A Wedding Story...
Wow, what an amazing time!
Ok, so this journal is more for me than the readers, so don't feel compelled to read the whole thing. (as if right?). Summary: I was the best man at the most amazing wedding. I love Bethany and Nolan and have gotten to know their families and friends very well. I ask God to watch over them and to continue to bless their lives and ministry. I gotta shout out to Nolan, Than, Justin, Blake, David, little Nolan and John Paul: the greatest groomsmen and friends Nolan and I could ask for!
Disclaimer: Warning-This post is one page short of being "Gone With The Wind"
Details: Wednesday
I left at 10:30am on Wed with Stephanie and began my trek to the Clinton-crazed-infested Little Rock. Ok, so the road trip was only suppose to take 7 hours. However, in a desperate attempt to save milage and gas, we took little wee roads. So after nine hours of vigorous traveling, we arrive in Little Rock just in time for church!!! We greeted the members there and as soon as the final amen was said I hear "GO!!" WOOSH! We were clearing communion tables and podiems (how do you spell that word anyway?) alike to make way for the wedding. Next thing I know, I am hauling 100 pound, live pine trees out of the baptistry room (appearantly thats what grows in there while its not being used.) As you can imagine, this is a winter wedding, so what wedding planner wouldn't want to bring a live, snowy forest onstage. The design was to have 5 trees in an arbor (horseshoe) shape. At the base of the trees, they lain white christmas lights all of the floor and covered them with white, fluffy sheets and lace. The auditorium is circular with a beam lining the walls, just below the ceiling in which we placed 15 strings of ice cycle lights. After my auditorium tasks were done, I ran (no, really, RAN) over to the reception hall to do more. You'd think I was in the ER. Behold, there was a dilemma!!!! WE HAD TO SUSPEND $8 SNOWFLAKE ORNAMENTS AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE OR THE WEDDING WAS SHOT! It took us awhile, but we engeniusly figured out a method of prefabrication in which we could successfully hang up the overpriced ornaments. DINNERTIME... the grooms parent's graciously went to Wendy's and purchased 33 jr bacon and other various burgers for the $.99 menu. Absolutely amazing! After we finished, we tied up a few loose ends, but relatively we were done for the evening.
I went back to the hotel room and chilled with Nolan (the groom) for while. A little Best-man/Groom chat, ya know? He walks to his parents room and next thing I know he rushes back in the room and says, "ok, dad's going to the hospital." The mother tells me to stay behind and then Nolan takes off to the Hospital going 105 MPH (no, for real) down the 60 MPH interstate. In the mean time, I'm alone in the room and I hear a stirring in the grooms man room connected to mine. It's the two groomsmen whom I haven't met yet, Justin and Than (short of Nathaniel.) So they are both awesome guys, we hit it off immediately just talking about whatever and having a good time. I get a call from Nolan at 2am and his dad is undergoing testing but things seem good. He wanted me to pick him so I took the guys in my civic and went there. After we picked him up, we decided to go for a random drive out on the town. Nothing was open, you hear me? Thats ok, because we didn't need anything to do we just drove crazy and with the intent to yell at people if we saw anyone. During this time, we cross this bridge and Nolan realized that it was the wrong way and we had to turn around. Well, I obey so I proceed to do a U-ey on the bridge going about...oh, 20mph. To my demise, there was about a 4 inch median that I didn't spot because it was the same color as the concrete and it wasn't painted yellow AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN! Stupid Little Rock. Well after I accepted the fact that I would require a new wheel alignment; the fun, music and such continued until 5 am.
Thursday
9:30 the wakeup call comes in-- thats right, 4 1/2 hrs of sleep. We all piled in Nolan's mom's van and Nolan drove us to the airport at 11am to pick up Blake and Bama (Amanda)- the maid of honor. We had to enter the gate careful so that the box of granades, or Nolan's "hemroids" wouldn't explode entering the gate. JK US government, JK! We picked up the packages then made our way to Men's Warehouse to pick up the tuxes as my first official duty as best-man. The bride met us there to pick up Bama and then we went to the "guitar center" since all of the groomsmen and groom are obsessed with that place. Then we went to eat lunch at "The Old Mill" which is a sandwhich and soup shop and they make the best bread in the world. It got embarrasing because we were moving tables across all these people until they were like "you want us to move and take our spot?!?" NO!! Difficulty is King in our world. Stuffed, full, and tuxedofied, we then made our way back to the Comfort Inn where we slumbered until the rehearsal.
