Month: June 2004

First off, as a single man I am really having a hard time getting my head around all these posts about the details of getting married. I thought weddings were born when a stork flew a sweet, giggling little wedding cake wrapped in a snuggly soft blanket to a happily waiting couple, arms stretched wide to receive the bundle of joy. Oh well, I guess that is just where babies come from…

Secondly, as the best man I feel I must chime in a few of my own thoughts for this occasion. I’ll just put them in a power-point friendly bulleted list for your reading pleasure:

• All the world shed a tear the day we found out that you didn’t put “Pee-wee” or “McSex” as a nickname for yourself on the wedding invitations. If you are trying to move on, put those names behind you, forge a more adult persona for yourself then I say fine, do that after the wedding. I almost threw the invite away (the first time) because, at first glance, I didn’t recognize any of the names on it. If McSex is good enough for the whole world on Xbox Live, why not among your closest kin and friends?
• The least you could do to pay me back for all the hard work of getting the bachelor party organized is wear the bonerface shirt I made for you as you and Jeannette ride off into the sunset.
• Speaking of embarking on the honeymoon, is it too much to ask that you bring the MR2 out of retirement for the final gettaway? I know I’d like to recreate your senior picture moment one more time! This time with you in your bonerface shirt, Jeannette in your old letterman’s jacket, and you’re both leaning in, resting your elbows on that shiny red spoiler! Seriously, why didn’t we give you more crap for that back in the day?



• From the commentary on zillionaire so far, I think I speak for all the groomsman when I express just how much we are looking forward to our traditional groomsman gift. Judging from your zeal for questioning the smallest of Jeannette’s expenditures (debating with her about the cost of postage, envelopes, even paper for god’s sake) I can only assume we are each going to get a) a quarter to put in the nearest almond, jawbreaker, or gumball machine; b) whatever was on sale at the local closeout liquidator grocery store, i.e. unopened bottles of red dye number 6; or the cleverly parental c) good feeling and a pat on the back. Well, I guess those are better than nothing.
• Please, god forbid, make a spectacle. You’ll come up with something in this department, I know you will, but in case your lacking for ideas, I’ll give you a couple. For instance, instead of having Ryan standing up at the podium when you and Jeannette walk down the aisle, have an organ grinder and a monkey up there working the crowd a bit. Then poof, a cloud of smoke envelopes them, the wedding march starts and as the smoke dissapates Ryan will be magically standing there, but in the monkey’s costume. Or better yet, when Ryan is leading you in your vows, turn to me (again as the best man) and do a motion with your hand like Ryan is jabbering on. You know, that motion where your hand looks like a duck quacking. And then roll your eyes. Then, lean in to me a little, whisper something into my ear and then put your hands together like they are a pillow next to your head and pretend to fall asleep. If I just told the world the routine you already had rehearsed I apologize.

Lastly, of course, I would like to congratulate you and Jeannette and wish you both the best. It has been said that a true zillionaire never settles down, but you are going to be an exception to the rule my good friend.

Final installment of pre-wedding thoughts…

As you’ve probably gathered from my previous posts, I’m generally not allowed to contribute ideas for our wedding. You see, my fiance tends to prefer sane, rational opinions and ideas for our big day. All of my suggestions, like the “Arby’s Sauce Fountain” and the “Gigantic Wedding Churro” (in place of a wedding cake) have been quickly shot down. Following my fiancé’s condemnation of my ideas, I usually just accept the situation, un-pause my XBox game, and return to saving the universe.

However, I was particularly adamant in my opposition to Save-the-Date cards. Naturally, I was still overridden, but I thought I would share the story anyway…

Save-the-date cards:
Essentially, these cards are sent to our guests months before our actual invitations, to remind them that a formal invitation is forthcoming, and they should make arrangements now to “save the date” for our wedding day. Apparently, we are worried that our guests will treat our first few direct mailings as junk mail, and therefore we need to deluge them with wedding advertisements months in advance. Like any other summertime blockbuster, our wedding demands the requisite hype. Billboards, radio spots, tabloid rumors… evidently we’ll do whatever it takes to generate the proper buzz to get people to attend our wedding.

I really pleaded with my fiancé not to send out save-the-date cards. It just feels so pathetic. Essentially, we’re acknowledging to our guests, in writing, that we fully expect our wedding to lose out in any scheduling conflict that may arise. And so, we’re asking them, months in advance, to not schedule a dentist appointment or plan on pumping the septic tank during our wedding weekend. Hey, we completely understand that our wedding is so low on their list of priorities that we need to preemptively beg them to keep the date free. To me, these cards just sent the wrong message.

