The Best

I cannot believe it but it has already been a year since Melissa and I tied the knot. July 29, 2017 will forever remain one of the best days of my life. I say one of because obviously receiving a handwritten letter from the one and only Britney Spears is a little bit better than getting married, so our wedding has to take the silver medal at this point.

It also needs to be said that in my heart of hearts I believe the days will come when Melissa and I get to meet both Céline and Britney – NOT AT THE SAME TIME PEOPLE! DON’T BE CRAZY! – but individually and when those moments happen they’ll obviously knock our wedding day down a couple rungs on the ladder of our lives. In commemoration of one year of marriage I want to reflect on the behind the scenes moments from the events leading up to our wedding that made it what is currently the second best and future fourth best day of mine and Melissa’s life together.

After our magical engagement (for more on this please read “A Moment Like This”) we were saddled with the responsibilities of having to plan a wedding. Fortunately for me, Melissa did everything that neither of us wanted to do, leaving me with all the legit fun stuff.

Special props go out to her though for acquiring everyone’s address, addressing all the Save The Date and invitation envelopes, and meeting with a half dozen halls before finally settling on our chosen one. Our day would not have been what it was if she didn’t put in all that dirty work from home. She truly is the best.

I do want to give another quick special recognition to my mother-in-law, Jane, for creating the watercolor art we used on our invitations. She is a truly talented artist and it meant so much that she painted that simple yet incredible piece for us to use in mass for our invitations. I just thought they were beautiful.

First on our agenda was selecting who would be standing up alongside us. Choosing the number of bridesmaids and groomsmen was perhaps the easiest part of our planning. Everyone knows that all the best boy bands have five members. I mean think about it – New Kids on the Block, 5; Backstreet Boys, 5; *NSYNC, 5; One Direction, 5; CNCO, 5; there’s just no disputing the facts here, so given that Melissa and I would each represent one member from our respective “bands,” we needed four others to complete our quintet.

My first selection was simple; it obviously had to be Chris, my brother. I am writing a book about him, after all, so it only felt fair that I included him as one of my groomsmen.

My time in California blessed me with some of the greatest friendships I have ever known and at the time of selecting my groomsmen there were three people from there that I wanted to stand alongside me: Jake, my California brother; Michael, my dear friend from Macy’s Mission Viejo; and then Joseph, my friend from Macy’s Escondido. No offense to Chris, but I knew I did not want him to be my Best Man, it just seemed phony of me to place him in that position, so between those other three, I had to make my selection. After careful reflection it became clear that Joseph was the appropriate choice.

Given how instrumental Joseph was to the success of my engagement I knew that he would be the perfect Best Man – and for the record – he absolutely was. I could not have proposed to Melissa that day at Disneyland without him and I did not want to go through my wedding process without him either, so Joseph it had to be.

I have taken a lot of heat for my friendship with Joseph for it has not always been smooth sailing, so my selection of him was scoffed by many, but no doubt about it, if I had to go back and do it again I would make the same exact decision. He was my Best Man because he is my best friend.

When I first chose my four guys I did so because I thought for whatever nonsensical reason it was necessary for me to choose four boys as Melissa had chosen four girls. I don’t know why my initial thoughts were to conform to traditional wedding norms, but I soon had an awakening and realized that while Chris, Jake, Michael, and Joseph all agreed to stand alongside me there was one prominent figure from my life that I failed to include: Lindsey.

Lindsey and I have been friends since we were five years old. We grew up together in Maryville, Illinois playing flashlight tag, Legos, Nintendo 64, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all amongst a million other things, so you can understand the shame I felt upon the realization that I neglected to include her. I moved swiftly to right this wrong and thankfully Lindsey accepted my invitation.

So for those doing the math I now had six people on my side when including myself. This obviously was not going to work because we were not trying to be one member away from the next S Club 7 or BTS – someone had to go.

