"The Best Man "
My brother got married today. My baby brother. Married. The kid brother who once would only wear shirts with pictures on them. The toddler who used to flush toothbrushes down the toilet. The boy who collected GI-Joe’s only to become one himself. My brother, the young man who once called Dr. Drew on KROQ’s Love Line radio show to ask if tomatoes make a woman’s…. Well, never mind.
He got married today.
Damn, I don’t know anyone who is still single. Well, there’s Annie, but short of Christ, I can’t think of anyone who would be good enough for her. Though she might settle for Dave Matthews if he stops smokin’ the weed, looses some weight, and ditches his wife. But that’s a rant for another time.
So my brother got married today. He got married in a little wedding chapel in Las Colinas, Texas to his beautiful – and expecting - bride, Sheila. We had about a week to prepare for this wedding.
Parisi family laundry. Hung out to dry through the literary stylings of the eldest in that clan. Well, cool your enquiring minds, I gotta keep this laundry at least semi-clean lest I incur the wrath of one very Italian and very vocal matriarch who happens to take a great deal of interest in both the protection of this family and the content of these little diatribes.
Well, we had known about the pregnancy for some time – he was forthcoming about that. But unlike parenthood, a wedding was not a forgone conclusion. Not by any means. Let’s just say the relationship between Sheila and Ken has been a bit, um, volatile. It’s kind of like nitroglycerine in the hands of an epileptic speed freak on a Red Bull bender while riding in the back of a monster truck doing ninety in an Afghani minefield.
You get the idea.
First it’s on. Then it’s off. On again – nope! Off. Wait two minutes…back on! I suppose that somewhere along the line the two of them, in between arguments and sticky, saccharine kissy-faces, decided to hell with it and went long for intimacy’s end zone. Arguing all the way. As of today, the two of them are hitched.
It leaves me the only single one left in my family, much to my mother’s simultaneous delight and frustration. But again, that’s a rant for another time.
I was the best man in this sudden little union (read impact) of souls. First time for that honor actually. I have been a groomsman in three past wedding parties, an usher twice, a lector once, and caught the damn garter at least three times before. But this was the first time as best man. I even got the opportunity to prove it.
Like most weddings this one didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned. Shocking isn’t it?
And yet, it was a lot smoother than it could have been, all things considered. In fact, it really went rather well. Maybe one day I’ll write about my sister’s wedding. Now that’s some Parisi family laundry – but again, a rant for another time.
Weddings by their very nature are a tricky business. There’s a ton of baggage that comes with this holy matrimony thing. Expectations and perspirations. State laws and in-laws. Hell, just a man and a woman attempting to plan a life together is enough to shake the very pillars of heaven. Add a pregnant bride, two occasionally over-zealous parents, a couple of unknown in-laws, a grievously short planning process, and a young, gung-ho Marine Corp officer just weeks away from a three-year relocation to Hawaii, and you have more than enough combustible material for disaster.
Trouble began when, on the day of the wedding, the jeweler screwed up the bride’s wedding rings. The rings made with stones bequeathed by my dead grandmother. The rings chosen specifically by the young and occasionally emotional bride to be. The rings that were picked up by the groom only, oh, four hours before the ceremony was about to begin.
It seems our friendly neighborhood jeweler, Rock – yes, that’s really his name - was “tired”, and in his fatigued state, put the stones in the wrong setting. And not just a little wrong. A lot wrong. You see, there were supposed to be two rings. An engagement ring with one stone, and a diamond filled wedding band to sit along beside it. Rock made one ring. Not two. One. I suppose that’s just one mistake, but under the circumstances, a rather significant one.
After a panicked call from my mother (whose naturally nervous demeanor and elevated cholesterol levels do not require any additional sources of aggravation), Rock promised he could correct his error in about an hour.
Enter the best man. Hell, the ring is my responsibility anyway. I drove down to Rock’s Custom Jewelry (very custom in this case), and handed him the erroneous ring. He told me the corrected version would be ready soon, and I should come back in an hour.
I gave him “the look”. The look a first born Italian son can give someone who just sent his beloved mother into a conniption on his only brother’s wedding day because of a fairly major screw up. You know – the don’t f*** with me look. I told him – politely – that we were leaving for the wedding in three hours. And I wasn’t leaving until the RIGHT ring was in my hand well before that time.
