Okay so I have to rant about my weekend real quick. I was invited by a friend to attend their wedding reception which was being held in a different state. Myself and another mutual friend made arrangements to be there. Saturday morning we woke up, and made the long 5 1/2 hour drive, checked into our hotel and started getting ready for the event.
The event was scheduled from 5-10pm. Our hotel was only a few minutes away from the event location. We got there right at 5pm and happened to be one of the first guests to arrive. No biggie, we hung out in the lobby for a short while allowing them time to finish up the seating arrangements, visited with the happy couple and then made our way into the reception hall. We spent a short amount of time admiring the ice sculpture, the cake, etc.. then found our table and had a seat. Another guest sat down at the table with us an introduced himself. He was one of those artsy-types who had spent a semester living in London and while in Europe spent some amount of time traveling through various places in Europe. This of course, made him our cultural superior and he spent the next hour and a half sharing his cultural experiences with us. I felt like I was on the movie Airplane! where I just wanted to hang myself because not only was he not as interesting as he thought he was, but he didn't stop talking long enough to even get a word in edge-wise.
An hour and a half later we were still sitting there waiting on guests to arrive. The couple wasn't even in the hall as they were still standing at the doors greeting people. My 10-yr old son looks over at me (bored out of his mind) and says that he left his Nintendo DS at the hotel. Since the hotel was so close, nothing was going on yet anyway, the hall was not even half-full of people and the guy talking wouldn't shut up, I decided to run to get his DS. I could use the break from the non-stop babble anyhow.
On the way out, I stopped and asked the couple if I had enough time to run to the hotel which was about 5 minutes away. They said sure, it shouldn't be a problem. I drove to the hotel, used the restroom, grabbed the Nintendo DS and then headed back to the reception hall. As I walk in my friend and son are looking at me with funny expressions on their faces. As I approach the table they inform me that, in the 10-15 minutes I was gone, the couple had made their speeches, cut the cake, and I had basically missed the main part of the reception...
I didn't want to seem shitty or ungrateful, and I certainly didn't want to rain on their parade, but I have to admit, I was a little pissed off. I gave up my entire weekend to be there, drove 5 1/2 hours each way, paid for gas, hotel stay, travel expenses, wedding gift... for what? To miss the event because I stepped out for 10 minutes when I specifically made a point to let them know I was running out for a moment?
Dinner was nice, and it was somewhat entertaining watching some of the older Aunts and Grandmas dancing after the dinner was over, but I was disappointed.
How could all of that have happened in 10 - 15 minutes?
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