One December day in 2016 when Melissa was out visiting, Michael came to Temecula, so that we could have wedding dance rehearsal, which Jake assured us all along he was going to attend. Well, when it came time for us to dance, Jake had to leave. This was the straw that broke the camels back. If he could not make it to wedding dance rehearsal in his own house, how in the world was he going to make it to our wedding in Cutesville!?! The nastiest of nasty fights ensued and after all the smoke cleared Jake was no longer part of our wedding and I was back to having my quintet.

I should note that things are very much amicable between Jake and myself now. I look forward to seeing him each visit I make back to California and no matter what, I still love that kid even if all our squabbling has taken years off my life.

For Melissa’s four she chose our good friend Ashley who went to Collinsville High School with me and we have been friends ever since and then Kamber, Kristen, and Nancy, all of whom worked alongside us at Target. She selected Nancy to be her Maid-of-Honor which made perfect sense because Nancy is the reigning Sheep Queen of Illinois, so she knew all about pomp and pageantry, which is exactly what Melissa wanted plenty of for our wedding.

I knew that for our First Dance Melissa and I needed a song that was energetic, infectious, and ultimately, personified our love. I spent days mulling over which jam would be best. I combed through Céline and Britney’s catalogues a hundred times trying to find the perfect song, but the one that kept coming to mind was actually by neither of those living legends, but rather another legend in her own right: Tina Turner.

The Best has always been one of my favorite songs from the blaring horns to the thunderous drums and of course Tina’s raspy vocals gliding over lyrics of unconditional love, it became quite clear that this anthem was truly the best choice for us.

Now obviously with such a spectacular song selection we were not about to get up there and dance hands on hips, hands on shoulders – no – that’s incredibly boring and everyone would be wishing it was over half way through. Boring is not our style, so I brought in the most talented individual I know to choreograph a dance of legendary proportions: my cousin, Alyssa.

Alyssa is a world-class dancer and always ranks amongst the best in her nationwide competitions, so I knew she would deliver us a knockout routine and I am certain she did just that. Alyssa and I spent hours upon hours rehearsing her choreography. Very few people in this world know me as well as Alyssa and she choreographed the dance the exact way I would want it to be: interpretively.

She took Tina’s lyrics and applied them to our steps and the results were phenomenal. I cannot even tell you how many times we took it from the top. It’s honestly amazing that either of us still have skin on our fingers from all the snaps we did from having to repeat that intro countless times. I had to perfect her choreography because I was going to have to pass on my learning’s to Melissa. Alyssa made the dance look effortless – seriously people she is so good she could be a backup dancer for Britney Spears – but it took me several tries to get some of the more involved steps down, but my tenacity proved key and within several months I had the dance down to an art.

While mine and Melissa’s first dance would be an obvious centerpiece to the reception there was one other dance I knew had to be done: Céline Dion’s I Drove All Night.

When this global smash hit dominated the charts back in 2003 I was inspired to conceive a dance of my own over the course of several trips to our favorite St. Louis metropolitan area hangout: Club Aurora. The dance initially was done whilst remaining seated, but gradually I evolved it for the dance floor and knew that it had to be showcased at our wedding. I had already performed it countless times in my life at various places of work for audiences of my peers, so it would be insane for our wedding party to not perform it for our guests.

Once I moved back to Cutesville from California we wasted no time beginning wedding dance rehearsal. As our house was not big enough to accommodate us all we decided to hold our rehearsals on the tennis courts in Wilson Park, the jewel of Cutesville.

Melissa, Nancy, Ashley, Chris, Lindsey, and myself spent several evenings on those tennis courts figure eighting and jiving the night away. We were graced with the company of aunt Ann, cousin Cortni, and my mom, all who gleefully stepped in to fill the voids of those out of town. Those three knew the dance as well as any single one of us. I would bring my portable speaker, hook it to my iPod Classic, and we would blast Céline throughout the park. We had no shame that summer. People would be on other courts playing tennis and here the nine of us were dancing our hearts out. If I had a dime for every Snapchat story we inevitably ended up on I would probably be able to pay off one of my credit cards – and y’all know about how much debt that is! We could not let our newfound local celebrity status get to our heads though – we had a dance to perfect and perfect it we did.