I suppose that’s not totally true. I did leave to gas up the groom’s car, buy some lunch, pick up the balloons, and purchase a lint brush for my brother’s uniform. But I stayed in the neighborhood. Regardless, he got the point.
And I got the rings.
Got back to the house, balloons, brush, and rings in hand. Two hours to go. Started getting ready. I went to the closet, pulled out my favorite suit from my well-used roller bag. My new, four-button, green-gray, Kenneth Cole matched neatly with the light blue micro-fiber shirt and silk DKNY tie. My recently dry-cleaned and altered suit. A week before, I asked my tailor take in the waist about two inches. I didn’t have time to tailor it in Vancouver where I bought it, and didn’t like how the trousers bunched up beneath the belt. It’s hard to find suits to fit when you have a 30-inch waist. Life’s a bitch, I know.
I showered, shaved, put on the shirt, pulled up my pants, and found that the tailor had not taken in two inches of unnecessary waistline. Rather, the tailor had let out an additional two inches. I now had four inches of extra fabric around the waist of the pants now hanging loose quite low on my hips. I looked like a clown. Perhaps a well dressed clown, but a clown nonetheless. And I had a pair of pants that no amount of Christmas leftovers could keep around my waist and only one hour to fix it.
Boy was I pissed. You can screw with my brother’s wedding ring, and I’ll stay calm. But don’t dare mess with my pants!
Safety pins to the rescue - one on each seam. Well, safety pins to the rescue after a quick phone call to bitch at my tailor. Not only were pins the only way to keep me from mooning the wedding party during my trip down the isle with the maid of honor, but it also was the only way to keep my trousers from looking like I was sporting a king-size wedgie. My violated fashion sense notwithstanding, another wedding-day catastrophe narrowly avoided.
However, my safety pins didn’t help my brother when he realized that he left his cuff links for his new officer’s uniform in North Carolina. My grandfather, however, did. He happened to have a pair of ridiculous, one-inch, white, plastic cuff links, each embossed with the head of a tiger. He’s 80 – who cares what they look like. And we just needed secured sleeves on that uniform. Tiger, globe and anchor – whatever works. We have thirty minutes to go, so long as the cuffs are closed. Right about that time the top button on his collar popped off. We were having a lot of trouble keeping our clothing together. If the bride was having similar troubles, we were all in deep shit. Luckily, the jacket of a Marine Corp officer covers the neck of the shirt beneath it. And with no additional wardrobe disasters, we were off to the chapel with plenty of time to spare.
Of course, upon our arrival we discovered that our wedding was missing the bride.
Someone gave Sheila (and her wedding party) the wrong driving directions, and she was nowhere to be found. We appeared to have a runaway (albeit accidental) bride. Turns out they took a right instead of a left, and were heading down MacArthur Blvd in completely the wrong direction. About five miles into the town of Coppel, they figured out something was wrong and reached for that cell phone.
I suppose I can understand that. Someone once gave me the wrong directions to a business meeting while I had an IBM Worldwide VP in the car and a pissed off CIO pacing in a conference room, but again, that’s a rant for another time.
So we had an extra 45 minutes to spare. My brother had an extra 45 minutes to ponder just what the hell he was getting into, and my mother had an extra 45 minutes to finally, thankfully, calm down.
When the bride finally arrived, she looked lovely, and the wedding proceeded sans interruption. Well, except for the lighting of the unity candle where my darling fourteen-month old niece began shouting, “Hot! Hot! Hot!” to the amusement of everyone in the room.
But what’s a wedding without a little drama and a little chaos (or with my family, a lot of drama and a lot of chaos). Surviving the wedding is just preparation for the marriage to come. Because regardless of how difficult that first step down the isle might be, it’s the rest of that journey that represents the true test. Husband. Father. These are the responsibilities that my brother will find waiting for him on the other side of those chapel doors, along with their significantly larger obstacles, frustrations, and surprises. I suppose as with anything worthwhile, with those greater risks, come the greatest rewards.
Regardless of how this marriage came about, regardless of how it came together, regardless of how it all ends up, it was an honor to stand beside my young brother, shining and handsome in his uniform, as his best man. It’s a role I was proud to fill and gladly accepted. But as a new father and a new husband, that title of “best man” is role he will need to fill most of all.
