divine angst

CM asked for wedding stories.

I’ll try to accomodate. I may have to tell more than one, and not just about my own wedding. After all, weddings are the main social excursions for me lately. (By summer’s end, I’ll have gone to 18 in four years.)

OK. Wedding stories.

Keeping My Cool, or How Delegating Is a Beautiful Thing

To preface, I will say that I am a pretty even-tempered person. I don’t fret about things much. I also had planned my wedding pretty well. So there wasn’t much to worry about. In fact, this particular event was really the worst thing that happened at my wedding—with close runners-up including being kicked out of the church before we could finish taking pictures, having brothers leave before family pictures were done, having one of my cousins change into khakis after the ceremony, and having a guest show up in a white cotton skirt and a belly shirt (in January). But those things were minor, really.

When this particular snafu happened, the wedding had been over for about 40 minutes. Mr. Angst and the wedding party and I had just come over to the reception from the church, where we’d been taking pictures. I was starving and people were stopping us every five feet for hugs and chit-chat. I was enjoying every minute of it.

My maid of honor brought me the last piece of food from the cocktail hour—a slice of baguette and (I think) a piece of celery. She also brought me a glass of wine. I continued to chat and mingle and greet people. And then, a family friend approached.

This family friend, let’s call him Bob, was my cousin’s college roommate. But Bob has been coming to our family reunions forever, and he’s really just a part of the family now. So I smiled widely and told him how glad I was to see him.

NB: Bob was at the time single, and he knew everyone in my family, so I didn’t send his invitation with an “and guest.” We were definitely short on space and anyone who was family and would know more than 30% of the guests didn’t get to bring a random date, only serious significant others. Some of my cousins didn’t even get to bring dates. I thought that was a fair decision on my part, and my wedding party and parents agreed.

So there’s Bob, shaking Mr. Angst’s hand and telling us congratulations, and then he turns around and says, “By the way, I’d like you to meet Amy.”

Amy? Who is Amy?

Amy was his date. His date who didn’t have a seat in the reception, who didn’t have an entree, who didn’t have a placecard. Well, crap.

I’m sure I turned sort of white. My maid of honor, God bless that woman, because she is my ROCK, immediately walked away and came back with the hotel’s wedding coordinator. I finished chatting with Bob—and meeting Amy—turned away, and found the coordinator standing right there, already aware of a problem. (This is the beauty of having your reception at a hotel with a full-time staff. They do EVERYTHING for you.)

So I told her that we had a problem at Table 9 (yes, I knew exactly what table Bob was supposed to be sitting at, and I knew it was a FULL table), and that I also didn’t know what this new person was going to eat, but that she was there and needed to be accomodated.

And she took care of it. I don’t really know what she did. But 20 minutes later as we were going in for dinner, I asked her about the extra person and she said, “It’s all taken care of!” And that was the last I heard of that.

As wedding stories go, that was probably pretty boring. And really, my wedding, while not boring, was pretty problem-free. And problems make the best stories. So I’ll try to think of other things that might be more interesting for another wedding post.