I remember the day he came home from the hospital. Now he’s in tails and a yarmulke, waiting for his bride. That little towheaded person, clutching a Care Bear, calling me “Seh” until he could pronounce his Rs, is about to become a husband in about twenty minutes. He’s going to break that wrapped-up glass so good, we’ll accuse him of using a Foley guy.

But as I make my way down the aisle with Jaygen, Mr. Stupidhead and I are making squishy faces at each other, just like we have from the very beginning. To my right, I hear our father’s customary sound of mock protest: “Achff.”

The more things change…well, you know.

***

Just to answer the first question: the hair looked great. Great. Isa at Altered Images in East Windsor is the man — my makeup looked great and stayed on, my hair looked great and stayed put, and he managed to deal with eight ‘maids, the bride, her mom and grandma, and various comings and goings with total equanimity. Started teasing us immediately. Love him. Go see him.

I don’t know if it’s that my hair finally reached critical mass last week, or if it’s that I had tried everything but hairspray and Isa just unleashed a good old-fashioned Jersey fog of AquaNet Reagan Formula Super Max Hold on my head and that got it done, but I’m changing my last name to “Benatar.”

Not least because Gen got up during wedding karaoke — you heard me. — and rocked “Love Is A Battlefield” like she’d never rocked it before. I even danced, and I’m like Brandon Walsh, I don’t dance.

Best wedding ever, you guys.

…Which I guess answers the second question. Nobody fainted in spite of the heat; in fact, everyone looked lovely and not all that sweaty, considering. No fights, no broken bones, no cringe-y toasts. The marriage license got left behind, but then Our Canadian Hero Kel retrieved it, Mr. S and Gen got married, mazel tovs, open bar, a friend of mine got lucky with another guest, and I made it all the way to the first dance before bursting into tears. Damn you, Ben Folds.

And what a handsome couple, my brother and sister-in-law.

And I have in-laws now.

And my in-laws get the best bagels.

Unqualified A+.

***

You hear stories about wedding drama; you’ve seen it for yourselves. Every time I get a wedding-drama letter for The Vine, I thank God that my family is not…I don’t know. Doing that. Bitter with itself. It’s not the Von Trapp Family Singers bus every minute, obviously, but I rolled in from the bachelorette at 9:30 AM, looking and feeling partially digested, and my mother courteously kept her voice to a whisper until I’d had coffee, and then we went to get pedicures and talked about language immersion and…and…you know, I don’t really remember what all. I just know we put our feet in soapy water and made lazy conversation for an hour, and then we came home and ate sandwiches and sat on the porch. Just…sat.

Until Mr. S and Gen got engaged, I didn’t think about that much, that I can just…sit with my family. But when you’re adjacent to the planning of a wedding, you see some things, some truths about how things are and how people see themselves in the larger framework, and it’s not always pretty. Not a lot of “just…sit” either. Tears and angry crossing-off of lists.

The Buntings and the Gens get along like knaves — foul-mouthed knaves doing vaudeville. We sang the Bridezillas theme song to Gen every time she so much as asked for the salt, because we had no genuine reason to bust it out, ever. Any hassles were, like, “Well, this is a hassle. Who’s dealing with it, hands in the air. …Thanks, meeting adjourned.”

And that’s rare, that attitude, when it comes to these things. Everyone sort of quietly, independently going on the necessary diets to get into the costumes and then clapping their hands: “Let’s put on a show!” I’m very lucky.

***

The wedding, in some ways, is like a show; it reminded me of doing the play. Beforehand, I feel sort of vaguely anxious, like I forgot to do something, but mostly it’s that I want to do something — I want things to start. Aaaaaaaand: wed!

Afterwards, remembering little photographs of the weekend — Cousin B, who was seriously the hit of the wedding, waving a highball all strawberry-blond Dean Martin at the bar; the birth of the “Red Hot Chili Tenders” album; Guns McBones’s evolving facial hair — I miss everyone, kind of. I want my dad to go up in the chair for “Hava Negilah” again, like, next week. I want to come down the stairs of my apartment on a Sunday morning and find Tony Alpine blinking in the foyer and observing, “It’s like the last day of a weekend in Vegas.”

