From This Day Forward

I still remember July 1, 2006, like it was yesterday.

The event was less of a surprise to me than to most, since I was one of the few people let in on the secret. It was meticulously planned and intricately organized, but in the end, to my great surprise, my brother was unable to contain his excitement and popped the question earlier in the afternoon, rather than waiting until sunset like he'd planned. A few days later, over the Fourth of July weekend, a holiday barbecue was the ruse through which two families came together to celebrate a long-awaited engagement.

I remember that day when my brother asked me to be his Best Man, a role I graciously accepted with no hesitation because a) he's my only brother and this would probably be my only shot, and b) the wedding was to be over two years away, and I imagined the workload, when distributed over that length of time, wouldn't be nearly so overbearing.

The past week has disproved a few of what I'd held as fundamental axioms of weddings -- namely, that no matter how long an engagement is, it will inevitably sneak up on you when you least expect it; and that the work of a Best Man is far greater than I'd anticipated.

The four days leading up to the wedding -- including, though through no fault of the bride and groom, the arduous late-night trek from Central Pennsylvania back to the friendly confines of North Jersey -- were among the most exhausting and chaotic days I've experienced in quite some time. So much so, in fact, that I needed several hours on Sunday just to gather up the energy needed to extricate myself from the floor and get back into my car for the return trip. Those same four days were also, as it turns out, some of the most fun and rewarding days I've experienced in my life.

Perhaps I should have anticipated the lack of rest and relaxation that would come out of this weekend, but it is, I suppose, my own fault too for naïvely believing that Friday, which was designated on all of our schedules as "breathing day," would instead be spent running even more last-minute errands. The list of things that needed to be accomplished won't be repeated here, for not only would it prove to be horrifically boring reading, but it also was so extensive and happened so quickly that it's all but a blur to me right now.

Suffice to say, however, that the payoff of Saturday was well worth the days (and weeks and months and years) of work and trouble that led up to it.

I knew on Thursday that my typically stoic stance would be drastically challenged, as the rehearsal of the ceremony at the church raised more than a few quivers on my lips. I had not expected to be so moved, particularly since the priest was mostly adept at keeping the tone humorous and jovial, and I anticipated anything from single tears to full-fledged bawling come 2:00pm on Saturday.

Shockingly, I kept my composure together, though it would be challenged well enough. Photographs at my parents' house went swimmingly, and considering how goddamn dashing I look in a tuxedo, I can't be blamed for allowing a bit (okay, a lot) of hubris to get into my system and present itself as a front to the emotional firestorm brewing inside me. (It should be noted that one needed only to touch me and feel the absurd amount of sweat pulsing from my body to realize that my faux machismo was strictly faux.) A few interesting incidents involving the rings kept me on my toes, and kept my hand in my pocket every few minutes fumbling with the box to make sure it was still there. And, naturally, though I plastered my best confident shit-eating grin for my own stroll down the aisle, watching my brother escort my stone-faced father and my extremely emotional mother threatened my moxie to the core.

I survived that first onslaught with flying colors, but when my brother spoke his vows with a quaking voice -- the same brother, mind you, who almost always refuses to take himself seriously in my presence; the same brother whose taste for cursing and fart jokes easily rivals my own; yes, the very same brother who, after the ceremony, put on what I affectionately call his "doof-face" in the picture I took for my cell phone background* -- I was fucking jelly.

My own speaking -- much later at the reception, as I toasted he and his beautiful bride -- was, so I was told, coherent and beautiful. Which surprised me because that speech, which I'd been planning since that very same summer day over two years before, had undergone many manifestations since that time. So many that, when it came time for me to begin writing down the final copy, I simply couldn't find the words. Instead of having a complete written text, I woke up on the morning of October 4, grabbed an index card, and wrote myself a "road map" of sorts, so that I would have points of reference for where I needed my speech to go.

As it turned out, I didn't need the card at all. The words came right from the heart, just as I suspected they would, and they spoke volumes about the work, the luck, and the joy that I've been seeing on their faces for over nine years now. I meant it when I said that I can't imagine two people more perfect for each other, and I meant it even more earnestly when I said that we should all be so lucky to find in our lifetimes what they found in just a few short years.

So while I freeze in the suddenly bitter-cold State College autumn and they enjoy the equatorial pleasures of 90-degree highs and 80-degree lows in sunny Aruba on their honeymoon, I can't hate on them too badly. They deserve nothing but the best, and if I'm to believe the reaction of one of my brother's fellow firefighters, the wedding was nothing short of that. For as one of Wayne's bravest so eloquently put it:

"This was one for the record books."

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* I submit, for your approval, the picture in question:



Is that not totally doofy?