This story is the third draft of this story, but I suspect it will change again (and the names will certainly be changed). The good news is that everyone who could be perceived in a bad light in this story has passed.

It started like any other day. Slept late and woke to the sounds of pounding footsteps down the hotel hallway, followed by a knock on the door. Instantly, Ginger, my wife, and I were both awake. Most of the residents on this floor were there for the wedding party, and it was time for the adventure to begin.

There were many last-minute items to be taken care of, but the bride and groom, Jeanette and Elvie, had made plans to take our daughters, Liz and Emma, for a helicopter ride and a trip to see the stuffed dinosaurs, respectively. The original plan had been to do it at five o'clock the day before the wedding, but since the wedding couple had not arrived until after 8:30 pm, everything was off. My mother-in-law's talent for never arriving on time had left me wondering why she was early. I once waited twelve hours for her and then got into trouble for not waiting to eat either the dinner or cake I had baked for her arrival. The helicopter/dinosaur trip was re-scheduled for noon on the wedding day. It was one of the last pleasant surprises for some time.

The last-minute stresses had been getting to the bridal party. The groom’s son was to be the best man. This would be his third wedding, but at his second, the kids had walked out after the vows. Apparently, Tennessee was a bridge too far for them to stage a similar protest, and his children decided not to attend at the last minute. This news left the best-man position vacant. The couple revealed a new plan for Johnny, my brother-in-law, to become the second-string best man. This would leave his previous role, giving away his mother, vacant, but no one considered that point now. Instead, Liz, Ginger, Jeanette and I headed for the helicopter ride while Emma and Elvie headed for the dinosaurs.

Traffic was bumper to bumper, stop and go in both directions. A textbook definition of Level of Service F. Jeanette napped while we drove to the heliport and coordinated more adjustments.

Meanwhile, back at the motel, Johnny and cousin TJ, after driving all night, had hoped for a nap. That was not going to be. Cathy, the lesbian partner of Jeanette's sister Sharon, recruited them to decorate and set up the reception hall.

The helicopter ride was a walk-up rather than an appointment-type arrangement. This was good as we knew we could never make it on time with her penchant for lateness. Another constant you can count on is her militant and dedicated cigarette smoking. As she crossed the concrete pad and stepped one foot into the helicopter, she took one last drag on her cigarette and tossed it down. Highly flammable fuel and FOD (Foreign Object Damage) be damned. Liz sat in the helicopter's front seat and never blinked an eye. Little did we realize we would be in a similar position in a few brief hours.

After we returned from the excursions, the bride and groom left for the honeymoon chalet to prepare for the nuptials. We headed for the hotel briefly, then to the chapel and the 6pm wedding, with Johnny and TJ right behind us. Or so we thought.

Instead, they had to deal with Jeanette’s sister, Sharon. As a surprise to no one except her, Sharon got back spasms. This normally happened to her when she traveled long distances. She took what they later reported as no less than seven muscle relaxers. The thought behind it was probably not bad. What was bad was that she did not imagine this would knock her out. One thing Sharon always did was keep her Life Partner Cathy's imbibing in check. With Sharon out, no one monitored the large quantities she consumed. Sharon also had a wedding role to play. She was to provide the flower baskets and petals, plus to pick up the cake. Now with only Johnny and TJ at the hotel, those duties fell to them.

The wedding chapel had a tight schedule. A tight schedule. One wedding party was walking out as the next one walked in. Watching the operation, I suspected they would conduct the ceremony if someone as unimportant as the father of the bride or the best man was late. I talked to the staff and confirmed my theory. They also told me they wouldn’t even wait for a bride or groom. The vows must flow!

The invitations had listed 6 pm as the time. Remember my mother-in-law’s propensity for lateness? She had sent the invitations with the time listed as a half hour early to ensure everyone arrived on time. The minor detail she left off the invitations was the time zone. Home, where she planned and sent the invitations out, was in the Central Time Zone, but we were now in the Eastern Time Zone.

In an uncharacteristic fashion, my mother-in-law arrived on time. She handed out flowers to her and the groom’s sisters. While discussing the best man, someone realized there was no one to give away the bride. I got the call to be the second-string “father” of the bride. With still no sign of Johnny, TJ, Sharon, Cathy, or the flower baskets, much less the flower petals for the flower girls to throw.

I recruited a longtime family friend to operate my video camera since I would be busy giving the bride away. One of the groom’s sisters tore up several roses and put them in Emma and Liz’s hats for their role as flower girls. By the time I finished the camera lesson, I had also emerged as the third string best man.

The wedding before ours filed out of the chapel. Crunch-time, and still no sign of Johnny. At the last minute, there was a third best man candidate selection. I uttered a sigh of relief, one of the last for a while.

The ceremony began beautifully. In fact, the whole ceremony was better than the rest of the trip, especially in hindsight. As Emma and Liz reached the end of the nave, dropping their flower petals, Liz turned her hat upside down, shook it, and put it on her head. I managed to not flub my speaking part. The vows were said with a maximum of Liz twitching and wanting to sit down, but not enough to distract from the event.

During the song at the unity candle lighting, the door opened to reveal the long absent Johnny, TJ and Cathy. She walked down the nave and around the wedding party members to take pictures from all angles around the stage. Standing beside me at the video camera, Johnny whispered in my ear, “You will not believe what happened.”

Truer words may have never been spoken.

Immediately following the ceremony, Johnny left to finish the reception set-up, promising to fill in the details of what had happened and the important instruction “drive slowly.”

