I, Paul, Take You, Mandy...

My favorite moments, stories, and pictures from the week that was:

THURSDAY

Paul, Bergman, Me, Fundy, ADawg. This was such an awful round of golf. Fun, but awful. I couldn't make a putt, like normal. Fundy was playing well until the beer kicked in. After that, the wheels flew off his round so violently that bystanders were nearly injured. ADawg should've probably just traded his golf cart for an ATV or something, since he was in the woods far more often than the fairway. Did he check for wood ticks?

We started off the evening playing blackjack at the bar. I don't miss much about North Dakota, but $1 blackjack is certainly up there. Who needs Vegas when you've got charitable gaming? We turned that blackjack area into a near-riot. Later that night, Buffalo Wild Wings was nearly our undoing. Noles puked in the bathroom, and ADawg couldn't have come any closer to puking up his tequila shot right there at the table (leading the rest of us to tell everyone around us that it was his 21st birthday.) Paul decided (in classic Old Paul form) that he wanted to run to the river to throw up, a good six blocks away. Naturally, he doesn't tell anyone first, so after we finally realize that no one's seen him for like half an hour, I have to go chase him down. Ironically, we were trying to be responsible when we went to BWW, as we realized it was 11 pm and we hadn't eaten yet. Unreal. We would've been better off mainlining everclear and going to a strip club.

My favorite part of Buck's that night was that when you were at the blackjack table, you could watch a monitor that showed the dance floor. When we first got there, there weren't a ton of ladies shaking their tailfeathers yet, but Fundy and ADawg ventured out there anyway. They would try and saddle up to some random chicks, get shot down, and then nonchalantly mosey back to the middle and dance with each other, wait a couple minutes, and repeat. I could barely concentrate on the cards I was laughing so hard. Later on we ran into Mandy, Tara, the Zidon sisters, and the rest of the bridesmaids (and I mean literally ran into; we were supposed to drink on our own that night, and we ended up at the same bar. Fucking North Dakota towns) and Paul was dancing with a woman who was, um, a little on the heavy side of the scale. Mandy comes up to Noles and I and asks, matter-of-factly, "Is Paul dancing with the fattest girl in the entire bar right now?"

After the bar, most everyone goes to sleep at a decent hour. Bergman, the Zidons, and I decide to take the party to the hotel hallway, and we keep going.....and going.....until we saw a hotel employee carrying a breakfast tray to someone's room. We realized it was 8 am and decided to wrap it up. Sara may or may not have slept in the closet.

FRIDAY

After struggling through breakfast, picking up my tux, the wedding rehearsal, and my allergies, after just an hour and a half of sleeping on the floor underneath a table, I am energized by the fact that the cavalry is starting to arrive. Alex, Chelsey, Russell, Jason, Pete, Lindsey, and others begin to filter in to the groom's dinner/BBQ, and then at the Broken Oar we add Lane, Skye, Amber, Sweeney, and Moose to our crew, so we're rolling pretty deep now.

The Broken Oar turned out to be pretty awesome. If you ever find yourself partying in Bismarck (God forbid) try and make it there. The best part of that night was Lane introducing TechnoBall on the dance floor. Since he invented that after he moved to Kansas, basically none of our friends had seen it yet; they had only heard me talk about it on here. As Noles said afterwards, "When I read about it I kinda thought it was bullshit, but that was fucking awesome!"

After the bar we went back and hopped from room to room partying, not being quiet at all. It wasn't until the next day that we found out Paul's family was staying NEXT DOOR to us. Whoops. Sweeney may or may not have flashed the pizza guy.

SATURDAY

We turned the picture taking session into a complete shitshow. If you know this group of guys, it really isn't too shocking. Basically, any time we're supposed to be on our best behavior, we are anything but. The wind kept blowing our jackets and ties around; Noles and Fundy were repeatedly grabbing my ass right before the flash went off, causing me to giggle and squirm and jump around; I was telling the photographer not to put ADawg in any pictures, because if he can't reunite his parents at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and get back to 1985, he won't even show up in the photograph anyway; and Fundy and I pretended to be conjoined twins (in our defense, Stuck On You was on TV that morning, and letting us watch that right before picture taking is like giving a hyperactive kid a six-pack of Red Bull before dropping him off at day care.) By the end of the session, the photographers either loved us, or they wanted us to die a slow, horrible death. One of the two.

