Apparently, My Wedding Etiquette Is Subpar

Last week, I tried to write a random post in order to have a back up in case of unforeseen illness in the future. Unfortunately, my record for writing random posts clearly shows that I am incapable of doing so, or, at the very least, doing so in an entertaining manner. I still have the failed attempt saved and I may use it if I ever am in dire need of content to publish. You will recognize it by its title, "This May Be an Exercise in Futility." Luckily, I will not be posting that this week as I had a very eventful weekend. I am thinking I can actually get two posts out of it. For one, it will help me have content to write about for two weeks. Secondly, splitting the weekend into two will help me have two shorter posts instead of a very long one which should help with those who complain that my posts are too long. I am, of course, talking about the BF even though I am not even sure he reads this. Thirdly, concentrating on one topic may help make the article more focused instead of the convoluted mess it usually is. As the title to this post indicates, I will be concentrating on the events surrounding a wedding I attended Saturday.

I have known this wedding was coming up for some time, as evidenced by the fact that I mentioned it in the last post. This may have something to do with the fact that I have known the bride for about eight years and that I currently work with her. I have known the bride, let's call her Nikki, since before she started dating her now-husband. I mention this to establish how long we have known each other and hoping it explains some of what happened at the wedding.

The first problem I had with the wedding, and no it was not that gay people can't get married yet, was that Nikki explicitly told me I could not wear jeans. The last two weddings I attended, one of which she attended with me, I wore jeans. They were nice jeans that I dressed up with a button-up shirt and a vest so it did not look bad. However, this time she explicitly told me no jeans. I must add that there was a guy at the wedding that wore cargo pants and a polo shirt so jeans would have looked a lot better and a lot less sloppy than that. I ended up wearing just slacks and a black shirt with a tie that I bought the day before because I did not like any of the ones I had. I looked ok, but was not totally satisfied with the end result. At this point I will interject that I know I had talked about taking a picture at the wedding but I was not about to take a picture when I was not truly satisfied with my attire. At one point I noticed that everyone was taking pictures with the bride and I had to ask if that was a requirement because I really did not need that wardrobe choice to be saved for posterity. Needless to say, I did not take a picture with the bride. I figured I did not want one and she already had too many so she wouldn't miss it.

Because I have known the happy couple (that just sounds cliche, doesn't it?) for a long time, it turns out that I knew a lot of the people at the wedding. I had dragged the BF along so that I would not be by myself and in the end I felt like I neglected him as I kept running into people I knew and talking to them, whether I liked them or not. I talked a lot that evening. I talked from the minute we sat down for the ceremony til the minute I climbed into the passenger seat of BF's truck. It wasn't all my fault though. I had to talk to keep myself entertained sometimes. For example, despite my better judgment and despite my Mexican upbringing that has taught me never to be on time for anything, we arrived at the wedding ten minutes early. Now, you may not know me, but ten minutes is a long time to wait for me. I am not impatient, at least I don't think I am, but I do get antsy easily and sitting still in a ceremony hall communicating in hushed whispers while trying to behave and not criticize people is not my idea of fun. Thus, I kept turning around to talk to people and asking how much longer it would be until the wedding started. The wedding was supposed to start at six o'clock but it did not start til ten minutes to seven. Now, if you remember that we got there ten minutes before the appointed time, that means that I had to sit and squirm for a whole hour. I am just saying that, despite my best intentions, I ended up criticizing some people and annoying others just to keep myself entertained for that long. Thankfully, the ceremony was short and we were served wine the minute we made it into the reception hall. I have said it before and I will say it again, wine makes everything better.

Finding a place to seat at the reception was also nerve racking. There were only six seats per table and there were more than six people I wanted to sit with. There was the co-worker group and the people I have met at previous parties. I ended up just sitting with the BF, two friends of the bride and two people I did not know. Thankfully, the people at the table did not find me annoying. I daresay that I was very entertaining but, as much as I like it, wine can be deceiving. If nothing else, I had a good time.

