I’ve never been to a wedding rehearsal before. This is partially due to the fact that I don’t have any close friends who would ask me to be in their wedding, and partially…well, now I just feel like shit.

But based on what I know, there’s a wedding coordinator who has broken down the wedding step by step with the blushing bride and the grimacing groom, and is there to make sure that everything runs smoothly and the lucky couple can concentrate on trying not to pass out and ruin the moment they’ve been waiting for all their lives.

However, the wedding rehearsal that I just went to was easily the worst-prepared wedding rehearsal I’ve ever encountered in my life, although I am forced to admit due to small sample size it was also the best-prepared wedding rehearsal I’ve ever been to. It’s possible I just have abnormally high standards, but the rehearsal was kind of like being in a Dropkick Murphys mosh pit: everyone is sort of thrashing to the same music, but there’s no unity, no cohesion, and everyone smells like sweat, whiskey, and regret. Here’s a picture I snapped halfway through:

The problems started the day before when the groom, flying in from South Carolina, found a flight delayed, delayed again, delayed for a third time, postponed, and finally, I believe, rerouted through Athens by way of Bangkok. Eventually, after a 10-hour layover in some godforsaken hellhole he found himself in Portland, a mere 4-hour drive away from his destination by way of rental car.

Naturally, I felt it my duty to point out that considering all these obstacles placed in his path it could be considered a pretty clear message from the One True God that this match was really not meant to be, but nobody was really interested in my opinions.

Eventually we all found each other in the park, a good half-mile from where the directions indicated, a tact I assume intended to weed out the less motivated guests, and got down to business a mere hour and a half late.

Turns out the happy couple did not, in fact, have a wedding coordinator, but texted one of my sisters the night before asking her to “stage manage” the entire production. And so, without a clearly defined sequence of events and everyone working from outdated information the rehearsal drunkenly climbed to its feet.

The first run-through ran smoothly enough, and served to highlight all of the problems that occurred when nobody, least of all the wedding party, knew exactly what they were doing. Five or six arguments later, several new parts of the wedding had been suggested and adopted and incorporated, and everyone speed-walked through the second run, which served to get everyone about halfway less confused over the precise sequence of evidence, just in time for everyone to head off to the twice-delayed rehearsal dinner that everyone was then late for.

Worst of all, my sister decided to ruin my life, but more on that later.

Part Three