Wedding Party!

It's been a while since I've posted, but it's been a busy couple of weeks for me. A few weekends ago, Sezzy and I united our whole wedding party (minus one, unfortunately) for our first of hopefully many wedding party events. As I mentioned in a previous post, we planned a box race, which traditionally involves lots of beer and liquor and competitive drinking. Normally, a box race would consist of 2-3 teams competing to see who could drink all the alcohol in their box the fastest and then complete a couple of small tasks, like a LEGO set or a jigsaw puzzle. Prior to the day of the party, we had received some concern over the amount of alcohol in the box and whether those who didn't want to drink much would have a good time. So we put a twist on the traditional game.

Sezzy and I are both gamers. Sezzy sticks to her Wii and DS games, while I'm a hardcore 360 and PS3 kind of guy. Well, anyone that plays Xbox 360 knows that the best part about it is the achievements. So we decided to create tasks and achievements for each team to complete. I found a website that let's you create your own achievements and we printed out a bunch of little slips of paper with the achievements written on them.


We had some great tasks for the teams to complete, such as making over a male member of your team, painting a male member's fingernails and toenails, switching clothes with another team member, and capturing pictures of team members with our three pets. Also included were drinking achievements, such as completing a power half-hour, the team member to complete/win Edward Forty-hands (more on that below), and the team to drink all of their beer/liquor first. Additionally, there were video game achievements, like winning a guitar battle in Guitar Hero, winning a game of Scene It! Box Office Smash, and winning in Duck Hunt. Each achievement was assigned a point value and the team with the highest point total at the end of the night won the game.

Everything was planned out so well. Sezzy and I went out to Five Below and the party store to get cheap props and "drinking hats" (to be worn when taking a shot or chugging) and we stuffed the boxes. We had our liquor connoisseur get us two bottles of Massachusetts' finest vodka, V-One (chilled, no less), to finish off our boxes. We were so ready. We even had a schedule of events for the video game events to make sure that the same team member from each team couldn't compete in all of the events.

Then we started the competition. Let's just say, we were perfect in planning but failed to execute our plan properly. Both teams started with the power half-hour, while a team member from each team started the Edward Forty-Hands competition, which involves duct taping forties to each person's hands. Whomever downs both their forties first wins the game. In less than in hour (or so it seemed anyway), all the alcohol was gone from both boxes. At this point, things got a bit out of hand. My team's bottle of Captain Morgan vanished and we found out that an opposing team member had hidden it, though we got it back without incident. One achievement was to photograph three team members with all three of our pets. Our one cat is mortally afraid of large groups of people, so after traumatizing the pets and not even getting one picture out of it, we decided it was best if we just gave both teams that particular achievement. Then my team's camera disappeared. After threatening the life of my best man, my future sister-in-law determined that the camera was always where it was supposed to be, safely hidden in plain view near our box. After some profuse apologizing on my part, the game was "suspended". See, Sezzy didn't like that people were fighting, but we all patched things up and moved on.

No one was too interested in the game after that, for one because we all just wanted to get along, and also because I apparently couldn't figure out how to start a game of Scene It on the 360, despite the fact that I play the 360 almost every day. In the end, the Green Team (my team) won by 30 points, but that result is disputed due to the Orange Team's involvement in completing our puzzle and the fact that we didn't end up completing any of the video game tasks. It didn't really matter who won, though. Our goal was to have a meet-and-greet for members of our wedding party that didn't know each other in a relaxed and social setting. While it wasn't always relaxed, I think it was ultimately a success. Everyone seemed to have a good time and that's what really mattered. Huzzah!

The next day, the future in-laws threw us a nice, relaxed cookout lunch at their house for our wedding party and close family. It was our idea of an engagement party. Neither Sezzy nor I wanted anything fancy, but we wanted to give our families a chance to sit and talk and get to know each other a little better. My grandparents really hit it off with Sezzy's and they talked non-stop to each other for about two hours. Our friends hung out, ate, recovered from the night before, and made sure to get the nail polish remover ready before too many people got there. While some of our friends held a whiffle ball home run derby, I just kind of soaked it all in. It was a perfect day with just friends and family.

In the aftermath of the weekend, Sezzy and I had to pack for the beach because our vacation was less than a week away. Sezzy's family takes an annual trip "down the shore", to Ocean City, NJ. A bunch of our friends showed up last year, but this year it was just me and her family. And it was nice. We got to have some time to ourselves to relax and talk about wedding plans, which have to soon start getting made. To that point, we are in the process of planning another trip up to State College to look at the newly renovated courtyard area where our wedding will be held. We are getting our guest list put together and my brother's girlfriend is designing us a logo for our Save the Dates. Things are starting to happen, and Sezzy and I are bracing ourselves for what's to come.