Special Ingredients: Show Me the Wedding in the Show Me State

I promised myself I wouldn’t allow myself to sink back into a funk so low that no one who hasn’t experienced it could hope to understand it. Yet I learned that life throws many curveballs, and one struck me and sent me hurdling back into a state that I hoped I would never return, a dark place in my memory that I prayed would never haunt me again. But I’m back, back in that infernal place. I am in the state of Missouri.

Okay, Missourians, I’m just kidding, just playing off the name. Settle down and send your angry letters after you read the article.

My mother informed me several months ago that her godson was getting married. This is a relative, you probably know the kind, that is so ridiculously obscure that you sometimes forget you’re even related to them, or that they exist. We’re talking about the kind that you’ll only remember when you randomly open the family tree and discover that you’re married to your cousin’s grandchild.

I’m man enough to admit this, but I actually hit on one of these sorts of relatives at a wedding years ago. I had absolutely no idea I was related to her (we’re talking second cousin thrice removed here) until my mother informed me, with a hint of mockery, that I was barking up a relative’s tree. I haven’t checked the family tree lately, but I’m reasonably positive that my girlfriend isn’t related to me. If it turns out that we are, indeed, related, it isn’t going to make a difference; I’ve invested too much in her already, godless relationship be damned.

Because this was my mother’s godson, she felt that she had to come to his wedding, despite the fact the groom probably didn’t even know who she was until someone explained it to him shortly before hand. The problem was his wedding was in another state. And of all states it could be in, we found ourselves going to, you guessed it, Missouri.

It had been less than year since I had been to Branson, Missouri, where many of you loyal readers no doubt remember was where I made fun of several attractions there, including the musical family the Haygoods, who ended up e-mailing me to make a few friendly clarifications, though they claimed to have enjoyed the article. I suspect they were just saying this to lure me into making a return, only to exact revenge by forcing me to listen to the comedic tragedy of Joe Riley. This is one of the reasons I didn’t send out a press release about this trip.

The wedding was in Saint Louis, which I spent a short while in during the Branson trip. With a three hour barrier between my potential tormentors, I decided it was safe for me to head down there, so I agreed to go. We planned on leaving at 9:30 in the morning, much later than the last time I went, which I hoped would put the trip on the right foot. I enjoy travel more when I’m not forced to do it by waking up early in the morning, which I’m convinced is the invention of Satan. Leaving later would ensure sufficient sleep and, ideally, a problem-free trip. And so it was.

Ha, ha! Don’t be a moron! Before we even left, my mother, whose foresight is simply astonishing, expressed her concerns that her tires were leaking. She told me she went to get an oil change the day before, and the workers noted that the tire was a little too low. Instead of having the tire checked, she decided to throw the portable air compressor in the trunk and hope for the best. And nothing came of it.

Ha, ha! Boy, are you stupid! Of course I suspected a leak too, so I demanded we take it into Bell Tire (who, by the way, has given me pretty good service) to have it looked at. Surprise, there was a nail in the tire, so after getting it repaired, we went to get Christy (who was gracious enough to come with me, you know, just in case I had to throw her at an oncoming band of Haygoods while I made my escape) and hit the road an hour late.

After the fact, my mother kept worrying about where she picked up the nail. I was tempted to mock her by suggesting we trace back every inch we’ve traveled and question witnesses, but I decided it was more trouble than it was worth.

The trip itself was pretty uneventful. I will note that I enjoy road trips under certain circumstances, usually those involving me not driving and the ride not being all that long. Unfortunately, I drove just over four hours straight, and most of that was through Illinois, which, in some circles, is known unflatteringly as “cow patty country.” Miles and miles of desolate farmland stretch over miles and miles of road as my bored brain drifted miles and miles away from my body, which was driving a car that could hit something and cause my body to be thrown miles and miles through the air.

It was not an entirely pleasant trip, so you can imagine my relief when I saw the arch, that wonderful symbol of America, a beacon of hope to a weary traveler. Unfortunately, my mother insisted that we get to the hotel before eating, so I solemnly drove past the McDonalds.

Seriously, when the Saint Louis Arch appeared on the horizon, my spirits lifted. We were at the end of a long journey, one that I couldn’t wait to conclude. I realized something about that arch, an infallible truth that was buried within its great structure. That truth was: damn, that thing is big.

So big, in fact, that I clearly saw it miles before we got into the city. We were passing through entire towns as the arch loomed in the distance, taunting me with its promise of the conclusion to our journey. The symbolism is obvious: in America, the greatest things are just teasing you.

