Unless you are John Waters, only occasionally in your life will you be called to bear witness to a true trash spectacle. And when that moment arises, it is your solemn duty to absorb every detail so that you may regale others with the story for years to come.
Friends, I stand here before you today to tell you the tale of the White Trash Wedding of the Century.
I was not invited to this wedding but attended as the guest of someone else who likely should not have been invited, either. You see, at different times, both of us had dated the groom. We both determined that sometimes people are ‘touched by an angel’; only in this instance, we were both ‘touched by a moron’. He had actually gone as far as proposing to Nicki while high on whippets, because nothing quite says “I will love and cherish you forever” like concentrated inhalants that strike down large swaths of brain cells in an instant. Lesser girls might have taken those glazed eyes for true love, flashed him a boob and then squealed yes, but Nicki, being a different caliber of lady entirely, decided that she COULD do worse, but only if she went cross-species.
You might think we’re being harsh, bitter bitches in our disdain, and you would be wrong. Here, I’ll prove it to you.
*This is a guy who proclaims to be an enlightened Taoist, but is seriously pondering getting a “bitchin’ tattoo of the Archangel Michael fighting Lucifer”.
*This is a guy who cannot construct a basic sentence in his native language yet somehow felt qualified to pursue a doctorate; when he was rejected by schools that felt differently, he placed the blame for the rejection on coming from a ‘broken home’. I didn’t personally know that when your parents got divorced well after you’d already moved out that it still counts as coming from a broken home. I’m looking forward to using this new scapegoat to my advantage. “I’m sorry that I missed that work deadline; I come from a broken home.”
*This is a guy who lists ‘tacos’ and ‘his cat’ as interests in an online profile before his wife. He also lists Jesus as one of his personal heroes. What?!? I thought he was a Taoist! The entire list consists of Jesus, Wolverine, Ghandi, Socrates, Benkei, Abraham Lincoln, and ‘Those who fought for us in America to save our freedom (what we have of it at least) and rights’. So I guess, Civil War soldiers. But most importantly, Jesus.
*This is a guy who refused (and still refuses) to sign the birth certificate for his daughter without having a lawyer look at it, because he’s afraid it might make him financially responsible for the kid that was apparently immaculately conceived, as that’s the only feasible reason to NOT man up and admit he’s the father. Since he can’t afford a lawyer, he still hasn’t signed it. That, and maybe he figures broken homes beget broken homes. I’m not an expert.
Even though Nicki set the bride up with the groom, for some reason, the bride still remains her friend, and insisted that Nicki be invited though Ben objected. Mandy won, and soon Nicki received this gem in the mail:
I knew as soon as I saw the South Park characters in the likeness of the bride and groom that I was being called to witness a major trash event. I was so certain of this that I flew across the country so that I could have first-hand memories of this event with me for the rest of my natural life.
So on Saturday, October 18th, Nicki and I put on our finest attire, prepared for an evening of velveeta and sausages from a can, and drove to the ‘Polish League of American Veterans Hall’. But how does one truly prepare for such a momentous occasion, knowing that you’ll be coming face to face with history? We arrived a few minutes before the reception was due to start (no one was invited to the wedding except family, and with six people standing up on either side and two people in the audience, I’m sure it made for a funny picture at the zoo. Oh yes, I neglected to mention: They got married at the Racine Zoo, home of the Mellzah-molesting camel. Because nothing other than whippets says ‘I will love you and cherish you forever’ like the wafting smell of large animal feces.) and determined it wouldn’t be right if the people who showed up to snark the wedding arrived earlier than any nice, legitimate guests, so we decided to prepare by having a drink at the bar across the street beforehand. A rather large drink at the bar beforehand.
Thirty minutes and thirty-two ounces of hard liquor later, we darted through traffic and into the Polish League of American Veterans Hall, and waited for the wedding party to show. And waited. And waited. And waited.
And then we noticed this sheet of goldenrod-colored delight at each folding table seat, and the grand trash ceremonies began. I have endeavored on this occasion to only snark at the groom.
I’m pretty certain that someone’s grandma doesn’t need to know anything about Jeremy Bush’s beast, and may, in fact, be happier living in ignorance.
She might also have been happier if she had been struck suddenly with blindness moments before the entrance of the wedding party, because no one with 20/20 vision left the event without cursing its clarity and precision, even at a distance.
The groomsmen were clearly instructed to wear just ‘a shirt and tie’ without respect to color or style, and thus strutted in with one powder blue shirt, one electric blue shirt, one lucifer’s ass red shirt, one beige vest, one white shirt, and one poufy ren-faire shirt. I remain surprised that no one decided to sport the Canadian Tuxedo: jeans, a denim shirt and a jean jacket.
