Wedding Essays

bellview--hope you like waffle irons!   

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

The Wilber Wedding

7/5/05

$420?

I'm sitting here at my home PC, sweating (profusely), wondering why the hell I can't find a single flight from the DC area to Seattle for less than $420.  I was doing this almost five weeks prior to departure, so I was certain that I could find something for cheap, but everywhere I turned, I kept coming up empty.

Even the $420 flight was dicey--it was a three-legger, flying from Dulles to Cincinnati to Denver to Seattle, leaving at 1 PM EST and not ending until 11 PM Pacific.  This, of course, had me landing the day before the wedding that I wanted to go to in Seattle, so there was going to be major pain involved.  Then I had to get a car, then I had to get a hotel for at least a night (friends would cover the Friday night stayover), then I had to do what I do best:  eat.  We were looking at $650-$700 for this trip, easy.

But then I paced around my room, with the flight on Orbitz sitting on-screen.  I had one of those great Mastercard moments, where I had to tell myself that the cost of being at my old roomie Laura's big day was worth almost any amount of money at this point.  You knew that Laura and her hubby-to-be Wes were going to do something different, something special, and you knew that if you were getting an invite to this thing you just had to be a part of it, and you knew that they were going to go someplace that was off the beaten path.

I clicked on "Purchase"--I could almost hear the sound of coins running down that cylindrical pot as my wallet got lighter--and after a long five weeks of waiting, finally the wedding arrived...and it was nothing short of glorious.  Not to say that there wasn't any pain involved in the process, though.  First, flying three legs can be downright miserable, especially when your allergies are fucking with you, as they were doing with me on my round of flights.  I was "that guy" that sits near you on your cross-country flight, wiping my nose while playing my Game Boy and fingering the in-flight magazine while putting it back in the seat pocket in front of me.  You could almost see the germs flying around me, "Outbreak"-style, as I wallowed in suffering through nearly eight hours of flight time between three airports; worse, the last leg was delayed by an hour, and then Alaska Airlines (the first two legs were Delta before the switch to Alaska Air) went ahead and lost my luggage, and worse, they told me there was no record of my bag leaving Dulles in the first place, which has solidified my decision to never check a bag again unless I am flying abroad.

(Note: I never tire of watching/listening to adults make fun of me for having a Game Boy with me when I travel.  Even though adults think that the Sony PSP or the Nintendo DS are really cool and they buy more expensive portable toys with games like, uh, iPods, they never pass up a moment to make fun of my Game Boy.  The best part, though?  "Hey, uh...can I borrow your Game Boy for a little while?  Oh, you have Frogger?  I LOVE Frogger!  Oh, you have Zelda?  I LOVE Zelda!"  If they ever release Contra for this thing, I'm going to have more friends than I can count.)

Anyway, the day before the wedding was travel-packed and painful, which is why the Laura Wilber Wedding was that much more special the next day.  The airline found my bag at noon on Saturday; somehow, it had been "accidentally" shipped to Anchorage (Dear Alaska Airlines:  Fuck You), so after getting the bag I hopped my car and made the two-and-a-half hour drive to Leavenworth, WA, site of the Mountain Springs Lodge, where the wedding/reception was taking place.  As I was driving through the hills, everything was like Calgon for a minute, you know?  "Calgon...take me away!!!"  The allergies were suddenly fleeting.  Cell service, infamously poor in any mountain region, was a three-bar signal, allowing me to idle-chat pass the time away, like kicking back on the couch, watching the Yanks bomb the Orioles.  It was sunny, low 70s (the temperature and my speed), nary a cop in sight.

Heaven, my friends...heaven.  And then, I got to the resort in time for the 5 PM cocktails, and my first sight?

and I'm thinking, "This is going to be a great time."

Of course, the wedding met expectations.  The invitation said to dress casual and so I did, thinking that a black button-down, some linens and sandals ought to do the trick...and, I was the most overdressed guy at the ceremony.  Many of Wes's friends wore costumes or party attire, forcing my fist to the sky while screaming "Curses!!!"  There was a live two-man set for the strings work during the ceremony, a five-person act that did their own stuff plus some covers for the post-dinner dancing outside and then a house/techno/pop DJ for the 10-2 AM set indoors.  The vows were completely written by the wedding couple and the ceremony was run by the respective best friends of the bride & groom.  Grown men were crying, the weather was perfect...there was a $5,000 chocolate fountain machine that was used by guests as a dinner roll dip and by one guy as a wine refill station.

It was, in a word (for real, just one word this time)...serenity.  All of the weddings that I go to are special in some way, but for this one--one where I didn't know many of the guests and didn't stick around for some of the weekend's planned events--I think I had more inner peace than ever before.  All was right with the world, if only for this one special day.

Most importantly, you're always excited to be with your friends/family/coworkers/hooker on their most special day, and you really can't beat seeing your buddies locking up a long-term contract in person.  That's the crack addiction for me; sure, I love the dinners, I love the dancing, I love the stories that come with these trips, but you just can't beat that five-second moment when you see the two people stare at each other and realize that this is the apex, man...good stuff.

Only five more weddings to go this year.  Hopefully they will all be this good.

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Buying a one-bedroom condo in Bethesda for $155,000:  Opening Weekend

• Having the whole dance floor to yourself:  $9.50 Show

• The AL East:  Matinee

• Bulky digital cameras:  Rental

• Airline prices to Cyprus:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com