The most memorable wedding we ever attended took place in the fall of 2001 in Southern Louisiana.
It was twenty minutes before the ceremony and the groom and I were just hitting our drinking groove at a bar in the Garden District of New Orleans. They knew us well enough to know what would come if they continued serving us such stiff drinks, so one of the bartenders demanded we leave-- after all, she was in her bridesmaid's dress and was missing half a shift to attend the festivities, so we were wasting her time.
The groom departed and I was soon left in the otherwise empty bar with my ride, a local homicide detective we'll call W. W. was falling off the stool and dropping his car keys, but I knew he was in total control. "We better hit the road," he mumbled, "The wedding is in fifteen minutes and it's twenty minutes away..."
W. and I got in his unmarked police cruiser and hit the streets, doing at least 85 miles per hour through the red lights-- it was all right, the traffic was moving too slow to hit us and do any damage anyway. At least, that's what I remember thinking.
At some point, W. made the horrendous mistake of trying to maneuver through the French Quarter, which, as usual, was swarming with jaywalking tourists. W. stared at them, never moving a muscle, not even to blink. W. had not said a word since we'd left the drinking hole ten minutes earlier. His concentration was both astonishing and frightening.
At last, he lunged across the driver's seat and yanked open the glove box. I noticed his police-issued handgun resting atop the car's registration. His hand disappeared inside and, out of nowhere, the entire street was filled with a horrible shriek-- like that sound one of the annoying characters in "Dumb and Dumber" makes to signify the most obnoxious sound in the world-- only at least 50 times louder. Seriously, every single person-- we're talking at least one hundred people-- in the vicinity stopped in their tracks and stared. Then, seeing W. glaring back at them, they quickly began to dive out of our way. See, there are perks to riding with the police.
Five minutes later, we were at the VFW hall and threw open the doors in a huff, having made it exactly on time. Unfortunately, we were greeted by a worship session attended by several dozen African-Americans, who were not at all happy to see us barreling in. Whoops-- there must be two VFW halls in the area.
Notice the initials on this one... and the shotgun shells?!
Anyway, by the time we made it to the correct location, the wedding had taken place, most of the guests had left, the booze had run out-- there wasn't any to begin with-- it was banned by the VFW hall-- and, best of all, the bride and groom were having a terrible fight. The bride, who was freshly pregnant, staggered over to us and, with barf breath, gravely intoned:
"Don't ever get married."
P.S. We were kidding with that headline, by the way.
Via Cake Wrecks and many other sources.
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