After approximately thirteen months of addition driving, we finally found the Hampton where we were staying at, along with the rest of the wedding party. This was fortunate, considering we had no idea where the actual wedding was. If you find it impossible to believe that we traveled across three states to go to a wedding we did not know the location of, you’ve never went on a vacation planned by my mother.

When we arrived at the hotel, we all got out to stretch, and piles of typical car trip garbage, such as fast food wrappers, pop cans, stowaway hitchhikers, ect, poured out of the car as if someone opened up the Hoover dam. I let my mother and Christy go inside and get the Secret Code for the hotel parking garage, which was protected by a keypad and made me feel like a secret agent just by using it. I’m telling you, there isn’t a whole lot going on back at home.

We checked in and went up to our room, which was disappointingly small. I should point out that it was a nice room, but at that point, I had stayed in more hotel rooms in the last few years than I had in my entire rest of my life, so I’ve developed this standard for how big hotel rooms are supposed to be. Frankly, this one didn’t seem to stack up, but I need to point out again that it was a very nice room.

We spent the night eating delicious pizza at the hotel bar and flippantly mingling with other wedding guests who happened to be getting drunk at the time. At least that’s what I assume we were doing. My mother was in charge of socializing, since she had a better idea whether or not any given person was a wedding guest or a complete stranger who just wanted the company.

I’m terrible with names and faces, and when you factor in that I there was a slim possibility that I may have possibly met any of these people several years ago at another wedding, there isn’t a whole lot of hope that I’m going to remember who they are now. This poses a significant problem in that I had no idea who I was actually related to, so there stood a strong possibility that I could ogle a pretty girl and have her turn out to be my cousin.

Yes, I have a beautiful girlfriend already, and as fate would have it, she was probably standing next to me when I was ogling, but give me a break here. I’m a guy! I have to look! It’s the law! I’ll bet you that God himself programmed us that way (“Thou shalt ogle pretty girls.”), but the religious leaders decided that the pagans were already doing that, so they changed the rules. That doesn’t mean ogling doesn’t get us in trouble, whether God approves or not.

And, yes, my fear did come true. A pretty girl with semi-revealing clothes entered the elevator I was in, and, yes, I did check her out. I later found out she was a distant cousin. Not that there’s anything wrong with it! If two consenting adults want to fool around, that’s perfectly all right, even with minor complications, like being related. And if one consenting adult wants to check out his pretty cousin and take a cold shower while sobbing his eyes out after he found out they were related, that’s fine too. And if that one consenting adult’s girlfriend doesn’t get the wrong idea about the last paragraph, that’s preferred.

The next day, during a very nice free breakfast provided by the hotel to make up for the squalid room size, I caught a CNN news feed running that was talking about a man who was suing a minister who picketed (I assume) his son's military funeral, and I immediately knew it was Fred Phelps, which it was. That really made the entire trip.

We got dressed and headed for the wedding. The wedding party decided to have their wedding ceremony at around two in the afternoon, and the reception at around seven in the evening, leaving a four hour gap, which would be filled, at least for the wedding party, by driving around the city in their rented limo. I imagine that they arranged it this way so the bride and groom could have time to absorb the significance of their new marriage. By this, I mean they planned on getting drunk on the way there.

Or maybe they factored in the road construction, which would have required them to set aside at least four hours to drive to the reception hall, which would have normally been a ten minute trip. The city officials of Saint Louis, probably linked with the seedy Branson city officials, somehow found out that I was coming to the city, so to thwart me, they decided to erect a long series of construction barrels and detours designed to get me lost and run out of gas, at which point I would have to fend for myself on the mean streets of Saint Louis, where it’s survival of the fittest, and, honestly, my mother isn’t all that fit, and Christy is too attractive and would draw too much attention.

And you thought I couldn’t put a positive spin on abandoning my girlfriend in a distant city.

It’s bad enough that Toledo’s highway system is under construction right now, rendering it as effective as trying to conduct electricity with a block of oak, but at least there I could figure out how to get to where I was going, and only add 163 extra miles to the trip. In a strange city, I was pretty much lost, with nothing but an obsolete set of Map Quest directions read to me by my irritable mother, whose brain was apparently on some kind of tape delay. So I had to find my way through a strange city that was almost entirely under construction. And you know, being a guy, I was going to find the church MY WAY.

Miraculously, we did end finding the church, which, in a stroke of design genius similar to the Hampton’s room size, had no actual parking lot. Fortunately, I managed to locate a space on the other side of the church, a spot available because everyone decided to park on the side the main entrance was on and never bothered to look any further, an action that should gauge the general wit of the guests (after all, they traveled far and wide to come to the state of Missouri, as did I, but only because I was forced to). I should mention that it was fairly hot that day, and I had to wear a suit, so the brief wedding ceremony only lasted maybe 36 hours.