5PM, rehearsal begins. This is when Nancy was no longer "Nancy the wedding planner." Oh no, the bachelors referred to her as "Nancy the wedding nazi satan reincarnate." Ok, mean right? Howver she wanted people to know about the tight shift she was running. We ran through the ceremony a few times for 2 hours and then we made to a restaurant in which I still don't know the name. However, we entered an elegant, italian themed party room which Bethany loved. I sat in the middle of the honor table where the people of the wedding party sat. I was placed at Bethany's right hand and we were served chips with cheese sauce, Italian salad, and thin pasta with very juicey strips of grilled chicken breast. After eating, it was the task of the groom's father, myself and Than to present toasts. Nolan's dad gave advice about a successful marriage. I gave a toast about how I cant get women, but I reflected on my friendship with them as a couple. Than gave a toast reflecting on Nolan before and after meeting Bethany. Then Nolan got up to present the groomsmen with gifts. I received a big old honking tool kit to keep tools in. Appearantly the running joke is that I was suppose to keep tools in it to keep fixing the Focus. However I furled his plot because I bought a new car after he had bought the gift. After all of the groomsmen received gifts I presented a gift to him on behalf of all the groomsmen. It was a pocketwatch with his initials engraved on the front and Phillipians 1:7 on the back. It was a silver watch with an amazing blue clockface that I knew he would love. Bethany then handed out Bridesmaids gifts to all her bridesmaids. After eating guitar-shaped, plum filled vanilla cake (that was AMAZING!!!!)we were headed out for another night of venture as groomsmen and bachelors. We left, did a little driving and retired to the hotel around midnight and most of the guys went to the pool to swim and mess their feet up on the rough bottom surface. I leisurely reclined in the room and chilled with Blake for the rest of the eve.
Friday
I had a really hard time sleeping last night because I had to share a queen-sized pull out sofa with a 6 foot 16 year old. I rolled outta bed about 9 am in preparation for a journey to Searcy, AR - a one hour drive. We had to haul buns in order to retrive MIA pumpkin cheese cakes from Nolan's apt and then do the whole bachelor party thing there. The bachelors set off and we were about 30 minutes out of Little Rock when Nolan discovered he had left the keys to the apt at the hotel. Ok, maybe the office manager will let us in. Nope, she's off on Fridays. Great! So Nol decides it'll be better to buy new cheesecakes than to run around and miss on the bachelor party. No sooner than 5 minutes later, Bethany calls and tells me that we forgot her younger brother John Paul. We didn't have time to go back and get him. After much deliberation, Nolan's uncle was gracious enough to make the hour long drive to us and bring John Paul and the keys to the Apt with him. While we waited for their arrival, we made way to the Farmer Joe's golf driving range where farmer joe himself manned the counter. Without missing a beat, Nolan goes "5 JUMBO BUCKETS please!" What's crawling up your shorts that we need that many balls? In fact 5 jumbo buckets was not enough to pease the aggressiveness-packed bachelors. SEVEN is our number. Thats right, and since we forgot John Paul - who met us on the course later - we bought him his own wee bucket. Dude, there is something in the gulledge blood because John and David were the only ones driving balls past the 100 yard line consistenly. OOPS, except Than! He's great too!!! David was hitting those suckers 200 - 250 yards and this was his first day to pick up a golf club. (Not counting goofy golf or putt putt) David and Than were so amazing, that Blake and I felt very sheepish and inadequate next to their beastly demeanor and somehow turned into personal caddies and cheerleaders for them. We then proceeded to the Chinese buffet and ate like Kings. We all talked about normal bachelor stuff and I gave lessons on how to eat crawfish (being the extreme cajun that i am). We talked about hopes, dreams, fears and women. After I took a picture next to the biggest fish in the world, we left and proceeded back to LR in fear that nancy will eat us if we were late.
