Alison and Billy's Wedding

Another domino falls! Little Billy, whom I first met 12 years ago when he was remixing "This Is How We Do It" on his computer is now a married man.

The festivities took us back to Philadelphia.

Traffic, dropping Diesel at the kennel and a ridiculous lack of sleep almost made Mrs. Poop and I late to the rehearsal dinner but we got there just in time to shower and hustle to the rehearsal for Bill to explain to us what a chuppah is.

At the rehearsal dinner, we practiced eating (I still know how!) and Mrs. Poop caught up on baby talk with Mrs. E-Z and Erin. The three of them even went across the street to a baby clothes store...and bought nothing.

Bill took a moment to introduce all of his groomsmen which led to the most inexplicable moment of the evening. When Bill was talking about me, Alison interjected "I swear they're separated at birth." Then Michael interjected "Mary J. Blige." I think he meant that Billy and I are brothers from another mother, and that mother is Mary J. Blige.

Friday night ended with everyone back at the hotel bar. Let me say this, I hate paying $7 for a beer ($21 for 3 yeunglings) but I really enjoyed the hotel bar. At these events I like talking to people I haven't seen in a while and the bar setup, with couches made it easy to hop from cluster to cluster and say hello to everyone, especially the people I don't see that often, like my long lost brother Smokey. And it's nice and quiet (I hate loud bars) so I could hear everyone, even Kristin who seemed to break out of her shell for the first time this weekend, which was nice to see. Plus when Pizza Parlor Derek finally walked in everyone cheered his arrival and he didn't even go upstairs, just started drinking with his luggage in the corner. After the hotel bar closed and they gave me my bill (I thought if you charge it to the room you don't really have to pay), I tried to get some sleep, as I was working on about 3 hours.

Mrs. Poop and I slept so late we missed the gay couples sight-seeing tour, but we did wake up early enough to get cheesesteaks for lunch, or so we thought. We sent Horse, Smokey and PPD to Jim's (or was it Rick's?), but the line was so damn long, that I didn't have time to wait, and Mrs. Poop and Baby Poop, didn't have the patience to wait, so Josh and I walked to Wawa. Wawa was a terrible way to introduce Mrs. Poop to cheesesteaks, but I enjoyed mine.

Then it was time for the wedding. We traveled around the city taking pictures in front of fountains, in front of the LOVE sign and in the middle of the street. Should be some cool photos for the wedding album.

The wedding was held in Philadelphia, so it was sort of weird, because you had this nice outdoor ceremony but you had the sights and sounds of the city.




There was a guy parallel parking a Prius, a hot girl on her way back from the pool, Horse staring at her, but most memorably, the valets somehow got stuck with a car that wouldn't start. So they were pushing this car, right behind the bride and groom, where we were looking, hard not to notice. But it was a beautiful ceremony, Billy stomped the glass easily on his first try, and he broke the glass, not his leg and the party began.





I love cocktail hours. And I was the first one on line and I took a huge plateful of shrimp, and yes I did offer them to Mrs. Poop, but she declined. I also had two Shirley Temples. I don't know who started the trend, but at the beginning of the night everyone was drinking Shirley Temples. The bartender told me that in 10 years of bartending he'd never served so many Shirley Temples to adults.



They also had lobster tails, which were delicious, and shrimp prepared several different ways. I don't know how many shrimp I had, but midway through my second huge plate, the ocean called.

Billy and Alison walked in to theme song from Beverly Hills 90210.

Right after that they did a choreographed routine to "Candy Girl" by New Edition, but it was awesome and very creative.



All night the music was awesome, mostly because Billy (acting like Bridezilla) gave the DJ a very detailed list of songs and the order to play them in.

There was a hip-hop section and I could have sworn during "I Need a Girl" the ghost of my friend Coach came on the dance floor and sang "the sun won't shine forever but as long as it's here then we might as well shine together."



The night really started to pick up when he went into his "rock block" starting with "Living on a Prayer" and "Sweet Child O Mine." That had people, including the bride and groom, dancing on their chairs.




