These are brother Mike McQueeny's reminiscences about Matt and Melany's wedding...
WEDDING RECEPTION, DECEMBER 31, 9:30 p.m. immediately after Mike's speech:
The maid and matron of honor gave touching speeches about Melany’s friendship throughout the years. Melany’s mother would give a beautifully elegant speech about the strength and courage Melany’s shown whilst dealing with the heartbreak of the loss of her father. They all touched on the person Matt is, and how those similar levels of compassion exist in both of them, and are only amplified by their love for each other.
And then came the other McQueeny speeches. As fellow groomsman JIG would come up and tell me afterwards, “Jeez, you McQueeny’s are rough. I don’t want none of you guys giving me any speeches. You know these are TOASTS, not ROASTS, right?”
My mom would get up there to highlight the years Matt lived at home without a glimmer of hope that he would meet someone as magnificent as Melany. About how, despite the fact Matt and Mel had been dating for months, Matt had not told my parents about her, and had to give my mom a “cheat sheet” of quick facts about Melany to make it seem as though he had been telling us about her the entire time.
Then my dad, ever the competitor with his sons, got up and tried to outdo my roasts by highlighting how glad he was that Matt finally married Melany. Mainly because of how wonderful Melany is, but also because Matt’s dating record pegs him only as “a once-a-decade dater” and that if they didn’t end up getting hitched, there wasn’t much hope until the 2020’s. This prompted my mom to give the classic TV producer move of dragging her thumb across her neck, telling my dad to cut it out.
Then came the dancing.
Or more accurately to say, the over-30 dance party. As myself, along with my cousins, and Matt and Mel’s friends in their 20s looked on helplessly, our mothers, aunts, and uncles poured onto the dance floor. They were not “partying like it was 1999” so much as “dancing like it was 1969.”
For the first and last time in my life, I watched mortified as my dad attempted to muster any kind of dance moves that his genetics of Irish-Catholic blood had for centuries been successfully able to suppress. My Uncle Benny tore it up, doing his best Saturday Night Fever, or at the least, Saturday Night Headache. Even Grandma Betty put all of us young 20-something wall-flowers to shame, as she boogy woogy woogied til she just couldn’t boogie no more. Then came Pastor Stephens. (Despite all the varied Unitarian jokes I could throw in here, for the sake of Melany still feigning tolerance of us, I’ll avoid these jokes at all cost.) While I have no clue what the actual tenets of Unitarianism are, after watching Pastor Stephens, I can say dancing is undoubtedly their 11th commandment. Despite the fact that the dance floor was made of linoleum, all these characters nevertheless effectively cut a rug.
I spent my time walking around, saying hello to as many friends and family members as I could. Suddenly, Ralph, one of the members of the WSITS (Winning Strategies Internet Services) family, came up to me, showing me a coat check and goes, “Mikey, whenever you’re ready, bud.”
At the bachelor party I had introduced the group to a now-illegal drink called 4 Loko, which is basically a heart attack in a can. JIG had been joking around ever since that he was going to smuggle a case of 4 Loko’s into the wedding. I kept informing him that 4 Loko was now illegal in New Jersey, and rested comfortably in the knowledge that this task was close to impossible. On the wedding day, he continued these statements, and told me, “Don’t worry, I got my best man on the job.”
As Ralph approached me that moment, JIGs words rang even truer when I realized that the man he was referring to was Ralph. Even on the bachelor party night, Ralph was like the special forces of partying, no task too tall, no mission too dangerous. Upon being pressed, he’d further tell me that after scouring North Jersey, he finally found a bodega in Newark that had the goods. The fact that “goods” were coming from a “bodega in Newark” should have been alarm enough of the trouble to come.