Luckily enough, we survived Nolan's driving and we picked up our stuff at the hotel and made it promptly to the church at 5:15 --- all without losing the rings. We played Wedding Night hangman to keep us entertained. However, all was asunder when the 10 year olds entered the room. We had to go into PG mode, but we still had fun. Now we had to line up to walk out. The wedding all went to plan. The minister offered a pray, I read my speech, etc. The minister just happened to be Bethany'd dad and my favorite line in the whole thing "Nolan don't be fearful, no man is good enough to stand where you are." No sir! Well, just a few minutes into the service, one of the service girls is bout to pass out, lose her groceries, something! She's all weaving and wobbling, so the grandmother of the groom walks up to her and escorts her to the back room by the baptistry. Well, to our demise, the baptistry acted as an amplifier and groaning, crying, comforting, and dry heaving was heard by all. Fortunately, I don't think the microphones for the video picked it up. But I was impressed that the people were more concerned about her well-being than the wedding. As the bride and groom were about to kiss, a nice touch was added and Beth'sd dad held misletoe over their heads. After the party walked out, we took pictures and then went to the reception.
The reception was nice and very elegant. The bride and groom chose to have finger foods from all the countries visited during our europe trip. A picture show, complete with music, was playing which featured past pictures of Nolan and Bethany. Bethany's pictures were displayed to Enya "Who can say" and Nolan's to U2 "Still haven't found what I'm looking for." Goose and I had to make fun of the picture taken of Beth and Nol in front of the mountains, just outta sight of the hooters establishment to their left. What if a hooter's girl walked out in front of them! Then punches were AMAZING. Bethany's sister Emily caught the bouquet. However, Than, in leiu of a conspiracy caught the garder. The plan was for the groomsmen to scatter away from Than so that he would catch it...but Nol just turned around and flicked it at him. Ok, the garder was our que to run outside and trash the car. The trashing was rather simple in design. Just car chalk, toilet paper, silly string and obscene words such as sex (13 times), pimp (5 times), Bow Chica Bow Wow (1 big ole time), etc. We then proceeded to tie a double 'D' bra to the antennae so that it would fly and display all its glory. It might cause some drag and eat some gas...but hey, it would be worth it. In a mad rush I was determined to put cans dragging behind the car and I was running out of time. I only had time to rigg 2 cans to wire before I had to shove Nolan from the driver's door before he got in, pop the trunk, and slam the wire into the hatch. Mission Complete. The groomsmen and I ran to the front of the church to wave them on as they turned on the street to proceed on to Outback Steakhouse for the wedding dinner and then to the Double Tree for..other festivities.
The groomsmen and I changed back into civilian clothes and then took the bridesmaids out on the town...literally. All we wanted was a small coffee shop nearby to play cards but I got lost and we ended up driving around Little Rock for 1 1/2 before making to a waffle house close to the hotel. It was a fun crowd and we spent many o' hour making fun of the past event and hicks that would randomly come in and out of the restaurant. I took the ladies back to the Gulledges house and the groomsmen went back to the hotel and crashed on the king size bed that Nolan left us!
Saturday
It was sad, sad day. We lost Bethany and Nolan and now the groomsmen were losing each other. Oh well, get over it right? I was the last one to leave and it was my duty to return the used tuxes. I stopped by the Gulledges on the way and got to see Nol and Beth and ate all of the left over food from the wedding for lunch. What a massive feast! Then they opened gifts and they recieved the nice salad bowl from Mom (salad bowl? good one mom!)
It was a long drive home. I know this event took place only over a few days, but I really felt God's presence with the people I spent time with. We didn't have special devos, prayer sessions, or anything out of the ordinary. Maybe it's because I felt like this period of time was an answered prayer from God. I had an awesome week with Stephanie and she is an amazing person. Her and I click and we had many o' laughs in Henderson, New Orleans, Houston, and Little Rock. The time spent at the wedding was a special highlight for me. I never had a "group of guys" that I could kick back with and be so comfortable. It's not even that we had similiar personalities or traits, but I found great solice and comradery being with them. Wow,...how poetic and over dramatic can I be about just a few days with strangers right? Then dedicating a few moments out of my life to help begin the benchmark of two of my best friends was an amazing notion for me. My prayer remains that God will continue to bless their lives and ministries.
