Back Story: I just want my life back

I don’t have Tony Hayward’s life, but what I’ve got isn’t bad. You remember Tony Hayward, top dog at BP when the oil hit the fan; the guy who said such grating things as America is a litigious society; the oil spill won’t impact the Gulf as badly as everyone is making out; and the famous “I just want my life back.” Hayward is gone now. BP gave him $18 million to go away – back to his yacht-sailing life.

I didn’t have an oil spill to deal with – just my stepdaughter’s wedding. “You’re going to have to handle this,” Amy told me early on. “I’m too busy to deal with it.” You writers out there will recognize this attitude – the “since you’re not doing anything” syndrome. And me, the least likely person to handle wedding arrangements…

Of course, I balked. But all that did was bring on the wrath of Amy. So I developed a strategy to keep her and her daughter, May, involved as much as possible in order to deflect the blame when things didn’t quite go right. Remember, in my other life I was a lawyer.

We settled on the Glen for the wedding and reception fairly early on. While a lovely venue, the size of the main room in the Glen Helen Building would limit us to about 85 guests. That seemed about right. Dealing with Liz Schneiders at the Glen was a pleasure and the price was certainly right.

What would a wedding in the Glen be like without Mayor Dave Foubert presiding? We asked; he obliged.

For a caterer we picked a long-time friend and customer of Amy’s who is in the business. And, although she still insisted that I be the point man, this made it easy for me to keep her involved. But, it seemed like whatever arrangements we would make, May would veto them and we would have to start from scratch. It started with the invitations and RSVP cards. Then the ivory table clothes and napkins were changed to red. At the last minute she wanted to throw in a roast pig. You know how much a roast pig weighs? We managed to talk her down to 30 lbs. of roast pork, imported from Columbus, as was the wedding cake. Fortunately, the groom’s sister lives there and was willing to deliver.

I thought I was completely off the hook when it came to the music. Amy has a friend she used to work with who doubles as a DJ and Elvis impersonator. Perfect, I thought. She made the arrangements. But, just a few weeks before the wedding, he called to say he had split up with his wife and she had locked him out of the house. His equipment was inside. Not to worry, her caterer friend knew someone and made the initial contact for us. But one Friday night as the wedding day was looming on the horizon, we were at the Emporium when local band The Undercovered was playing. We had heard Emma Woodruff sing solo with acoustic guitar on a previous evening at the Emporium and were very impressed. On this night, on most of the numbers she was lead singer in a rocking band of about eight pieces. The next morning, I was in drummer Mek Logan’s email. The following day, I called to cancel the DJ.

My son flew in from Seattle. Amy’s brother and his wife flew in from New York. One of my sisters and her husband flew in from Tampa and my other sister and her husband drove from New York. Arrangements had to be made. We filled our spare rooms and overflowed into Grinnell Mill, where my two sisters enjoyed their stay. Everyone ended up at our house on Friday night before the wedding.

“Are you excited?” my sister asked.

“I just want my life back,” I told them.

They thought I was kidding. But, I knew what still lay ahead on Saturday morning: setting up tables, moving 85 chairs onto the patio; decorating inside and out; and making sure all the wine, beer, liquor and soft drinks got moved from our house to the Glen. There was barely time to squeeze it all in before I finally squeezed into my tux and found myself crawling around on the floor searching under the bed for my black dress shoes with just minutes to go before the ceremony was to start.

“It will happen, no matter what we do,” had been Amy’s motto throughout. I knew she was right – and she was. It happened.

The bride was beautiful and the groom handsome; the weather could not have been better; the Mayor was charming as usual; and the ceremony was short and sweet to the pleasure of all those who couldn’t wait to get at the booze and appetizers. Sure, there was a certain amount of confusion and miscommunication, such as remembering after the ceremony that we had not yet picked up the champagne from Jenny Chen’s refrigerator at her restaurant and then mistakenly dispatching two cars to retrieve it. But good food, lots of booze and a great band will cover up a lot of glitches.

Afterwards, we were sitting in the dark on the back deck at the Mill after locking up the Glen Building for the night when my sister asked, “Are you relieved that it’s over?”

But it wasn’t quite over. There were chairs to be moved back from the patio into the Glen Helen Building in the morning and some cleaning to do before the regular Sunday morning group arrived to use the room. There were people to be driven to the airport. It wasn’t over until 5:00 a.m. on Monday, when I dropped Amy’s brother and his wife at the airport. It was then, that I finally got my life back.