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| Saturday, July 5, 2003 Went to Phyllis’ and Phil’s wedding yesterday at Café Brauer next to the Lincoln Park Zoo. The wedding was nice. Anna was the matron of honor. Julie was a bridesmade. Rob was the best man while Anson and John Kim were the other groomsmen. Gerald was the emcee for the reception time. He did a great job and was hilarious at trying to “auction” the singles off. For John's intro as a groomsman, Gerald let all the single ladies know that John’s single and a doctor; anyone interested should talk to him to get John’s number. He did the same for engineer Rob. Too funny. Rob’s speech at the reception was very touching. I got to the wedding about an hour early and we chatted a bit. He was nervous about his toast and joked that he hadn’t finished preparing for it which ended up being half true. He had just finished writing it that afternoon. He had some good jokes and he broke down when he got to Phyllis. That was really sweet and Gerald played on it immediately by repeating that Rob was single and available. After the obligatory slow songs, the deejay began playing some pop music. I wasn’t paying attention until Cuevas popped by our table and told me that I wanted to dance. Lucky for him I did so we grabbed some more people from other tables and got out to the dance floor. There were a few Latinas on the floor already and Chris was all set with dance partners. John Choi was hilarious and the camera guy was snapping him up. Harold asked me if he should ask Phyllis’ very Korean grandmother to dance and I said, “yes!” He got shot down but it was funny watching her facial expressions change. I noticed that Rich wasn’t out on the floor so I tried to hunt him down but he ran away from me. Later, I spotted him sitting close to the dance floor so I mentioned to Victor that Rich should be picked up and carried to the floor since it’s his last free night in Chicago. Victor agreed and literally plopped Rich onto the dance floor. Did I mention that Victor's probably thrice Rich's size? Truly a Kodak moment! Of course, I ran off when they announced the bouquet toss. Cynthia was right in front of me. We sat down only to be harassed by Rob and Daniel to get out there. I think the photographer tried to rat us out but Phyllis let us go. Someone from Phil’s co-workers’ table caught the bouquet so it wasn’t too exciting from my perspective. The garter toss however was hilarious because it was totally rigged. There was Rob... and the rest of the guys were a good two feet behind him! We set off the building's fire alarm with sparklers. Instead of bubbles, we had sparklers to play with. Very fitting for a Fourth of July wedding. We were waiting about half an hour because their departure time kept getting changed. So when John ran down and told us that the couple were right after him, we all frantically lit our sparklers and waited... and waited. They fizzled out so we frantically lit another round and luckily they showed up for the second round. There were probably a hundred of them going off and the doors to the building were open. They rode off in the horse-drawn carriage amidst good-byes and smiles. When we turned around to go back into the building, there was this big, angry man telling us to close the doors because the fire alarm had gone off. Ooops! The night ended quietly. Cynthia and I wanted to take Rich out but he finally decided not to because he needed to finalize his packing. Too bad. I got a betta out of this. I rescued one from one of the centerpieces. They were very beautiful arragements - a large vase with submerged roses, glass beads, a siamese fighting fish and a floating candle. Not humane but pretty. I think the betta is happy in my tank now. I should’ve quarantined it just in case it’s diseased but I don’t have one yet. I guess the current one will become the quarantine tank whenever I decide to “upgrade”. |