The ceremony, which was held outside, was equally hectic. The wind picked up and wreaked havoc on things:

-During Chelsey's scripture reading, she was facing the wind, and wearing a wrap dress. I'll let you draw your own picture. Use your imagination.

-I had to help Tara hold her music book while she was singing, since the wind blew the pages around. I failed horribly in my simple task:

Tara, handing me the book and whispering "Don't fuck this up."

Me, IMMEDIATELY fumbling the book and losing the page "Ummm I fucked it up."

Tara, not whispering anymore "Are you kidding me?!?"

Me, flipping through pages to reclaim her song "If you wouldn't have said anything, I would've been fine!"

-The microphone kept shorting out, so when Paul started his vows, he wasn't sure if it would be on or not, so he leaned in and yelled "I Paul, take you, Mandy!".....the microphone was on. On the bright side, this led to the first Unamused Mandy Face of the day! Best face ever.

This all contributed to make the ceremony awesome, in my opinion, as it kind of took the pressure off and put everyone in a festive mood. Right before the kiss, when Paul pulled out the binaca and sprayed it away from his mouth, Dumb & Dumber style, it brought the house down.

During dinner, we got our first look at Ike, who I hadn't seen since his wedding in June. He was sporting, quite simply, the shittiest beard in human history. He only grows facial hair on his moles, and in about 4 other spots on his face. So he grows out the hair in those places until they can at least cover 75% of his face. He calls it his comb-under. I would estimate that 50-60% of the conversation at the head table were beard jokes at Ike's expense.

My favorite moment of Paul's speech: when he starts out by saying, "You know, I look around tonight, and you know what I see...." and during his pause everyone just dies laughing. Because every single person in there knows Paul and in their mind is saying, "Oh sweet Jesus what is he going to say next..." The kid doesn't even have to make a joke and he gets people to laugh at him. It must be a good feeling. Or an awful feeling, I haven't decided yet. My second favorite moment: when he dusted off the "I love you Dad" straight from Old School. The only shocking thing about him pulling out a Will Ferrel quote at his wedding was that he waited so long to do it.

The dance was a typical dance, but the deejay unfortunately ignored all my songs (no word on what happened with that yet) except we finally did get Apache played, and it was as magical as I dreamt it would be. TechnoBall and VirtualJumpRope were also pulled out at some point. During the dollar dance, Tara and I were competing to see who could raise the most money, so I started a 3 for 1 deal where you paid your dollar, got to dance with me, then I passed you to ADawg, and then he passed you to Paul. So you barely had to stand in my line, while Tara's line stretched out forever. Somehow she still beat me by 3 dollars.

(Side note: Moms LOVED dancing with ADawg. I usually brag about my skill in hitting on Moms, but this was ridiculous. They were loving the shit out of him. Probably because they see his shirt and it reminds them of when they shopped for their own kids at Baby Gap.)

To break it down SAT style:

Middle-aged Moms : ADawg :: Me : Chili cheese wraps

Best part of the dollar dance: every time someone would come through the line, I'd grab them, start dancing with them, and go through my little spiel about the 3 for 1, batting my eyes and sweet-talking them the whole time. Well, this one elderly lady comes through (no idea who she was, I think she may have been on Mandy's side) stops me and says, "Ummm, I'll pass." I stop, dumbfounded. "You don't want to dance with me?" "No, I'll just stand over here until Paul is free." And she did just that. I have to give her props for dissing me like that though. It would've been much cooler if she would've waved her hand in front of her face and yelled, "You can't see me, you can't see me!" and some of her friends from her Bridge game came up around her yelling "Ohhhh snap! You just got served, bitch!" But alas.

Maybe my favorite part of the entire evening was when Lane had some drink made that included apple pucker, green slushee mix, and some other shit, and called it a Slimer. Now, if you know us personally, or just pay attention on this blog, you know where this is going. It started with a couple of Ghostbusters jokes. Then it turned into me telling the bartender he should only put one straw in the glass instead of two, because you NEVER cross the streams. Then, it escalated so that every time someone at the bar would order one (word spread fast, they were selling like crazy) we would all gather around and sing the Ghostbusters song. Loudly. And not just the words. Oh, no. The tune and everything. We were loving every second of it, but I'm sure the bartender wanted to shove each and every one of us into his proton pack.