Thusly, I suggested we send out “We Don’t Care If You Come” cards to our guests in advance, and perhaps invoke a little reverse psychology. If we quit acting so desperate, maybe people would willingly set aside the date without our groveling. Of course, my confrontational approach to wedding invitations was vetoed, and the sniveling save-the-date cards were mailed out instead.

Alright, that’s it for the pre-wedding thoughts…

Ok, wait… one more. C’mon people, the Wedding Churro! We need to get some grassroots support of this idea to bring it to fruition. I suggest a letter writing campaign to your elected officials, followed by some direct action, perhaps a band of pro-churro demonstrators could block the entrance to our wedding or something.

This idea came about a few months ago when I was looking for a creative alternative to the traditional wedding cake. A friend of mine works at Nestle, and I inquired about the logistics of serving a giant Baby Ruth bar instead of a wedding cake. We could have had the best of both worlds: Serving a gigantic, delicious dessert and being featured in the Guinness Book of World Records. Not surprisingly, shattering a world record for the “Largest Dessert at a Wedding Function or Bar Mitzvah” was not a priority for Jeannette on her wedding day.

Thankfully, inspiration struck again during my recent trip to Disneyland. Everywhere I looked I saw people indulging in crowd-pleasing desserts like sno-cones and ice cream sandwiches, and nobody was eating wedding cake. Passing by an otherwise ordinary food stand on my way to the Haunted Mansion it hit me like a bolt of lightning… THE WEDDING CHURRO! Instead of a traditional, run-of-the-mill wedding cake, we serve portions of one enormous churro to our guests. I immediately shared my stroke of brilliance with my traveling companions and it was met with great enthusiasm… (Ok, just Krusty thought it was a good idea.) Anyway, let’s face it, the churro is generally the most underrated and least celebrated dessert out there. Frankly, I’ve always been a huge fan of the churro, and it’s definitely long overdue for a moment in the sun. So please, fellow Zillionaires, I’m asking you to stage a hunger strike, light yourself on fire, or something else equally self-destructive to help raise awareness for the Wedding Churro. With your help, hopefully it will be a massive churro Jeannette and I cut into on Saturday night…

That’s really it for the pre-wedding thoughts… I’m looking forward to seeing all the Zillionaires this weekend…

Still more pre-wedding thoughts…

While registering for gifts is generally one of the best things about being married, I simply lack the requisite physical stamina it takes to endure a day at the department store. Thankfully, my wedding registry experience only lasted eight minutes. All I remember is the store being really hot. It was like being in a greenhouse, shopping for saunas. Within five minutes of being in the store, I was literally suffering from heat stroke. I couldn’t discern one chrome melonballer from the next due to the proliferation of sweat rolling down my brow. I desperately tried not to pass out, as my fiancé really wanted to hear my opinions on the desired handle color of the aforementioned melonballer. Obviously, very few men can withstand this grueling process, aside from the marathon runners and mountain climbers that like to build up their endurance by registering for flatware patterns at the Bon.

I could tell this experience was wearing on Jeannette too. She hadn’t anticipated that my opinions would not be based on the style of the items we were registering for, but rather, whether we needed them in the first place. For the same reason that my fiancé is not consulted in regards to what games are needed in our XBox library, I have no business deciding the color scheme of our potholders. And clearly, after the “Spoonrest Incident”, Jeannette had no desire to spend the afternoon justifying the presence of every crystal gravy boat and velvet throw pillow on our registry to a man with the cultural refinement of a Fear Factor contestant.

Of course, women see all of these items as absolute necessities. Every female in the universe is convinced they need an 84-piece place setting in the event the Pope, the Sultan of Brunei, and the cast of Friends all stop by for servings of ball-shaped pieces of melon. Thankfully, I have a solution…

Now, I rarely have ideas worthy of taking credit for, so here goes: The Sears registry. In all modesty, registering at Sears was possibly the greatest stroke of pragmatism I’ve ever had. Each item on the Sears registry is equally practical and manly, and it completely offsets the delicate house wares from the Bon. Selecting weedwackers and garden hoses from Sears have enabled us to do the impossible: Achieve gender equity within our gift registry. The only way to possibly improve on this idea would be to register at Home Depot, so that items like grass sod, chain-link fencing and lumber would also show up on the gift table at the wedding.

