A couple of months ago, when David and I went to Los Angeles for his best friend Todd’s wedding, we were a little worried.
Or maybe “worried” is too strong of a word. “Concerned” is probably more accurate. Because for the two weeks leading up to the wedding, Todd was super-stressed out.
I’m not talking about pre-wedding jitters. That’s to be expected.
I’m talking about some full-on, full-out stress. Stress that was causing our mild-mannered, utterly kind, godfather-to-our-child friend Todd to use adjectives that were far more colorful and forceful than usual.
David kept trying to put his finger on what was going on, but ultimately we just decided that maybe the pre-wedding stuff was weighing a little heavier on Todd than it does most people. After all, he has been known to obsess over minutiae a time or sixty in the eighteen years that we’ve known him, and the details surrounding a wedding can make even the most laid-back person slap-dab crazy.
But still. We were concerned.
So we got to LA, and everything seemed fine except for the fact that Todd kept apologizing that he wasn’t getting to spend time with us. David assured him that while a wedding is good for many things, hammering out some quality time with your nearest and dearest is not one of them, and then Todd apologized and twitched some more.
We could not, for the life of us, figure out what was going on.
The day of the wedding we drove up to Palos Verdes, which has to be one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever visited. The scenery is so staggering that if you were to accidentally drive off the road and plunge straight into the Pacific Ocean, you might not even care because OH MY WORD AT LEAST YOU GOT TO SEE SO MUCH PRETTY.
The ceremony was at Wayfarers Chapel, a place that will absolutely take your breath away. After we arrived there, as we were walking up to the chapel, we noticed that there were a lot of cameras and microphones and clipboards with forms, but we just figured that wedding videographers out there are a little fayn-ci-er than what we’re used to here in the South. And based on our assumption, we bypassed all the people wearing headphones and walked inside.
The ceremony was absolutely lovely. Picture-perfect, in fact. And if I could, I would write an ode to Marti’s dress and then I would set the ode to music and sing it for you.
But, you know, I can’t.
I do apologize.
After the wedding we drove back to Redondo Beach for the reception (sidenote: on our way there, we passed a store that had a sign out front that said ALL SHOES: $20, and it took everything in me to stay firmly planted in my seat, because I totally wanted to pull a Bo Duke and roll down my window and hoist myself out of our moving vehicle so that I could check out ALL SHOES: $20. But I stayed in the car. It was a nuptial miracle). We finally found the reception site, where we were surprised to be greeted by even more people wearing headphones and holding forms.
Clearly something was afoot.
Then, when Marti showed up at the reception wearing a different dress than the aforementioned hypothetically-ode-inspiring dress that she wore in the wedding, I was Officially Suspicious.
Oh, I’m a quick one. Only took me THREE WHOLE HOURS to suspect anything at all.
As it turns out, Todd and Marti’s wedding was being filmed for a reality show on TLC called Rock the Reception (check out the video after the click), a show where three couples surprise their wedding guests by performing choreographed dance routines. And I’ve wanted to tell y’all all about it a thousand times, but I felt like I should watch the show before I posted about it in the event that some unfortunate editing caused me to be humiliated on national television.
Because on the way into the reception, as I was signing the release form for I-knew-not-what, I looked straight into the eyes of the assistant producer and said something along the lines of, “Gosh, we don’t have to sign forms like this at weddings in Alabama.”
And she said, “Really?”
And I said, “NAW.”
I SAID “NAW,” y’all.
ON CAMERA.
And y’all know that if they HAD used that bit of footage on the show (which they didn’t, thank the Lord), they would’ve turned it into some repetitive loop of me saying, “We don’t have to sign forms like this in ALA-BAMMER, NAW!” while the banjos from “Deliverance” played in the background.
And they would have used CGI to make it look like I was picking my teeth with hay.
But fortunately my fears were unfounded. The show actually perfectly captured the low-key sweetness that is the very essence of Todd and the high-energy enthusiasm that is the very essence of Marti. They are so fun to watch.
And, I would add, even better to know in person.
So now, thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, you can see Todd and Marti’s dance right here. You may want to watch it before you share it with your kids, not because there’s anything distasteful, mind you, but because it is a playful little dance number between married folks who are fully entitled to be playful with each other, oh thank you Lord and amen.
So all of Todd’s excessive pre-wedding jitters? They were the result of having to learn and practice a choreographed dance routine – and, besides that, NOT TELL A SOUL about it – in the midst of all the last-minute wedding stuff.
The stress, it is understandable.
And I have to say that besides seeing seeing Marti and Todd perform, do you know what my favorite part of their whole reality television experience was? It was reading a review for Rock the Reception in Entertainment Weekly. Because the critic referred to Todd as “an introvert with two left feet.”
And then I wanted to email the reviewer and say, “BUT SIR, HE ROCKED THOSE TWO LEFT FEET WITH EVERYTHING HE HAD.”
That’s our boy, internets.
That’s our boy.
With the girl of his dreams.
And we are ever-so-proud.
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