The groom elected to appear at his own wedding, in photos he was paying for, with hair bleached so blond, it appears in safety gear catalogs directly behind ‘safety orange’, and a goatee comprised of 7 carefully-spirit-gum-applied pubic hairs.
When the lights were turned off in the hall, his hair glowed in the dark.
I felt awfully sorry for Mandy and her rather unfortunate, unflattering dress, but she made her own bed when she asked one of the groomsmen’s recent, unproven hobby seamstress girlfriend to make her wedding dress, and a dress for her daughter. This hobby seamstress girlfriend took on the job, and then sent the bride a text message on the day of the wedding to let her know that neither dress was done. After much freaking out, the hobby seamstress girlfriend finished the wedding dress bare minutes before Mandy needed to put it on for the ceremony. As she fastened the zipper in the back, hobby seamstress girlfriend proudly mentioned that she’d left Mandy ‘some room to eat tonight’. She certainly did–Mandy can gain forty pounds and the dress will fit better than it did on the day of her wedding.
God, that hair.
After dinner, Ben’s sister ran up to me to say that she had been excited to learn I was coming because she reads my blog.
Whenever someone approaches me and tells me that, and I hadn’t previously been aware they knew I had a blog, I will freeze in place. I will stand perfectly still while alarm bells scream in my head and I think about anything that I’ve said that might cause me to have to apologize. Liz either hadn’t noticed that I was referring to that day as the White Trash Wedding of the Century or she agreed with me, but I wasn’t about to make any inquiries.
GOD, THAT HAIR.
And then there was an excessive amount of bump and grind on the dance floor, and then glowsticks were busted out and THEN little kids started showing their butts to everyone and grandmas were hurling in the bathroom, and dudes got drunk and started burning cigarette holes in everything, and the air started to reek of sweat, singed polyester, and love.
We learned some juicy tidbits that night, namely that Ben and his new wife are still going to live in grandma’s basement, and that a flamboyant drag queen once mistook Ben for a bull dyke, and after a few drinks, the bride told us exactly what she thought of hobby seamstress girlfriend, and then after a few more drinks, we learned the secret that would drive us to conclude that the evening had reached its zenith, and that no more schadenfreude could be derived.
They were doing the ‘dollar dance’ portion of the evening, which is something I had never heard of before. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s essentially a cash-grab by the bride and groom where the guests line up and pay a dollar or more to dance with either of them. I elected not to participate, but Nicki lined up to dance with the bride. And while they were dancing the dance that Nicki paid for, the bride enhanced Nicki’s dancing experience by whispering to her that she’d needed to have her bridesmaids cut the crotch out of her pantyhose because she’d urinated in them. Even as the behavior of the guests devolved, it’s unlikely that anything could top the bride wetting herself, so we excused ourselves and congratulated one another on dodging a peroxide blond bullet.
Thus ends the tale of the White Trash Wedding of the Century. I hope that you have laughed, and cried, and shouted in horror, as I have on many sleepless nights since.
BUT WHO CAUGHT THE BOUQUET?
No one caught it, it caught a chick in the eye, though, as it was a single lily with a really pointy stem.
I hope she wore an eyepatch whie smoking Pall Malls the rest of the night.
Pfft, Pall Malls are for fancy-folk. Chew is the real bargain.
oh my god
OH MY FUCKING GOD
I know, it’s almost overwhelming!
Also, please to be stocking up on the octopus necklaces–I have gotten tons of compliments on it, and have been directing people to your etsy shop for them.
Were you wearing an octopus necklace at Rob’s party? Did I comment on it? I was too drunk to remember. I love octos!
No, I wore one of‘s other necklaces that night, the Rain necklace. Here’s her octopus necklace–I don’t see any for sale in her store at the moment but she does special orders.
Well, his hair almost matches the ribbon on her dress.
I’m somehow visualizing the crotch cutting-out as being done while she was still wearing them…even though I’d hope she’d also changed underpants.
I’m thinking about this too much.
underwear’s for fancy folks and mormons. I’m sure she went clammando.
I wondered about the underpants myself, if she just went completely crotchless, adding another level of class to the evening, or put on another pair–but if they cut out the crotch while the hose were on (which makes a bit of sense because pulling on hose without a crotch might cause them to run all the way down to the heel), there’s no way she could’ve managed to get the underpants off and a new pair on.
I have decided that this is an answer that I’m all right with not knowing.
oh man, i just ASSUMED while she was wearing them, else she could have just cut it herself!
