Hey everyone. It's November, time for the BIG day, the day I put my bachelor life away and become a married man. The day I stop being half and join together to mskate my other half. The day I get married, my wedding day. So so much happened coming up to this. I think I'll start out with getting the marriage license, because that was an ordeal. Mskate being between jobs at this time was taking care of most of the paper work before the wedding, and one of the things she was taking care of was the marriage license. She filled out the paperwork online for the county we were getting married in (because that's where our priest said we needed to get it done), but then I got a call at work saying "no, this needs to be done in the county where you live." That sucked, but no harm no foul, we'll just do it at one of the counties we live. Well seeing that she wasn't an official resident of where she was living at the moment, we had to register in the county where I live and she will after the wedding. Unfortunately they require one of us to do it in person, and thanks to covid I had to make an appointment, and appointments were in short supply, and only one person could go (meaning me), and the county clerk is in a big city with colorful characters. On my way in I ran into a gangsta nerd. He's trolling around on his bike, trying to sell his CD, rapping, throwing hand signs, and all that, but he's rapping about biology and throwing up the Spock "live long and prosper." He yelled "Star TREK!" to get my attention, said "hey man, throw up that Spock sign," and when I did he said "YEAHHH boy, I knew you was one of us." After that getting to the county clerk was pretty uneventful; went to the clerk, checked in, waited my turn, saw someone go to the wrong county clerk and get pissed but the officer working security took care of it (even though I was thinking he might have escalated it when he yelled "you're dumb" when the guy said "y'all are dumb" as he was walking away), filled out the paper work, held up my right hand and swore that everything was correct to the best of my knowledge, and then went home.
OK, skip around to the tuxedos. I have a tuxedo vest I wear for my Hareta cosplay that I used in a book report in highschool school (because I convinced my teacher to let me read Pokemon Diamond and Pear Adventures for an independent reading project) and a Pokemon neck tie. Unfortunately mskate didn't really like that, and wanted me to wear a black tuxedo with a bow tie and no vest. Since I don't like bow ties and didn't want to wear black, we were able to compromise on a light gray tuxedo with a light blue neck tie. The dads wore black tuxedos, and my best man wore a dark gray tuxedo. We went to Men's Wearhouse and got measured. It was kind of funny since we all have VERY different body types, and that will come into play later. The tuxedo guy also asked me to write down my email address, and since my handwriting was so bad he had to transcribe it later. They also didn't have a try-on tux coat in my dad's size so they had to grab one from the store floor, and it was blue plad. I REALLY wanted to take a picture and send to my bride saying "we decided to go with a different style," but I knew that would drive her over the cliff and wasn't going to do that to her. When we were checking out they wanted to sign me up for the rewards program since they didn't have my number in the system, but then I pulled out my rewards card from highschool and the guy said "WOW, I haven't seen one of these in years." I asked if they still had my prom measurements but they didn't. 3 weeks later the tuxedos come in, we all went to get our tuxedos together, and while they remembered us they didn't remember who was who, and gave us each others tuxedos, and when we looked at the names we're like "no that REALLY wouldn't fit me." The dad's didn't have the right ties, so we had to wait to get those. My dad's coat didn't fit well either, so he had to wait a few days for alterations to get done. It's funny, for his wedding 30 years ago his tuxedo didn't fit either, and now it wasn't fitting for mine. I guess when my brother gets married we'll see if the trend continues. My dad picked up his tuxedo parts a few days later. When we brought them home my mom wasn't sure where we would hang them, but I suggested hanging them on "the clothes rack" like old times. When my brother was like 12 he bought one of those door frame pull up bar things, but it got a lot more use from hanging clothes on hangers off of it, and it still hangs there to this day. My parents probably would have taken it down if it wasn't so useful for hanging hangers.
OK, jump ahead to the day before. We had our rehearsal at the church and that went off...with a few hitches. First the fun stuff though. Remember my waving dancing man from my bachelor party? Well my parents set it up again outside the church, for fun. Mskate was more than a bit worried that I wanted it at the church on the wedding day, but I assured her it was just for the rehearsal, and she was OK with that. The most eventful thing that happened when going through everything was when mskate's dad brought her to the front and our priest said "take his hand." I took both of his hands and started holding them, and asked "OK now what?" Apparently I was supposed to shake his hand and take my wife's hands, but we misunderstood and took my father-in-laws hands. It was kind of funny. Going through everything went ok, but our videographer wasn't there and we needed him there to do some tests (make sure the stream could be seen, and that everything could be heard). He got there 15 minutes after we started, which was basically when we finished. We still did some tests, but my aunt who was doing the test wasn't at the right link, and sound wasn't coming through, and some other challenges, but we got it worked out.
