Wisconsin Redneck Wedding

Lorraine recently tagged me on Facebook with a meme entitled “My Wedding Day.”

It reminded me that I never blogged about my wedding to Iwanski. Or maybe I should call it “Wisconsin Redneck Wedding.”

You see, Iwanski and I were in our early 20’s when we got married. We were young and poor. And apparently, we were also kind-of dumb. Because the people we hired to do our wedding—the photographer, the DJ, and who could forget the awesome dressmaker?—were all quite rednecky and—um, well, really quite bad at their jobs.

Let’s start with the photographer. I don’t even remember how we found this woman—I’m sure she was probably a friend of one of my students’ parents.

She was a rather large woman—well over 250 pounds—with long frizzy brown hair that looked like something out of a bad 80’s video. When we first met her, though, she seemed pretty normal, and she shared wedding pictures that she’d taken, that we thought looked nice. But what did we know? Apparently not too much.

After our wedding mass, when it came time to take pictures of everyone, she became the bitchy lady from hell. She became like a drill sergeant, shouting out orders for people to get in and out of pictures, yelling at all of us like we were a bunch of unruly children. Which we weren’t. Mostly.

Then, when we went to take pictures in the park, and there were a bunch of Canadian geese pooping everywhere, she made all the men kneel in goose poop, while we ladies sat on their knees. The men were thrilled about that. Still, the geese wouldn’t leave us alone, so there was a potential for some funny photos.

So a couple of weeks later, after all was said and done, Iwanski and I went to go pick up our pictures. And what do you know? She had the pictures developed AT WALMART! Yes, I said Walmart. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her take pictures out of an envelope, clearly marked “Walmart Photo Department.” Yep, truly rednecky. And she wouldn’t even let us see any of the goose pictures. She said she was keeping them for herself!! Man, we really picked a winner!

But that doesn’t even compare to the DJ and the dressmaker.

The DJ was a parent of one of my students. He worked at a reputable DJ company in the town where we lived, so we thought he was a safe bet. Before we met with him, Iwanski and I came up with a list of several songs that we’d like him to play, if possible.

Then we met with him. We should have known something was off when we walked in and he had framed pictures of Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh on his wall. Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh! But we were already there, so we went over our music suggestions and what we’d like to have for the Grand March (we chose “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead). Then we said our goodbyes and went out to our car. Iwanski looked at me skeptically. “Why did you pick this guy, again? He had pictures of Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh on his wall.” I sighed. “I know. But I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

But of course, he wasn’t fine. Oh, he played all kinds of crappy music that you hear at most weddings. But the songs on our list? Nope, I don’t think he played any of them. Then it came to our Grand March. Two minutes before we were to start the march, he came up to us and said, “Hey, the CD I have for “Truckin’” has a skip in it.” A skip in it? Really? Then he offered to have his helper-dude go out to a store and look for another recording of Truckin’. Yeah, right! Let’s just hold off on the Grand March while his little cronie goes around at 10:30 at night to try to find a record store that’s even open.

So Iwanski said, “Do you have anything else by the Dead?” (We were huge deadheads back then.) “Um, yeah, let’s see…I have “Touch of Grey,” said the DJ. “OK, ‘Touch of Grey’ is fine,” Iwanski said.

Then Mr. Jerkstore DJ said a statement I will never forget, “OK—is it okay if I mix a little Queen in with that?”

Iwanski looked at him in disgust. “No, it’s not okay.”

The DJ just looked at him, shrugged, and went back to his DJ equipment.

It turned out, “Touch of Grey” was a great Grand March song. Mr. Jerkstore DJ was lucky we liked it. What a crappy DJ!

Still, that was nothing compared to the dressmaker. Ah, the dressmaker. She deserves her own blog posting. That’s how bad she was.