Did you do your best today?
So, I got married. I wasn't planning on writing much about that here but then Marisa mentioned writing herself so she could have that recorded somewhere, and that really is a lot of the reason I keep this LJ, so I can go back and look up what I was doing at different times, so I feel like there should be something where my wedding happened.
Wait. First. Before my wedding happened, I saw a bunch of movies, like way too many movies for someone about to get married. I saw The American (review! in my column) with Marisa and Katie and Nathaniel. Then I saw The Virginity Hit (review!) right after that. Then I saw The Romantics (review!) with Marisa and Allison. Those last two -- The Romantics and The Virginity Hit, not Marisa and Allison -- open this weekend, along with Resident Evil: Afterlife. Not having seen Resident Evil: Afterlife, I would nonetheless recommend that you go see Resident Evil: Afterlife.
So: married! Everything went fine. It was so much fun. I recommend it, if you can find someone like Marisa to marry. Maybe even if all you can find is a Best Man like Rob, go ahead and get married to someone anyway, because it would be a terrible waste of a Best Man. Rob is really good at this stuff, including but not limited to: driving me to the wedding; driving other people to the wedding; setting up audio equipment; playlisting; making announcements; running and getting stuff from the parking lot; writing toasts; delivering toasts; being hilarious; dancing to the songs I want to dance to; punch-dancing in general.
That sounds maybe more like a love letter to Rob than a love letter to Marisa, but I think I covered the love letter to Marisa with all of those pictures of her and anyway, I hope the vows and stuff, as well as the actual marrying, speak to how much she means to me. Maybe that's not the case as often as it should be but it is the case here. But back to that Rob thing, or something related.
Earlier that week, I had lunch with Katie (the other Katie, the one from Saratoga) (so many Katies), and she mentioned being at a wedding and talking to a bride who exclaimed (and I don't use dialogue tags lightly): "Everyone I love is here!" That sounds maybe a little trite, but it is also the perfect way to describe that feeling (as long as you exclaim it). It's not even literally true; there are people I adore who could not make it to the wedding (and understandably; not least because I knew of at least four other unrelated weddings happening on the same day!). But still: something like eighty, ninety perecent of who I love was in the same place at the same time. Let's think about this. This will probably not happen again. It's kind of mind-blowing. It's like when twenty people go see Star Trek and I'm giddy but also overwhelmed, and regret only having to chance to talk to a quarter of them in any detail. Except times four or five. I am grateful to have this problem for one day in my life and I know I speak for Marisa and myself when I say that it made us ridiculously happy that we had so many friends and family members there, "sharing our day" or whatever. That is another thing that might sound trite but is inescapably, unavoidably true. This really meant the world to us.
Contrary to some conventional wedding wisdom, it didn't all pass in a blur. I remember a lot of it quite clearly. I remember Corinne and Rob both giving wonderful toasts, and Rayme and Amanda and my brother and sister and Jeff and Chris getting in line to walk with us, and Bayard and Andrew doing such nice jobs reading. I remember lots of stuff before and after the ceremony, and at the hotel afterwards, and at El Dorado West the next morning. But it did go too fast in the sense that I could've talked for an hour to everyone there.
A handy guide to the last few hours of the evening comes in the form of the playlist Rob and I and Marisa put together the day before. Having manned the laptop at Styne's wedding and helped out with that stuff at Rob's, I've observed several experiments in not just playing the same thirty wedding songs everyone uses, what goes over, what doesn't, and how much that should matter. Many debates about the danceability of awesome songs ensued. We were also factoring in requests, as well as my neurotic striving that the people who made requests would be in a position to hear them when (if) we played them (in other words, Maggie, I don't know if you were in the right place when "Hotel Yorba" got played, but I'm pretty sure we played it! Or at least we tried to), and of course our unofficial "do not play" list of wedding songs that one to three of us hate. I didn't take a photo this time, but people seem interested when I did, so I'm going to go ahead and walk through the entire master post-dinner playlist.
"Museum of Idiots" by They Might Be Giants
Our first dance. Marisa put this song on a mixtape for me before it made it to an actual TMBG album. It's become one of my favorites of theirs. Also, we scotched "The Luckiest" for good when we heard it playing over our doppelgangers' website and realized it's a bit too much of a thing (although I do like that song a lot).
