Crobster, I Hardly Knew Ye

I really appreciate all the kind words everyone’s had for me since I posted yesterday’s sad entry. You guys are the best, as you know, and I’m grateful to know that since I’ve been so gauche as to post about my personal life online people have seen fit to be supportive and encouraging. But let’s not dwell on unhappy things, okay? Regular readers will know that this is not a journal that obsesses over sadness and pain, but one rather that seeks to document one girl’s general ridiculousness in exhaustive detail. To that end, I give you the wedding I went to on Saturday.

Now, again, regular readers will know that I am something of a wedding expert only because I have been to so many. I just counted a dozen weddings I’ve been to since 1996 and I wasn’t even trying hard; I suspect the number will be closer to twenty-five or thirty by this August. I’ve been a bridesmaid five times yet have managed to buy only three bridesmaid dresses, as I was able, for some odd reason, to double dip twice. I have opinions about assigned seating vs. non-assigned (I am firmly pro-assigned), bouquets, dresses, tuxedos, buffet flow, venues, updos, flowers, cakes, photos, invitations, favors, the whole thing. I’ve been to weddings in backyards, restaurants, gardens, mansions, and beaches (a couple of churches, too). I’ve been to a wedding where the bride’s veil stood stood straight up in a stiff wind during the whole ceremony and I’ve been to a wedding that involved effigies of the bride and groom made out of straw, as well as one in which the groom wore an actual sword. I’ve been to a wedding where there was karaoke at the reception and to one where all the food was vegan and/or wheat free, and I just went to one two Tuesdays ago where the bride and groom improvised their vows to one another, right there in the herb garden. I know I’ve told you many times that I considered becoming a wedding coordinator when I was all unemployed because I was getting so much second hand information and also I thought that clinical mental health skills might come in handy for engaged people. Weddings: I’ve seen it all. You’ll have to trust me on this.

So when I tell you that the wedding I went to Saturday night really, like, pushed the envelope for my expectations for what a wedding can be, you have some idea of the magnitude of this event. I know the bride and groom only a little and was very surprised and pleased to have been invited at all. Later when I understood how many people they invited I realized that after the first three hundred or so it all becomes a blur and you just start inviting whoever you happen to run into. Once I got the invitation, which was gorgeous and red and gold and written in three languages, I began to get the idea that this was going to be no ordinary event.

Ordinary to me, at any rate. I’d never been to a Chinese/Vietnamese wedding before, and from what I understand, what this bride and groom did was pretty straightforward. They had a tea ceremony in the morning (which was just family and close friends, I think) and then the legal western-style ceremony in the afternoon and then the big banquet thing in the evening. I understand that they’re taking a two-month honeymoon after all that, which surely they deserve.

But back to me. So Saturday morning I went to Target for some sparkly barrettes (which ended up being the worst barrettes in the world) and hustled into a nice wedding-appropriate dress and made it over to the venue with my neighbor Erika. It was held at a lovely old schoolhouse with a lot of white plaster walls and exposed brick and it was very cool and spacious and airy and pretty. I was escorted down the aisle by Erika’s husband (not to mention my landlord) Deane, who would later recapitulate this act of gentlemanliness by being the only person to ask me to dance later at the banquet. But that came later. My lovely opera singer friend Anne Carolyn sang a song in German. Later she told us that the groom has kiddingly asked her to learn something in Mandarin, which strained her professionalism a little bit. Bride wore a lovely and very fancy dress and four inch heels underneath. I guess that’s one of the hidden costs of being a very short woman married to a very tall man: sore feet. I think the song was actually longer than the ceremony itself, which was short and to the point and got the job done because poof! Married! I then escorted Erika down the aisle and after some mingling it was time to head home and rest up for the banquet.

I was a little worried about the banquet for sartorial reasons. The day before I’d received an email from Anne Carolyn that mentioned the word “gown” in reference to proper banquet attire. Gown. I’m much more of a jeans and tee girl and not so much for the gowns for non-Halloween purposes, in general, but remember up there when I said I’d been a bridesmaid five times? I still have one of the gowns and so I thought it might be kind of fun to bust out a little and wear it.

I tried to iron it with not a ton of success, I’m sorry to say, although this may just because I’m not especially good at ironing things and also because I was watching a nature show about sharks and I covered my eyes during the scary parts, which is, in general, a very bad idea if you happen to be ironing. It was only when I finally got into my shoes and everything and was running next door to go that I noticed the gown was positively covered with watermarks from the last time I wore it for non-Halloween purposes, which happens to have been as a bridesmaid at Marah’s wedding which was a little rainy. No go there, so I was forced to don emergency backup wedding wear and ended up looking like an Italian widow, with a black sweater and skirt and black wool shawl.

