Urn’s Wedding

(Urn’s wedding was about a month ago, but I didn’t get this post finished in time to post before we got wrapped up in our wedding - now it’s done, so I thought I’d post it before I started posting about our wedding and honeymoon)

Annie and I left the hotel we stayed at the night before and arrived at the wedding about 15 minutes late. Lucky for us, everyone else was running a bit late as well, including the bride. Urn was the only one (as far as I know) who got there on-time, in his haste to not repeat his performance at the rehearsal. [aside: He and Pat got stuck in traffic, missed the rehearsal entirely, and showed up an hour and a half late to the rehearsal dinner.] The photographer started setting up shots immediately, and between photos, everyone sat on the steps of the small building the wedding was set behind. There was a nice little lawn with a gazebo, and the entire thing was in direct sunlight except for about 2 feet of shade on the porch. After awhile, the guests began arriving, including many of our friends from Ellensburg, who we hadn’t seen since we left.

The wedding went off flawlessly. Urn included a gag where he had Jeremy, his best man, pretend to not have the rings, and then proceeded to sell him some out of a briefcase full of rings and watches. Urn had told us he was planning this during the bachelor party, and I thought he was insane. To his credit, however, the joke went over very well, and everyone (even Kat) laughed as Urn slipped Jeremy a twenty after looking over his wares.

There was a brief reception after the wedding, and then everyone changed back into their civilian clothes and retired to Kat’s parents’ house for an after-reception party. Everyone had a lot of fun. On the drive over, Pat and I got to geek out and discuss sci-fi and computers. At some point, I ended up in a circle of people who were passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels. Everyone poured a shot, made up a toast, tossed the shot back, and passed the bottle to the next person. It was a very complicated game, and after about half the bottle, the toasts tended more and more towards “To Whiskey!”

My memory gets a little fuzzy around this point, but I do remember making fun of Ben’s shirt, which said “National Guard: Since 1768″ (or some such date prior to 1776). We all thought this was hilarious, because this clearly meant that the National Guard was originally a British unit. Ben wasn’t at all impressed with our clever deduction. Now that I think back on it soberly, I’m not either. I also remember when it came time to leave asking Annie if she was alright to drive, and once she assured me she was, I closed my eyes, and then opened them to find myself at her parent’s house. I said “Wow, that was fast!” and she replied that we had been driving for an hour.

I fell in bed, and didn’t move until 3:30am, when I managed to avoid pulling an Urn by confining my vomiting to the bathroom, and then returned to bed after brushing my teeth a couple times. I figured out later that was the first time I had thrown up in six years. The moral of the story is that it’s better to quit drinking after the first bottle of Jack, not the second, larger bottle.