She was still wearing them, which is what blew my mind more than anything. Mandy is a reasonably sane person (save for marrying Ben) but what I just could not understand is why she just didn’t remove the hose and either a) go without (no one would have known anyways) or b) had one of her minions run to f-ing Walgreens and pick up a new pair. Really? This couldn’t have been done? Okay.
But what about the underwear? Did the crotch get cut out of those, too?
I’ll wager there weren’t any underpants to start with.
I have a FETCHING photo of the bouquet toss at my reception, showing all the ladies LEAPING for it. My MOH’s dress was rather short, and um, she dislikes wearing undies with her pantyhose, which is patently obvious in the photo. And yes, the carpet matches the drapes. :/
I should totally scan that photo.
YES YOU SHOULD. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
I didn’t know you were (are) married?!
It was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And now I’m free, thank Pete!
I’ll look for the photo. I saw it a while ago, and I think it’s somewhere on my desk.
Oh hai–nerd alert:
She is an accomplished musician; we traveled to Europe together.
This entire ridiculous story, and i feel like the one thing i need to point out is this sentence from the rundown of bridesmaids. A semicolon is meant to connect to related thoughts; how are the girl being an accomplished musician and them traveling Europe related???
That’s right–this entire post and i’m mostly bothered by misuse of the semicolon.
So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
THANK YOU. I was going to comment on that but decided that I wanted to focus entirely on Ben’s half. But rest assured, that semicolon bothered me as well.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
i was bothered by her pointing out the femaleness of her girlfriends, especially laura’s explanation as to why she got to be a bridesmaid.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
“she is my oldest, dearest female friend I keep in cahoots with these days.”
As opposed to all of those old, dear friends who you never talk to and actually don’t like anymore. Or got sex changes.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
if laura had been a guy, NO WAY she would be in that wedding party! i wonder if this is one of those couples that divides into male and female roles of who hangs out with who [she’s not allowed to hang out with the dudes] and who does what from fun activities to chores.
ca·hoots (kə-hōōts’)
pl.n. Informal
Questionable collaboration; secret partnership: an accountant in cahoots with organized crime.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
I’m pretty sure that the whole wedding could be described as a ‘questionable collaboration’.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
Yes, they are that kind of couple. Mandy is really not allowed to hang out with her guy friends… or me for that matter.
Re: So did you travel to Europe together as musicians? Or did open for the band ‘Europe’?
Clearly because you have a Jew-man-face.
ok….
…that’s just WRONG…oh gawd is it wrong…*snicker* I sincerely wish that you fully recover LOL 😉
Re: ok….
I appreciate your well-wishes for my sanity. 😀
His hair is the highlighter of the event…
It was the bright spot of the evening.
Wow. Glowing hair guy and my dumbest ex sound like they’d be BFFs no problem. Except, scary as it is, glowing hair guy is significantly more coherent than my ex.
Ben, more coherent than someone? Now, there’s a scary thought!
Exactly. Imagine somebody who FAILED HIGH SCHOOL ART CLASS.
After we’d broken up, I still tried to maintain a friendship with him for some reason or other. He got some shitty tattoo and posted a picture of it on his livejournal, and I asked him how big it was.
HE COULDN’T GIVE ME A COHERENT ANSWER!!!
By the way, for laughs, here’s his hardcore tattoo which hurt so bad he cried:
He pissed me off enough I stopped talking to him. Then I ran into him at an anime convention and finally saw the damn tattoo. It’s something like an inch and a half tall, on the side of his lower leg.
hoooooly shit. I’m sure all the ladies swoon when they see the totally hardcore chocobo tattoo!
I keep running into one of my exes at nerd conventions in the area–he’s the one who waited until the third date to tell me that, oh yeah, he’s married. Every time I see him, I want to kick him straight square in the face or in his totally hardcore triforce tattoo.
This guy probably already has a triforce tattoo by now, too.
I avoid the nerd conventions these days. Don’t want to run into exes and ex conspirators.
If you want to burn off your retinas, take a gander at his myspace page. Holy crap, was I really that stupid?? And yeah, he was like that back in high school too.
WOW those pictures are priceless. And by priceless, I mean I hope that he walks around in public with those plastic lightsabers for maximum mockery.
I wonder if he knows that everyone can see those half-naked pictures of his girlfriend?
The plus side to myspace pages and white trash weddings and long-distance internet mocking is that they provide a handy way to gauge how far we’ve personally come since we dated the douchebags.
