Miami Wedding: Part II

I'm tearing myself away from the last third of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for this posting, not an easy task for me. I'm not one of those freaks who read it straight through in the first few hours after getting it. I dole it out in 100 page increments, like savoring a piece of fresh key lime pie (my favorite dessert).

When looking back on Carrie and Rusty's wedding, I realize how hard it is to accurately capture the fun that was had and the absolute sweetness that was that memorable wedding. Few came away from the evening with dry eyes and dry armpits. Tears and fun. Yin and yang. Rusty and Carrie.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner, during which this happened:

I really have no idea what is going on here, but it apparently was the first part of Ted and Tommy's bonding during the weekend. The next day, this happened during dinner after the ceremony. You try to figure it out:

Tommy is famous, and not just because he's part of Lately David or because he's looking more and more like Don Rickles the older he gets. Making him more famous than that is when he and his wife Melissa made it all the way to the show-case showdown on The Price is Right earlier this year after their Elvis wedding in Vegas.

Here is Melissa with Ted. See, this is funny because she's so short and he's so tall. Geddit?

Also at the rehearsal dinner, the groom's dad was very excited to meet Abe Lincoln in person, though the groom's sister was unimpressed. As she said, "It's not like he's in Rascal Flatts or anything." True dat.

Following the dinner, we roasted the couple, the highlight definitely being Jason's video that he sent through friends since he couldn't make it to the wedding. The video can be seen here. Jason is a creative, funny smarty-pants.

Also during the roast, someone described Ted's "performance" this way: "It was like watching someone violently shake a can of coke and then pop the top." I believe that few will soon forget it.

As part of my roast, I got to say the following sentence: "I began beating on bongos as soon as I changed into swim trunks."

We'd rented a karaoke machine, so here we are singing a truly awful version of "Love Shack." I'm not being humble by saying that it was terrible. It really was. Here's our friend Matt and his girlfriend Liza enjoying the evening's karaoke performances:

Notice the firm placement of fingers in ears.

Here we are with the future bride and groom after the roasting and karaoke fun.

*
Day Two

Here's that $19 dress, Jill. This is also one of, if not the only, normal photo we got at the wedding.

There are very few serious drinkers in our crowd, so since we prefer funny faces to straight faces, we asked all these sober folk to pretend drunk.

We start with the bride and groom, Carrie and Rusty:

Next we have the groom and his father:
Then we have some high school band director and his girlfriend:
Finally, another of those "What the heck?" photos.
So it looks like just a lot of silliness, I know, so what made this wedding so sweet? I've known Rusty since we were thirteen. He was my first friend at the new junior high I moved to. We met during art class, when we'd taken our chairs outside to draw a tree. He plopped his chair next to mine and asked, "So, have you ever read any C.S. Lewis?"

How could we not be friends after that?

When you've been friends with someone for more than half of your life, it is really exciting when you watch them find their other pea in the pod, as I got to witness Rusty find Carrie. These wedding-things are also very emotional for me, with the whole passing-of-time-thing. When I'm with this crowd of people, I feel thirteen again (minus the teenage drama) and go through these mind-warps every five minutes upon realizing, "oh yeah, we're grown-ups now...weird."

So I cried when I toasted Carrie and Rusty. I cried especially hard when Rusty's dad toasted them; I told Rusty later that not every man gets to hear such affirmation and unconditional support from their dad and that he should be thankful. Right after the ceremony, amidst the cocktail hour, Ted and I glimpsed Rusty and his dad, nose to nose in discussion, dad's hand on groom's shoulder, reassuring and blessing. I got choked up then too.

Then when the whole party was over and we were waiting to go home, Rusty, one of those true-blue friends who without reservation contributed a letter to our foreign dossier, came up to me with a hug and told me that he can't wait to meet the new addition to the Rooney family. Just the way he said it, all grown up and married, yet still as magically boy-wonder as ever now with a gorgeous girl-wonder beside him, got me and I cried all over again, as I'm crying now writing this.

I am blessed with loved ones.

Dr. and Dr. Spell

July 21, 2007