By the end of the night, JIG and Ralph’s table became like a bootlegging distillery. Table 12 became 1920’s Atlantic City, with JIG standing as Nucky Thompson and Ralph his muscle. For the rest of the night, every time I passed by the table, Ralph would run up to me and go, “Mikey, let me top your drink off.” By the time I’d get back to my table, all my drinks would be bright neon blue, green, or orange. 4 Loko, a mixture of strong caffeine and alcohol, slowly pervaded their corner of the wedding. Within an hour, I’d look over to their corner and notice that it was now home to much of the most emphatic and enthusiastic dancing in the entire room. By the time they started breaking out into choreographed numbers, I knew that all the 4 Loko had been drunk.
Matt was by far the funniest character at the wedding. This was Matt’s day, and he was enjoying every moment of it. Normally a restrained and calm individual, Matt was smiling, dancing enthusiastically, really enjoying himself in a way that I had never seen before. Part of the job of the bride and groom is to go around and thank each person individually for coming to the wedding. In that right, part of the job of the best man is to make sure that throughout this socially strenuous process, Matt always has a fresh drink in hand. I stayed loyal to the mission.
Matt was never out of control, and never visibly seemed drunk. However, the day after the wedding, I was chatting with Matt and Mel and Matt was commenting how his only regret of the wedding was not getting a chance to sample all the varied desserts that had been laid out close to the end of the night.
I looked him in shock. I said, “Matt, are you serious?” He goes, “Yeah, I barely ate anything.” I then filled him in on the fact that not only had every single dessert on the premises been placed at the bride and groom’s private table, but that also, Matt had plopped himself down at the table for a solid 15-20 minutes STUFFING his face with pastries. “Oh,” Matt said, in a moment of confused realization.
The wedding continued for hours, and there was never a lull throughout the night. Everyone danced, ate, drank, and enjoyed themselves. As the night dragged on, I increasingly became exhausted. Exhausted from the nerves I had felt the previous three days, from the lack of sleep from the previous night, from the constant activity of the entire day, and from the fun and excitement of the wedding itself. As the night began to draw to a close, I looked forward to nothing more than simply lying down.
However, everyone still energized from the night wanted to continue the party at the hotel. Groups had brought their own stockpiles of alcohol and personal bars, and I was continually invited and implored to go to various after-hour parties. Given the fact that I’m in my young 20s, and I wanted nothing more than to avoid more fun and simply go to sleep, I became evasive.
I started fashioning my “Irish Exit,” which is a term for when an individual is at a party, and then just leaves without saying goodbye. Once we got back to the hotel, I promised others that I was simply going to change out of my tux. As people became suspect, and asked what room I was in, I started giving fake room numbers. I even took a back staircase to go up to my hotel room, lest I be followed.
Soon after, my cousin Monica, also avoiding participants from the wedding dogging her to hang out, came to hide in my room. After the long hours, I was finally in my bed and able to relax. However, my phone continued to ring and outside my room groups of people scoured the hallways looking for us. Every time I heard a voice in the hallway, I implored everyone to stay quiet for a minute, and at one point, even shut off the lights. There we were, on my brother’s wedding night, and I was hiding away like Anne Frank, afraid of the drunken forces searching me out.
I would find out the next day that one group had been busily knocking on all the fake room numbers I had given them. My Uncle Billy would come up to me the next morning and say, “Mike, some guys were looking for you. They knocked on my door, and virtually forced the door open once I unlocked it.” The worst was that Mrs. Felsen, and Grandma Betty were now sleeping in the room Matt had been sleeping in the night before. This was also the room where all the groomsmen had gotten ready before the wedding. The search party dispatched after me now went to this room, and not only did Grandma Betty open the door for them, but at 3 in the morning, also invited them in to chat for a little bit.
My mom, sister, cousin, Tom, and I sat around in my room and debriefed about the night for a while, until eventually it was easier for me simply to become blunt. “Listen, I like you guys, but you have to get the hell out of here, I need to sleep.” I looked out the peep hole to make sure the coast was clear, and soon after, everyone left. I shut the door, locked it, and with that, the wedding, at least for me, was officially over.
Then, I slept.
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