Earlier on in the night, a bunch of the girlfriends/fiancees/wives decided that since they always watch us dudes get silly drunk while they stay relatively under control, they were going to flip the switch on us tonight and get crunk sauced. The commanding officers of this little rebellion (Smapes, Bobbi, Natalee) started out guns blazing, doing shots, loving life, but.....well, you learn pretty early on in your life that

girls + tons of liquor + chip on their shoulder + wedding = A FUCKING DISASTER

And this was no different. There were lots of emotional girls struggling to stand up by the end of the night. I hope you ladies learned your lesson. And I can sound sexist because of all the heat us guys are taking from the ladies for not giving up our jackets to the bridesmaids during the ceremony. We're men. Men who built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. And you're just women with a brain 1/3 the size of ours. It's science.

Anyway, afterwards, we after-partied for awhile at our hotel, ADawg and Bergman sang "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin" to Chelsey, then we passed out around 4. Sweeney didn't flash the pizza guy this time. He seemed disappointed.

Now we come to the picture portion of the post:

Noles trying on Sweeney's dress, and me picking some lint out of his sweater. Take a good look at this, Mike. Do you REALLY think you can beat him in a beard contest?

Pastor: Oh yeah? Well, the proper girl in the hat just eye-fucked the shit out of me.

Paul: Hee hee hee. That's from Wedding Crashers.

Pastor: I know, right? Up top, bro.

Paul: You just inspired me to quote Old School during my speech, my man.

Just after the binaca spray. People love to be in the presence of true love. It's powerful stuff.

I put this picture up only because there is some speculation that I may have been crying here. I would like say that in actuality, I am trying to hide the fact that I'm laughing because Mandy is getting ready to bust out the legendary Mandy Unamused Face.

Me, Fundy, Noles. ADawg was late to the dinner because he was still in the woods off of hole 7 looking for his tee shot.

Rachel, Sara, Katie, Mo, Tara. Us guys have been getting absolutely raked over the coals for not giving up our jackets during the ceremony when it was cold outside. Let the record show that as soon as we stepped inside, we gave them right up. We're likely huddling together for warmth during this, freezing our asses off. What was the air conditioning set at, like 71? C'mon, who says chivalry is dead?

Mandy and Lane. When there's somethin' strange, and it don't look good...who ya gonna call?



Bergman and Sweeney. If I was an artist, and this was my portrait, it would be titled If We Can't Be Lovers Then We Can't Be Friends.

See? I told you the Moms loved ADawg. Look how excited they are! Oh, wait. That's ADawg's mom. Is this how you spell Oedipus Complex?




Katie and I. My recollection of this moment = low. Now I'm not a betting man, but the safe bet would be that is this during the Dollar Dance.



ADawg, it's happening! You're starting to fade out of the picture now too! You have to get your parents to kiss and get to the clock tower, the lightning's gonna strike soon!

A developing story: if I keep using Back to the Future jokes at this rate, will I have any left for ADawg's wedding in three weeks? Stay tuned.

Ike, Bobbi, Casey, Jake. The good news about Ike's beard is that he won a Worst Beard bet with the Shoebomber Richard Reid, and he has a crisp $5 bill coming his way.

Here's Ike getting ready before the wedding. The valmorification is complete.

Chelsey, Alex, and Sweeney. A.k.a. Miss February, Miss July, and Miss October of the "Girls of Room 276."

The lovely bride and me. It was somewhat awkward during this dance when I heard her whisper "If only it was you and me, Jim..." but it was pretty quiet, so I just pretended like I didn't hear it.

All in all, a fannnnntastic weekend. Congrats to the happy couple. I'm sure I left out a lot of stories that I forgot about, or there were some good ones that I wasn't present for and didn't get the story on. Comment it up with those.

Oh, and Weisser- since Salwey and I were unable to accomplish our dream of live-streaming video of Kuntz's wedding and Paul's wedding, which were going on simultaneously, I'd like a report on that. Minimum 500 words. Go.