I’m a closet fan of Seinfeld. I haven’t seen them all, but Jerry Seinfeld’s humor is the kind I get.
Joshua & I created our own Seinfeld episode this weekend. It went something like this:
While packing, we carefully checked every item for Joshua’s best man attire, since the bride and her mother were very particular about the grey suit (with no pleats, lapels just the right width and length) and yellow tie (a specific pale shade, special-ordered) and white shirt (with no pleats, tone-on-tone, or extra buttons). The unworn suit was carefully stashed in the garment bag we brought. Suit? Check. White buttondown? Check. Black shoes? Check. Black socks? Check.
And so on, and so on.
It was on Saturday evening, as we were preparing for the rehearsal dinner, that Joshua and I had a conversation that gradually led around to the outfit he would be wearing the next day. I think I ended one of my sentences with, “…and that tie.”
A thought occurred.
“I hope you brought the tie,” I laughed, “because I didn’t!”
Joshua looked at me. “I didn’t pack it.”
My stomach flipped over. Our voices dropped to a dead whisper and we said together, in dismay, “We forgot the tie.”
Of all the things to forget! I called my good friend Rachel, a bridesmaid in the wedding, to find out if her Charlottean family would be joining her for the wedding the next day, hopefully driving in that morning. No. Of course not. In fact, it turned out that everyone who was coming to the wedding from Charlotte was either already in Tennessee, or well on their way. It was hopeless.
But the ties had been special-ordered through David’s Bridal from Men’s Wearhouse, of which there are two in Chattanooga (nothing is in Dayton, TN, where the wedding actually took place, because Dayton is in the middle of nowhere). After a quick call, it did appear that the Men’s Wearhouse had the tie we needed. But Chattanooga is 50 minutes from the house in which we stayed, and 40 from the wedding venue. Men’s Wearhouse opens at noon on Sundays, and the best man needed to be there, looking proper, at 1:00pm for pictures. The timetable had us cutting things very close…
I texted Rachel to tell her it looked like things were going to be ok. I told her we were trying to keep things under wraps, because we knew how important the colors and attire of the wedding party were to the bride and her mother.
Rachel responded by saying, with a touch of chagrin, that the bride already knew, because Rachel had asked her if anyone else was coming in from Charlotte, and that opened up the whole can of worms.
“RACHEL!” I moaned. “Of all people to tell! The bride?!”
[It is at this point that the similarity to a Seinfeld episode ends, as a Seinfeld episode would continue with Jerry and George getting a yellow tie that was a horribly wrong shade, and by the time the bride was able to really see it, coffee or punch would have been spilled on it, and it wouldn’t matter any more.]
The next day, we rose early to get to Chattanooga exactly when Men’s Wearhouse would open. We had to have all our stuff packed to go home, as well as be fully dressed for the wedding. Well, dressed except for the tie, of course.
In the hustle and bustle of the morning, someone said something about “the guys in Chattanooga”. My ears perked up.
“Wait, what guys are in Chattanooga that are coming to the wedding?” I asked, perplexed, and seeing a glimmer of salvation.
The groom shrugged. “Well, your brother and the other guys,” he explained.
I had no idea my brother was staying in Chattanooga. I knew he was in Tennessee, but who knew he was in the very city we needed him to be?!
A phone call and a few texts later, we arrived at the wedding venue, tie-less, having spent the morning in semi-relaxation with longlost relatives, and my brother and his entourage arrived only a few moments later, tie in hand, to save the day.
An enormous thank-you to our knights in shining armor – Peter, Brock, Jonathan, and Colby! You guys are the best!
with this ring 