Post Wedding Moment of Clarity; Lessons to Learn

By, Adel

It’s said that every little girl’s dream to have a storybook wedding. Ignoring what some would call an obviously sexist ideology, we’ll agree with this to avoid any argument to the contrary. Take one for the bloody team for the sake of this article! I don’t have time to cater to every bleeding feminist war cry out there.

Yes, bearded lady, your point of view will be heard... eventually.

So, if a storybook wedding is every girl’s dream, then the one I just had must be the anomaly. I’m not saying it was bad. Quite the contrary. The result was the same; the groom was blessed with me as a wife until he dies. That’s how I understood it, at any rate. There was something in the ceremony about loving, honouring, and cherishing me. I am pretty sure there was an “obey” in there somewhere.

I've been taking some pointers from "They Live" - strategically placing OBEY in various locations to reach his subconscious. And you thought it was just a bad movie with Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David.

Not being the stereotypical fairytale wedding, mine was unique. Not jug band, hillbilly unique, but a definite type of crazy one usually has to tune into the tele for some sort of Gary Busey fix.




It was a peculiar mixture of me looking absolutely stunning in my dress, the bridesmaids being beautiful, (but not on my level of beauty, of course), Tresckow attempting to kill one of my bridesmaids, and mini bar shenanigans. This concoction still isn’t volatile enough for you? Well, add a healthy dose of motorcycle gang and ex-IRA and you have the uranium core of a marital super weapon that could take out most of the Pacific Northwest.

Bugger. There goes Yakima.

As you may remember from Tresckow’s article he bitched and moaned about traveling to my wedding. Piss off, mate, it’s a small price to pay to get a front row seat to the performance of a lifetime. Tresckow and Ren have a type of antagonist relationship that could, possibly, end in the death of small children and the elderly. Don't get me wrong, it's cute. She constantly bugs the ever loving shit out of him and he prays for death. Awwwwwww.

Tresckow is my self-adopted brother. Yes, I admit that. Don’t try to understand it, just accept it. Ren, being my husband’s sister (poor bastard), believes that she and Tresckow are brother and sister-in- law via some sort of muddled drunken Mick logic. Whatever the whiskey induced mathematical equation she used to arrive at that conclusion, the result ends in constant emotional and physical pain for Tresckow. It makes me laugh. What? Siblings should revel in each other’s misery.

Pictured: Irish logic.

With the combination of Ren, my mother, Tresckow, Roode, a plethora of alleged “one percenters,” and visitors from the UK (Northern Irish and British- another explosive combination) the event had no choice but to be the Poseidon Adventure of weddings.

Come to think on it, this may have been the only way to get some of those Micks upright.

It's no secret that my wedding exploded beyond control. What was supposed to be a small, quiet affair ended up in the newspaper and a blip on the local news. Half of Northern Ireland attended (those legally allowed to leave British soil and otherwise) and a might more bikers showed up than originally thought. To top it all, I actually had a good turn out with my family. That was a surprise. Oh, and Tresckow, my self-adopted brother, was there to be my therapist, confidant, and giver-awayer [insert another obligatory mushy "Awwww" here].

So, out of all this beautiful mess, what have I learned? I'm so very glad you asked. I've broken it down into 15 short tidbits of knowledge you may not have known. Also, for my enjoyment (and I suppose for some of you), each lesson is presented by a woman wearing the naughty teacher outfit I wore on the wedding night. No. There will be no photographs of that anywhere near this website.


Hitting someone in the head with a hymnal during a wedding ceremony will make a significant sound that echoes. As will the "Bloody Mary, OUCH" that follows.

You would think this is common sense. Ah, but common sense took a vacation during my wedding ceremony. Long of the short of it, some of the boozed up Northern Irishmen got into a Three Stooges-esq slapfest towards the end of the wedding vows. I hope God laughed, because I did not. Wankers.


