Retrospective: Bob & Kelly's Wedding

One thing I've said from Day 1 on the RPR is that I'll be glad to entertain requests for articles. When I saw Bobby Hipp and Kelly, his wife of 6 months, they mentioned I should write up something on their wedding. Well, I'd like to take them up on that. The only problem is that the wedding was back in early June, and many of the details may have fallen into the cracks. So rather than tell the stories in normal "story" fashion, I'm going to do it free-form...just rambling off the things that happened along the way...

- First off, I want to mention that Brandon, Brian, and I weren't sure we were invited because Bob pretty much waited until the absolute last minute to give us every piece of information we needed to know. We had no idea where we were going, what time to had be anywhere, what was expected of us as the groomsmen, and so on. We can always count on Bobby Hipp to be the event planner...

- Oddly enough, by the time June 3rd rolled around, which was the day of the Rehearsal dinner, we knew what time we had to be in Reading, PA (Kelly's hometown and thus the site of the wedding), and even knew what the plan for the evening was. So we arrived at the church and knew it'd be a debacle right from the start. Brandon, Brian, and I began to take bets on whether it'd be the pastor or Kelly's mom would who kick us all out of there first.

- The Rehearsal was interesting, as the pastor was trying to be serious, but provided some excellent anecdotes of past grooms who went out the night before the wedding and got so sloshed that they had to interrupt the wedding ceremony to go vomit. I'd say it was a pretty discouraging story, which is probably the reason he tells it. It's also important to mention tat Brian and Brandon enjoyed making fun of the pastor's awful toupee.

- At the dinner, there were some great comments by Bob's dad (named Bob) and Bob's uncle on his mom's side (also named Bob). You see a theme? So picture this...we had Bob, Bob, and Bob, with Brandon, Brian and I, as Bob (dad) and Uncle Bob were telling a story about a strip club that they used to frequent. The story featured several highly inappropriate comments, which we all enjoyed, and several interruptions, so that Bob's mom wouldn't catch on to the conversation. I can't remember the name of the strip club, but they did mention great beer specials that they used to have, and it also had an excellent buffet.

- We also appreciated the nice comments that Bob's parents gave to us, saying how we've been great friends to Bob through the years and they appreciated knowing that their son was associating himself with such fine and upstanding gentlemen. In the words of Brandon, "He obviously doesn't know us that well."

- During the Rehearsal Dinner, Bob realized that he didn't have the marriage certificate with him. To add salt to the wound, he couldn't remember if it was back in their apartment in Bethlehem (Lehigh Valley area) or back at his parent's house in Lafayette Hill (Philadelphia area). Way to go, Bob. To fast forward on this story, he ended up driving from Reading to Lafayette Hill, didn't find the certificate there, and then drove up to Bethlehem that night, and back to Lafayette Hill. All of this was on the night before the wedding. Just what he wanted to go through, I'm sure.

- So let's move on to the morning of the wedding, Saturday, June 4th. Believe it or not, we were all on time getting back to Reading, and how did we know we were on time? About 5 minutes into our drive, I get a call on the cell from Bob. He says, "Hey jackass, look behind you". Excellent, the groom was driving right behind us. It was a moral victory for the groomsmen.

- We made a pitstop at the hotel to check in and saw everyone rushing to get ready and over to the church. We were ready to head over in the hotel shuttle. We get to the church and Bob realizes that he's forgotten the marriage certificate again. It's in his car, back at the hotel, and he doesn't have his car keys with him. (I think Kelly may have killed him at the time if she knew all of this was occuring.) So, the plan was to have Uncle Bob get Bob's car keys from Bob's dad Bob, drive back to hotel, and get the marriage certificate from Bob's car. Follow that?

- Luckily, Kelly's mom entrusted Keith (Bob's friend from East Stroudsburg) and Joe (friend from grad school) with the usher duties. That may have been too much work for the rest of us, so we were better off. We were positioned in the side room until everyone was seated and the pastor was ready to begin the ceremony. Another bad idea. The side room had all of these old, ugly clothes and so we of course put them on top of our tuxes and took pictures. There was also a forklift and a wheelchair, so we then queued up the "We should wheel Bob into the sanctuary room like Hannibal Lecter" jokes. By the way, Brandon ended up breaking the wheelchair. And of course, we gave him the whole, "Are you sure you want to do this?" lecture, which he couldn't take seriously, because once Bob has his mind set on something, it's set. Plus, we all like Kelly and knew that she was great for him. Who else could put up with his nonsense?

