After a late night, with an attempted effort to not party till dawn, the wedding day arrived. Things were somewhat hectic after breakfast, at 10 a call was issued for all participants to dress for pictures and meet in some room. The male attendents were unaware of this so scouring the hotel and locating all the tuxs etc. was quite a chore. Then we found out it was for the bridesmaids and women only.

My Tux, which had seemed to fit perfect, with metal sizing clips on each side, suddenly lost one of the clips. completely broken and falling off with 2 hours to go.

I walked back down and had the ladies pin it up. 2 steps and all the pins gave way. We obtained some big safety pins and pinned the pants tight to the shirt to hold them up. OK, now we are ready.

It was nearing a hundred degrees and humid, something uncommon for Napa valley. As i went to my room and sat down in front of the Air conditioner, There was a loud ripping sound. Apparently we forgot the mechanics of the effects of clothes stretching when sitting, causing my shirt to rip all over, and my pants to fall down again. The rips were not visible under the vest so I tried again myself to pin the pins thru 3 layers of thick tux. I even tried to pin the pants to me! My skin turned out not to be very good for holding up pants either and I couldn't bring myself to pin it through any internal organs! At this point the photographer lady was walking bye and graciously came up with a pinning solution.

Everyone met near a small bridge we had to walk over and arranged them selves for the ceremony. The harpist started playing the music to start, and 2 by 2 the bridesmaids and groomsmen started thier trek. When here comes the bride started, Melanie and I walked over the bridge. On the second step there was a disticnt snap. I whispered to Melanie, resplendent in her beautiful long trailing dress, "don't look now but my pants are going to fall off half way down the aisle!"

"Dear the pants are falling"

She just said "No!"

I managed to shuffle along side of her to the alter, where after shaking Nick"s hand and bidding him welcome, and saying "Bye,Mel" to the bride,I felt the pants come loose. I dove for my chair in the front row just as they fell off. No one noticed and disaster was averted by milliseconds. The ceremony was nice, partally written by the bride and groom. Amy had warned me off mentioning in my father's toast the times when I tried to scare Nick off, as I did all her boyfriends, by asking him if he wanted to go hunting for large animals. He asked me if I hunted often, whereupon I replied No, but in your case I'll make an exception!

Anyway in the ceremony, they said something to the effect that they were still together 6 years after my best efforts to run him off were unsuccessful! That got lots of laughs and was cute.

I could go on and on, but you would be totally bored. The rececption was great, the food wonderful, the crowd a very good mix, and as it turned out, Our side of the family and the Irish contingent are the true partiers. We closed the room, then the verandah at 3:30, then adjourned to a couple of rooms till past 4. Nick's side had mostly professed tiredness about 11:30 or 12:00, and were no longer in eveidence after that.

Next installment: The 14 passenger limo and adventures at the beach, my rescue of Euro Bear from a fate worse than death, and how EB and I ended up making a 45 min drive into a 1 hour late arrival, DrunkASS gets his butt kicked, and more.