It's been one week since Gabriel and Lea's wedding. I had one more day of my Birth Week after that; I've written and mailed both the second part of my Birth Week 2024 email travelogue
and my email travelogue of the wedding; I've watched four movies since then; and I had
three notable events last night alone, which I still need to write about—but I still have more to say about the wedding!
More than anything, this is just because I wrote as much as I could remember about it last Sunday morning for my
first blog post about it, before I needed to leave for Everett to spend my last Birth Week day with Lynn and Zephyr. I thought of as much as I could for that post, but not quite everything. I sent out my email about the wedding on Wednesday, and that did include a few details I didn't think to mention in my blog post. But, instead of just converting that email to a blog post as I often do with my travelogues, I'm simply following up with a separate blog post here. My intention is not to repeat myself too much on the blog.
I suppose I should mention, however, that I got one thing very wrong in the email: the "We're Too Old For This Shit" group text is a lot older than I said in the email, when I said it started with Gabriel's birthday gathering in April 2023. Mandy texted the group chat this on Thursday, and I spent a psychotic amount of time at work scrolling back to the beginning of the text thread to confirm when it was actually created:
October 5, 2019. That group text has been around since
before covid. Granted, Andy was not added until later—2021, according to him—and it may very well be that the group was not retitled "We're Too Old For This Shit" until then. Even that would have been before 2023, though, so I was wrong about this on multiple levels.
Gabriel even texted the "Mans" group text (this is the one for the Lopez Island trip crew: Gabriel, Andy, Garret, Brian, and me) on Thursday morning, right after Garret texted there that he had loved the email. Gabriel wrote,
Loved the travelogue! Only got a couple things wrong this time! 😎 What else I got wrong, he did not elaborate on.
Well, whatever. I am confident the email made for a good narrative regardless. How important are these details, anyway? Just call me James Frey.
Anyway! As the days passed over the past week, I actually took notes on things I wanted to cover in a follow-up post about the wedding.
For instance: how could I not mention in last weekend's post that there was
a goat in the ceremony? Its name was Daisy. (I texted Lea to confirm this.) Lea has an undying love of goats, don't ask me why. (One of the choice responses to the email, from Michelle in Accounting at work:
PS I couldn't do the goat. No thank you.) This was actually part of the contingency plan in the absence of Andy, who could not make it due to covid. Joan, wife of Ben the Officiant, himself Lea's brother, was tasked with walking Daisy the goat down the aisle in the ceremony, right after which she handed Ben the rings, who then handed the groom and bride the rings himself when it was time. In Andy's absence, there was no handoff from the Best Man.
Joan just friended me on Facebook today, by the way. Literally minutes after I accepted the request, she had clicked the "love" reaction on
all twenty of the photos I posted of the wedding on Saturday night.
Joan wore a
truly fabulous outfit to the wedding, it not having anything to do with May the Fourth or Star Wars notwithstanding. She kind of looked like she had just time-traveled from the 1920s. Plenty of people, like her, did not come to the wedding in any kind of Star Wars cosplay, but more than plenty people actually did: I could not get over the
Stormtrooper doll, brought by a teen girl with her hair done up like Rey from
The Force Awakens. I kept imagining that doll coming to life and stabbing everyone like a Star Wars version of Chucky from
Child's Play.
I tried looking up some other Star Wars themed weddings online, incidentally. Shocker, there's a
lot. I wasn't as fond as any of the others I found, which were often
over-polished and over-rehearsed, but I also know I have a bit of a bias here. Here's something none of the others had: Washington's own Mount Si as
a backdrop. What's more, this wasn't
just Star Wars themed, the date notwithstanding: there were also
references to
Twin Peaks (being in Snoqualmie), and to the Seattle season of
Love Is Blind (being the same wedding venue), and to
The Bachelor (particularly during the vows). This was less a
Star Wars wedding than a very personalized Nerd Wedding.
Hit it, Billy Idol!
It's a nice day to say "I know"
It's a nice day for a nerd wedding
It's a nice rose to accept again
Okay, what else?
I did want to mention one more thing about my suit, the one thing I really like about a suit of any kind—the vest. I noted this in the email travelogue: it's a sort of magic garment, like a loose fitting girdle that you don't have to tighten. (Although you can tighten it, with a strap in the back, which I did insofar as making it a better fit under the suit.) Got a paunch? Wear a vest, and you look great! Hell, you can be straight up fat and a vest will make you look great.
This was definitely not one of the things in the email that I got wrong. I am right about this! It's not going to make me start wearing suits, though. Instead I'll just fantasize about having the courage to develop bulimia. I'm just kidding! Sort of! I have a healthy relationship with food!