After the ceremony, we headed back to the hotel, barreling though road blocks and serving into oncoming traffic so could end up back at the hotel and not Mexico. Since we had a few hours to kill, we hung around the room for a bit, and then Christy and I headed to Union Station, a local historic site that provides the city with a link to its historical past and addition sales revenue.

For the uninitiated, Union Station was a train station that operated back in the days when people used trains (get this) as transportation instead of roadblocks as they are today. As people got smarter and realized that it would be more convenient to travel via cars and choke the air with deadly pollution, the train station eventually became useless. Instead of just leaving it sit around to crumble and drop chunks of concrete on pedestrians in true Toledo style, some entrepreneurial genius came up with an idea to convert the whole thing over to shopping mall.

The mall itself is beautiful and fun to just walk around, especially considering the high-caliber stores you have to choose from. You can’t go wrong with the rock-and-roll shop that smells like someone is trying to hide the scent of some potent narcotics or the shirt shop where you get a free shirt printing of your choice with the purchase of a blank shirt (only $12.99!), or the pay parking that will only run you $32.52 if you run in for a quick bite to eat. On the other hand, they had a functioning TCBY, and the guy serving us gave us a discount for some reason (because I looked cute, I guess), I have to conclude that the mall is a good place to check out.

We got back to the room and prepared to go back to the wedding. After returning once again to the orange barrel jungle, we jerked around the city in a desperate attempt to find the reception hall. As we traveled further in, I noticed that we had entered the Italian district, which was getting Italian to the point that I thought Al Capone himself would be zooming around the corner in a gangster-style car firing shots at a 1920’s police cruiser moving at a blazing 23 miles per hour. In retrospect, it would have been more fun to join them than go to some lousy reception, but then again, it would be more fun than most things.

I’m kidding. The wedding reception was very nice, held in an old reception hall that radiated its history. By this, I mean it had an old scenery painted on the wall that looked like one you would find on the backdrop of those state fair rides that’s been in commission since 1872 and is not, if you want to get picky about it, safe. The place smelled like a state fair, too, making me think that Barnacle the Clown would show up during the cake cutting and dump the entire thing on both the bride and the groom. Unfortunately, there were no clowns, unless you potentially count the wedding party, because they would probably show up drunk.

The food was a standard blend of favorites that the hall caterer had on the menu which the bride and groom (by which I mean the bride and the bride’s mother) figured the guests would like, which means that no one would like it. This is in part because the food was dried out from being served 72 hours after being cooked, not that the wedding party would notice, because (surprise!) they were drunk.

I’m sure some of you wonder why anyone would get drunk on the Most Important Day of Their Life. This makes sense to me. Marriage is a life-long commitment, a path that brings frustration and compromise along with happiness and fulfillment. So of course after making such a boneheaded decision, you’re going to need a lot of drinks to keep the pressure off. If it weren’t for the alcohol, I imagine many a groom would, on the way to the reception, think “What the hell did I just do?” and have a quick fling with the maid of honor in the bathroom while the bride wasn’t looking.

(Please note that the above observation does not apply to my feelings about my girlfriend, who is the best girl in the universe, and therefore shouldn’t even think about beating me to the punch and hooking up with a potential wedding guest.)

The reception itself was pretty uneventful, save for the best man, who gave a drunken speech that was so long and personal that half of the reception hall wished he would just pass out from all of the drinks. We ducked out early and made our way back to the hotel, which was a feat in and of itself, not just because of the construction, but the because of the fact I managed to get lost deep in the outskirts of the city, where I pissed off a lot of competing motorists who knew what they were doing. This is because I slipped into the Guy Zone, where I was going to find the hotel no matter what WITHOUT STOPPING FOR DIRECTIONS.

Okay, I did stop for directions, but when you have two women fearing for their safety, you’re going to hear about it.

The trip home with also pretty unexciting. About the only thing of interest was a final stop a Union Station, where I picked up a Jesus figure on a spring, and a stop at a Dairy Queen in Ohio, which was only worthy of note because it was maybe the fifth time I’ve ever been to a DQ in my life and because I swear I had been to that one on the way home from Branson, though I didn’t plan it. A weird sense of déjà vu was a fine cherry topper to the sundae that was this trip.

So I survived without getting beaten by irate Branson performers, and overall, it was a good time. I wouldn’t mind going back to Saint Louis to take in the sights, the culture, and the people. In 2051, when I estimate the construction will mostly be done.