"I Want You Back" by Jackson 5
This was Marisa's call as a song that would get people to dance immediately, and it worked extremely well. I especially like how it brought up (a.) everyone and (b.) Jason! Everyone loves this song! Wedding staples don't have to be terrible!
"Drive My Car" by The Beatles
This is not really my favorite Beatles song, or even my favorite up-tempo mid-period McCartney-led Beatles song, but Marisa's dad requested it specifically and we're never going to deny a Beatles request (Derrick's request of "Here, There, and Everywhere" did get played during dinner or cocktails, I think), and everyone knows it so this turned out to be preetty awesome.
"Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett
This was a request from Marisa's mom, and frankly I was a little surprised by how well it went over, only because I never think of this song in my everyday life.
"I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James and the Shondells
"We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters
This was the wedding song for Uncle Alan and Aunt Barbara, and we actually got married on their anniversary, so their kids requested it and we were happy to oblige. I actually don't hate the Carpenters. I also have fond memories of the time Rob was DJing a work party of his, busted out this song, and the dance floor cleared immediately (I kind of love when songs can clear a dancefloor; see also Kasia playing "Dejalo" at her wedding).
"Crazy in Love" by Beyonce
Obviously. Marisa was pretty opposed to playing "Single Ladies" and I have to say, as much as I love that song, this one is more of a classic and just superior all around.
"Hey Ya!" by Outkast
Double obviously. I think I'll still be happy to hear this song at weddings in 2040, that is to say that it's just inherently better than, say, "Brick House."
"We Can Get Together" by the Hold Steady
Yeah, I danced with my mom to this song. Hipster wedding like yeah?
"Like a Prayer" by Madonna
Ethan noted that this song would immediately bring Andrew to the dance floor. He was correct. This is probably the best Madonna song, right?
"It's the Same Old Song" by the Four Tops
"Life is Hard" by Bob Dylan
This is a song from the recent Together Through Life record and I had been thinking for awhile that it would be a nice slow-dance song. As it happens, I don't think I actually slow-danced to it (possibly this was when cupcakes came out). However, I'm pretty sure Tom and Maggie did! Which made me happy.
"Tea for Two" by Tito Puente
A cha-cha for Pop-op! Also a nice break.
"Just Like Heaven" by The Cure
"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" by the Black Kids
Real Cure followed by Fake Cure! Real Cure got a much bigger reaction as it bridges generations more efficiently than Fake Cure, but whatever, that Black Kids song is ridiculous fun to dance to.
"Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand
Lesson learned from Rob's wedding: THIS SONG IS AWESOME. And not just because it gets Derrick to do scissor kicks. Seriously, people, play this song at your weddings.
"Sequestered in Memphis" by the Hold Steady
Not as huge a reaction, but our Hold Steady bona fides stuck it out for this. I was back and forth between this and "Stuck Between Stations" and "Chips Ahoy!" for the best Hold Steady song for fast dancing. That question may not hvae an answer. Ben and Lorraina weighed in via email: "People don't dance to Hold Steady. (Lorraina says people dance to 'Little Hoodrat Friend.')"
"Dance Magic" by David Bowie
I believe this was Allison's suggestion, and yeah, wow, excellent call, Ali. This really hit our demo pretty much between the eyes. Even if the electric slide somehow broke out at the end (I knew I should've cut another thirty seconds).
"The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News
This went over pretty huge, too, but I also feel satisfied with my decision to use iTunes to cut it down to two minutes.
"Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello
"July, July!" by the Decemberists
This was not so much a crowd-pleaser as a Marisa-pleaser, as this is something she dances around the office to pretty regularly. But I know Bayard and Alex and Cristin all repped for it anyway.
"Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys
Derrick refers to this as a song he heard at every party he went to freshman year of college back in 1998. As Rob pointed out, it just seemed wrong not to include the Beastie Boys.
"Ignition (Remix)" by R. Kelly
Apparently this is a class of 2003 thing not unlike the freshman year 1998 thing. That's fine, gave me time to go debate Simpsons episodes with Jon and Rob and Derrick.
"Pull Shapes" by the Pipettes
I am such a huge fan of this song but I needed to take a break and didn't really dance to it. But other people did so that was pretty satisfying.