Cortni would film our dance rehearsals when she wasn’t filling the void of someone else and I would send those rehearsal videos to Michael, Joseph, Kamber, and Kristen so that they could be practicing on their own while the rest of us did so together. THE ONLY ONE WHO PRACTICED WAS MICHAEL! HUGE THANK YOU goes out to him for his dedication to our dance. Jenna would send me videos of Michael rehearsing and it brought comfort to know that he had it down just as well as any one of us. Kamber was there back in 2003 when I conceived the dance in Club Aurora, so I knew she too would be fine, but the other two I had my concerns about. Nonetheless, when the time came all who participated did so with great ease as if each of us had all been dancing that dance our entire lives.

As our wedding day inched closer we found ourselves without an officiate. Our good friend Jody who for so long spoke of officiating our wedding got cold feet a month before and left us empty handed.

Our amazing friend Katie – the very one who rescued us at the Emerson Park Metrolink station in my post, “Party in the U.S.A.” – came to our rescue once more. Another classic, Oops!…I Did It Again moment for her. She agreed to becoming an ordained minister online, so that she could facilitate our ceremony and with that everything was right back on schedule.

Katie is a teacher and with summers off she proved to be an instrumental help to our wedding’s overall success. I was – for the second of what has been three times in my adult life – not working as well and as a result Katie and I would go and do all kinds of things for the wedding. From buying hundreds of stamps, to going to the gazebo in Wilson Park and deciding there what would work best for the ceremony, to meeting with the people who ran the reception hall, Katie helped with it all. Our wedding most certainly would not have been as smooth sailing as it was had it not of been for her dedication to ensuring that it was all perfect, so yet another HUGE THANK YOU goes out to her!

A few days before the wedding Michael and Jenna, Joseph and Shannon, and Kamber all arrived in St. Louis. It was an absolute dream having all our favorite people with us and getting to show them all the best St. Louis and Cutesville has to offer. We took in more St. Louis sights and scenes in those days before the wedding than we normally do in an entire year – it was wonderful.

There were a few hiccups with my dear Californians though from Michael dropping this insane itinerary on me just before coming and Shannon and Joseph booking a FOUR IN THE MORNING flight their day out, but past those irrational moments, everything was absolutely perfect and I cannot wait for ANY one of them to come back and visit – even if it involves detailed itineraries and red eye flights.

Now somehow I have spent nearly four Microsoft Word pages discussing all that led up to the wedding without once mentioning the one event I spent more time discussing over anything else – literally ANYTHING else – that event being the rehearsal dinner.

I could not have a conversation with my mom without her asking how many people were going to be at that dinner. It didn’t matter that it was November 2016 and we were getting married in July 2017 she wanted to know how many people were going to be in attendance dammit! The closer we got to the wedding she became more and more persistent in our rehearsal dinner conversations and I started to play with her a bit, telling her that I invited hoards of people that I never actually did. Naturally, the bulk of those conversations never went over well, but damn, couldn’t we of talked about something else like how Britney Spears and Tinashe were being robbed by Slumber Party failing to make much of an impact at pop radio? That is what was consuming my mind – not rehearsal dinner details! One can always have more weddings and rehearsal dinners, but Britney only gets one shot at climbing the charts with each single release! Priorities people, priorities!

All that rehearsal dinner talk paid off though because we had a tremendous time that evening at Ravenelli’s in Cutesville amongst all our closest friends and family. My only real regret from that evening was not having more pictures of everyone taken. It was one of the few times where we all were together, so I truly wish we would have prioritized those pictures, but alas, everyone captured plenty the next day.

Until you have to plan your own wedding you will never understand just how much time, effort, energy, money, friendship, and family it takes to pull off such an elaborate event. Had it not of been for everyone mentioned in this post and many who weren’t we would never have had the perfect day we did, so yet another HUGE THANK YOU goes out to EVERYONE who participated in our planning. You all truly are THE BEST! Our wedding day was the stuff dreams are made of and we owe that dream result to all of you, so again, thank you for being a friend!

…and now a HUGE THANK YOU to you for reading! Your continued support means the world to me! I hope each of you has a terrific week and remember that you too are simply the best! See you next week!