So far, except for the talking a lot, I felt like I was behaving in an appropriate manner. Unfortunately, I can't be trusted to behave for extended periods of time. Especially not when I am around people I feel comfortable with. Everyone was lining up for the buffet so me and the BF decided to go congratulate the newlyweds before lining up ourselves. When we got to their table, Nikki was talking to someone else so I said a quick congratulations to the groom while waiting. I thought about giving him a hug but I decided we were not that close. I probably did not need to tell him that aloud though but hindsight is 20/20.  While we were waiting, the servers brought the new couple their dinner plates. I would describe the dinner but that is not of consequence right now. What does warrant mentioning is that after saying congratulations to the bride, and informing her that I was not giving her a hug either because it was awkward, I mentioned that her plate looked good. You may know where this is headed but don't get ahead of me. I will get there. So, I mentioned that her plate looked good and she asked me, politely, if I wanted to try anything. I found this a bit odd but we have shared whataburger egg taquitos after a night of drinking so it did not seem too inappropriate. Still, I declined by saying that I would just get in line and get my own plate. I guess that should have been the end of that but she asked me if I was sure and told me that I could try something if I wanted to. At that point, I looked around her plate to really ascertain myself of its contents. Even I knew that it would be inappropriate for me to take the piece of chicken from her place but I noticed that on the side there was a piece of honeydew melon. I told her that, if she didn't really mind, I would take the piece of honeydew. She told me to go for it... so I did. Upon clarifying that my hands were clean, I picked up that piece of melon and ate it only to look around and find that the BF had deserted me and that he and Dottie, one of my co-workers whom he'd just met, were standing in the buffet line pretending that they did not know who I was. I thanked the bride for the fruit and excused myself so I could stand in line and get my own plate but, apparently, I had crossed a line. I kind of understand that what I did may be considered inappropriate but the bride asked and shouldn't the bride get anything she asks for on her wedding day? That is why, even though the BF and Dottie acted as if they were embarrassed by my actions, I maintain that I did nothing wrong. Especially since I am not a particularly big fan of honeydew, I will eat it if it is there but I won't go out of my way for it, and I ate it because it was the least obtrusive item on her plate. See? I am a little bit considerate.

After we got out plates, we sat down to eat and dinner was fairly uneventful. I mean, I did at one point had a piece of chicken on my lap and had to use my napkin to clean the sauce from my shirt, but that was an accident. Accidents happen to everyone so I am not taking responsibility for that one either. After all, I was just sitting there trying to cut a piece of chicken off when all of a sudden it flies into me and lands in my lap. I don't like wasting food so I still ate it and then I cleaned my shirt off but I don't see how any of that is my fault. You may say that it's my fault for now knowing how to use cutlery properly. I think I do pretty well considering that, growing up in Mexico, we sometimes only used a tortilla to eat instead of cutlery. If anything, I should be offended that their wedding was not culturally inclusive as it discriminated against those that use tortillas as cutlery by not having any tortillas around. I may be on the losing side of this one too, though.

I am happy to report that the eating of the cake went off without a hitch. Also, even though I had a total of seven or eight glasses of wine, I only spilled a little bit of it on the tablecloth and it was only noticeable because I was drinking Merlot and the tablecloth was white. Speaking of wine, I learned that wine is not the best of beverages to try to drink while dancing. Me and Nicole have gone to clubs many times. We have danced with our drinks in our hand more times than we can count and we are very proud of the fact that we have never spilled a drink. Now, don't be scared, as our perfect record of unspilled drinks remains unbroken. When it was time to dance, I was going to leave my glass of wine on the table. However, I saw Nikki take her glass of beer onto the dance floor and, you know, when in Rome... They played two line dances. One was the wobble, which I don't know how to dance, and the k-wang, which Nikki and I had agreed we would dance at her wedding. I jumped in at the end of the wobble and as we were walking off the dance floor the k-wang started. The bride and I lined up on the dance floor and, although some people tried to join us, we pretty much danced the whole song by ourselves. This is when the wine became problematic. The k-wang is a line dance that does not have a lot of down time. I wanted to take a drink but the movement kept the wine away from my lips. To make matters worse, I would end up exhaling into the wineglass and spraying my face with wine. Having a face full of wine does not promote good dancing so I kept messing up the steps. Also, I wish I could say that I sprayed my face full of wine only once, but that would not be true. I did it at least three times. The more I danced, the more I wanted a drink and the more out of breath I was causing me to exhaled more and spray more wine in my face which made me really want a drink thus becoming a vicious cycle. The good thing about the whole situation was that, even though I kept missing steps, everyone thought we did really well because no one else knew the dance. That is the benefit of practicing beforehand.

The rest of the wedding went of without a hitch. Especially since the bride and groom got "hitched" at the beginning of the wedding so the "hitch" was already done. I am sorry for the horrible pun but I could not help myself. If I could have stopped myself from typing that, I would have. After the line dancing, I went over to the table, wiped my face clean with my napkin, polished off my glass of wine and returned to the dance floor unburdened by any liquids. Having taking care of that, dancing went more smoothly and was more fun. There were no more inappropriate shenanigans that I can think of. Still, even with the few mishaps I have mentioned, I think it was a fairly successful wedding and I deem my behavior appropriate, if not stellar.

The wedding ended shortly after and we bid the newlyweds adieu. After that, I made sure to say hello and good bye to the bride's mother and to a few people I wanted to make sure I said hi to and me and the BF departed. We still had a long drive ahead of us and I would like to say that the drive went off without incident but that was not the case. However, that is fodder for another post.