His girlfriend’s myspace name is “White Trash Pornstar,” so I don’t think she minds. Also hilarious is I looked at her profile a bit, and found a pair of fuzzy cuffs on her that I bought like, 7 or 8 years ago. My first BDSM accessory is in some random chick’s myspace account. Who knew?
The plus side to myspace pages and white trash weddings and long-distance internet mocking is that they provide a handy way to gauge how far we’ve personally come since we dated the douchebags.
Agreed 100%. I think I’ve come a LOOOOONG way since this guy. Even the douchebag I dated after him wasn’t as big of an idiot, just more of an asshole.
Oh yeah, and he probably does walk around with the lightsabers because he thinks it’s funny. Or something. What more would you expect from somebody with a crappy chocobo tattoo? He even still lives at his parent’s house. He celebrated when he moved back in and everything.
Every once and a while, I try to figure out what I need to fill the gaping hole in my existence, and now I think I’ve got it–it involves moving back in with my parents and someone else’s sex toys. Meeee-YOW.
Damn Mellzah, you really lucked out, being able to work at GameSpot WITHOUT having a Masters Degree or even finishing college!
I know, I was extra lucky to not have to try to pay back student loans on gamestop wages! Kelly must have had a crush on me to lower the hiring standards that much.
You should be grateful to them, because now you have material for eleventy billion new comedy bits.
The saddest thing about me reading this account was thinking, “Those people could be members of my own fucking family.” Yes, my extended family is THAT trashy. How I got to be so sophisticated and elegant is a total mystery. 😉
Please get me invited to their weddings, thanks. 😀
If I ever decide to go to any future ones, I’ll take you as my +1, promise! Although I’ve avoided the last few, since they were back in Minnesota, and Pete knows I really hate that place, so I don’t go unless it’s absolutely necessary, which it hasn’t been since, oh, ’97.
The dollar dance thing is pretty prevalent in Minnesota; I refused to have one during my wedding reception. Luckily nobody argued with me and I didn’t even have to go Bridezilla! 😉 They either do that, or they do a “money tree” on a table at the reception, which is a branch of some sort with clippies on the twigs and people put money in the clips. Tack-EEEEE!
I’m hoping for something more within driving distance so I can bring my flask. They confiscate them on planes. 🙁
Ya dope, you fill the flask AFTER you deplane! Or you put it in your carry-on and then fill it on the sly with a couple of shots from the airport bar. You young ones, you’re just not slick like us more experienced lushes.
oh my god.
Oh My God.
Oh My Fucking God.
I’m not sure whether to laugh.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Nevermind
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH
*adds to memories*
*reads for the third time
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I know, I’m almost afraid that I might not ever see anything funnier than this and that it’s not worth living anymore.
I’m sure that somewhere down their family line, another little boy or girl will get married and there will be another Ultimate White Trash Wedding: Part II!! And when it happens, u have to write about it! XD
Even though Nicki set the bride up with the groom, for some reason, the bride still remains her friend
heh.
there is girls’ wrestling in high school? i wonder if that is the same ciara i once knew? [germantown-ish]
i went to a wedding with a dollar dance once and i was so disgusted that when someone i know is getting married, i make sure they won’t do that shit if they want me to attend.
WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST REMOVE THE PANTYHOSE? WHY MAKE THEM CUT THE CROTCH OUT!!!?????
Maybe! I don’t know Ciara personally so I couldn’t say whereabouts she lived.
The dollar dance bothers me SO MUCH. It’s tacky and conveys a message that the gifts the guests brought weren’t enough. Ugh.
I haven’t really read the post yet (I was looking at the pictures first), but I spotted the names of the wedding party…and I went to junior high and high school with the best man…I didn’t realize this wedding involved anyone I knew!…
okay, now I’m gonna read the story…
It’s a small Kenosha after all. :\
i can really see the bulldyke thing. photo #2 says dungarees and comfortable shoes to me.
and that hair is something else.
I think at the time he had longer hair, so the illusion was even more perfect!
Now I really want to see what the groomsmen looked like…
Ye gods.
My enormous camera didn’t fit in my tiny ‘going to a wedding’ purse so I didn’t bring it. These are the only pictures I’ve managed to scrounge from Facebook and elsewhere.
Badass.
The grandmas vomiting were what really made it punk-rock.
Yeah, you know, it’s funny – I remember distinctly being 16 and planning to leave for college and being so incredibly glad I dodged the bullet of marrying any of the guys I went to high school with.
Because they would be this guy.
Also, maybe dollar dances are regional? I think I’ve had cousins who’ve had them. My brother didn’t, though – my sister-in-law doesn’t like them. I don’t know if my brother would have cared one way or another.