It's not the best idea for your (soon-to-be) sister-in-law to give directions to the groomsmen and have them repeatedly lead to a strip club.

Ren, fancies herself a funny girl. She's good for a chuckle, I'll give her that. I suppose that's why she doctored the directions to the after- rehearsal boozing to lead Tresckow, Roode, and the others to the "Gentleman's Club" in town. Did I mention they were on foot, hoofing it through a town none of them were familiar with? After the first hour of wandering through the streets, repeatedly passing the same strip club, they started to catch on. In, yet again, another page from the Three Stooges play book, they blamed each other and started a street by street snowball fight. From what I'm told, it was a slightly less organized, slightly more destructive Battle of Berlin. What IS funny about all of this? None of them wanted to call for directions. Why? MEN DON'T NEED TO ASK FOR DIRECTIONS! Bloody retarded.

They did all this with snow?

Fist fights should not break out in public; let alone, in front of a patrol car.

There's really not much more to say about this. All out brawls should be done in the privacy of a back alley or in the elevator in a hospital. Come to think on it, ANYWHERE that isn't in front of a police patrol car is a better place for a fist fight. Why in crikey fuck couldn't they wait ten more feet until filling the air with fists and broken whiskey bottles?


Ham sandwiches should not be thrown off 15th story balconies.

Do I really need to go into further detail on this? Here's a simple mathematical formula:

Drunken Micks + hungry motorcycle enthusiasts + ham sandwich x 15th floor balcony = very surprised octogenarian on the ground



Two 90 pound Malamutes WILL sleep in your bed, regardless of your personal preference.

This is true no matter who you are. It will happen and you're powerless to stop it. Keep in mind, if you protest too much, they can crush your windpipe.




Your brother yelling "It's show time!" before rushing your (soon-to-be) sister-in-law in her father's bar for giving him directions to the previously mentioned strip club instead of the correct location is entertaining, if not slightly psychotic.

Again, there really is no call to go into this any further. Ren cannot be stopped. Tresckow was a fool for trying.



It is a bad idea to give the aforementioned (soon-to-be) sister-in-law access to your hotel key.

This wasn't my room. Quite frankly, I would have tossed her off the balcony. This was, once again, Ren's attempt to be sisterly to Tresckow. Of course, the sisterly thing to do is steal a copy of your "soon-to-be sister-in-law's self adopted brother[in-law]'s" room key. It's also sisterly to empty the mini bar fridge, fill the empty alcohol bottles with water, and sneak into his room at 2:30 in the morning to jump up and down on his bed to check if he's asleep. I'm not quite sure how that rowdy Mick survived. Tresckow must be getting soft in his old age.


When an Irish biker tells a bartender to give him the entire whiskey bottle, the bartender better do so.

This is just good self preservation instincts. It isn't worth getting castrated, then stuffed in the trunk of your own car for a job that only pays minimum wage. Leave that to the executives.



Slam dancing shouldn't be done at a wedding reception. Tables will break.

No, no, a thousand times NO! Wedding receptions don't have mosh pits for a bloody reason. I'm never going to get that deposit back now.





Repeated threats made against the groom by the bride's brother as a warning to treat his sister right probably shouldn't be made as part of a toast during the rehearsal dinner. Or in the church rehearsal. Or at the reception... or in notes nailed to his parents' door.

Nailed to the bloody door! He Martin Luthered my in-laws' house.


It may not be a good idea to wake up at 3:30 AM the day of your wedding and make your brother go on a three hour drive to your house, "just cause."

Let's just say discovering the bride is missing on the wedding day puts a damper on things. I reckon it also looked like Tresckow kidnapped me. It's the bride's prerogative! I wanted to talk to my brother and go on a drive. That drive ended up being a three hour trek to my house, across the border, into Montana. I don't know why. Maybe I thought I left the iron on. Just let it go. We almost hit a moose and, actually, backed into a big horn sheep. That's penance enough. Besides, I came back; with an hour to spare, thank you very bloody much.