After the rehearsal we had the rehearsal dinner. Because of covid we didn't have a REALLY big thing, but we had about 20 people there, and that was good because a lot of the people that came weren't going to come to the after glow the day of. I was able to get caught up with my college friend, and I wore my pink wig. If you don't remember, I had pink hair for my aunt's wedding back in college, and then I wore the same wig for my cousin's wedding. Because it's "unusual," I told the story to everyone that was there. PepperBC and her family understood immediately, but no one else really did. We also tried doing the waving dancing man inside, but the ceiling was too low and it didn't work, for which I also explained to everyone. The kind of "full circle" of this was the dinner was at the same restaurant that we had my uncle's luncheon at. After dinner I went to say goodnight to mskate and give her one last kiss as single people. I then spent the night with my parents and was ready for the next day. I was able to sleep, unlike my godfather on his wedding eve night.
OK, now is the big day. My parents made me breakfast, and we enjoyed some time together. Mskate's mom dropped off a special present that mskate got me; pokemon cards and cookies. Since it's easy for boys to get ready, I said "I want to watch 3 stooges with my dad and brother." Back when covid was at it's peak lockdown in my state, and I was at my peak depression with the lockdown and moved back in with my parents, every night my dad and I would watch 3 stooges or some other comedy (and because I have the ultimate 3 stooges collection, we weren't going to run out any time soon). So to commemorate my final hours as a single man, we watched the stooges. After some stooges we started to get ready. I put on my tux, dad and vikingpolak put on their tuxes, and my dad took some video on my phone in the style of our home movies. He was giving commentary, saying "OK, it's [the date] and the day of [Pokematic]'s wedding, how are you feeling?" It was fun making videos like we did in the past. About an hour before the limo showed up my groomsmen showed up, and at some point my parents set-up the waving dancing man. After they got ready we took some photos, but they were sparingly because I hate taking a lot of photos; one or 2 with each group of people is OK, but not hundreds of different poses and such. The limo showed up at about 11 and we got in. Mskate didn't really care for the whole limo thing, so my group was the one that got to take it to the church. Zeldamaster93 and I reminisced about how this was kind of like prom, and IRA and vikingpolak hadn't really ridden in a limo before, so it was new to them. When we got there I put my face mask over my eyes to make sure I didn't see mskate before the ceremony, and my boys did a good job of coordinating to make sure we didn't see each other since she was taking photos outside the church with her family and party.
When it was safe the limo driver took us to the front of the church so I could walk out into the vestibule, and I basically stood there and greeted people as they came in. We had 44 people attend, and I directed them on where to record well wishes for us. Z-man was going to do our wedding video, but since he's an amateur and would have used my equipment, we went with my friend who does this professionally, but we still wanted to include him and since people weren't going to be congratulating us in person we gave him the job of filming people congratulating us to watch at a later time. Another fun thing one of our loved ones came up with is to have people write their names on wooden hearts and put them in this big display heart, so I helped direct people there. I know, "my wedding day, I shouldn't be working," but this was the only way I was able to interact with my wedding guests on my wedding day; it wasn't "I was the only one that would do it," it was "I wanted to do it." Our videographer showed up and got everything set-up, and I watched him set-up some because I like that kind of stuff. Also, since the "bride prep room" was close to the men's room, when I had to use the bathroom I put my mask over my eyes and had my brother guide me to the bathroom. I made a bit of a show of it, because it was comical and I wanted to be "star of the show."
OK, time for the main event. My parents lined up with me and walked me down the aisle. I know it's not exactly "traditional," but I wanted to have my moment with all eyes on me; I didn't want to just "start at the front of the church." vikingpolak walked down with mskate's matron of honor, and then looped around to walk our grandma down the aisle. Now for the big thing, the big reveal. When I saw mskate, I was blown away. She looked absolutely amazing, and you could see me say "wow" on the video. When new dad handed her off, he shook my hand a lot and welcomed me to the family. It was a good service, and was a good "happy event" since the last big thing we had there was my grandpa's funeral some months earlier. At the end we had our recessional, looped around to sign the marriage license, and said hello to some people. The funny thing is our ceremony went kind of up to the normal mass and some regular people were starting to show up. Later when we were looking at the hearts there was this group of 4 people that none of us recognized, and we later found out that some of the regular mass people thought it was something for the church and signed a heart. It's ok though, the more the merrier. Mskate and I were the only ones to take the limo to the afterglow, and we shared some champagne provided by the limo. Since there was still an hour or so before the party started, we took the long way to her parent's house, and took a tour of the neighborhood. Normally this is when couples would take a bunch of wedding pictures, but we agreed to not do that because it would ruin my day (I don't like taking pictures, and I don't like the kind of pictures people take now adays). We did stop at her parent's house and took some pictures with their dogs, and it was just until we got a good picture with them, so that was good.