Maybe the only drawback to the registry process is the ridiculous amount of packing material that our gifts are wrapped in once they are shipped to us. I’m pretty certain that our wedding is single handedly supporting the entire Styrofoam peanut industry. By far, the Bon is the biggest offender, as they literally mummify their merchandise in Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. I suppose that is a good thing, as the shipping department at the Bon handles our flatware as delicately as weapons-grade plutonium. One the other hand, there’s something truly wrong when live organs are shipped more haphazardly than the items on our registry.

Anyway, under these circumstances, a few gifts’ worth of obscene amounts of packing material can easily consume your home. Our house is completely overrun at this point, it’s almost as if the Styrofoam is somehow reproducing. In a moment of desperation, I actually suggested that Jeannette find some miscellaneous fabric and use the Styrofoam peanuts to make us some giant beanbag furniture (this is true). As you can see, we’ve clearly achieved a full-blown Styrofoam-related crisis at our house…

More to come…

In an attempt to have a unique and creative ceremony, I really wanted to have live crab present at the wedding. Not because it is a delicacy, but because of the theatrical opportunities. Anytime a live crab is available, I like to hold it against my face and do an impression of the alien from the movie “Predator.” Specifically, I like to re-enact the scene where the alien takes off his helmet and growls hauntingly at Dutch (Arnold Schwartzenegger.) With the crab’s writhing legs functioning as the mouth tentacles of the alien, this impression is nearly dead-on.

This particular scene is the climax of the movie, where Dutch comes face to face for the first time with the alien hunter that has slaughtered his platoon. It is a very powerful moment, as the alien and Schwartzenegger, individuals literally from two different worlds, demonstrate an unspoken, mutual respect toward each other.

Of course, this kind of symbolism transcends a movie screen, and it could be easily integrated into a wedding ceremony. Think about it, instead of played-out traditions like “unity candles” and “wedding vows,” my fiancé and I could perform a special scene from Predator to demonstrate our respect for each other. I can’t fathom anything more romantic than that…

Also, this scene has great personal meaning. My future in-laws have witnessed the live-crab-on-my-face spectacle countless times, and each time I am greeted with increasingly worried expressions. This has actually become somewhat of a tradition with my in-laws, as I have never missed an opportunity to put a crab on my face in their presence. Honestly, at this point, it almost seems odd to not somehow incorporate a crab into the ceremony. Next Saturday, I guarantee when me, my fiancé, and a crab stand together at the altar, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

More to come…

Well, we have just a few short days left, and the wedding planning is in full swing. There is an ungodly amount of details to organize and plan, at least that is what my fiancé tells me while I’m playing XBox. Anyway, in the next few days leading up to the wedding I thought I’d share some quick thoughts and wedding observations, starting with…

Vellum Paper: Allow me to define this: Vellum is a clear, delicate, thin piece of paper suitable for printing fancy invitations on. Actually, this is its only function. Think wax paper, but 80 times more expensive. I really don’t know exactly how this product is created, but based on its price, apparently it is pulled from mines deep in the earth’s core. Naturally, my fiancé decided to corner the vellum market and buy about three quarters of the world’s supply to do our invitations. I’m very excited to be getting married, but sometimes I think wistfully back to my bachelor days, when the bulk of my hard-earned paycheck wasn’t going towards the purchase of massive quantities of vellum.

When I suggested we use a cheaper alternative to vellum, like making our invitations out of hundred dollar bills, it was instantly rejected. Of course, I didn’t want to send out traditional invitations in the first place. “Too postage-intensive,” I thought. In this day and age, I was really hoping it would be socially acceptable to just send out a massive wedding email to our guests. I considered even scheduling an appointment through Outlook, so that everyone would get a nice pop-up reminder 15 minutes before the wedding.

Sadly, my ideas were completely ignored, as my fiancé was too busy agonizing over the fact that our invitations didn’t include an inner envelope. Of course, this “inner envelope” isn’t sealed or addressed, it is merely decorative. It seemed kind of ridiculous to mail an otherwise perfectly good envelope to all of our guests, but evidently we are expected to include random office supplies with each invitation.

Anyway, I’m sure you can imagine how this story ends. While my ideas were practical, efficient and cost-effective, they simply failed to somehow incorporate vellum into the equation. And so, regrettably, none of our guests had their invitation text-messaged to them on their cell phone.

More to follow…