Loudly discussing how to make pipe bombs from every day household items to blow up the British in Belfast isn't suitable conversation for a hotel gift shop.

Need I say more? I'm not sure I legally can.






Never let your sister-in-law connect an ipod to the DJ's computer.

"Detachable Penis" [music link] isn't traditional wedding music. It just isn't. Anytime a mother has to explain to her son the concept of a detachable penis during a wedding reception is just an investment in future therapy bills.




Songs about suicide probably shouldn't be requested at a wedding reception.

I love Alice in Chains. I really like their new album. As much as I like "Black Gives Way to Blue" I wouldn't say it's ideal wedding reception music. Tracks like Check My Brain and A Looking In View cause the slam dancing/mosh pit I spoke of earlier. But, the depression filled, suicide mourning, melancholy lyrics of Your Decision and Black Gives Way To Blue probably won't provide the appropriate wedding ambiance.

Seriously, guys. I love you, but your music doesn't exactly say "Marriage! Whooooohoooo!"

It is quite disconcerting when your mother seems to fancy a biker.

I really don't want to talk about this one.







Oh, and just in case you were curious (I was), there is a Staring at your hot teacher during class Facebook page. You can find your own hot teacher related porn.

Family Quality Time = Emotional Anguish

By Roode

Let’s face it; no one wants to be with their family for the holidays. Anyone who says differently is a fucking liar. Each year many of us ruin a perfectly good Christmas by spending it with people we voluntarily severed ties with. Somehow, the rules change for the holidays. We have to be all nice and social and shit.

This is especially true during Christmas. Somewhere along the line Charles Dickens brain washed society into believing Christmas is a time for forgiveness and family. Well, I don’t forgive and family is the reason why I wake up crying at night.

Dear Charles Dickens: Fuck you.

There is no way I can avoid this train wreck. My wife is very traditional and... well, normal. She had a normal childhood with normal relatives. Her family seems to … um… do that love thing. She has two sisters, bringing the total to three girls in her immediate family. I don’t know what that was like to grow up with. I imagine it had something to do with holding hands, singing Kumbaya, and pillow fights in their underwear. Sorry. That sort of shit is in my head all the time. I mean all of them are smoking hot. Let a guy dream. Hold on. Now I have the most amazing picture in my head. Give me a minute.

Do NOT ruin this fantasy for me!

I, on the other hand, grew up with two brothers. Three boys in one family spells clusterfuck. I’m the middle child, and therefore, the most awesome. Where there may have been tickle fights among the sexy sisters in my wife’s family, there were fist fights and constant emotional pain for us. Our childhood years were devoted to seeing how many swirlies we could give each other before one of us snapped. For the record, it’s eight.

There has always been a certain amount of animosity between me and my older brother, "Greg." By animosity, I mean outright shit-tastic rage. Greg is a holier-than-thou fucker that lives to point out when I fuck up. Hey, asshole, I don’t need that. I’m married. That shit happens by default.

My little brother, "Gene", is almost as awesome as I am. Being the youngest, he doesn’t feel the need to live up to anyone’s standards. It’s completely OK if he wakes up in a dumpster smelling of cheap vodka and Chanel. It’s Gene! He so crazy!

How I hate him.

The wife makes me go home for a lot of the holidays. I guess it’s alright to a certain extent. Her family is nauseatingly affectionate. They’re so polite and sweet to each other. That shit makes me sick. There’s so much nice floating around, I usually have to step out for some air. Where’s the fucking animosity? How are you supposed to unwrap gifts without throwing a bowling ball at someone? This is just insanity.

The tree usually caught fire at some point, too.

We’re from lower/central Alberta. It’s a good twelve hour ride o’ hell from where we live in Montana. That gives me plenty of time to plan for the circus of horrors. At any given time it’s 5 degrees, but the rage Greg and I emit raises the temperature to a balmy 10. My loving and oh so naive wife gives me a pep talk every year. I don’t have the heart to tell her that it does nothing. The only thing that would truly help is a bottle of Windsor and a shit ton of explosives.