- During the ceremony, we had to stand up on the steps to the stage facing the crowd the entire time. Very awkward. It was like Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson in Old School. We then proceeded to do the lines from that scene until the wedding began. Side note: Bob's little cousin was the ring bearer and definitely dropped the pillow with the fake ring about 3 times, causing a quiet outburst of laughter each time.

- After the ceremony, it was time to go take pictures. Kelly's parents hooked us up with a trolley to take us from the church to the park (where they took pics) and then to the country club for the reception. Kelly's drunk maids of honor starting drinking out of plastic bottles as soon as we got on the trolley. Looked like we'd be in for a circus. That's when Brandon started taking shots of rum. And this was all before cocktail hour.

- During the pictures, we had to hold Bob up horizontally across a bunch of people. We almost dropped him. We managed not to drop Kelly though. That would have been bad news given the white dress and what not. If I remember correctly, there were several inappropriate comments being made during the pictures. Bob's two little cousins looked at us like we were aliens.

- By the time we made it over to the reception, there was a mad rush for the open bar and the hors d'ouevres. It was like we hadn't eaten or drank anything in a month. But before we knew it, cocktail hour was over and we had to go into the reception room. We sat down to eat, and remember one thing about being a groomsmen in a wedding: You are running around all morning and by the time you get a chance to eat, it's been several hours and several drinks since you've had anything to eat. My advice is to take a timeout and eat the meal. Plus, it's good food and you'd otherwise be missing out.

- Other highlights of the reception: Brandon trying to stay away from one of the bridesmaids who he didn't particularly care for. Trying to keep track of who had taken the most trips to the bar. Similarly, who could get the bartender to remember what their drink was the quickest. Constantly making fun of Bob and laughing amongst ourselves about how Kelly still may have no idea of what she's getting herself into. Trying to come up with smart ass remarks for Uncle Bob's video camera. Listening to Kelly's grandfather tell us the same stories on more than one occasion. And most of all, watching Bobby Hipp be Bobby Hipp and attempt to stay out of the spotlight, even on his wedding day.

- One other story worth mentioning: So the DJ decided to do this thing where you were supposed to come up and dance with either Bob or Kelly, and in order to dance with them, you would have to put $1 in a hat. Remember, this was toward the end of the reception, so everyone was rather inebriated. Any case, Kelly's grandmother goes to dance with Bob, and instead of putting a dollar in the hat, she was trying to put a $20 bill in his front pant's pocket. For some reason or another, her hand was in his pocket for an exceptionally long time. Brian, being the astute one that he is, sees what's going on, and makes the comment, "Hey, you're digging pretty deep into his pocket...Why don't you jiggle his balls while you're down there?" I lost it. Brandon lost it. We were literally on the floor from this comment. It came so far out of left field that we couldn't believe that the words actually came out of mouth. What was even better was that Grandmom thought it was pretty funny and was laughing right along with us. Leave it to Brian to provide a comment like that....

- After the reception, we made our way back to the hotel, but not after Brandon decided to call everyone on his cell phone and just yell incoherent babble into the phone. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs. Back at the hotel, it wasn't all that late, so we stopped into the bar to check out the scene. We were all pretty beat so we didn't stay too long, plus we were going to get up early and head back. Overall, Bob & Kelly's wedding was an excellent time and I think we handled ourselves pretty well (although some were concerned). It was a different experience, especially since it was the first one of my friends to get married. The good news is that there'll be plenty of weddings to attend in the coming years that should give us a similar experience. Like I always say, weddings are like bar mitzvahs, but we can now take advantage of the open bar.

Check out some pictures from the wedding in the posts below. Hope you enjoyed this retrospective, and I'm pleased to mention that Bob & Kelly, coming up on their 6 month anniversary, are still two happily married grad students, and to my knowledge, are not ready to kill each other just yet.

Enjoy Thursday. I'll stop back then.