Whew, it’s been a crazy the past few days and posting has kind of been pushed on to the back burner again.  The main reason of why it’s been so busy is because a friend of mine (Neal) got married!

Not only was it the first wedding I’ve ever attended, but I’d been asked to serve as “best man”, which, frankly, made me extremely nervous because I found out that the best man is also supposed to give a speech!

I spent the week before preparing for the speech, reserving a dinner jacket outfit (otherwise known as a “tuxedo” in the US), and also participating in the wedding rehearsal.  On Friday evening I picked up my outfit and headed over to Neal’s place.

We ended up staying awake till after 3AM to do last minute preparations such as going to convenience stores to print out programs, prepare the music selection, and go over the schedule…finally ending up crashing around 0330, and oversleeping a little till 10!

From that point on, it was madness, with everyone rushing about trying to get a million and one things done.  We kept coming up with schedules and discarding them as plans kept changing.  Finally though, the parents departed for the church, and Neal, Josh (another good friend who is a fantastic photographer), the bride, bride’s cousins, Sumiko, and myself were left to finalize preparations.

Neal suddenly found out that he couldn’t locate his belt.  Then his cummerbund went missing (we later found that one of the ushers had borrowed it, not knowing it was the groom’s!).  And all the while we kept rushing around with last minute preparations and calls to friends and guests.

Then worse disaster struck.  We got a phone call from Neal’s dad saying that Neal’s mother had fallen out of the car just as they were arriving at the church and she had landed on her wrist, breaking it.  He was calling from the hospital and at that point didn’t know what was going to happen.  This threw another wrench into the schedule since the dad was supposed to be coming to pick up the bride – and people were already waiting at the church since everything was supposed to be starting in an hour or so!

We ended up calling two taxis, and also delaying the start of the program by about an hour so that the mother could get her wrist in a cast and make it back in time.  In the end, it all worked out – and I didn’t forget the rings! (yay).  The wedding was actually really pretty and, despite the 80% humidity, things turned out ok.

Also gave my speech without freezing up, and just a little tremor in my voice (hopefully disguised with a bout of throat clearing :p

All in all, a very memorable day!  EXTREMELY exhausting, but memorable.  I don’t really have pictures myself since I had absolutely no time for picture-taking but will be putting some pictures up later that Josh took.

Hopefully things will be settling down and I can start writing more soon 🙂