're going to spend your next day in a place where it's not as warm, it's not fun, it's not as...well, vacation-y.  But, even as I was sitting in an airport bar with Stacey and Alex, with Steve, Renee, Lana, Adam and Cindy nearby, I had to admit that this destination wedding thing was not all too bad once you convince yourself to get out and do it.  In fact, it was pretty sweet, especially if there are cool people to meet, like Helene and Paul, the latter of which spent much time with me clarifying much-heralded rumors that "it's all about the British accent" and "that OTHER town in 'The Office' really IS a real place."  Or that guy Chris, who literally asked me at 2 in the morning at the reception--fully dressed and ready to go--what time we were going to hit the clubs that night.  Or, maybe it was Grandpa Sal, who seemed to be playing the role of Hugh Hefner at this wedding, dropping sass here and there on women 50 years his junior all while looking like a former playboy.

Even though the actual trip home was awful (for many reasons, chief among them my 3:15 AM arrival back in Rockville thanks to a flight delay out of Denver), my memories of this trip by Monday morning were all good in the hood.  I don't know when my next destination wedding will come--certainly not this year, but the way I'm going, I'm bound to get another round of wedding invites next year--but I'll reflect back on this trip with fond memories, most notably the thought of a wedding couple shutting down the party last and the sound of flesh being cooked over an open flame at that PVR taco stand.

God bless you, unsanitary, inexpensive open tortilla mart--without you, this world is just a big bowl of hummus.

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Hot tubs, any time, ever:  Opening Weekend

• 300 sunny days a year:  $9.50 Show

• Bacon, sausage and ham at every breakfast brunch...bacon, sausage and ham at every breakfast brunch:  Matinee

• Naming your gringo-friendly Mexican restaurant Carlos O'Brian's:  Rental

• Having Taco Bell your first night back in the States:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com