And speaking of dancing on chairs, we did a hora. No one loves a good hora more than me, but I felt a little lost without my partner in hora, TallSkott. Michael was a good substitute but too many non-jews were holding the chairs and I was calling for everyone to walk in circles, but it didn't quite work out that way. But most importantly, we kept the bride and groom upright.




The evening took a turn for the better when they brought out the Viennese/breakfast table. There was your normal assortments of cakes and cookies but there was also a chocolate fountain. Chocolate was flowing from everywhere. You stick something in there, and it comes out covered in chocolate. I wanted to stick my head under but Mrs. Poop forebade me. So I had some chocolate covered Oreos. Then I got to the breakfast part. There were pancakes, and sausage and yes bacon. And it was midnight. I took a little breakfast, in the hopes I could sleep later in the morning. So as I was about to eat my bacon I noticed I had a pool of chocolate on my plate from where the Oreos had been. So I tried it. Chocolate covered bacon isn't as delicious as you would think it would be.

So to recap at this wedding I ate: a lot of shrimp (if I had to guess I'd say more than 50), 2 lobster tails, 2 chocolate covered Oreos, 3 chocolate covered bacon strips, and I drank 2 Shirley Temples and about 10 beers.

Yeah probably 10 beers, which is why at some point I found myself manning a bottle of Tanqueray pouring it onto the ice sculpture and into the mouth of my fellow Redskins fan, Christian. I guess my judgment of what constitutes a shot was a little impaired at that point because the bartender came over and confiscated the bottles.

As the night came to an end a couple of special songs were played giving the groom a chance to do his Vabilla Ice Dance, and immediately the bride's family drew up annulment papers.



And then Billy instructed the DJ to play La Bamba and hand the mic to Horse. A very drunk Horse. A Horse who had been getting disgusted looks from Mrs. Horse for the last two hours starting with his magical attempt to make a lime disappear. Here's the back story on La Bamba. When Horse was just a pony, he had to learn the lyrics for a 7th grade Spanish class. He's remembered them and uses it as his go-to karaoke song. At Michael's bachelor party, Horse delivered a rousing rendition. Well, he tried to duplicate that effort and the crowd was really into it.





Regrettably, the wedding had to end, but that didn't stop the fun. Nor did it stop Horse. He began a sing-along on the bus ride back to the hotel. He started off with his second favorite karaoke song "To Be With You" by Mr. Big, the song that got him attacked on the DC Metro.

Other songs sung include "Hail to the Redskins" (by just Christian and me), "The Humpty Dance" (the girl behind me knew every single word and even admitted later that yes, she uses words that don't mean nothing like "loopid" and that she did once get busy in a Burger King bathroom. The next morning I saw her wearing a shirt that said "real women don't date Yankees fans". Needless to say, I like her.), "Before He Cheats" and several others that aren't worth remembering.

Those of us who didn't want the night to end (almost all of us) hung out in the hotel lobby til 4am.

I also want to give credit to the best man E-Z who did a great job with his speech which had something to do with a man named Horace, Wheaties and Viagra.



E-Z's speech was really about finding things you aren't really looking for. That must have been a theme for the weekend because in the elevator banks on every single floor was a huge, pentagonal cylinder full of Hershey's candy, thanks to a group from the candy company that stayed in our hotel. At first I decided to be judicious and I only took 3 York Peppermint Patties. But with each pass by one of these chocolate havens I became bolder and bolder. By 2am when I was drunk I grabbed as many as I could and when I woke up the next morning after getting yelled at for putting them on Mrs. Poop's pregnant belly, I counted I had taken 35 York Peppermint Patties (not including the 10 or so I'd eaten up until that point).



The next morning I actually woke up in time for breakfast which was nice because I obviously hadn't eaten enough so I stuffed my face with a ton of bacon and got one last chance to talk to everyone and say goodbye to the happy couple and wish them well on their honeymoon and to thank them for a beautiful fun weekend.