Rehearsing for a Wedding…

It kind of comes without saying that the days leading to your wedding are jam packed with action no matter who you are. The way everything panned out, the day before our wedding was pretty busy for the both of us, and Cassie and I both were apart for the entire day taking care of all different kinds of things.

This is my side of the story.

In the morning, I awoke at 6:30am and lazed around for a couple of minutes in bed catching up on some news on my phone, and I noticed a small electrical jolt in my hands. I made nothing of it. I put on my gear and went to the gym for a long cardio session, 50 minutes on the elliptical trainer at a moderate pace with moderate resistance. During this time, I reflected on the upcoming events and thought of things I could do to make the day go smoothly.

After coming home, showering and making an egg sandwich, I had to head down to Albany to pick up my brother at the Greyhound bus station. When I got into my car, knowing that I had to eek as much juice as I could out of my phone, I connected the same phone charger I had in my bedroom into my car. As soon as I plugged in the phone, I noticed sparks coming from the frayed end right off the connector into the phone.

That couldn’t be good!

I freaked out a little more than you’d expect a grown man to freak out over a cell phone charger (If you’ve seen “The Big Lebowski”, I imagine it looked like The Dude’s reaction when the marmot got thrown into the bathtub.). I didn’t have time at that point to get a new charger, but I could easily insert a stop at a department store later in the afternoon.

I was a few minutes early to pick my brother up, and his bus arrived on time. We lunched at Mingle.

Dom and I split an order of Korean tacos, and, of course, I had to have the Asian burger with some extra gochujang on the side. It was a very fulfilling and amazing meal (Thanks again, Jose!), and was a nice little cheat after really pushing it at the gym for the few preceding weeks.

Afterwards, I had to pick up a monster order of 300 assorted baby cheesecakes for the wedding from Cheesecake Machismo. These were part of the dessert bonanza we had planned for the wedding.

I don’t know if you remember April 26, but it was an unusually hot day for the spring. I had to blast the AC to keep the cheesecakes cool for the ride over to the fridge at Indian Ladder Farms.

While we were on the way to make this drop off, my other groomsman, Jeff, arrived with his girlfriend. Thankfully, they were able to check into their hotel room a little early because I couldn’t meet them anywhere for a while. When I finally made my way to pick him up, I stopped at Walmart to pick up a new charging cable for my phone. The urgency picking up this stupid cable took that day was ridiculous. It’s not like I don’t already walk around with two fully charged replacement batteries for my dumb HTC Thunderbolt, any way! Whatever, I felt like I had to do it, so leave me alone.

After swinging by the Hilton Garden Inn by SUNY Albany to pick Jeff up, the three of us were off to pick up the guys’ formalwear at Tuxego. This went off without a hitch; everything fit perfectly!

We had a few minutes to relax at the hotel, so that’s when I presented them with their groomsmen gifts for (hopefully) exemplary service. It was also nice to sit down and breath for a few minutes.

It wasn’t long before my parents arrived at the hotel, and, once they were checked in, it was time to head over to the church to rehearse.

It was reassuring to see the pastors go through the motions.

For our “rehearsal dinner,” we decided to let it take on a character of its own and be entirely relaxed. We utilized the social hall space at the church, and our parents prepared some food for our party.

Cassie’s mom, Holly, makes kick ass mac and cheese with more cheeses than you can count on one hand; she prepared two humongous trays for the dinner.

She also prepared a big salad, which was a nice thing to cut through the richness.

My dad hauled two humongous heroes from his deli in Middletown, NY. One was Italian-style with ham, mortadella, sopresatta, provolone, and homemade capicola; atop this monster, he pinned knots of his fresh marinated mozzarella. The other was the American-style with ham, turkey, roast beef, and swiss cheese. This was topped with a thin slice of roasted pepper.

The spread was impressive, and no guest left hungry. (I think there were a ton of leftovers, too.)

We reminded everyone to save a little room, because they weren’t getting away without having a treat with Cassie’s and my touch. We ordered five ice cream pies from Snowman for dessert. Three were snickers with their homemade vanilla ice cream; these were loaded with caramel, hot fudge, snickers. Two were Reeses Pieces with their homemade chocolate ice cream; these were loaded with peanut butter, hot fudge, and Reeses Pieces. (Now, when I say “loaded,” trust me, ok?)

I took on the task of cutting the pies, so mine got a little melty by the time I got to eat it.

Being that Cassie and I always order Snickers sundaes at Snowman, we were expecting this to be superior. I think the general consensus was that the Reeses pie was the better of the two. But this is kind of like comparing Lennon to McCartney; nobody loses. In actuality, one pie was left uncut, so four pies comfortably fed our party of 20-25. That includes the 3 (+?) pieces I devoured.

After dinner, everyone went off their separate ways into the sunset, and we all rested for the remainder of the night.

It was a damn good day!