The wedding was awesome, but it is too late to recall all the details without photos. There are several items, however, that are salient and lend themsevles to tale.

• The Bachelor Party
• The Girls Party
• The Crazy Videographer
• The Toast
• the top 10 list
• The Playlist

The Bacherlor Party

Byron arranged my bachelor party. It started at his house with beers, and then the honorable P. Norton Brown brought brownies. Jeff Nappi, Kevin Hatch, Tim Streit, Chris Guttman all arrived. I am horribly forgetting 1 or 2 others and that is crappy, might have been Cosmo Pearl…we tried to take a picture but no one seemed to be able to get a photo with Byron’s camera. Which is probably for the best, so we leave the evidence behind. We went to the Improv in Scottsdale where we hooked up with Jack Smith and Jimmy Yuan. It was fun, the show was fun, we were wasted, we saw the guy who did “2 + 3 equals chair!” well, he had his 15 minutes, this was a few years ago. I think it was Larry Dues who finally showed – not sure I was really wasted when he called – but I know Tim made me drink a prairie fire on Larry’s behalf since I bought one for him at his bachelor party.

Then we went to Cristie’s Cabaret. I won’t talk about it, other than to say that lapdances happened, and there was an $12 fee for the ATM, according to Jeff. But it was fun. Somehow we got back to Byron’s, somehow i fell asleep with a head like a freight train and a painful hard-on.

I woke up early the next morning, stinking of smoke and stripper dust, and made my way home by way of more wedding errands at the Superstion Mall. No rest during wedding planning. Stumbled in, saw Beckie, showered, passed out. She appeared to be doing the same.

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Girls’ Party

Beckie’s friends took her out. They gave her tasks to complete at a Scottsdale bar. Things happened, I’m sure they were fun, I’m glad I don’t know.

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The Videographer

This story is so ironic and catastrophic and tragicomic, it could not have been invented. I struggled mightily with which one would follow the other in this story, and not be a letdown. But I voted to end on a happy note. Byron had a friend, who was a good and very nice guy. Byron worked with him for several years, and he was a good and very nice guy. He wanted to go into business for himself as a wedding videographer. He was basically a video geek who wanted to make some coin off his hobby, but had to build a resume. Sounded like a perfect match – I just wanted some stuff recorded and not to go crazy with money. We met with Byron over lunch, we agreed he’d show up and eat and drink and tape…I intended to give him $100. Alas, I should have told him, to have secured a commitment.

I thought the connection through Byron and the significance of what the day meant to us would be enough. He wanted to get into this field, he HAD to feel for people and the role he was taking on, how could he not give us a good job for ~2 hrs? In the back of my mind, it was too easy and i was getting something for free, but…but…it seemed like a good idea. I had our videocamera there JIC.

He showed up while we were posing for pre-ceremony photos, we said Hi, he did his thing. All was good. We got married, we had some drinks, we posed for this photo, all was good.

Apparently not. Apparently he had social anxiety disorder and panicked. And left.

Left.

Went home.

My epic toast, all our epic toasts…were not recorded even by my video camera sitting idle.

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The Toast

So today is actually Beckie and my 12th anniversay.That factoid tends to elicit some questions: why’d you wait so long, what made you decide, what are you crazy? Well I actually proposed to Beckie in 1995 at Gates’ Pass in Tucson, AZ. At first we waited for our jobs, then for her dissertation, then til they repealed the tax law. But what finally made us decide is Beckie’s sister got pregnant, and Beckie just sort of flipped out. Meet Beckie, the newest character on Desperate Housewives.

Beckie and I met in summer of 1992 in Washington, DC. We were office-mates. For a long time I really couldn’t remember our anniversary, cause at the beginning…it was just hot office sex. I eventually remembered our anniversary because our second date 3 days later was to a bar to watch the Dolphins play in Monday night football. So I found our anniversary by googling “1992 schedule NFL”.

I think what’s kept us together is we have so much in common:music, books, tv. I got into biking, Beckie got into biking. Beckie got into gardening, I got into dumping bags of manure where she told me. I don’t know if we’re perfectly compatible or compatibly ambivalent, but in 12 years together there has really only been 2 times when I doubted our relationship. The first time was when beckie left the truck key at the bottom of an 11 mile canyon, at the end of a 50 mile dirt road, 500 miles from our house. The other was planning this wedding.

Crazy…constant stress. Every day started with a titanic battle of wills, followed by an equally impressive display of ignorance. After a couple drinks Beckie was like “when I wear high heels, you look like a hobbit”.  Based on the last few weeks, I’ll be the first man in history not to get any on his wedding night. Let me put this in perspective, Michael Moore got lucky on his wedding night.   Shopping for this suit was an angst-ridden weekend of doubt and remorse. What size, what color, will it fit…it was like going to the Home Depot with Dante. And the suit is very important if Im going to do better than Michael Moore on my wedding night.

But it wasn’t all bad, Beckie bought me this ring. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was perfect. No punchline here, just pretty cool.

I got to drop the wedding card few times at work. That’s pretty cool, its like “rock paper wedding — i win.” The day of my bachelor party, huge crisis at work. One of the programmers broke the code that deals wtih time.  Allow me to provide some context. I am a qa engineer for Ticketmaster, tickets need time, Roger stopped time. On the day of bachelor party. I dropped the wedding card, boss let me skate…told him I had to meet with the minister. This is AZ, and we’re a red state. [funny thing I forgot to say, but actually meant to say] Our minister, btw, found him by googling “wedding officiant Phoenix”.

My boys took me to a bachelor party, Beckie’s girls took her out. Men when they are feeling frisky go to a strip bar, girls feeling frisky…just go out. Random guys pay them to sex them up. [another funny thing i forgot] It cools cause the next morning, no one’s pointing fingers. Both stagger home, we’re like “hey…can i shower first? ok…rock paper wedding…damn, you threw wedding too...

People keep asking me if now we’re married if anything will change. Well, I won’t have any more of those awkward moments where in the space of like 30 seconds I refer to Beckie as my wife, my girlfriend, my SO. People are like: “he’s married, he’s cheating, he’s gay. What’s your deal dude?”

Beckie, you are my best friend, and my favorite person. You’re smart, beautiful, funny, and you clean toilets. Thank you for having me.

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The Top 10 List

The Top 10 Reasons Beckie and Jason Finally Got Married

Something very funny that Margrette and Michael put together, that we will just have to remember as having been very sweet and very funny.