The abbreviated and incomplete instructions Johnny had received at the hotel failed to mention the most important aspect. One he quickly realized—they were not “helping Cathy,” rather they were doing her jobs while she drank. Jobs that neither knew much about. He put Cathy in the back of her van, which suited her, as that is where the cooler of beer was, and headed for the cake pickup. The first sign of trouble was the argument over the time for the ceremony. The invitations said 6 pm. Knowing Jeanette had scheduled an earlier time for the invitations, Cathy vehemently argued that the wedding was really at 7 pm.

As the van slowly progressed in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, Cathy began speaking of why men pull over on trips. Any man can tell you all the world is a giant toilet. Cathy's soliloquy included the rhetorical question, “Do you know why women don't pull over?” The unasked for answer to the unwanted question was, “I have a bucket, they don't. Turn up the radio and don't look back here.” Yes, sounds of tinkling soon broke the sounds of silence. Neither Johnny nor TJ had any desire to look back.

At the store, Johnny picked up the cake, but a drunk began badgering the baker. Johnny went to the cash register to pay. As he walked out, a social-finger-flipping woman joined him. Yes, they were both Cathy. They rushed out to re-join the bumper-to-bumper traffic already in progress. Cathy was now riding in the back with her cooler of beer, the bucket, and the cake. After hitting a bump in the road, Johnny looked back to see Cathy, who had fallen off the seat and was now on the top portion of the cake. As she saw him looking, she remarked, "I think I may have hit the cake."

At the reception location, Cathy attempted to fix the cake while Johnny learned the horrible truth that the reception was going to take place in a smoke-free facility. My mother-in-law will do nothing in a smoke-free environment. She won’t go to her own funeral if held in a smoke-free funeral home. The smoking status of the reception room would lead to the first run in with Happy, the desk clerk. I never learned Happy’s real name. I only knew this was the name Cathy gave him.

When Ginger and I arrived at the reception, she made sure everything was ready. TJ, the soon to be high school senior, began the important task of spiking one of the punch bowls. I got the honors of fixing the cake as I had watched my mother do it for years. What I really remembered was the last wedding cake I had repaired. It would have been my groom's cake, but Jeanette poured ketchup on it later. For the record, I got another cake and was later told the non-condiment-covered parts of the cake were delicious.

As the time arrived for Jeanette and Elvie to cut the cake, they became aware something was not quite right. They commented they would not be saving the top. A drunk Cathy explained they needed to save it for the first anniversary. For reference, besides this being Elvie’s third wedding, it was my mother-in-law's sixth wedding (third groom and not last wedding, but those are different stories), her older twin sister had been married twice, the younger five times, her younger sister, Sharon, had been married once to a man, and Holy Unioned twice, last time to Cathy. If they were not yet aware of the top cake tradition, they never would be.

Things seemed to flow nicely for a bit. Johnny and I went out to find car-decorating devices. We decorated most of the vehicle before I pulled it to the door for the final touches. There was shaving cream over the windshield washer ports, and two fine lines down each wiper. There was a heart shape left without cream so that Elvie could see to drive. The traditional "Just Married" and not so traditional "Legally Doing It" were in white shoe polish, along with other sayings around the car. Johnny finished an important piece on the trunk, which said, "We love the Police," for when they met the law

After smearing banana baby food under the door handles and tossing the bottle in with the spare tire, I walked back inside. Johnny was scrounging for beer cans to duct tape to the bumper, never hard to find. Happy asked me who was catering for our event. I described Cathy, and he said, yes, “Are y’all family?" With a long pause, I replied, "Yes, we are.”

Walking into the party, I saw Cathy in an animated conversation with the newlyweds. I asked, "Does this have anything to do with why the desk clerk was asking me who our caterer was?" It did, and Cathy talked about how Happy was dripping gayness.

Jeanette asked, "Are we prejudiced?"

To which Cathy replied, "Yes, we are." Lesbians prejudiced against homosexuals.

The party continued nicely for a while. Cathy sang the male parts on the karaoke machine and began changing lyrics to be vulgar. At one point, I counted five cigarettes being smoked simultaneously by members of the party. Finally, the big moment arrived. Time for the new couple to depart.

One of Elvie's nieces and TJ jumped in the back of the car just before the newlyweds come out. Elvie helped Jeanette in and then walked around the front of the car, meaning he had never seen the beer cans. I told Elvie not to use the windshield wipers or the washer. He said, "But I have to clean it off." I said, "Yes, but not that way." He got in and prepared to pull off. Then the hidden couple popped up to surprise them both. Finally, they pulled away as Johnny and I quieted the crowd to hear our masterpiece, the duct taped cans, rattling down the highway toward Gatlinburg. After cleaning up, we retired to our hotel rooms on the main strip of Gatlinburg to shoot people from the balcony with water pistols while we finished the vodka and shared stories with our new relatives.

The next day, we joined Jeanette and Elvie to finally tell them what had happened. Elvie described how he had to pull over, thinking the car was messed up. Score one for the beer cans. Shortly after that, as he slowly made his way down the road, he noticed a police car behind him. The police officer got right on his tail and then hit the lights. The officer pulled in front of them and led them to a car wash. Once in the wash, the machine bogged down and stopped. This may have been because of the shaving cream, or the four rolls of toilet paper, but at least he had cleaned off the windshield.

Overall, it was a successful wedding, since the couple never knew of any problems other than that of the cake. The part we didn’t know about concerned TJ and Elvie's niece in the back seat. Apparently, neither of them noticed the top of the wedding cake before they sat down on it.