Also also, that hair.
A lot of the guys I hung out with in high school were actually in the wedding party or invited to the wedding so I got the benefits of the high school reunion/oh-god-I-dodged-a-bullet-with-ALL-of-them without actually having to attend a high school reunion. Some of these guys, I’m friends with on Facebook and we message back and forth, but in person, they couldn’t manage to get more than a sentence out to me. Seriously? Nearly a decade later and still too socially retarded to talk to girls? WOW.
oh sweet jesus wept. how awful. Who the eff did his hair?? It’s neon yellow. Like some sort of highlighter wizzed on his head.
I’m pretty sure he did his own hair–very few salons would set you out on the street looking like that on purpose.
I just noticed the plastic Miller Lite pitcher fulla beer on the head table. Even more class!
Even MORE class
The table decorations were hershey’s kisses, which ultimately ended up being flung at other guests instead of being eaten.
It captures it so well. I really wish we would have had pictures of our 32oz Long Islands to truly capture how much booze was needed to enter the Hall of Pity.
God, he’s such a cretin. Reading this makes my skin crawl. I don’t know how I ever put up with him, let alone slept with him… OH YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, HE BLEW ME OFF WHEN I WANTED SEX SO THAT HE COULD PLAY MAGIC: THE GATHERING WITH HIS FUCKING NERD FRIENDS. HOW COULD I FORGET.
My cheeks were pretty rosy in that cupcake picture, it partially conveys how
high-spiritedhigh the level of spirits I ingested was.DUDE, NO. My fucking bragworp is worth like 8,000 points. I’ve already conquered your dungeonous vagina.
You dated this guy. Buahahaha.
Yes, but I believe a case can be made that I learn from my mistakes.
Dammit, I thought I had a chance. 🙁
haha so you’re saying you’re like this guy?!
Nah, I was just hoping you didn’t have standards. XD
Oh my god, I can’t stop laughing. Good thing neither of my coworkers are here or they’d be giving me the stink eye for laughing so uproarously (and seemingly at random)! 😀
Thank you for sharing this tale of horror!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, it makes the suffering worthwhile. 🙂
This couldn’t be more magical if it had been vomitted out by a pegasus.
I have it on good authority that they vomit out rainbows and tragically awesome weddings.
I love this story, thanks for linking it AND for living through it.
It’s one of my favorite stories of all time to tell. 😀
I can’t get over the hair. Or the bride peeing herself. I bet I was even more wasted than she was at my own wedding and I didn’t pee myself (of course I was wearing a pure silk Vera Wang dress so that could have a lot to do with it)
Yeah, maybe she was taking some subconscious anger out on the dress through vengeful peeing.
Srsly, I bet she did. My dress was a gift from my bff, she bought it for her wedding years ago and then kept it after they called off their engagement (due to him being into meth and boys). It was the perfect dress for me anyway and I was relieved to not have to go shopping for one so I was super grateful. All I had to do was get it altered and pressed. So easy. No way would I have bought an actual Vera Wang, we kept our budget at 10k and even that was a lot to spend on ONE DAY!
Damn.
We don’t know each other well (yet) but I have a few comments here that may or may not be related to the above post (well, all tangentially, at least in my mind).
I saw a skeezy show on cable last night called “Strange Sex” where a woman with a doctorate in psychology referred to herself as “an attention whore since birth” (and various other un-doctorly things). Seems reasonable that perhaps she and the groom went to the same school?
Why would you cut out the crotch? There’s piss everywhere, right? Eh, I gave up panty hose in junior high so maybe I’ve missed out on some new technology.
And, here’s the tangent, for some odd reason I think you might find this as fascinating as I do. Not for the snark factor, per se, but just as a little bit of a reality check 🙂 Who knew there was somebody on the internet totem pole below furries?
See, I can’t imagine that the pee wouldn’t immediately soak the whole of the pantyhose, either. But taking them off made too much sense? I guess?
I think that Na’vi community will give me shameful joy for the rest of the afternoon.
Isn’t it mind boggling? That mod is fascinating to observe…
mmmmmm wisconsin fun. wood paneling and all. just needs some deer heads on the wall. the program is most amazing and i am sure south park granted copyright to their art for such a great event. but overall i know people just like him. all special. i am glad his masters has him at the gamestop. he will do well there. this entry is just such a jem. i do hope they had schlitz ice on tap.
wow. Thanks for sharing that with me. It changed my life. And I can’t get the imagined smell of urine soaked sweaty panthose crotch out of my nose.