Speaking of healthy relationships, I have to mention the wildest conversation I had at the wedding. It's too wild for me to name the person with whom I had it. And honestly, this guy was all too happy to talk to me—about an uncle who soon has a court date to somehow defend ruining his father's (this person's grandfather's) life, including arson. As in, burning down a building full of prized possessions, including a car. I am really burying the lede here though because apparently this uncle is in a romantic relationship with his own, biological daughter.
. . . What?
I had many follow-up questions. None of the answers made me feel any better about this story.
Anyway! Another thing I forgot to mention last Saturday was Gabriel and Lea's "guest book," which was not pen and paper, but
Lego avatars. They had a whole table for this, tubs of separate components: one for a head/face, one for a torso, one for legs, one for hair, one for something to hold in your hands. Check it out, I'm at top left in that display they made! Gabriel clearly wrote my name on it. I had just
written my initials, which later got a little smeared. Had I known they were putting every Lego person from the wedding party into a display, I might have been more inclined to write out my full name. As it was, my avatar was one of several that Gabriel texted to both group chats to ask if we knew who they were. My name had not been clear, and although they thought that one might be me, they were thrown by the gun I had chosen to put in my hand. Honestly I just wanted something black, and I didn't like any of the other options. I even did my avatar before most people did, before the ceremony, hoping to find the best options. I still found it a challenge to find something that looked even remotely like me. I was pretty happy with
the facial expression, though.
Speaking of avatars, I never mentioned
the Lady on
the cake in Saturday's post! (Although the post did include a video clip of it.) As in, literally Lady, Lea's dog. Stephanie had included it as a surprise, which Lea did not see until she and Gabriel went
to cut the cake. When Lea first noticed it, she damn near cried.
Let's see, what else? Can I talk shit about anyone? If not here, then where! I don't have much, honestly. I guess I could mention that Mandy did go there at one point with an "at your next wedding" joke, which did not land well. Lea wasn't there, but Gabriel was, and his response was literally to say, "Fuck you," and I could hear in his tone that he meant it. And for the record, I would be lying if I said it never occurred to me to say something similar, except I actually made a conscious decision before the wedding day that it would be a bad idea. Maybe some other time! But, not
at the wedding. There's not one person there that it would be good for.
That said, I did note not long ago to Gabriel that he and Lea have been together longer before deciding to get married than he was with anyone else he married. And Gabriel
also said "Fuck you" when I said that—see? he's sensitive!—but he was clearly misreading my intention. I was only observing that as a positive thing, something
good that sets this relationship apart: he
already knows that this relationship can last, because it already has. And this is not to say that he rushed into any of the others, per se (the extenuating circumstances in 2012 notwithstanding)—only that
this relationship has had the most breathing room, the longest runway, the greatest reason to have faith in its future. Gabriel refers to Lea as "home," and we can all see that he's just stating the obvious to everyone around them.
Oh! One last detail: wedding reception song requests. When we RSVPd on their wedding website, it asked for a song request. Gabriel noted on Saturday—or maybe it was Mandy? somebody did—that they got tons of song requests, far more than could ever hope to get played. I heard that and thought: okay, I probably won't hear my request. That's fine.
And you know what? I could not for the life of me remember what song I had requested anyway. I remembered that I very deliberately did
not request something super on-brand for me, like Madonna or Lady Gaga or Fleetwood Mac (Gabriel would never want to hear that last one anyway). I wanted something that was, if not bonkers, then bonkers-adjacent. I remember being very pleased with my choice, but not what the hell the choice was.
And then? I had gone out with Mandy to get my third cocktail at the "Tipsy Trailer." And suddenly I heard it. I got very excited: "Mandy, this was my song request!" She was too engaged in conversation with someone else. Dammit! I want somebody to care about this!
It was "
She Wolf" by Shakira. I remember watching that video with Gabriel once and him going on about how uniquely hot she was, particularly the way she moves in the video. But more than anything, that on top of the lyrics, as the quasi-ironic song choice in this context, cracked me up:
A domesticated girl, that's all you ask of me
Darling, it is no joke, this is lycanthropy
The moon's awake now, with eyes wide open
My body's craving, so feed the hungry
There's a she wolf in the closet
Open up and set it free (Ah-ooh)
There's a she wolf in your closet
Let it out so it can breathe
Also: the song just plain rocks. Had I not been involved in getting my drink, I'd have gone inside to dance to it. Alas, once I got back inside, it had ended.
Okay, that's it. I've gone through all my notes. How long can we talk about Gabriel and Lea's fabulous wedding,
ugh! We get it! Okay, I'll just say this: as with basically any wedding, I can only imagine how stressful and chaotic all the planning was behind the scenes, for god knows how long. From the other end, from the outside, it only looked like they stuck the landing. They killed it. And moving forward, it certainly appears they will
not be spending any time fantasizing about murdering each other. Must be nice!
[posted 7:54 pm]
