Aaron and Karen’s Wedding

Bonding with Dennis and Rob

At the rehearsal din­ner I was lucky enough to meet Dennis, Aaron’s older cousin from Edinburgh, Scotland, and we imme­di­ately hit it off. Some peo­ple don’t so much talk with you as at you, whereas talk­ing to oth­ers can be like drag­ging a stick through the mud, but for us it was the per­fect bal­ance. The art of con­ver­sa­tion is dead, we agreed, and find­ing each other was like two Masonic broth­ers from dif­fer­ent lodges meet­ing for the first time.

Pat later told me that, on arriv­ing, he didn’t say hi to me for fear of inter­rupt­ing us. Our faces were so intense, focused on each other, he said. Dennis and I exchanged con­tact info, and he offered me a place to stay if I ever went to Scotland. Normally, I’d brush off such an invi­ta­tion as a glib pleas­antry, if it weren’t for the fact that he repeated it five or six times over both nights. In return, I offered him a place to stay if he ever wanted to give Nana and Popa (whom he calls June and Vic) a break. It’s funny, I never knew their names until then.

I also had a good talk with Rob while Aaron and Chris were out­side smok­ing cig­ars that night (which turned into the morn­ing) before the wed­ding. We bonded over our love of Aaron, and I got to probe Rob, who’s deep enough for an entire entry I’ll be post­ing soon.

This is the Story of Aaron and Karen

Before I gave my speech, I showed this video as a way for every­one, but most impor­tantly Aaron and Karen, to know how the groom’s side felt. Notice the keg-can of Heineken in Trolley’s shots.

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/aaronandkarenwedding/interviews.swf” width=“480” height=“375” wmode=“transparent” /]

I learned a lot about being an inter­viewer, about ask­ing the right ques­tions, about try­ing not to laugh at funny sto­ries. You can hear in the way I ask Jay (yel­low shirt), “In what way?”, that my cheeks are tight­ened in a big smile. I also real­ized that I shouldn’t fin­ish other peo­ples thoughts, which is a bad habit of mine. The inter­viewer shouldn’t present any bias.

Everyone told me after­ward that they were touched by how Aaron spoke from the heart. The inter­est­ing thing is that peo­ple were laugh­ing at parts I didn’t expect them to laugh at. In my speech too. I don’t write to be funny; I can’t be a funny per­son why I try. It hap­pens rather accidentally.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The speech did go well. I like how peo­ple started say­ing, “Woo hoo!” and “Cheers to that!” for the toast. If you lis­ten closely after I give my thanks, there’s one per­son who claps well before any­one else, and I’ll for­ever be won­der­ing who it was and why they were clap­ping with such vigor.

Wedding Opportunities

The cer­e­mony was short and sweet, though it was a lit­tle cold. The Prince Charlie jacket doesn’t breathe, so the grooms­men were warm for most of it. I felt bad for the brides­maids though, who wore back­less, sleeve­less dresses.

I caught up with Nick and Alison, whom I hope to see for a few photo projects down in that area at some point dur­ing the sum­mer (I wish I was able to bring my cam­era to the wed­ding though). I got to know Steph a lit­tle bet­ter, and you could tell from the way she talks that she really cares about Trolley, which was impor­tant for me to find out. Hanging out with Jay was a blast too; he’s a really fun, easy-going guy, and I can totally see why he’s such good friends with Aaron. Pat did some robot­ics for us to the Scottish dance music, and I had the oppor­tu­nity to intro­duce him to Dennis, hop­ing that both con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists would hit it off.

We danced, we min­gled, we ate, we laughed. Weddings always offer great oppor­tu­ni­ties for such things. What other chance would I have to wear some­thing as fun as the Scottish regalia (although Dennis explained to me that Ontario and Canada have their own tar­tans, and that I’d have the right to wear one if I wanted).

A good time was had by all.