"A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend
"Slow Hands" by Interpol
I'm not gonna lie; I thought this was an awesome idea. It more or less cleared the floor. HOWEVER: I emailed Kate beforehand, knowing that she likes Interpol more than most people, and told her, look, I just added "Slow Hands" to our playlist so you better dance with me on this. So I had Kate, and I got Derrick up there. And we were, I'm pretty sure, the only three people dancing to this song. But it was kind of awesome. This song rules.
"You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!
Craig's request was really the only excuse I needed to work this in. In fact, I was dying for an excuse to play it, so thank you, Craig. I struggled with how to deal with the intro, because it's too long to play straight through but too awesome to cut entirely. It turns out that the last bit of the intro fits really well with the clamor of the end of "Slow Hands." This tired some people out.
"Disco 2000" by Pulp
"Strangers" by the Kinks
"The City" by the Dismemberment Plan
If it weren't for "Slow Hands" and also Michelle and Sara C and my sister coming back for this song, this would've been probably the least popular cut of the night, but I don't care, I love this song and it's awesome to dance to.
"I'm Looking Through You" by The Beatles
"The Blues Are Still Blue" by Belle and Sebastian
We started winding down around here. Then Rob and I fucked up the prep for the last song and wound up cutting this one off. Sorry, Belle and Sebastian.
"Smoke Detector" by Rilo Kiley
Probably a better Rilo dance song than "Dejalo" but also probably would've gone better earlier with the more sixties and faux-sixties stuff.
"Certain Songs" by The Hold Steady
Not a dance song. But a good sitting around the table catching your breath song. And that was that!
One thing about getting married is: you don't have a lot of time to take pictures yourself. Believe me, this was really weird for me, being in a place with all of these people and not being the one in charge of taking pictures. But I wasn't. So I didn't. Except when I did. There are really great photos of our wedding all over Facebook and more are coming in the next few weeks when the photographer's stuff comes in. But my photos are so erratic that even though it was my wedding and I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures, I feel kinda bad. There's a bunch of Marisa. Rob and Jeff get in there. Some of my brother who some of you didn't believe existed. But nothing that comes close to conveying the number of wonderful people there (none of any of my non-sibling family, for example). Our pro photographer's photos (as well as what we're getting together on the IRave account) should better convey that, and once the wedding was over, I went back to pretty much photographing anything of interest (and SFW) that Marisa does.
Here are a bunch of photos. More at the click. Overhead shots of Newport courtesy of a helicopter ride courtesy of the Wes03 kids. Yeah, we went in a helicopter.
Wait. First. Before my wedding happened, I saw a bunch of movies, like way too many movies for someone about to get married. I saw The American (review! in my column) with Marisa and Katie and Nathaniel. Then I saw The Virginity Hit (review!) right after that. Then I saw The Romantics (review!) with Marisa and Allison. Those last two -- The Romantics and The Virginity Hit, not Marisa and Allison -- open this weekend, along with Resident Evil: Afterlife. Not having seen Resident Evil: Afterlife, I would nonetheless recommend that you go see Resident Evil: Afterlife.
So: married! Everything went fine. It was so much fun. I recommend it, if you can find someone like Marisa to marry. Maybe even if all you can find is a Best Man like Rob, go ahead and get married to someone anyway, because it would be a terrible waste of a Best Man. Rob is really good at this stuff, including but not limited to: driving me to the wedding; driving other people to the wedding; setting up audio equipment; playlisting; making announcements; running and getting stuff from the parking lot; writing toasts; delivering toasts; being hilarious; dancing to the songs I want to dance to; punch-dancing in general.
That sounds maybe more like a love letter to Rob than a love letter to Marisa, but I think I covered the love letter to Marisa with all of those pictures of her and anyway, I hope the vows and stuff, as well as the actual marrying, speak to how much she means to me. Maybe that's not the case as often as it should be but it is the case here. But back to that Rob thing, or something related.
Earlier that week, I had lunch with Katie (the other Katie, the one from Saratoga) (so many Katies), and she mentioned being at a wedding and talking to a bride who exclaimed (and I don't use dialogue tags lightly): "Everyone I love is here!" That sounds maybe a little trite, but it is also the perfect way to describe that feeling (as long as you exclaim it). It's not even literally true; there are people I adore who could not make it to the wedding (and understandably; not least because I knew of at least four other unrelated weddings happening on the same day!). But still: something like eighty, ninety perecent of who I love was in the same place at the same time. Let's think about this. This will probably not happen again. It's kind of mind-blowing. It's like when twenty people go see Star Trek and I'm giddy but also overwhelmed, and regret only having to chance to talk to a quarter of them in any detail. Except times four or five. I am grateful to have this problem for one day in my life and I know I speak for Marisa and myself when I say that it made us ridiculously happy that we had so many friends and family members there, "sharing our day" or whatever. That is another thing that might sound trite but is inescapably, unavoidably true. This really meant the world to us.
