More 2HW Weddings

Yesterday, I summarized my weekend of wedding crashing. It wasn’t nearly as sexy as Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made it out to be. While I may not have had the opportunity to make out with a single Treasury Secretary’s daughter, it did make me think of another wedding crash involving Craig and me.

In college, I was one of a multitude of groomsman in my roommate Bryan’s wedding. I brought Craig with me to Arkansas even though he hadn’t been invited. He didn’t know Bryan very well and had never even met the bride. But, when one of the groomsman backed out at the last minute, Craig was asked to fill in.

In those days Craig was known as “The Fat Kid”, so he jumped at the chance to attend the rehearsal dinner featuring all-you-can-eat catfish. This was well before Craig decided to become a man of the cloth, so he predictably succumbed to gluttony.

The next day Craig was wishing it had been an “all-you-care-to-eat” catfish buffet instead of “all-you-can-eat”. After taking pictures in the hot sun, Craig was in pretty bad shape and a few short minutes before game time he was nowhere to be found. Everyone was scrambling to locate Craig as the groomsman began escorting the bridesmaids down the aisle.

But, just seconds before Craig’s date was about to walk down the aisle solo, we heard a mighty flush and turned to see Craig walk out of the men’s room with a relieved look on his face. His bridesmaid was not quite as chipper when Craig asked her to smell his thumb on the way down the aisle.

He continued to offend women in pretty dresses, later calling the bride Mary Beth instead of Sara Beth. Months later we learned that Sara Beth was not happy with the substitute groomsman’s antics on the wedding video. Apparently, Craig did not notice the cameraman behind him, who couldn’t help but get a shot of Craig grabbing another groomsman’s caboose.
The night ended appropriately, with Craig catching the garter belt. Eleven short years later Craig found his blushing bride. Thank God Craig didn’t meet her then, because she still had baby teeth and was on the junior high drill team.

After the wedding we went back to the house where we were staying. Before I get into that, I need to do a quick background story to set the scene. During our freshman year in college, Craig developed an ingenious underwear system. He only owned three pair and they happened to be very colorful bikini briefs. He would wear one pair into the shower, wash it and hang it up to dry. The next day he would wear the other pair and wash and dry it in the same manner. Pair number 3 was for emergencies only.

I’m not sure why he thought lounging on a stranger’s bed qualified as an emergency, but one of the tenants of the house unexpectedly came home a day early to find Craig laying in his bed wearing nothing but purple briefs. The Fat Kid in bikini underpants was not quite as attractive as the women Owen and Luke brought home in Wedding Crashers.