The Wedding Reception, Part 1
After we got pictures with both of our extended and immediate families, as well as the bridal party, Paige, Ryan, Nicole, and I got into Nicole’s car and drove to Kobolt. We did not walk in the main entrance. Instead, we went to a door that leads to Dad’s office. Now there was a guy who was clearly on… something, and I mean, a woman in a wedding dress walking down the sidewalk is going to draw attention no matter what. He said something incomprehensible to us, and then, as Nicole and I watched, he dipped into the front of the studio. “Did he just…?” I asked.
“I think he did,” Nicole replied.
“Well, nothing I can do about it,” I said. It turns out, though we won’t find out until the next day, this guy talked his way into the reception and was there for 30 minutes before he signed our guest book and left, which, honestly-good for him.
After (or shortly before) the guy left, our DJ, Ed, came into Dad’s office. He told us that everyone had arrived and asked when we wanted to go in. It was about 5:45, and we had not planned to arrive until 6:15 or 6:30, but we decided to enter then to enjoy some of the cocktail hour.
This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) by Natalie Cole started playing, and Ryan and Nicole made their entrance. Ed asked everyone to stand, then introduced Paige and me. We walked in, and everybody cheered, and then I dipped and kissed her. Just because of the sheer number of people there, Paige and I split up to cover more ground. I talked to my side of the family, some of Paige’s coworkers, Greg, his sister Melody, and her husband, Rob, Dr. Brooks, and her husband, Mr. Brooks, Arden, Marshall, Aspen, and Kid, Nikki and Dan McCarthy, and very briefly, my New Story coworkers.
Around that time, Ed announced it was time to eat. Paige and I made it to the sweetheart table, and the caterers served us, and everybody else was released by table number to go to the buffet. Once the last table had gotten their food, Nicole stood up and started her speech. First, she talked about their nearly decade-long friendship and the little moments that made it. From carpooling to school while having their own personal concerts, constant laughter, and their Myrtle Beach trip. Then she transitioned to when Paige told her she “met someone.” She talked about how shocked she was, as I was Paige’s first boyfriend, but that as soon as she met me at Top Golf, she knew I would eventually be Paige’s husband. Then she told a summarized version of the Michelle story I wrote about earlier this season. She ended her speech by talking about her fiancé, Carson, and how she has loved watching her and Paige’s romantic relationships grow together, and then she wished us a good life!
Then Ryan gave his speech. He started it by making a joke about how long my hair had been before the wedding haircut, which was hilarious. Before the toast part, Ryan’s speech was broken up into two parts. Part 1 was his interpretation of Chapter 7 of my first book, when I jumped into a duck pond to get a toy of his. From my perspective, that event is the inciting incident of my life, but he used it to depict my loyalty. I have a little more to say about part 2.
About a decade ago, I played in a Christmas Piano recital, dressed as the Grinch. In 2019, I went to an ugly sweater party in that costume, and that is the night that I developed my crush on Paige. Ryan used this to talk about Paige seeing through some of my antics and falling for me. But I think there is even more of a metaphor here. Autism is not fun. I love myself and being an advocate, and I try to be a positive person, but sometimes, no, a lot of the time, it just sucks. Asking a friend or a family member to take on my autism never seemed to be that big of a deal because I masked the hard parts of it. But I didn’t want to mask with a partner, and with my exs, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t completely take the mask off. Paige is the first person I could completely show the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of autism, and she has made me a better person.
After Ryan toasted, we hugged him, and it was time for us to cut the cake. As we walked up to the cake table, I came to the horrifying realization that throughout all the wedding planning, we had not discussed how we were going to feed the cake to each other.
“Do you want to twist arms?” I whispered to her, thinking of champagne instead of cake. Paige looked at me like I was a crazy person (I mean, fair), and I didn't know how to explain what I was asking in the heat of the moment. So we ended up cutting one piece of cake, and each taking one bite ourselves, which caught Ken and both of our moms off guard. Immediately after we cut the cake, it was time for our first dance. As Paige and I walked onto the Dance Floor, Invisible String by Taylor Swift started to play.
To be Continued…
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