THE DAILY DIVERSION

Part 2 (The craziness begins)

After I’m picked up from the airport we head to Owensboro. We’ve got a couple of stops to make before we can actually head home, and most importantly, to bed. Our first stop is at the home of our ring bearer and two of our flower girls.

Adrianne had picked up all but one of our tuxes, so we wanted to make sure everything fit as early as possible. Larry tried his on at the store, and his jacket was the wrong size. I was hoping this was an anomaly.

Anyway, back on subject… We stop in to have our ring bearer try on his digs for the big day. It starts off well enough. His pants fit just fine, but that’s about it. His shirt was fine in the collar, but the sleeves went about 4 inches past the end of his fingertips. Yes, they were that long. His jacket was too small, and just to add insult to injury, his vest and tie were huge. Luckily his shoes fit okay. We had to call Afterhours the next day and get that stuff taken care of.

We already had them ordering Larry a different jacket, so they just added Colman’s needs to the list. They promised everything would be delivered on Friday, by hand, and it was. I was very pleased with Afterhours, and would recommend them to others. Both of my Brothers-in-law used Men’s Warehouse and had problems up to the last second with their tuxes. All of our issues were resolved by early Friday afternoon.

Okay, onto out last stop before going home. We wanted to run over by Justin’s house (one of my two best men) so he could try on his tux, and, also, so I could try mine on. As if by miracle, both of our tuxes fit perfectly. Neither one of us needed any changes at all. My shirt could’ve been a little longer in the sleeves, but it wasn’t worth worrying about.

As soon as we got in the car to leave Justin’s it started pouring down rain. It had been lightening since my flight got into Evansville, but I had yet to see any rain. Well, we got it, and lots of it. It was raining so hard that neither one of us could hardly see the road. Luckily it was almost 11 o’clock at night, on a Wednesday, so no one was out on the road. As we made our way toward Maceo, it seemed like we were engulfed in lightening. It came down in burst from every angle, and put on quite a show. If we weren’t in a car trying to get home it would’ve been fun to watch.

We made it home safe and sound and shortly thereafter put a couple of heads to bed. I’m thinking it was just around midnight. I had an appointment to get a haircut (which was badly needed) at 10 am the next morning, so I could sleep in a little bit, or so I thought.

Instead, we need to get up and load up the vehicles to take in decorations for the reception hall, and that was no small task. Rosemary (Adrianne’s Mom) and Doug had done such a wonderful job on making the decorations look wonderful, so the rest of us didn’t want to take any chances on screwing them up.

We had planned on not being able to get into the reception hall until early Thursday afternoon, but when Adrianne called them they said we could come whenever we were ready. So, while I was having my beautiful locks sheared away to reveal my gorgeous eyes, everyone else was delivering the decorations to the reception hall.

Unfortunately for me, it takes only about 15 minutes to cut my hair, so I was out of the chair and on my way over to the reception hall by 10:20 am. I had a facial appointment at 11 am, so I couldn’t hang around the reception hall too long, but just long enough to unload the booze for our “Big Bash”, whoops, our wedding!

Okay, so I’ve never had a professional facial before, and it’s something else. I couldn’t help it, but I fell asleep. I do the same thing when I get a good massage. She was rubbing my temples and had on some really, really relaxing music, so naturally I took a nap. She woke me up by saying “Are you comfortable?” I said “Sure, actually I was asleep.” I thought I had done something wrong at first, but she reassured me that it happens to a lot of people.

Well, I finished up that new and exciting adventure, and Adrianne was done with her manicure and pedicure, so we headed back to the reception hall to get a little work done. When we got there, all of the decorations had been placed toward the back of the reception hall, and there were just long rectangular and round tables set up neatly in order. It’s really too bad that this isn’t how we wanted the reception hall to be, because we spent the better part of the next five hours moving tables, chairs, asses, and decorations all over the place.

I took a bunch of pictures of the transformation of the hall, and I really want to post them, however, I haven’t moved them off of my digital camera yet. We took the memory cards to Wal-Mart Wednesday to get all of the pictures on them developed (nearly 300 of them), and should be picking them up either tonight or tomorrow.

We worked until nearly 11 pm that night on the reception hall, with multiple members of each of our families coming in and working hard, as well as both of my best men, and several of Adrianne’s bridesmaids.

As I told my guys… The more we get done on Thursday, the less we’ll have to be here on Friday. So, they were more than open to staying as late as possible on Thursday night, since we wanted to play some golf on Friday.

I ended up staying with Paul in the hotel on Thursday night after we closed up the reception hall. However, before we went to the hotel, we went over to Justin’s to hang out, just the three of us, for a little while. Actually, we had purchased a four pack of Sam Smith’s Nut Brown Ale and a half case of Newcastle, so I wanted a beer. I needed it after a long day of work. Yes, I did work most of the day, believe it or not!

I think I posted during the week before the wedding that I was working on little notes for each one of my guys, so I decided that I wanted to give Paul and Justin there’s this night. It was more personal and each one of their notes were special. I won’t go into the details of each one, but I was teary-eyed while I was writing them. Along with the cards, I also gave them each a framed picture of us. Paul’s was a picture of the two of us at one of the tournaments he was refereeing. He was in his uniform, and I found a pretty cool looking frame shaped and painted like a soccer ball. Justin’s picture was one of us from Vegas, while we were enjoying some public transportation. I told them I couldn’t really think of a great gift, and this way we could always remember each other and our friendship.

So, still thinking I’m not gay? Well, I’m married now, so there’s not really any doubt. Well, there could be, but it’s all good.

Anyway, Paul and I headed over to the hotel just after midnight and were in bed asleep (different beds mind you) right around 1 am. We had a 7:30 am breakfast meeting at Stinky Barrel (Cracker Barrel for those not in “the know”), so we needed a little rest.

Okay, I’m going to stop there for today. Friday was a very important and emotional day, so I want it to have it’s own post.

Stayed tuned…