Another Sibling Officially Married Off

I should write about this before it gets too crazy late.

My brother got married a couple of weeks ago. Well, this was the big affair that they had been planning out anyway. They technically got married in City Hall back in 2012, but since you can’t invite everybody you’d want at your wedding to a City Hall thinggy, they went ahead with the big due they were planning, and that was this one.

It was on a Friday, which was a little different than usual. I think the reason for picking that day was it was supposed to be lucky. By all accounts, everything worked out fine…but the weather had nothing to do with good luck, at all! We had a special weather statement, rain, threats of freezing rain, and other assorted grossness.

Because it was on a Friday, and my folks were part of the wedding party, there was a rehearsal the night before. Because the wedding was in Toronto, this meant that Steve and I got picked up the night before. So I ended up taking 2 days off work that week. Nutso!

I have to say technology is a wonderful thing. Since my folks were in the rehearsal dinner, Steve and I were on our own for finding food that night. We could have gone to the hotel restaurant, but a. we ended up grabbing lunch there, and b. holy pricy dinners! So, after some quick googling on our phones, and a little blindsquaring, we found ourselves Boston Pizza and had it brought in. Yes! Can you imagine the craziness if we didn’t have our phones? We could have done it, but it would have been a lot harder.

We learned a lot about the beast that is Toronto traffic. Mom and Dad had driven from hotel to church when the roads were pretty empty. It was maybe a 10-minute drive. On Friday afternoon? Took us a good 45 minutes ish. Those were some stressful 45 minutes.

I learned about a new kind of member of the bridal party, junior bride’s maids! I had never heard of that, but this was the day I learned about them. A bunch of nieces of the bride were all dressed up in cute little tutus. Those will make some fine pictures.

I never wrote about his City Hall ceremony, probably because it was 4 days after my uncle Mike’s funeral and we were in the middle of Trix retirement pain and grief. But I didn’t know what to expect from a city hall wedding. I knew the couple only got 15 minutes, so I expected an assembly line process, “Here are the rings, do you? I do. Snap snap snap go the cameras, next!” But those 15 minutes felt very personal and important, and like we were the only people who mattered. You knew that you weren’t, because you could hear the next family lining up outside, but the woman made it feel very special, personal, and not weird at all.

Going into this ceremony, I knew it was going to be long, and that it was, and full of reminders of how I don’t go to church. There were lots of call and responses where I didn’t know what the response was supposed to be. Um, oops? Mouthe furiously, just mouthe furiously!

Every time we had to stand to sing, Tansy kept trying to exxit the row. She would stand and try to start walking in one fluid motion. I had to put her back in our place. She was very confused. “But you stood up! Aren’t we going? Shouldn’t I be efficient? Why are we standing?”

Apparently the priest was…quite blunt if he didn’t think someone was doing something fast enough or the right way. He never said a word, but if looks could disobey the sixth commandment…

After all that was over, we headed to the hotel for pictures. Thank goodness we picked an indoor picture-taking spot because the weather, as I said earlier, suuuuucked. Rain and wind and cold don’t make for great wedding pictures. But apparently our hotel lobby does. There were some interesting pictures taken next to, and sitting by, a grand piano. That’ll be nice.

And, even more awesome for Tansy and I, Tansy got to be in these. So I will eventually have nice wedding pictures of Tansy, complete with Trix’s old fuzzy bow.

Then we headed to the reception, which was super nice. Man was there a lot of food. I couldn’t finish it, and I was stuffed. This was unfortunate, since there was a poutine stand available. How neat! Too bad I was too stuffed to eat any.

Speeches were nice, and I thought dad was going to just bawl. Mom made some people chuckle, and someone on the bride’s side said my brother reminded their kids of Olaf, a character out of Disney’s “Frozen”. I made a mental note to watch Frozen as soon as possible.

One indicator of how long it had been since I’d seen some family was how many were looking at Tansy and wondering if this was Trix or a different dog. I had to ask myself if I really hadn’t seen them since Trix retired, and answer that yes, that was the case. I got lots of questions about what happened to Trix or where she was or whatever. It was a good time to catch up.

The DJ was pretty good, he had this way of mixing songs really well. I feel old, though, because I could have gone with a few more different songs than the boom boom dance type…and if I ever hear that Selfi song again, I think I might punch something or someone.

And before I knew it, the lights were flickering and we were packing up all the gear, and it was over. We got back to the hotel just before 1, and crashed by 1:30 or something.

The breakfast was nice the next day. The funniest part, though, was when a bunch of the kids from the bride’s side started spontaneously singing. We couldn’t figure out why…until someone said they were watching “Frozen” on an iPad.

And about that. I did watch the movie…and was generally disappointed with it. Is it me, or was this not Disney’s best work ever? I remember hearing nothing but raves about it, but I couldn’t rave. There were no hidden jokes for the adults, the plot was just super dumb, and the songs weren’t catchy. The best I can say about it was it had a twist, and from what I remember, Disney wasn’t known for its twisty plots.

All in all, despite special weather statements, crazy Toronto traffic, and other little things that always happen, I think all went well and everyone had fun. Tansy survived, although she slept like a loooog for the rest of the weekend. I think, in the end, it worked out better that the wedding was on Friday, because we had the breakfast on Saturday, and we all had Sunday to recover. I think that was needed, even by Tansy.

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