Wedding Blog, Pt. I - Dunes are different from the beach

Congrats to Derica and Patrick, looking lovely on the most important St. Patrick's Day of their lives.

In my ongoing quest to turn this blog into a series of telenovelas, I now present the first part in my four-part series on weddings and why anyone would invite me to them. Within this ongoing series, I will unfairly and unjustly compare everyone's wedding to my wedding. I know, it's not a fair fight because I had the best wedding, ever (everyone should be so biased). Also, as the convention of this blog, I will attest to the mature nature of this very important ceremony simultaneously with the immature hypothesis that we don't need all this pomp and circumstance to be with the ones we love. The adult in me loves the stability, while the kid in me just wants to eat wedding cake.

First up, the lovely daytime nuptials of Derica Shipley (not related to the footballer Shipley family) and Patrick Griffin (not related to the Griffin's from TV's "Family Guy"...because he is not animated).

Last Thursday was a very good day to get married on the coast. Yeah, you read it correctly...last Thursday, as in St. Patrick's Day...as in the first REAL day of The Tournament. Yeah, that last Thursday. Speaking of the kid in me, the spoiled brat in me was throwing a hissy fit. A personal lesson to me would be that love does not care what your schedule looks like or what holiday it collides into. Of course, this is the second time I have been scolded with this harsh reality. My younger brother was married on New Year's Eve. Of course, he got his feelings hurt when I left a shade before midnight. So, St. Patty's Day should not have set me crooked, right? Right?

See, this is what I expect on St. Patty's...and that's it! Say hi to Amber...

God bless this lovely couple, but if you were told only these four things about a wedding:
March 17th
5 PM
Corpus Christi, TX
Padre Balli Park
...what would come to mind?

In my simple, panicked mind, I am thinking, "okay, a beach wedding during spring break on one of the drunkest days of the year." What could go wrong?

My doomsday scenario was nowhere close to being realized. Balli Park is probably the best possible location to avoid drunken beach sunburned zombies as the pavilions ask for the cash deposit before anyone shows up near those buildings. All of my fears were quelled. Even the weather cooperated with my sports jacket and heavy slacks as the sea breeze was comfortable and somewhat calming.

As the wedding ceremony goes, I also expected a very heavy catholic tilt even with the neutral ceremony site in between the dunes separating the tides with Park Road 22. No dice, with the unknown association to clergy from the officiator of the wedding, the ceremony lasted, maybe, 15 minutes with very few religious overtones. The wedding procession of seven groomsmen, seven bridesmaids, the proud parents, a ring bearer and bagpipes(!!!), the walking portion of the wedding nearly eclipsed the ceremony running time (Lessons Learned sidebar: I need to have a stop watch to measure how long these ceremonies last if I am going to blog about it).

"It's easy to grin, when your ship has come in, and you've got the stock market beat..."

With all timing and sequencing analysis aside, there is one constant that remains...everyone looked beautiful. The bride was beautiful, the groom looked slick with the all-black. The green of the bridesmaids' dresses offset the groomsmen's highlighted accessories brilliantly. The sun-kissed blue sky was the ultimate backdrop as the rows of waves behind us came with five rows at three feet. The only natural element that was a bit of a bear was the cloudless glare of the sun...but that was the witnesses' problem that a pair of sunglasses could easily solve.

To the happy couple, thank you for the invite. I apologize for the mumbling as this was not what I expected. I appreciate being surprised in a good way. No disrespect, but my wedding was cooler. Literally, we had central air when we were inside. Good luck to the both of you.

Wedding Blog series disclaimer - I am going to be a jerk about your wedding because my wedding was the best. See paragraph one.

Lessons Learned, my three things.
1) If Corpus could pull off nights like last Thursday, they would have to worry about their image because the tourists would just be pouring in enjoying themselves. Quit over-thinking and just be a city by a sea.
2) If Austin was the size of Dallas, locals would probably not bitch all the time about visitors invading their city. It's SXSW. What the hell did you guys expect (see: ComiCon)? Blessing and a curse...
3) If Dallas wanted to be more like Austin, they should have asked this guy to come north. Ah, the North Texas identity crisis continues post-80's TV show. Wait, what?

Unlike the Costa Rica series, the "goin' to the chapel" series will be a bit more spread out. We double-down in June as April and May are sans ceremonies. July through September are also quiet for reporting as we finish up the ego-trip in October for the event of the season. Then and there, we will see how these bums stumble out of the blocks on day one. If trash-talking weddings are wrong, then I don't want to be right. Talk later.