I spent Thanksgiving with my dad's family. We had a nice time, but unfortunately my favorite uncle and his fiance weren't able to make it. They had some elaborate excuse about being busy and not wanting to drive several hours two days before their wedding, blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure they're just lazy.
(Also, maybe they knew their Thanksgiving leftovers would include stuffing. Why else would you have Thanksgiving leftovers? Seriously, NO POINT without the stuffing. Perhaps their hosts would never be so oblivious as to forget the stuffing.)
Anyway, my uncle was getting married on Saturday but he missed the... togetherness and jovial nature of an old fashioned family gathering. At the wedding there would be drinking and debauchery and it wouldn't be the same. We started brainstorming around the table and came up with some ideas of how to make Uncle P's day a bit more festive. The ideas were fairly basic, we figured we could just pick a word and any time it was said during the very secular ceremony we could yell out "Amen!", "Hallelujah!" or "Praise Be!" We couldn't find any foam fingers in time to do an adequate cheer or start the wave. We did have to practice saying the new wife's name because... yeah, that was an issue. Also possible: we're jerks.
Like most families, mine has lots of traditions. Some families have sing-a-longs, mine had a longstanding history of sending dinner leftovers to family members who could not make a holiday via the post office. (These packages, containing everything from lobster claws, shrimp tails, ham, and turkey carcasses, were often marked as suspicious by the post office and thus the practice stopped in 2001.) (And no... the packages were easily spotted and uh, we didn't open them. We simply put the entire thing inside a new package and sent it to the next recipient. They got quite large.)
Luckily, my dad's family had a large estate. An estate comprised almost entirely of Tacky Ass Shit. Most of the family lives in the same, small town so the lack of mailing was easily addressed by doing drive-bys. If it was your birthday? Your car might be toilet papered. (Bonus points if you live in a gated community and security drives by twice without noticing anything askew.) The last round of ham was quite long (oh yes, I still have it somewhere) and was easily recognized by waking up or arriving home with a large package left in the driveway as thrown from a car.
Metallic Christmas trees? Yep, they might end up on a front porch. Three foot wide metal peacocks with bronze accents? Well, someone might enter a home and hang them on the bedroom wall. Hosting a party, have no fear, one of my aunts will show up with several hundred previously used plastic forks that my grandmother saved. My dad drives a convertible in the summer and can pretty much guarantee that if one of his siblings drives by his place of work, a restaurant he's dining at, or well, anywhere, and sees his car sitting all by its lonesome, they're going to do a drive-by Santa-ing. There are other things involved, like fake police complaints involving vandalism, ransom notes, etc. But we don't need to go into that.
There's only one of the siblings who doesn't live in town, and it was his wedding. Santa WANTED to go. It was a last minute decision. Plans involving many, many bridal duckies had already been made. But we all knew that Santa neeeeeeded to be there. I mean, seriously, Santa is roughly 50 years old. He's family.
Here is is, nestled all snug in the car. Also, Santa is squeaky. (Don't worry, my aunt shook him out before getting in the car to make sure no rats had gotten snuggly in his interior.) (I insisted.)
Here's Santa getting ready to go inside the hotel
The front desk didn't flinch. I do wonder what the housekeeping staff thought. (Santa spent the night with my aunt because she's afraid of the dark and doesn't like to sleep alone.) (Heh. Once, when she was in the midst of moving, my cousin and I tucked Santa into her new bed and sent her pictures.)
On Saturday we had zero problems sneaking ducks into the ceremony. Let it be noted that I carried a purse because that seemed like a better idea than tucking them into my belt. (Not that I had a belt, but whatever.)
They got married.
But where was Santa? Well, he had to wait until the happy couple went to the reception for the surprise visit.
It had been a long journey so Santa hopped into the jacuzzi in the middle of their room.
He had to wait a long while for them to come home. In the meantime I tried to explain the concept of mirror self portraits to my father. I still don't think he gets it.
The groom later told my dad he was a bad best man because he used the bridal suite's access key in order to include Santa in the festivities. Oh well. This morning we were ready to take Santa home but the new bride declared that as a member of the family, she now wants to have control over Santa for a while. She argued about it with her new husband. He was a bit concerned over where they might store Santa and how they might transport him when the time comes. But she insisted. We're all a little concerned since she we have no track record of her care and keeping of Very Important Things, but we all have to take a chance now and then. I'm sure she'll be just fine.
