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The story of my sister's wedding
November 06, 2007It has been kind of a whirlwind week or two. But it's about time that I told everybody about my sister's wedding on Oct. 27th.
April (the middle of us three kids) married Greg Gardner two Saturdays ago on a gorgeous day at the A and M Gardens in Azle... no Aggie jokes.
That day was nearly perfect.... the couple of weeks leading up to it were not.
April and Greg have been together for the last 2 years or so. Even they weren't really sure when they started dating, but they've gone to the same church as my parents for a while before then. Pretty much ever since April moved back to Fort Worth after graduating from MSU in 2005.
I pretty much liked Greg instantly. Not like I got to hang out with him a whole lot, but from the few times I saw him before he really became a fixture at home, he seemed pretty cool.
He plays golf.... so that instantly puts him into the middle of the Palmer family fray. Actually... one of the funniest stories was from a golf trip with Greg. I told the crowd at the reception that story and then told them how it was then and there that I knew that Greg was going to be around for a while. He just rolled with the punches and was able to laugh at himself, just like the rest of us Palmers.
The story goes like this.... Greg is a lefty (like my dad and I) and as we were warming up to play golf one day, Greg broke his 9-iron on a swing, sending the head flying off into the driving range. Whoops.
We had a chuckle about it, and he grabbed another club while I was still hitting. The very next swing he took, he broke that club too.
Two clubs broken in consecutive swings.... I was shocked. So was he.... the look on our faces was priceless and I knew that he's gonna be around for a while.
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Fast forward to Oct 11... just a few weeks before the wedding.
April gets a phone call that morning giving her a bit of bad news. The 5,600 sq-ft. banquet facility on the garden grounds burned to the ground overnight. The reception hall was reduced to ashes.
Not only the reception hall... but the backup plan in case the weather was nasty and we couldn't have the wedding outside.
This seriously had all the makings of a bad television show.
I mean... what else could have gone wrong in this case? Wedding dress dyed blue?
It took about a two weeks of having no plan whatsoever and staying in limbo to finally figure out a plan.
Turns out... the wife of the garden owner was really good friends with the wife of another banquet facility owner not that far from the gardens. They worked out a deal and the entire reception plan was relocated with just a few days to spare.
Mom was stressed. Dad was stressed. April was near homicidal......I was just trying to stay out of everyones way when I went home on vacation for the week. People would ask me what was going on, or what the plan was for this and that... and my general response was.
"I'm just doing like I'm told."
So I wanted to get out of the house for a while and went to play golf by myself during that week. It was good to get away from everything and spend a few hours alone. It was one of the first times I've spent more than 2 hours with nobody around me in a long time.
By the end of the week... about 85% of my extended family was in town and spending a lot of time at our not-to-big house. My girlfriend Amy made it down Thursday evening and spent the weekend as well.
The rehearsal went okay, except the weather (which honestly, I had feared since they told me when the date was). Having an outdoor wedding on the last weekend in October is risky. Could be anything from ice and snow to near 90 degrees.
That day though... the wind was a factor. It was blowing steady about 25-30 mph during the rehearsal.... and that's not a good thing at all. Even though the weather guys were saying it was going to be nice on Saturday, how much faith can you put in a weather guy these days....
On Saturday, the tension was high all around, except for me it seemed. I was cutting up and trying to lighten the mood of everything. My spot as a groomsman was perched precariously close to a small well/pond/bottomless pit. I was a bit nervous, I mean, if I fell into that thing and ruined my sisters wedding, I might not have made it out of my tux alive.
But everything ended up perfect, just about as textbook as you could imagine. I ended up gaining a brother-in-law, which is a weird feeling... but I know that it was meant to be.
April and Greg are somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean right now flying back from their honeymoon in Italy.... I hope they took a lot of pictures.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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