How not to attend a wedding

I don't have a clue who the person walking down the aisle is.

Looks pretty enough, I guess, and her soon-to-be hubby looks suitably dashing. He's from here, apparently, or she is. I don't know him either, or anyone else in the wedding party. The only people I know in this whole damned cathedral are Reid and Mary, up for a visit from the port city and mid-way into turning my apartment into a mirror of Reid's third-world hellhole of a domicile.

So it's their fault I'm standing in the house of the lord with a mouth full of cottonwool, a belly full of writhing cockroaches and an anvil dropping on my head from space once every few seconds.

The excuse for their visit was the wedding itself, apparently one of Mary's good friends from school. Then, of course, the visit turned into an excuse for a trip down to the only Irish pub in a city that bills itself as the Irish capital of Canada (No, really...it's on the water tower and everything).

And, as is usually the case when we three meet, a pint turned into another pint, and then another, and then into three shots of tequila, then another three and so on. We got home at three, rose at nine for a crappy breakfast and tried our damnedest to look respectable as we tottered up the steps of the city's impressive old cathedral from my car, hungover as great holy fuck.

It was a catholic affair, of course, in the best church in town with an old Irish priest interrupting the usual ceremonies with the occasional inappropriate reminiscence. The regular standing to attention that entails has been scientifically proven to be ineffective as a hangover cure, as I can personally attest.

Then, of course, came the wedding reception...free food and booze right? Right.

'Cept ... you know all that rain we've been getting in the Maritimes? The never-ceasing torrent? Cottage-dwellers getting airlifted to safety out by Grand Falls, highways washed away, rivers rising ominously, all that stuff? Yeah, for one weekend...and one weekend only...everything cleared up. So blazing, noonday sun in 40-degree weather with neither shade nor quenching drink, save for some wine and watered down punch.

Such are the memories of my first-ever wedding....let's just say I much preferred the second night at the pub.