Previous Episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Sorry this was late. My dog ate my homework. Er, I left it on the bus? My grandfather died, and all that. Anyway, here goes part 16.

I was just, this past weekend, the Best Man (by title only) in a wedding. It made me a little nostalgic for my own wedding, so i figured I’d post this story.

Approximately 9 months ago, I married my wife. We had a beautiful ceremony outside of Reveille Church in Richmond. There were many people who had responsibilities to take care of that day, including myself. Someone was in charge of flowers. Someone was in charge of parking. Someone was in charge of making sure the groomsmen didn’t smell like booze. Everybody came through with their responsibilities flawlessly… almost.I had two responsibilities, other than just showing up. The weather and the sound. The weather was easy. I called my regular weather guy. He does great work, and he really came through for me on that day. He gave us a beautiful blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds, a slight northeastern breeze, highs in the lower 70’s and lows in the lower 60’s. Perfect for an outdoor October wedding. Trust me, weather like that costs a lot, but lemme know if you need his number. I’ll dig it out of my files. The sound was not quite so easy.

The second thing I was responsible for was the PA system at the ceremony. As it was an outdoor wedding of nearly 250 people, we wanted to make sure that everyone could hear us take our vows. We had been to outdoor weddings where the blowing of the wind, rustling of the trees, and chirping of birds was really all that you could hear. We wanted all our guests to actually witness our vows. To save some money, I decided to use my own speakers, amplifier and cords. I rented two wireless lavalier mics, one for me and one for the pastor. On the day before the wedding, I brought the PA to the garden where the ceremony would be held, plugged everything in and tried it out to make sure it would work. As expected, it all worked fine. So, to avoid the equipment from being stolen or damaged in the possible rain storm that night, I packed up the equipment and put it in one of my groomsman’s (Shaft’s) trunk. I can’t believe I thought that was a good idea.

The big day. The plan was to go to the garden, set up the PA and mics, and then go relax with a few games of bowling with most of my groomsmen. Shaft had decided to wait until the last minute (typical) to get a brand new tux and had to go to spend the day with his tailor (which, for some reason, was 30 minutes south of Richmond, in Petersburg) having it altered. I arranged for him to drop off the equipment at the church before going to meet his tailor, which he did… sorta. We arrived to the garden to find that he had left everything there except for the items in his trunk, which consisted of all the cords required and the microphones. Enter wedding day stress.

I called him immediately. “Hey, man. First of all, thanks for going out of your way to drop off the equipment. I really appreciate it.”

“Sure, man. Just doing my part.”

“Secondly, where’s the rest of it?”

“What rest of it?”

“Cables, cords, mics…”

“Ooooooohhhhh… I bet it’s all in my trunk, I bet. Oops.”

“Oops, nothing. Where are you?”

“I’m in Petersburg getting my tux.”

“Any chance you can make it back here?”

“Not right now. She’s got her hand up my pant leg. Actually, I’m not even with my car. My old lady drove me over here. My car’s at her place.”

I knew that her place was even farther away than he was. For some reason this was extremely important to me, so I laid the hammer down. “Look man, I don’t know what you have to do, but I absolutely NEED for that stuff to be at the church so I can set it up.”

“Jesus. Are you serious? I can’t do it, man. I’ve got…”

“Shaft, make it happen.” Click.

Hanging up on him may have been a bit dramatic, but I was really pissed. The one thing I needed to take care of was gonna fall through. Shaft had a strong history of being late to important events, not showing up to some, and missing things. Shaft is the kind of guy that you tell him that something starts at 4:30 when it really starts at 5. The reason I still love the guy, though, is that he will always come through when it’s absolutely necessary. This time, though, I had my doubts.

We set up what we could in the garden. We hid the speakers on the bushes, hid what cables we did have and made sure the generator was working. So far so good, but without the other cables and mics, there was no way to test any of it. By this point, I had planned on having all the levels set, so that right before the wedding, I could switch it on, and have nothing left to worry about. Since that wasn’t the case, I went bowling.

Needless to say, I didn’t bowl well. It was fun, though, having all my good friends there drinking late morning Bloody Marys, pitchers and trying to relax. The bowling alley gave me an old bowling pin that all my buddies signed and wrote comments on. It was a great time, but I was still stressing out.

After a few games, I got a call from Shaft. “Hey, man. You guys at the lanes?”

“Yep. Where are you?”

“Stay put. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”He did it! He came through. I knew he would. I just knew it. Somewhere deep, deep down I knew Shaft would never really let me down if he could help it. That’s why we were still friends. The other guys agreed to pay the tab for the games and drinks. I ran outside and jumped in Shaft’s car. We drove over to the church garden and set the stuff up. If there was anyone I wanted with me setting up PA gear, it was Shaft. We’d been setting up PA gear at shows for 10 years at this point. He knew exactly what to do. We had everything up and running and sound perfect in 10 minutes. We had just enough time to go put our tuxes on and make it back in time for some pregame pictures. Finally a small relief.

At this point, I have to point out that our regular pastor had become very sick a few days before the ceremony. He had something along the lines of a gall bladder infection, which had put him in intensive care. Of course we were all very concerned. My wife and I had met with him many times so that he could scrutinize us, get to know us, and make sure that we were ready to be married. I thought he was a great guy, and was very much looking forward to his homily. Thus the double disappointment when he got sick. Not only were we worried for his life, but now our “most important day” would be officiated by someone we hardly knew. The church called in an old faithful. He was a retired pastor. I believe for reasons that his mind was staring to go. Don’t get me wrong, he did fine job, but some of the details were missing. He couldn’t remember my name. He didn’t have us turn and face the crowd, like we had asked. His homily was generic. And worst of all, he never turned on his microphone.

As I stood there with my wife’s hand in mine and looked him in the eye, he made it clear that he knew, but it was too late to do anything about it. I turned mine off as well, so that I wouldn’t be the only one that would be heard. My heart sank as I realized I had put a lot of stress on myself and Shaft for nothing. Then it quickly rose again when I realized that none of that mattered. I was standing on the alter about to commit my life to the greatest person I knew (and know) before all of my friends, family, and whatever god or God was watching. Who cares about the stupid PA system. I could hear fine. My wife could hear fine. And as her choked up voice said “I do,” I could think of nothing else besides how beautiful she was standing there committing herself to me.

Popularity: 39% [?]