Contrary to some conventional wedding wisdom, it didn't all pass in a blur. I remember a lot of it quite clearly. I remember Corinne and Rob both giving wonderful toasts, and Rayme and Amanda and my brother and sister and Jeff and Chris getting in line to walk with us, and Bayard and Andrew doing such nice jobs reading. I remember lots of stuff before and after the ceremony, and at the hotel afterwards, and at El Dorado West the next morning. But it did go too fast in the sense that I could've talked for an hour to everyone there.
A handy guide to the last few hours of the evening comes in the form of the playlist Rob and I and Marisa put together the day before. Having manned the laptop at Styne's wedding and helped out with that stuff at Rob's, I've observed several experiments in not just playing the same thirty wedding songs everyone uses, what goes over, what doesn't, and how much that should matter. Many debates about the danceability of awesome songs ensued. We were also factoring in requests, as well as my neurotic striving that the people who made requests would be in a position to hear them when (if) we played them (in other words, Maggie, I don't know if you were in the right place when "Hotel Yorba" got played, but I'm pretty sure we played it! Or at least we tried to), and of course our unofficial "do not play" list of wedding songs that one to three of us hate. I didn't take a photo this time, but people seem interested when I did, so I'm going to go ahead and walk through the entire master post-dinner playlist.
"Museum of Idiots" by They Might Be Giants
Our first dance. Marisa put this song on a mixtape for me before it made it to an actual TMBG album. It's become one of my favorites of theirs. Also, we scotched "The Luckiest" for good when we heard it playing over our doppelgangers' website and realized it's a bit too much of a thing (although I do like that song a lot).
"I Want You Back" by Jackson 5
This was Marisa's call as a song that would get people to dance immediately, and it worked extremely well. I especially like how it brought up (a.) everyone and (b.) Jason! Everyone loves this song! Wedding staples don't have to be terrible!
"Drive My Car" by The Beatles
This is not really my favorite Beatles song, or even my favorite up-tempo mid-period McCartney-led Beatles song, but Marisa's dad requested it specifically and we're never going to deny a Beatles request (Derrick's request of "Here, There, and Everywhere" did get played during dinner or cocktails, I think), and everyone knows it so this turned out to be preetty awesome.
"Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett
This was a request from Marisa's mom, and frankly I was a little surprised by how well it went over, only because I never think of this song in my everyday life.
"I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James and the Shondells
"We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters
This was the wedding song for Uncle Alan and Aunt Barbara, and we actually got married on their anniversary, so their kids requested it and we were happy to oblige. I actually don't hate the Carpenters. I also have fond memories of the time Rob was DJing a work party of his, busted out this song, and the dance floor cleared immediately (I kind of love when songs can clear a dancefloor; see also Kasia playing "Dejalo" at her wedding).
"Crazy in Love" by Beyonce
Obviously. Marisa was pretty opposed to playing "Single Ladies" and I have to say, as much as I love that song, this one is more of a classic and just superior all around.
"Hey Ya!" by Outkast
Double obviously. I think I'll still be happy to hear this song at weddings in 2040, that is to say that it's just inherently better than, say, "Brick House."
"We Can Get Together" by the Hold Steady
Yeah, I danced with my mom to this song. Hipster wedding like yeah?
"Like a Prayer" by Madonna
Ethan noted that this song would immediately bring Andrew to the dance floor. He was correct. This is probably the best Madonna song, right?
"It's the Same Old Song" by the Four Tops
"Life is Hard" by Bob Dylan
This is a song from the recent Together Through Life record and I had been thinking for awhile that it would be a nice slow-dance song. As it happens, I don't think I actually slow-danced to it (possibly this was when cupcakes came out). However, I'm pretty sure Tom and Maggie did! Which made me happy.
"Tea for Two" by Tito Puente
A cha-cha for Pop-op! Also a nice break.
"Just Like Heaven" by The Cure
"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" by the Black Kids
Real Cure followed by Fake Cure! Real Cure got a much bigger reaction as it bridges generations more efficiently than Fake Cure, but whatever, that Black Kids song is ridiculous fun to dance to.
"Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand
Lesson learned from Rob's wedding: THIS SONG IS AWESOME. And not just because it gets Derrick to do scissor kicks. Seriously, people, play this song at your weddings.
"Sequestered in Memphis" by the Hold Steady
Not as huge a reaction, but our Hold Steady bona fides stuck it out for this. I was back and forth between this and "Stuck Between Stations" and "Chips Ahoy!" for the best Hold Steady song for fast dancing. That question may not hvae an answer. Ben and Lorraina weighed in via email: "People don't dance to Hold Steady. (Lorraina says people dance to 'Little Hoodrat Friend.')"
"Dance Magic" by David Bowie
I believe this was Allison's suggestion, and yeah, wow, excellent call, Ali. This really hit our demo pretty much between the eyes. Even if the electric slide somehow broke out at the end (I knew I should've cut another thirty seconds).
"The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News
This went over pretty huge, too, but I also feel satisfied with my decision to use iTunes to cut it down to two minutes.
"Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello
"July, July!" by the Decemberists
This was not so much a crowd-pleaser as a Marisa-pleaser, as this is something she dances around the office to pretty regularly. But I know Bayard and Alex and Cristin all repped for it anyway.
"Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys
Derrick refers to this as a song he heard at every party he went to freshman year of college back in 1998. As Rob pointed out, it just seemed wrong not to include the Beastie Boys.
"Ignition (Remix)" by R. Kelly
Apparently this is a class of 2003 thing not unlike the freshman year 1998 thing. That's fine, gave me time to go debate Simpsons episodes with Jon and Rob and Derrick.
"Pull Shapes" by the Pipettes
I am such a huge fan of this song but I needed to take a break and didn't really dance to it. But other people did so that was pretty satisfying.
"A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend
"Slow Hands" by Interpol
I'm not gonna lie; I thought this was an awesome idea. It more or less cleared the floor. HOWEVER: I emailed Kate beforehand, knowing that she likes Interpol more than most people, and told her, look, I just added "Slow Hands" to our playlist so you better dance with me on this. So I had Kate, and I got Derrick up there. And we were, I'm pretty sure, the only three people dancing to this song. But it was kind of awesome. This song rules.
"You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!
Craig's request was really the only excuse I needed to work this in. In fact, I was dying for an excuse to play it, so thank you, Craig. I struggled with how to deal with the intro, because it's too long to play straight through but too awesome to cut entirely. It turns out that the last bit of the intro fits really well with the clamor of the end of "Slow Hands." This tired some people out.
"Disco 2000" by Pulp
"Strangers" by the Kinks
"The City" by the Dismemberment Plan
If it weren't for "Slow Hands" and also Michelle and Sara C and my sister coming back for this song, this would've been probably the least popular cut of the night, but I don't care, I love this song and it's awesome to dance to.
"I'm Looking Through You" by The Beatles
"The Blues Are Still Blue" by Belle and Sebastian
We started winding down around here. Then Rob and I fucked up the prep for the last song and wound up cutting this one off. Sorry, Belle and Sebastian.
"Smoke Detector" by Rilo Kiley
Probably a better Rilo dance song than "Dejalo" but also probably would've gone better earlier with the more sixties and faux-sixties stuff.
"Certain Songs" by The Hold Steady
Not a dance song. But a good sitting around the table catching your breath song. And that was that!
One thing about getting married is: you don't have a lot of time to take pictures yourself. Believe me, this was really weird for me, being in a place with all of these people and not being the one in charge of taking pictures. But I wasn't. So I didn't. Except when I did. There are really great photos of our wedding all over Facebook and more are coming in the next few weeks when the photographer's stuff comes in. But my photos are so erratic that even though it was my wedding and I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures, I feel kinda bad. There's a bunch of Marisa. Rob and Jeff get in there. Some of my brother who some of you didn't believe existed. But nothing that comes close to conveying the number of wonderful people there (none of any of my non-sibling family, for example). Our pro photographer's photos (as well as what we're getting together on the IRave account) should better convey that, and once the wedding was over, I went back to pretty much photographing anything of interest (and SFW) that Marisa does.
Here are a bunch of photos. More at the click. Overhead shots of Newport courtesy of a helicopter ride courtesy of the Wes03 kids. Yeah, we went in a helicopter.