Just add alcohol.

So, why do we subject ourselves to this bullshit? Tradition? Sentiment? The possibility of putting my Yule log in my wife’s fireplace? Yeah, it’s that last one. Like you're above bartering for sex. Married sex is a game of Risk for the husband. You’re constantly attempting to figure out the other's next move. For the wife, it’s more like a game of hitting a bunch of bottles at the fair, except instead of a little shit BB gun, she has a friggin rocket launcher. Husbands just aren’t hard to get. I’m proud of that shit.

Something about this doesn't seem fair.

Everyone has some issues. Some have enough issues to fill a fucking newspaper stand in Times Square. There are a metric shit-ton of dysfunctional families out there. Even the most functional suffer a core meltdown during the holidays.

In some families it’s sibling rivalry. In others, it’s the cold hard truth that your dad always wanted a boy. There are always those precious few that have an “uncle” no one talks about. Be it Uncle Joe and his disturbing obsession with women’s underwear or Uncle Sheamus who spent the better part of the 80’s building bombs for the IRA using alarm clock parts and road flares.

Yeah... One of Sheamus ' "novelty" alarm clocks.

So, again, why do we do this to ourselves? We all have our reasons. I already told you mine (married sex). Some of you have forgotten what hellish treats the homestead has in store and need a refresher. Either way, we’re all idiots.

After surviving the arctic tundra that is southern Alberta, well pulled into my parents’ driveway. My parents love my wife. She’s the daughter they never had; which is sort of disturbing, because that would mean we’re in an incestuous relationship. That shit may happen in Manitoba, but not here, Bub. Don't believe me? This article (about inbred sparrows) says it all!

OK, I just ASSUME there's a lot of inbreeding in Manitoba. Have you ever been to Winnipeg?

My record for the shortest amount of time between arrival and being fuck-shit pissed beyond belief is one hour. Sorry, it WAS one hour. Within thirty minutes the rage fuse was lit; middle son fighting oldest son while the youngest son eggs them on and takes bets. The mother begging them to get along and the father pouring himself another highball… that’s Christmas mother fucker!

Above: Means of escape.

I won’t bore you with the bullshit details. Let’s just say that someone assaulted someone else with a wreath and that someone else returned fire with a life sized baby Jesus.

As if I need another reason to go to Hell.

After a fifteen minute bourbon break, we resumed the thirty year war. Efforts to barter for peace were futile. My nephew asked if I was “Going to kill daddy?” Being the great uncle I am, I told him “Yes.”

Yeah, I hear you judgmental pricks. “But, Roode, assaulting your brother with the baby Jesus isn’t the grown up thing to do.” Shut the fuck up! In familial situations like this, there are only three options.

1. Keep drinking Cisco until your liver literally punches a hole through your abdomen and leaves.

2. Lock yourself in the bathroom and assume the fetal position.

3. Assault your brother with a plastic baby Jesus.

At the time, number 3 (with a healthy dose of number 1) was the most logical choice.

+

= SOLUTION

Somehow, we made it through Christmas without sending someone to the hospital... again. No, I don't hate Greg. I have been programmed to love my brother. I wasn't programmed to like the son-of-a-bitch. I wouldn't want to see him killed. That is, unless, it was by my hand.

Tough love.

After the goodbyes were said, my wife begged me to be the "bigger man" and let the ceaseless war drop until next year. So I did. To her knowledge, anyway. I may or may not have shampooed his car's carpet with spoiled eggnog before we left. Suck on that fucker!

I don't know if a full and real truce will ever be reached. At the moment, we're more like Israel and Palestine; with a lot less ethnic cleansing and a lot more alcohol. I guess that would make my parents' house the Gaza Strip.

Somewhere, in there, my dad is pouring himself another highball.

Sincerely,

Roode