Work Text:
*Names will not be used to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent*
This one is going to be a long one, but once I give the details you’ll understand why.
Over 10 years ago, I was invited to a friend’s wedding set to be performed during the hottest month of the year (remember this). A lot of Groom 1’s friends (including myself) were, at first, surprised by this on account that he had only been dating someone for about 6 months. From this point on I need you to imagine Groom 1 as a seemingly meek owner of a flower shop whose wardrobe consists of white turtleneck sweaters and baggy pants and Groom 2 as a wattpad cover: 6’ 3”, heavily tattooed, and chooses to wear an eyepatch rather than a glass eye “for the aesthetic.”
The day of the wedding comes and the first thing I see outside the venue is a group of women wearing platform heels and club dresses and cardigan sweaters congratulating the happy couple and whispering things in Groom 1’s ears that make his face turn red. Come to find out that they work at one of Groom 2’s businesses (a strip club/ breakfast buffet), and one of the women was the wife of one of the 2 best men (old friends of Groom 1) who had gotten a shotgun wedding after one night stand pregnancy, and it was obvious that they were only staying for the baby, since they only spoke a few polite sentences with each other.
Once the party entered the building and the wedding was about to start everyone noticed something a little “off “. Apparently the happy couple, in an attempt to allocate funds from the wedding to an extra long honeymoon, used a groupon to book the building for the wedding, and the owner of said venue, hoping to squeeze a few extra pennies, decided to turn off the air conditioning for the duration of their booking. This angered everyone. The best men, in an attempt to keep everyone’s sanity opened every window in the room where the actual ceremony would occur, and everyone either stripping their layers or using anything vaguely paper shaped to fan the air. One woman even had a giant silk fan with her that she used to alternate between her and the 2nd best man’s infant, to the parents gratitude (purposefully ignoring how the fanned guest was also the sister of the venue owner).
The ceremony itself was pretty sweet, with both of them obviously not wanting to wait a second longer to get married, with Groom 1 beaming as Groom 2 entered at the other side of the room, causing 2 to speed-walk to the altar. When it came time for the vows Groom two said he didn’t “want my beloved to catch heat stroke, so I’ll have to cut down from my original 20 pages” earning a chuckle from the audience (although from the looks of relief from the best men he probably wasn’t kidding) and the exchange from the preacher to Groom 1 reading “Do you take-“ “YES” it seemed to go well.
Once it came time for the objections, oh, boy, there was a loud scream and curse words from multiple languages about how these two should not be married. I turned around and saw what can only be described as a gremlin in thrift-store-reject garb, who turned out was the cousin of Groom 1, who objected because he “thought it would be funny.” The cousin wasn’t invited to the wedding, in fact no one even told him about the wedding, so how he even got there remains a mystery to this day. There was a 30 second pause, as no one knew what happened when someone actually objected to the wedding, before Groom 1, ice cold smile on his face, said, “[Cousin’s name] would you please do me a favor and get the fuck out of here,” causing the intruder to instantly turn around and exit before the officiator happily declared them husbands.
Thankfully the reception was held in a place with air conditioning and everyone happily migrated there for food, song, and dance. The DJ apparently owed groom 2 an enormous amount of money so they were playing music for free, something they clearly resented because they played a lot of Pitbull songs throughout the reception. As in, nearly every song was by Pitbull. One of the few exceptions was the slow dance between the husbands because, to quote Groom 2, “If you make me slow dance to ‘hotel motel’ at my own wedding, I will fucking kill you.” The songs became more varied when they hooked up the playlist on their phone to play while they left with fan-guest to sniff cocaine in the corner of the room (apparently fan-guest had cocaine in her purse since before the ceremony.)
Once the cake was cut and everyone got food and drinks(buffet style) everything seemed to set into a rhythmic calm: the guests were queuing up songs, the couple was feeding each other cake, the strippers were teaching a young girl and a guest’s nephew the striptease dance from little miss sunshine. Just when I thought things were great SUDDENLY the music stopped, and then another wedding crasher (appearing to be in his 40s or early 50s) appears on stage, blasting Billy Ray Cyrus’s “It Could Have Been Me” saying that no one understood Groom 1 like he did, saying he “will forgive you for leaving me,” and was making a massive mistake in marrying Groom 2, all the while the DJ, still coked out of his mind, runs up to the stage to turn off the music, tripping over and knocking down expensive equipment on the way. The wedding crasher goes up to groom 1, and gets down on one knee and offers to run away with him.
Cue *both* grooms losing their shit screaming at him, and best man 1 punching him in the face (he didn’t want the couple to spend their honeymoon in jail) and escalating into a brawl with 10 of the drunkest guests, and one non-drunk guest throwing a chair into the crowd. Cops were called. I left before they got there, heading to the parking lot just in time to see Groom 1 giving Groom 2 a lapdance in the backseat of their car.
The next day over a dozen guests got food poisoning because Groom 1 personally made one of the dishes.
Edit: Fan guest genuinely had no idea their brother was going to turn off the AC, we were all hot, cranky assholes, and the optics just didn’t align in her favor at the time.
Edit: the reason the girls were there congratulating them and attending the wedding was because Groom 2 is apparently a great boss (health care and 401k's are rare in the sex work industry), and Groom 1 pulled the "While you're here..." card
Edit: Best man 2 and his wife divorced shortly afterwards because she thought he was having an affair with Best man 1 (he wasn’t, but their bickering being easily mistaken for sexual tension is practically a group joke) but, the former couple are much happier with the other’s company now.
Edit: The wedding crasher wasn’t an ex-boyfriend, he actually was a former boss of Groom 1 while the latter was an intern. Wedding crasher fired Groom 1 so they could enter a relationship together, expecting him to be grateful he could date him now. (He wasn’t)
Edit: The grooms are still happily married after 10 years and treat their wedding as an amusing party story, they’re pretty much the poster child for the phrase “For Better or Worse”