May their hearts continue to be linked together and spread the gospel according to God's grace - Philippians 1:7
Ok, so this journal is more for me than the readers, so don't feel compelled to read the whole thing. (as if right?). Summary: I was the best man at the most amazing wedding. I love Bethany and Nolan and have gotten to know their families and friends very well. I ask God to watch over them and to continue to bless their lives and ministry. I gotta shout out to Nolan, Than, Justin, Blake, David, little Nolan and John Paul: the greatest groomsmen and friends Nolan and I could ask for!
Disclaimer: Warning-This post is one page short of being "Gone With The Wind"
Details: Wednesday
I left at 10:30am on Wed with Stephanie and began my trek to the Clinton-crazed-infested Little Rock. Ok, so the road trip was only suppose to take 7 hours. However, in a desperate attempt to save milage and gas, we took little wee roads. So after nine hours of vigorous traveling, we arrive in Little Rock just in time for church!!! We greeted the members there and as soon as the final amen was said I hear "GO!!" WOOSH! We were clearing communion tables and podiems (how do you spell that word anyway?) alike to make way for the wedding. Next thing I know, I am hauling 100 pound, live pine trees out of the baptistry room (appearantly thats what grows in there while its not being used.) As you can imagine, this is a winter wedding, so what wedding planner wouldn't want to bring a live, snowy forest onstage. The design was to have 5 trees in an arbor (horseshoe) shape. At the base of the trees, they lain white christmas lights all of the floor and covered them with white, fluffy sheets and lace. The auditorium is circular with a beam lining the walls, just below the ceiling in which we placed 15 strings of ice cycle lights. After my auditorium tasks were done, I ran (no, really, RAN) over to the reception hall to do more. You'd think I was in the ER. Behold, there was a dilemma!!!! WE HAD TO SUSPEND $8 SNOWFLAKE ORNAMENTS AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE OR THE WEDDING WAS SHOT! It took us awhile, but we engeniusly figured out a method of prefabrication in which we could successfully hang up the overpriced ornaments. DINNERTIME... the grooms parent's graciously went to Wendy's and purchased 33 jr bacon and other various burgers for the $.99 menu. Absolutely amazing! After we finished, we tied up a few loose ends, but relatively we were done for the evening.
I went back to the hotel room and chilled with Nolan (the groom) for while. A little Best-man/Groom chat, ya know? He walks to his parents room and next thing I know he rushes back in the room and says, "ok, dad's going to the hospital." The mother tells me to stay behind and then Nolan takes off to the Hospital going 105 MPH (no, for real) down the 60 MPH interstate. In the mean time, I'm alone in the room and I hear a stirring in the grooms man room connected to mine. It's the two groomsmen whom I haven't met yet, Justin and Than (short of Nathaniel.) So they are both awesome guys, we hit it off immediately just talking about whatever and having a good time. I get a call from Nolan at 2am and his dad is undergoing testing but things seem good. He wanted me to pick him so I took the guys in my civic and went there. After we picked him up, we decided to go for a random drive out on the town. Nothing was open, you hear me? Thats ok, because we didn't need anything to do we just drove crazy and with the intent to yell at people if we saw anyone. During this time, we cross this bridge and Nolan realized that it was the wrong way and we had to turn around. Well, I obey so I proceed to do a U-ey on the bridge going about...oh, 20mph. To my demise, there was about a 4 inch median that I didn't spot because it was the same color as the concrete and it wasn't painted yellow AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN! Stupid Little Rock. Well after I accepted the fact that I would require a new wheel alignment; the fun, music and such continued until 5 am.
Thursday
9:30 the wakeup call comes in-- thats right, 4 1/2 hrs of sleep. We all piled in Nolan's mom's van and Nolan drove us to the airport at 11am to pick up Blake and Bama (Amanda)- the maid of honor. We had to enter the gate careful so that the box of granades, or Nolan's "hemroids" wouldn't explode entering the gate. JK US government, JK! We picked up the packages then made our way to Men's Warehouse to pick up the tuxes as my first official duty as best-man. The bride met us there to pick up Bama and then we went to the "guitar center" since all of the groomsmen and groom are obsessed with that place. Then we went to eat lunch at "The Old Mill" which is a sandwhich and soup shop and they make the best bread in the world. It got embarrasing because we were moving tables across all these people until they were like "you want us to move and take our spot?!?" NO!! Difficulty is King in our world. Stuffed, full, and tuxedofied, we then made our way back to the Comfort Inn where we slumbered until the rehearsal.