It was worse, actually. It was the boarding lounge at McCarran Airport, 6:15 AM and everyone came straight from the bar and forgot their sunglasses. Hectic, hungover, I kept finding bits of gardening mulch in my pockets.

It was outstanding. I wish they could get married every year.

And it was those little moments, too. My Uncle T attempting to run a serious rehearsal, apparently not realizing that we had not cast for that, at all. My dad working the Treasury Secretary into his toast (typical), and making it touching (also typical). (Lawrence: “That’s some Jedi shit right there.” Sarah: “We keep telling you.”) The tarot reader I got for the bachelorette working so broad that I had trouble not laughing, then going hard right and hitting all this stuff she couldn’t have known from a cold read. Chilling on the BQE with Addie, and Addie’s Date patiently fixing my shoe. Bugging out to Madonna in the VW Golf Headlights Parking Lot Disco. Isa getting really mad at the 20 Questions pocket game and threatening it with physical harm. Mom II bursting into tears right before we got on the shuttle back to the hotel. “Mom II! What’s wrong? Is it your hair? Do you want some water?” (tears) “You lost your bag? Tears of…re…lief?” (tears) “You…need a hug!” (nodding) (hug)

“What do you mean, he’s ‘out getting beers,’ the ceremony starts in 20 minutes.” “That’s why they call him the best man.” “Was I talking to you?”

“…I don’t know, you guys.” “I think it looks great.” “Me too, Gen.” “Ask Sarah, she’ll tell you the truth. Sarah, go look at the eye shadow.” “Tell her it looks great.” “Tell her the truth.” “I’m with Gen, I don’t love it. That top part.” “Yeah, see…? Isa, can you just take off that top part?” “Well, if Sarah says so. Because Sarah knows all about eye shadow.” “I should lie to my sister-in-law?” “Go away now.” “Okay.”

“One, two, three: open bar!” “Open baaaaaar!” [click click click click] “And again, because Sarah blinked! One, two, three –” “Sarah bliiiiiinked!” [click click click] “That was dreadful! Again! One, two, three –” “Dreeeeeeadfuuuul!” [click click click click]

Gorgeous ceremony, fabulous food (seriously, the best wedding cake I’ve had, and I’ve had some good wedding cake in my life), people really rocked the karaoke, the rabbi should have brought a set of cymbals with him because we kept having to supply rimshots — but it’s the between times you take with you, standing in front of the AC with Triple R, our arms up, trying to look soigné while de-pitting.

“Put your hands in the air!” “Yeah, okay.” “Wave ’em like you just don’t care!” “We’re on it, thanks.”

***

I didn’t actually make a toast at the wedding. If I had, I would have raised my glass to God for ignoring my prayers. When Mr. S was a little pesty thing, I used to pray that he would get kidnapped by gypsies. My parents’ strict policy on TV consumption led to my 1) reading a lot, and therefore 2) wrongly believing that felonious gypsy communities were still a going concern in the northern New Jersey of the 1980s, so obviously, Mr. S never got bagged by a butterfly net, but at the time, I chose to believe that this was because God was blowing me off — on that, and on my repeated requests for a pony.

Of course, the repeated requests coming from my parents’ bedroom that I shut up about the pony already may have cancelled me out, but more likely, it was that God knows the truth of the old saying that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones — hell, God probably coined it, or the Holy Ghost did, sitting on their porch and shaking their heads at us all, “Every time. Didn’t those crazy mortals learn anything from MC Hammer?” It was that God knew Grandma was right about how Mr. S and I would grow up to be great friends.

It was that I hadn’t asked for a sister, either, but God knew Mr. S would furnish me with one anyway — the best card-counting, necklace-shopping-enabling, Woody-laughing, shit-talking sister on the lot, in fact.

It probably sounds strange to credit the Lord with such close attention to Bunting affairs, with everything else going on in the world, but it can’t hurt to suck up to The Big Guy (in case the pony file is still open — I’d ride her every day, I swear!).

So, then: to You, Heavenly Father. Please treat all requests from the Stupidhead household with the same infinite wisdom You have mine, and thanks for the boost on all those math tests.

And to the Stupidheads: “IIII love you guyyssh. […hic]” Except: seriously. Thanks for everything. Next year, same time. A salut’.

July 22, 2006

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