The most popular question last week was What are you going to be for Halloween?"" Well, my costume wasn't very exciting, but at least I can say it was original. I was a very pissed off greeter at my cousin's wedding. How did you miss such a great costume, you may ask. You didn't; I was two hours from State Street and, like I said, was not very happy about it.
When I first got the save-the-date card from Jake, I was too excited to notice that it overlapped with Madison's biggest party of the year. And when Melissa asked me to be in the wedding, I was too honored to realize that I was committing to the entire weekend, so I couldn't even enjoy the regular holiday festivities. But as Halloween approached and I realized that being a greeter is possibly the lamest wedding job ever, it became all too clear.
My mom tried to tell me it would be OK, maybe even fun. After all, Jake and Melissa had invited me to the rehearsal dinner, where we could wear costumes and drink apple cider. Seeing as only one person in the wedding party was under 20, no one was too excited about it. But things really picked up at the haunted corn maze after dinner. I am close to my family, but the whole ordeal was pushing the boundaries of cousinly love.
So, I spent my Halloween lost in a corn maze in freezing temperatures receiving drunk dial after drunk dial from revelers back in Madison. I reminded myself tomorrow would be the wedding, and with the wedding came free drinks. I told myself it wouldn't be that bad.
Positioned in the back of the church with a big painted-on smile, I began to doubt the previous night's reasoning. It was freezing, I couldn't see anything and the other greeter was flirting with me. Usually I wouldn't have cared, but seeing as I was pretty sure he was somehow related to me, I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe it was because we were in Iowa, but he didn't seem to mind the notion of kissing cousins. I introduced him to my cousin Kathy and ran away.
Inevitably, as the day went on, I began to draw comparisons between the party at the reception where I was and the party on State where I should have been. When my roommates were dressing up as Playboy bunnies, I was in the bathroom trying to get baby throw-up off my dress.
While the neighbors were fighting about who could do the longer keg stand, I was trying to break up a fight about who was better, the Braves or the Cubs. I didn't have the heart to point out to my uncles that both teams ultimately sucked - the Brewers didn't exactly leave me bragging rights this year.
And when my friends at school were listening to O.A.R. and watching ""Rocky Horror Picture Show,"" I was stuck rocking to Kenny G and watching a Power Point of Jake and Melissa's baby pictures. Things got a little crazy when the DJ played ""The Monster Mash"" twice in a row, but soon we were back to the easy listening love jams of Michael Bolton. I was back to pounding my head on the table as well.
Things finally started to wind down around 10:30 p.m. My cousin Dan and I enjoyed one last beer. He was even more upset with the weekend than I was. Apparently he had been planning to visit me so he could go to Freakfest for the first time and get free room and board. I didn't mind that he had planned all this without me. I owed him for his Eggs and Kegs breakfast before the Iowa game. We clinked our bottles and vowed for next year.
I returned to Madison feeling well-rested, but not exactly overexcited about my weekend. I walked into my apartment to find it pitch dark and silent. It was 2 p.m., so at first I thought we had been robbed. But soon I realized that my roommates were simply hiding in their rooms, suffering some of the worst hangovers of their lives and severly depleted monetary funds. I guess there is one thing you could say about my weekend: at least the beer was free.
If you want to get married on Halloween, Megan isn't coming. If you want to share a story from your weekend, e-mail her at mcorbett2@wisc.edu.