5PM, rehearsal begins. This is when Nancy was no longer "Nancy the wedding planner." Oh no, the bachelors referred to her as "Nancy the wedding nazi satan reincarnate." Ok, mean right? Howver she wanted people to know about the tight shift she was running. We ran through the ceremony a few times for 2 hours and then we made to a restaurant in which I still don't know the name. However, we entered an elegant, italian themed party room which Bethany loved. I sat in the middle of the honor table where the people of the wedding party sat. I was placed at Bethany's right hand and we were served chips with cheese sauce, Italian salad, and thin pasta with very juicey strips of grilled chicken breast. After eating, it was the task of the groom's father, myself and Than to present toasts. Nolan's dad gave advice about a successful marriage. I gave a toast about how I cant get women, but I reflected on my friendship with them as a couple. Than gave a toast reflecting on Nolan before and after meeting Bethany. Then Nolan got up to present the groomsmen with gifts. I received a big old honking tool kit to keep tools in. Appearantly the running joke is that I was suppose to keep tools in it to keep fixing the Focus. However I furled his plot because I bought a new car after he had bought the gift. After all of the groomsmen received gifts I presented a gift to him on behalf of all the groomsmen. It was a pocketwatch with his initials engraved on the front and Phillipians 1:7 on the back. It was a silver watch with an amazing blue clockface that I knew he would love. Bethany then handed out Bridesmaids gifts to all her bridesmaids. After eating guitar-shaped, plum filled vanilla cake (that was AMAZING!!!!)we were headed out for another night of venture as groomsmen and bachelors. We left, did a little driving and retired to the hotel around midnight and most of the guys went to the pool to swim and mess their feet up on the rough bottom surface. I leisurely reclined in the room and chilled with Blake for the rest of the eve.
Friday
I had a really hard time sleeping last night because I had to share a queen-sized pull out sofa with a 6 foot 16 year old. I rolled outta bed about 9 am in preparation for a journey to Searcy, AR - a one hour drive. We had to haul buns in order to retrive MIA pumpkin cheese cakes from Nolan's apt and then do the whole bachelor party thing there. The bachelors set off and we were about 30 minutes out of Little Rock when Nolan discovered he had left the keys to the apt at the hotel. Ok, maybe the office manager will let us in. Nope, she's off on Fridays. Great! So Nol decides it'll be better to buy new cheesecakes than to run around and miss on the bachelor party. No sooner than 5 minutes later, Bethany calls and tells me that we forgot her younger brother John Paul. We didn't have time to go back and get him. After much deliberation, Nolan's uncle was gracious enough to make the hour long drive to us and bring John Paul and the keys to the Apt with him. While we waited for their arrival, we made way to the Farmer Joe's golf driving range where farmer joe himself manned the counter. Without missing a beat, Nolan goes "5 JUMBO BUCKETS please!" What's crawling up your shorts that we need that many balls? In fact 5 jumbo buckets was not enough to pease the aggressiveness-packed bachelors. SEVEN is our number. Thats right, and since we forgot John Paul - who met us on the course later - we bought him his own wee bucket. Dude, there is something in the gulledge blood because John and David were the only ones driving balls past the 100 yard line consistenly. OOPS, except Than! He's great too!!! David was hitting those suckers 200 - 250 yards and this was his first day to pick up a golf club. (Not counting goofy golf or putt putt) David and Than were so amazing, that Blake and I felt very sheepish and inadequate next to their beastly demeanor and somehow turned into personal caddies and cheerleaders for them. We then proceeded to the Chinese buffet and ate like Kings. We all talked about normal bachelor stuff and I gave lessons on how to eat crawfish (being the extreme cajun that i am). We talked about hopes, dreams, fears and women. After I took a picture next to the biggest fish in the world, we left and proceeded back to LR in fear that nancy will eat us if we were late.
