Two weekends ago, some of my best pals, Brad and Megan, tied the knot. Once residing in Indianapolis, they now call Boulder, CO their home. It had been months since I’d last seen them, so I was over the moon when their wedding weekend finally arrived.
If you asked some of Brad and Meg’s wedding guests to sum in one word the Pickens wedding weekend, they might suggest the following: Love! Romance! Happily-ever-after! Fun! Dancing! Beautiful! Perfection!
If I had to sum up that weekend in one word, I might choose this: Urine. If I had to choose another word, it’d be Poop.
As it happens with most weddings, lots of friends from out of town came to Indy to celebrate, so Bryan and I opened up our little duplex to a houseful of guests. Or, I should say, a houseful of men. Groomsmen, a groom and a bunch of pals. Some stayed all weekend, some just used our house as a place to relax or change between wedding events. For the majority of the weekend, I was the only woman in the house. Which quickly led me to discover something else:
Our house only has one bathroom.
Do you see where “urine” and “poop” fit in now?
Here is a list of some of the things I learned during that weekend:
- When you have a houseful of people and only one bathroom, the bathroom will always be occupied. Always. Worse than the ladies room at any professional sporting event.
- By the time you finally do have an opportunity to get into the bathroom, there is a 90% chance it will smell like feces. The feces of a male who has spent days drinking beer and nourishing his body with a 40-pack of off-brand hot dogs.
- When you return home from the rehearsal dinner, you should make a beeline for the bathroom. DO NOT stop to hang up the coats that were thrown on the floor, DO NOT stop to pet your adorable cat, DO NOT stop to greet anyone. You may not think you have to pee that badly. But, when a groomsman gets to the bathroom before you, he will not only poop, he will fall asleep while he’s pooping. For an hour. Nothing you do will wake him up. And then you will find yourself crouching sadly in your own back yard, trying not to urinate on your own dress and praying your neighbors won’t choose that moment to pull into their driveway.
- After you’ve peed all over your own dress – and somehow your tights? – you will return to the house and change clothes. Just then, the groomsman will wake from his slumber and wander into the living room. You will sprint to the bathroom to wash your face and brush your teeth so you can just go to bed already. In the bathroom, you will be greeted by the stench of beer/hot dog/rehearsal dinner poop that sat for an hour in an unflushed toilet. And you will be forced to brush your teeth as the smell wafts and swirls all around your face.
- You will also go through a lot of toilet tissue. Thankfully, you’ll find that your guests will take special notice of the tissue’s softness and will not only thank you for stocking such a quality product, but inquire as to what brand it is. (Cottonelle with Aloe, for anyone who’s curious. The one in the green package.)
- If you didn’t already know, you will quickly learn that (a) it is much easier for men to pee outdoors than women and (b) in general, men LOVE to pee outdoors! Even when it doesn’t make sense! Even if they are literally staring at a functioning port-a-potty while they are urinating in the grass! Even if it’s during a wedding reception, a mere two steps outside of the reception entrance, in front of a window, under a shining spotlight! With men, women and children around! Even if an employee of the barn at which the reception is held will surely notice the public urination and will tell the urinator to cease peeing or he will call the police and have him “escorted off the premises”! No, dear reader. Even then, the average male pee-er will pee. (Not saying that happened.)
OK, OK, so bodily waste doesn’t sum up all of the wedding weekend. There’s much more to tell about those precious days. (I’ll get to those stories later.) But there was so much notable peeing and pooping sprinkled and plopped (respectively) throughout the weekend that I couldn’t not mention it.
After all, these are the stories that the newly-minted Mr. and Mrs. Pickens will want to laugh about when we’re all at their 50th Anniversary dinner, right?
Jillian Wyatt 