By the time we got to the banquet the bride and groom were on something like their fourth or fifth wind and were posing for a picture with every single guest who walked in. I sneaked around them and found my table, which was already full of bonhomous camaraderie and with whom I had a very silly and good time.

So, first, the food. There was a twelve-course Chinese dinner, as you might expect, and it was all going pretty well until they brought the Crobster. The Crobster is a sort of unholy amalgam of crab and lobster, fried up and disassembled, and then reassembled into some sort of monster of the deep (fryer). The crab carapace had the lobster head jauntily perched atop, and then all the various crab and lobster legs were sort of rearranged around that part, and then maybe the lobster tail was stuck on the back. I wished many times during the evening that I’d had a camera with me but never so much as the moment when the Crobster was brought in on a platter. Man. Crobster.

Then there was the singing. We’d all been pretty excited when we saw the DJ booth because it involved things like a disco ball and several synthesizers but we were a little disappointed when we learned that the karaoke machine was for certain people only, like people that the bride and groom actually wanted to hear sing. And in fact the bride and groom themselves sang a song, in Mandarin, which was very impressive, especially coming from the groom, for whom Mandarin is his second language. The bride, by the way, was a total trooper in her four inch heels and has quite a lovely singing voice. The things you learn at weddings. The groom gave this speech that made our entire table start bawling for non-Crobster-related reasons, so we were feeling a little vulnerable when the bride’s father got up, strapped on an electric guitar, and serenaded his daughter in Vietnamese. I lost it. The guitar was super feedbacky so it was like I was at the Battle Of The Bands in 1991 and it was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, ever in my life, and I say this as someone who has personally witnessed jello wrestling in my friend’s backyard.

So you can imagine the unmitigated joy at our table, after the bride, the groom, and their entire families had gone by every single table at the restaurant to make toasts (the bride and groom were looking a little glassy-eyed at that point but they shook it off), when that very same man stepped up to the DJ booth for the dancing. We’d already enjoyed the music thus far, which had been a very interesting mix of French, Chinese, Vietnamese, and American pop music. There was also, for reasons that elude me still, a Musak rendition of “On Top Of Old Smokey,” and if you think there’s anything better than trying to remember the words to “On Top Of Spaghetti” while dismantling a Crobster, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. Anyway, it turned out the bride and groom had been taking dance lessons in preparation for their first dance, and so they had a choreographed number (I think) and that was all very exciting. They invited folks up to dance with them and I was in the very interesting position of being a wallflower for a couple of minutes.

I think that was really the only time I was sad during this wedding, because there were so many interesting things to look at and talk about. I watched all the various couples dance together and I sort of sat there and thought about nothing and it seemed a little dark and chilly in the room and I wondered if I would have to sit there alone the whole night and watch other people dance. I had just about decided that I was actually okay with that when Deane busted up an dragged me from the chair and did a sort of seventh-grade sway-back-and-forth thing with me. At the end of the song when I thanked him graciously he said “You’re not going anywhere” and that’s when the magic started. First of all, don’t you wish you had my landlord? Second of all, the bride’s father started spinning Chinese salsa music and that’s just where it’s at. Don’t come to me with your Tainted Loves and your Love Shacks and all that nonsense. To make the dance floor really jump, it’s Chinese salsa music all the way.

Those of you who have never seen me dance, I have to admit to you right now that it’s not a pretty sight, for the most part. I am cheesy, there’s no other way to put it. I mean, I love to make little hand gestures and silly faces and to strike a pose when there’s a pause in the music. It is related, certainly, to my strange desire to throw gang hands every time someone takes a picture of me. To those who have seen me dance, thank you for still being friends with me and I’ll be more careful with your lamp next time.

However, I have to tell you that while for the most part I was a blot on the dance floor, there was a moment where I did a tango with a dangerous and voluptuous brunette and made her my own. For discretion’s sake I must draw a curtain on the details of this dance, but suffice it to say that…well, no. You would never understand. You never can understand the beauty and passion encapsulated in our dance of fiery loins, our dance of the intensity of a thousand suns, our dance that made grown men weep aloud. Let’s never speak of it again. (Confidential to Laura: call me!).

Then it was time to get my purse and get in the car and go home, and think about all the weddings I’ve been in or been to, and about relationships in general, and whether the Crobster would follow me home and kill me as I slept,a nd whether I should make going out dancing a regular part of my social repetoire. It was a lot of fun, this wedding. Three down this year, two more to go. The mind, seriously, boggles.