Luckily enough, we survived Nolan's driving and we picked up our stuff at the hotel and made it promptly to the church at 5:15 --- all without losing the rings. We played Wedding Night hangman to keep us entertained. However, all was asunder when the 10 year olds entered the room. We had to go into PG mode, but we still had fun. Now we had to line up to walk out. The wedding all went to plan. The minister offered a pray, I read my speech, etc. The minister just happened to be Bethany'd dad and my favorite line in the whole thing "Nolan don't be fearful, no man is good enough to stand where you are." No sir! Well, just a few minutes into the service, one of the service girls is bout to pass out, lose her groceries, something! She's all weaving and wobbling, so the grandmother of the groom walks up to her and escorts her to the back room by the baptistry. Well, to our demise, the baptistry acted as an amplifier and groaning, crying, comforting, and dry heaving was heard by all. Fortunately, I don't think the microphones for the video picked it up. But I was impressed that the people were more concerned about her well-being than the wedding. As the bride and groom were about to kiss, a nice touch was added and Beth'sd dad held misletoe over their heads. After the party walked out, we took pictures and then went to the reception.
The reception was nice and very elegant. The bride and groom chose to have finger foods from all the countries visited during our europe trip. A picture show, complete with music, was playing which featured past pictures of Nolan and Bethany. Bethany's pictures were displayed to Enya "Who can say" and Nolan's to U2 "Still haven't found what I'm looking for." Goose and I had to make fun of the picture taken of Beth and Nol in front of the mountains, just outta sight of the hooters establishment to their left. What if a hooter's girl walked out in front of them! Then punches were AMAZING. Bethany's sister Emily caught the bouquet. However, Than, in leiu of a conspiracy caught the garder. The plan was for the groomsmen to scatter away from Than so that he would catch it...but Nol just turned around and flicked it at him. Ok, the garder was our que to run outside and trash the car. The trashing was rather simple in design. Just car chalk, toilet paper, silly string and obscene words such as sex (13 times), pimp (5 times), Bow Chica Bow Wow (1 big ole time), etc. We then proceeded to tie a double 'D' bra to the antennae so that it would fly and display all its glory. It might cause some drag and eat some gas...but hey, it would be worth it. In a mad rush I was determined to put cans dragging behind the car and I was running out of time. I only had time to rigg 2 cans to wire before I had to shove Nolan from the driver's door before he got in, pop the trunk, and slam the wire into the hatch. Mission Complete. The groomsmen and I ran to the front of the church to wave them on as they turned on the street to proceed on to Outback Steakhouse for the wedding dinner and then to the Double Tree for..other festivities.
The groomsmen and I changed back into civilian clothes and then took the bridesmaids out on the town...literally. All we wanted was a small coffee shop nearby to play cards but I got lost and we ended up driving around Little Rock for 1 1/2 before making to a waffle house close to the hotel. It was a fun crowd and we spent many o' hour making fun of the past event and hicks that would randomly come in and out of the restaurant. I took the ladies back to the Gulledges house and the groomsmen went back to the hotel and crashed on the king size bed that Nolan left us!
Saturday
It was sad, sad day. We lost Bethany and Nolan and now the groomsmen were losing each other. Oh well, get over it right? I was the last one to leave and it was my duty to return the used tuxes. I stopped by the Gulledges on the way and got to see Nol and Beth and ate all of the left over food from the wedding for lunch. What a massive feast! Then they opened gifts and they recieved the nice salad bowl from Mom (salad bowl? good one mom!)
It was a long drive home. I know this event took place only over a few days, but I really felt God's presence with the people I spent time with. We didn't have special devos, prayer sessions, or anything out of the ordinary. Maybe it's because I felt like this period of time was an answered prayer from God. I had an awesome week with Stephanie and she is an amazing person. Her and I click and we had many o' laughs in Henderson, New Orleans, Houston, and Little Rock. The time spent at the wedding was a special highlight for me. I never had a "group of guys" that I could kick back with and be so comfortable. It's not even that we had similiar personalities or traits, but I found great solice and comradery being with them. Wow,...how poetic and over dramatic can I be about just a few days with strangers right? Then dedicating a few moments out of my life to help begin the benchmark of two of my best friends was an amazing notion for me. My prayer remains that God will continue to bless their lives and ministries.
May their hearts continue to be linked together and spread the gospel according to God's grace - Philippians 1:7
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