I have become the village idiot. I have become the father of the bride.
My daughter is getting married in 250 days, give or take. In popular culture, the FOTB is a comical figure, someone who stands by in bewilderment as the arrangements and drama swirl around him, aware that there are impressive financial consequences in the offing, but otherwise confounded. Think Spencer Tracy (1950). Think Steve Martin (1991). As for me, these portrayals are true in part and untrue in part.
True: I am baffled by much of what is happening. Thank God my wife speaks caterer.
Untrue: I am not bellowing about the cost of the … how did the Martin Short wedding planner character pronounce it in the ’91 remake? … the “kek.” I don’t think I’m bellowing. An occasional, very, very low-key wince. I’m trying to behave.
True: I am dealing with rising daddy angst.
It will likely hit me hardest at the very end of the aisle, I know, when the preacher’s question will form a prompt for my only official task in this enterprise. In the 1950 movie, here’s the soliloquy that rushes through Spencer Tracy’s mind.
“Who giveth this woman? “This woman. But she’s not a woman. She’s still a child. And she’s leaving us. What’s it going to be like to come home and not find her? Not to hear her voice calling “Hi, Pops” as I come in? I suddenly realized what I was doing. I was giving up Kay. Something inside me began to hurt.”
Anyway. I got that to look forward to.
A little background
My Hilary is 21 and will graduate this December (a semester early, thank you very much), from UNC-Chapel Hill, with a double major in romance languages and psychology. She is smart and musical (she was drum major of the high school marching band). She is funny, opinionated and organized. She has the curly brown hair that resembles mine, before I lost it. Her intended, Travis, is a computer science major at N.C. State. He is also smart and a worker. He can fix things, like cars, plumbing and data networks. He directs the music at the church, plays guitar and has a quiet sense of humor.
My wife and I were talking to a caterer the other day who mentioned that she is doing an increasing number of weddings for brides and grooms who met in those newfangled ways: Some of her clients met on eHarmony. A number found each other on Match.com. Some at It’s Just Lunch.
Hilary and Travis met the oldfangled way, in middle school. It’s Just Recess.
But they didn’t start dating until about three years ago. Things started getting increasingly serious, and then Hilary went to Mexico for several months to study and ramp up her Spanish. They missed each other something terrible, she in Cuernavaca and he in Clayton. A few days after she got back late last year, he produced a ring and a proposal.
How, I wondered, did he know what kind of ring to buy, since Hilary is, uh, particular? Well, sometime during the courtship, Hilary had made sure he knew. “Girls do things like go to Web sites and design their own rings,” she explained to me. “And I showed him what I had and said, “If I get married, I’d like that ring.'”
“Real subtle,” recalled Travis.
Like building a sub
A wedding is a big, complex, occasionally scary project, with jobs that have to be done in a certain order. For example: You can’t send out the invitations until you figure out the guest list. You can’t book a reception hall until you figure out the date. I was describing this profound insight the other day, drawing an analogy to the construction of a nuclear submarine. You have to build the hull before, I said, you can install the reactor room and the fuel rods and such. “Are you likening my wedding to a nuclear submarine?” asked Hilary after one complete eye roll. Not exactly. The assembly of a submarine has less potential for drama. There is no TV show titled “Subzilla.”
But my daughter is organized I mentioned that already and so she was on the horn with prospective reception halls last spring. Which, I have now learned, is not that early, even for June ’08 nuptials. You don’t hold a fair-sized wedding on a whim. Places book up fast, especially for June weddings. Especially for June weddings with a cutesy date 06/07/08. The stress that fuels bridal reality shows usually results from waiting until the last minute to plan, Hilary told me. “We’ve got stuff planned,” she asserted with her usual self-possession.
Travis ticked off the to-do list. “We’ve got a photographer. We’ve got a place to do the wedding. We’ve got a pastor. We’ve got a place to do the reception.”
“We need a honeymoon,” Hilary added helpfully.
She has her dress, a white number with burgundy embroidery. She has chosen her bridesmaids. Travis has his groomsmen. The music has been lined up. They’re working on the flowers.
The gift registry is online. Someone has already ordered the food chopper, white.
According to the bridal magazines I’ve been reading, that leaves only 117 things to decide. Like the caterer.
The toothpick question
If guys like me planned wedding receptions, we’d call Domino’s from the church. Fortunately, the logistics are in the hands of more competent people. The reception is the most complicated phase of this project. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, this is the big enchilada, what people will remember, so it has to be right.
I have been tagging along with my spouse to the caterer interviews, and I have learned a thing or two. For example, while we are having pictures taken at the church, the guests will be arriving at the reception hall. And some will be partaking of the grape and the hops. So it is important to keep them in peanuts and cheese lest they get, shall we say, too happy. But that raises the question about how the cheese will be configured (believe me, every dimension of a reception involves an array of options.) The toothpick installation process is not free. But without them, the line will back up at the cheese station. (Top people at universities have done time-motion studies, evidently). So I think there’s an emerging consensus for toothpicked cheese at this point.
I am learning the science of table-space optimization. Every decision sit-down entrees vs. (and I love this phrase) “butlered heavy hors d’oeuvres” is going to have an impact on how much you can get on those rounds. Will there be sufficient room for the butter and the yeast rolls, the votive candles, and guests’ elbows? (I had to go online to find out what votive candles are.) Don’t make the centerpiece too tall or guests at opposite coordinates of the table will not be able to see each other, and thus, it will get shoved around, creating a cascading effect that will disrupt the careful architecture of the butter/yeast roll/votive candle landscape.
And there’s more. People say they want to eat healthful foods, but celery and carrots have a tendency to stick around till the end of the night. This from a caterer who knows such things.
Tango lessons
As I said in the beginning, I’m mostly baggage here, trying to be helpful, supportive, cheerful. But there are a few items on my modest agenda. I have a tux that doesn’t fit, so I need to take it easier on the carbs and hit the gym. We’ll see how that goes. My daughter tells me that some bridesmaids help the bride get into shape for the wedding. She doesn’t need it.
And one other thing.
I once kind of knew how to dance, back when the sixth-grade boys at my school were frogmarched each Friday afternoon into the gym and required to learn ballroom with foot-taller sixth-grade girls. I didn’t take to it well, and it didn’t take any time at all for me to forget the waltz and the fox trot and the tango. So I need to find a place to take lessons. I approach this with the same apprehension as I did 40 years ago.
But even a village idiot can figure out what’s important. Already, something inside me hurts. I want to dance with this woman, my daughter, on her wedding day.