I was honored to be asked to be Best Man in a wedding last weekend in Montana. Of course I accepted, since it was my best friend of 11 years... then he told me the details...
The way he broke the news went as follows:
"In a few months, you're gonna have to buy some cowboy clothes."
"Uh, why?"
"Because your'e going to be the best man in my wedding on September 15th."
So I head over a couple days early for the rehersal and to buy what clothes I needed to fit in with the wedding party. For the first time in my life I had to dress like a cowboy. Now, I did grow up in Northwest Montana, but we were far from cow-folk. My mom was a child of the 60s and a rocker, and my stepdad works in the timber industry. I had never put on a pair of cowboy boots or a hat in my life. And now I am standing in Corral West Ranchwear trying on hats, most of which made my mom, girlfriend and daughter laugh out loud when I put them on. But I finally found one that fit and apparently looked ok, so that was that. A few times during the wedding day I startled myself at my own shadow, wasn't used to seeing this huge hat shadow so close to me (I rarely wear any kind of hat as it is). I also went to the local Goodwill to find boots, and they had ONE pair of boots; surprisingly they fit well enough and for $8.50 I couldn't pass it up (for those of you who don't know, a good pair of sh** kickers can be a sh**load of money). Then we went to JC Penney to get some new jeans and a button up shirt and we were on our way.
The wedding and reception were held at a campground, 20 miles from the nearest town on a dirt road. I got there about 30 minutes late to when the rehersal was supposed to happen, because about halfway up the dirt road my gas light came on in the car and I had to whip back around and go back to town and fill up. Fortunately for me nobody else had shown up by the time I got there so I was off the hook. The next day (wedding day) was a bit of a fiasco, which I hear is fairly normal for any wedding. People were rushing here and there to get all the last minute affairs in order, and I had brought my laptop to hook into some pawn ship P.A. system and speakers to play the music. After we finally got enough extention cord from the VW-sized generator hooked up, we tested everything, and guess what.... nothing coming out of the big speakers. We're about 30 minutes from crunch time at this point and there was much panic. We blew a breaker on the generator, had to rearrange cords here and there, and finally ended up having to play the wedding music off of a karaoke machine with one 8 inch speaker.. but at least we had sound. Turns out the speaker extension cords weren't the right Ohms so not enough power made it to the speakers, which we found out later when we moved the "sound system" (my laptop, the pawn shop mixer and a mess of cords and microphones on a rolling tool box) over to the "dance floor" (a wide spot on the campground road near a camp site). More on that later. Anyways the ceremony was on time and went very well. My friend's brother, who is a Marine, presided.
Then we went over to the reception area (another campsite with every picnic table from the entire campground moved in) and had our meal. I had to give the traditional Best Man speech, which of course I had rehearsed for...well basically I stood up and had no idea what I was going to say but somehow pulled it off. And at the end of the evening we played music and did some karaoke and danced and the younger crowd played hackey-sack. I got in on that for awhile, proving again that I was a horrible hackey sack player when I was younger and I'm even worse now. We got the big speakers working after realizing our issue, unfortunately they were too close to the sound system and every time we turned on a microphone there was feedback and all that.. All in all a good time.
So now I wish my friend and his new wife a long happy life together, and if the wedding is any sign of what's to come, they will have an exciting life together. I wish them the best, and as I promised a long time ago, when it's my turn, he will be standing next to me at my wedding. And I'll make him wear something other than cowboy garb.
If you want to see proof, go to my page at Rock Jox, scroll all the way down and check it out for yourself. CAUTION: May cause faintness, shortness of breath, or uncontrollable laughter!