Royal Wedding - Day 1

Annie and I took off to Omaha, NE, to participate in the wedding of one of my favorite people ever.  He's the groom in the pic below (not to say that his new wife isn't just as amazing as he is).

All of these fancy cartoons are taken from the groom's blog.

The trip started with an invitation to the rehearsal dinner.  (Technically, I guess it started at 3:45am when the taxi picked us up to drive us to SFO.  After all, we had 2 cities to touch down in before we would eventually make it to Omaha [though we were on the same plane throughout].)  I guess checking into the hotel happened before the rehearsal dinner, as well.  We took a shuttle from the airport to the wrong Hilton.  Why the fuck are there two different Hiltons in downtown Omaha?  We also received a gift bag when we checked in, which excited Annie so much that she hasn't stopped talking about it.  Seriously.

Moving on.  I had never heard of general riff-raff being invited to the rehearsal dinner (or anybody outside of the actual rehearsal), but I'm glad they did it.  It was the first opportunity to meet people and family, and it was a good introduction to the high taste and classiness that the wedding would be.  We discovered that there were only a handful of people that we knew, and only 1 or 2 that I knew well (the groom was a friend of mine from U of M).  So, I had to come out of my shell a little and try to be social.

There was way more food than I expected, and it was really good.  (I ate just before going so that I wouldn't be a ravenous monster.)  The red wine was Flowing, with a capital 'F'.  Anytime somebody walked by, your glass was filled.  I probably drank something like 10 glasses.  After a slide show, we all congregated to the bar, and the Jack&Cokes started to make their appearances.  Then there was talk of progressing onto the next bar.  Which led to more and more bars, until we closed the bar at our hotel and I finally returned to the room with an already sleeping Annie.

Notable moments were:

Giving the bartender at some dive a $10 tip after keeping a tab open.  Alcohol was cheap, and we drank alot, so it was a fair tip.  However, he walked out from behind the bar to approach me as I was walking out, shake my hand, and thank me for the tip.  This is why I tell Californians that they have no fucking clue how nice we are in the Midwest.

A fight broke out at one bar right next to us.  The crowd splitting the multiple guys apart ended up pushing us into the bar.  We pushed back, and one of the groomsmen jumped in front of the groom in an attempt to shield him.  (Way smarter than my "punch him, pussy" cat calls.)  It was just this side of ridiculous, but the craziest part was the drunken redneck yelling "I'll fucking kill you, faggot!"  Who the fuck says the word 'faggot' anymore?  In my head I pictured him spelling it 'faget' or 'faggit'.  We were also surprised that they let him sit back down and continue drinking.  I guess it makes sense not to kick everyone out so that they can kill each other in the street.  Or maybe that's just how things roll 'round here.

Great Facebook statuses when I woke up:  "Alcohol is so cheap!" In Nebraska, True.  "What bar number is tjis?"  Fair question, but asking the same thing 12 minutes later is a bit obnoxious... and a sign that things are going downhill.  "Crazy dex happening in rhe 5040s. Come lisson!"  This was the last thing I communicated before passing out around 2am.  I thought I could hear some wild sex going on in my hallway.  I apparently thought we should all congregate outside of the participants' door and enjoy it together.  Note:  drunken texts are funny and between two people.  Drunken facebook statuses are funny and between 1,000 people.  Try to keep that math in perspective next time, drunken ~RoB.

Magically, a hotel shuttle arrived outside of one of the bars as we were all about to stagger home.  I have no clue who was in a right enough mind by that time of the night to make it happen, but kudos to them.  There were way more of us than the shuttle should transport, so the Super Groomsman (who shielded the groom) and I were going to walk back.  It would be an opportune time to start burning off the alcohol before taking off to nappy, nappy land.  They ended up shoving our whole party onto this little shuttle, which probably wasn't smart by any means.  I stood the whole way back.

My attempt at taking a pic turned into a fairly accurate representation.

Those people still going strong made our way to the hotel bar just before last call.  We ushered out a bride and groom, still in full wedding reception garb, cuz everybody within 4 states was getting married at our hotel in Omaha over Labor Day weekend.  Anyway, by this time there was a half dozen of us, including a girl that had fallen out of the shuttle onto the pavement at the Hilton, only to return in sweatpants and a renewed enthusiasm for drinking.  I had promised the Super Groomsman that I would still walk around with him before hitting the sack, but whiny messages from drunken Annie sent me up to my room with the groom when he finally decided to call it a night.  I found out the next day that the Super Groomsman managed to stay out an hour past that point, and he eventually returned to his room "smelling like a homeless person".

It had been a while since I've hit the hard alcohol, and Day 1 in Omaha was way more fun than I had prepared for!
~RoB

(Day 2 to come.  Day 3 is summarized in my last post.)