My Wedding: The Morning Of

[This post is part 2 of a multi-part series about my wedding. You can read about the rehearsal here, the wedding itself here, and the honeymoon here.]

The above tweet was sent at 6:00 AM on the morning of my wedding. I was actually still asleep when it was sent, as I used a program/website called HootSuite to schedule it to post ahead of time. In reality, I woke up at around 6:45 AM in a hotel room with my best friend/best man, brother/groomsman, and friend/gatekeeper. I was the first to awake, as evidenced by the loud snoring of the gatekeeper that sounded more like it was being produced by an industrial machine rather than a living human, (earlier in the night I'd also heard him speak some gibberish in his sleep).

Too excited to stay put, but too considerate to wake up the others, I snuck out of the room. I glanced at the doors of my wife-to-be's room and that of my in-laws (the governor's suite and base of operations for the weekend) to see that neither was wedged open. Realizing that it was almost time for the continental breakfast, and thinking it might be romantic to bring a treat or two to my love, I wandered down the quiet and mostly empty halls of the hotel toward where I recalled the breakfast being served from a previous stay.

Though it was about five minutes before I expected it to be served, there was no evidence of a breakfast or preparation for one. I later found out that they did not serve their continental breakfast on weekends, but in the meantime I headed back to the rooms, hoping to find someone else awake.

My father-in-law-to-be was in the hallway leaning against a window. He told me that my bride had called him and that she was going to be out of her room any minute now to join him for the continental breakfast.

Joined by a few others, we realized that the continental breakfast wasn't going to happen, and instead made our way to the hotel restaurant to see if we could pick up some coffee and breakfast treats to take back to the room. Instead, all of us ended up eating a sort of pre-breakfast, fully intending to arrive later with more people for the actual breakfast (and eat some kringle we'd brought in the meantime as well).

After everyone else woke up, we had our real, full breakfast, then talked about going to check out the hotel's water park. Unfortunately there was some miscommunication which prevented me from joining the others at the waterpark in time. Admittedly, I got so annoyed that I made a small scene when I finally got to the water park just a few minutes before everyone else decided it was about time to leave, but I lightened up and was able to go down a water slide and enjoy the hot tub.

Next, it was time to get ready. At least for the ladies. Us guys had to vacate our room and find something to do until it was time for us to get ready, since it would be much, much quicker for us to do so.

The hotel provided a complimentary hospitality suite intended to let the bridal party prepare, but since they'd taken over the governor's suite, we decided ahead of time that us guys would use it, until it turned out to be a pathetically worthless room.

Luckily my groomsmen had already picked up the keys to their room for that night, so after using the shower in the complimentary room, we ditched it and instead put our tuxedos in their hotel room. We then discussed what to do with all of our spare time.

Logically, we decided to check out the arcade.

It was fun at first, but the arcade was small and mostly filled with coin-guzzling games that we were too smart to fall for (and probably too mature to play). We grew tired of it pretty quickly (and got two child-sized tiara's for the bridal party with our tickets) and intended to go to the bar for a drink, snack, and good times, but were persuaded to go back to the arcade when we discovered that one of the matrons-of-honor had been holding out on us; she had two coupons for a bunch of free coins for the arcade.

This is where I feel we failed, especially compared to the girls. We made our way back to the arcade, which we were already bored with, simply because we'd run into a bunch of free coins. From the moment we stepped back inside I should have turned back around, since I felt overwhelmed with boredom from the start, but my need to take advantage of what I perceived to be a good deal overwhelmed my better senses, and no one else spoke up. We tried to find fun, and while some was had, it was mostly futile. We ended up trying to figure out which machines would likely give us the most tickets, got them as quickly as possible, then checked out what we could get with them. When our best prize turned out to be a miniature football (about the size of a normal golf ball), we instead decided to give our tickets to the nearest child in the area (with permission from his parents). We then made our way to the room to get dressed.

The girls, on the other hand, had the entire governor's suite to themselves complete with music, snacks, and drinks. From the photos that I've seen, I suspect that they had more laughs and good times than us guys did. We should have went to the bar, or anywhere else but the arcade.

Overall, the morning of the wedding was a bit disappointing for me (considering how upset I got about the miscommunication as well as the poor decision-making on my part). I recall feeling this way in the moment, but not being smart enough to do anything about it, and I still feel this way now.

Luckily, the morning of the wedding was the only part of that day that was sub-par. I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that it's the only part of the day that I wish had gone differently. We even realized the error in not having anything to eat since breakfast, and feebly ate some cold leftover french fries from the night before. I'm sure that will be an interesting story for later, but again, it's kind of a pathetic way of spending my last hours before my wedding.

Luckily, I was mere moments away from the best day of my life.
-Ryan