- Schedule an office excursion to Longwood Gardens the same Thursday that you have to leave for a wedding. Be sure to offer your house for lunch afterward because you live so close by.
- Take an inordinate number of pictures and focus on the lily pads because you’ve never seen them outside of books about frogs.
- Arrange that the day you spend outside looking at plantlife is outrageously hot and humid and that there is construction en route to your house, ensuring that the caravan of cars inevitably falls apart.
- Once your co-workers leave, start packing because you have to leave in an hour. Stress about what you’re forgetting because you didn’t write out a list, stupidly. Realize that sharing a duffel bag with your husband is an easier way to carry things but not an easier way to organize them.
- Four hours later, arrive at your husband’s grandmother’s house and make small talk.
- That night, have trouble sleeping. Finish your book because you have nothing else to do. Garner, at most, 2.5 hours of sleep for the night. Feel sick at the thought because you still have at least 8 hours of wedding for which to be alert.
- On Friday, get ready for the wedding in record time and promptly get stuck in traffic on the way there. Watch the time go by. Get very hot.
- Deliberate as to whether or not it’s worth it to try and make the wedding ceremony or to go straight to the reception. Try not to focus on the fact that missing the ceremony would be really disappointing.
- Have the decision made for you by the 8 miles of construction. Head to the reception venue, check in, and collapse on the bed, despite dressy wedding attire.
- Arrive right on time for cocktail hour because, boy, you could use a drink. And one of those scallops wrapped in bacon.
- At the reception, discover that you’re seated at the table farthest from the action. Dub it the “trouble table” and proceed to be rowdy with your friends because no one can see anything, anyway.
- Go around the reception and take lots of pictures to send to the couple right away because the professional ones will take forever.
- After the meal, dance the night away with your husband, thanks to some liquid persuasion on his part. Request “More Today than Yesterday” and get “Build Me Up, Buttercup,” instead. As a result, miss out on cake-cutting and eating.
- Shout so much over the loud music that your throat becomes painfully hoarse. Try to remedy the problem that people can’t hear what you’re saying by shouting some more.
- Join the throng to wave off the bride and groom. Feel grateful that the night flew by, you had a great time, and you didn’t get tired.
- Hobble up to your hotel room and kick off your heels at the first chance.
- On Saturday morning, walk around the Penn State campus and enjoy the lack of humidity.
- Stop by the Creamery and repress the fact that their ice cream has so much fat that the FDA has not approved it to be sold outside of campus. Also, try not to think about the ice cream that is already in the freezer.
- Pick up three quarts of ice cream: vanilla, cookies and cream, and your favorite – Peachy Paterno. Have the staff pack it up in dry ice for the ride home.
- Encounter more traffic that stretches what should have been a 3-hour drive into 4.5 hours.
- Order Chinese when you get home and save room for the ice cream.
- Sleep in on Sunday morning. Stay in your pajamas for as long as possible.
- Eat leftover Chinese for lunch.
- Go through the pictures from the last few days and remind yourself that the fatigue and barely catching your breath was a fine price to pay for such a fun time.
Instructions for a too-fast weekend
Sunday, July 1, 2007 | 12:45 pm | Weekendery
2 comments
AS and I were seated at a “Trouble Table” at a wedding last fall. There is no other choice to embrace it and be as rowdy as possible!!
If you had a chance to flip through the pictures of that wedding, you’d notice that there was a preponderance of pink. There was also a pink spotlight over the trouble table! I think we were the metaphorical red light district, as it were.
Even as exhausting as that all sounds - hello, what a blast! And it ended with fantastic icecream… can’t go wrong there!
xox
Seriously, the ratio of people to quarts of ice cream for our house is ridiculous…
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