The afterglow was a fun little thing. It was a house party at her friend's parent's house, who apparently like to host parties. Considering they have 2 pinball machines in their basement, I understand why. We basically just went around and visited with people. Unfortunately for me there wasn't a ton of dancing or buffet dinners, but it was still pretty good. My best man and her matron of honor read some speeches before dinner, and we catered individual meals. Back on my Tennessee trip I picked up a limited run bottle of wedding cake moonshine, and I could never find the right opportunity to open it. My wedding day was the best time as any, but unfortunately we forgot about it in the hustle and bustle so my parents just brought it back to their house. Even though we didn't have a big dance floor, we were still able to have our first dance and mother-son and father-daughter dances. First was my mom and I, then mskate and her dad, and finally our first dance as husband and wife (I know, not traditional, but we used the dance to end the night for us). My mom and I practiced our dancing every time we saw each other, and we had a great dance, then mskate and her dad had a dance, and we had ours. After our dance we said our goodbyes and went to our hotel. On our way in some people congratulated us, and it was fun being on the receiving end since I've congratulated complete strangers in the past. We didn't know that this hotel gives wedding couples a welcome stack package, so that was a nice surprise.
In the morning we went to her parents house to open our wedding gifts, and that was fun seeing all the great things people got us. It was like Christmas a month early. After the wedding gifts we started out for our little honeymoon to Frankenmuth. This was going to be fun, because while mskate hadn't been to Frankenmuth before, I used to go multiple times a year with my grandparents on both sides (Dad's parents would be day trips, Mom's parents would be weekend get aways), so I was able to show her all the stuff. What was different for me though was staying at an air BNB. Whenever I went with my grandparents we always stayed at one of the hotels, either the Bavarian Inn Lodge or Zender's Splash Village, but for multiple reasons (like covid stopping a lot of the hotel activities), we had a nice little house off the high way. The house was far enough away from the road to not be too loud, but it also made it hard to find the house. We unpacked our stuff and got settled, and started our first night at Frankenmuth.
First thing first, I wanted to drive mskate around the city so she could see all the stuff and we could figure out what we might want to do. Granted, I've been here probably 50 or so times, but it was generally just a few key places (Bavarian Inn restaurant and castle shops, Bavarian Inn Lodge/Zender's Splash Village, Bronner's Christmas store, and River Place), and there's more to the city than just those places (like a sausage place, a leather store, a cheese store, many other artisan gift shops), and even if you don't go in places a lot of stuff still has Bavarian-German architecture (like the McDonald's). I gave her the grand tour, showing her the places I knew and would like to stop at, and went to the fun center of the Bavarian Inn Lodge and took a little walk down memory lane (I used to stay there with my grandparents a lot, and the fun zone still has a lot of the same attractions I enjoyed as a child). While exploring the city we found this little wool shop that was kind of away from everything. We didn't get anything, but it was still kind of cool to see. We also stopped at the Cheese Haus where we picked up some cheese. I'm not a big cheese connoisseur, I put Kraft singles on my burgers and basic mozzarella on pizza, but mskate is really into cheese, so this was kind of good for her. This place was cool, they had basically every kind of cheese imaginable, and it was like, "the real deal." This wasn't prepackaged, mass produced, blocks and slices; I'm talking "cuts off the wheel" kind of cheese. You know in classic cartoons where the mice would have the red wheel of cheese with a section cut out? This was that kind of cheese. We decided to pick up some classic smoked cheder. It was a little expensive, but it was our honeymoon and we were going to treat ourselves. Plus, it was REALLY good. Like, I have never had cheese that sharp and rich before; it was worth every penny. Speaking of penny, I also got a smashed penny.
After the Cheese Haus, we went to the river place shops. I didn't have a lot of places I wanted to go there, but it's still fun to walk around. We went to the fudge store where I bought a giant peanut butter cup the last time I went. I didn't buy one this time, but it was good to get out of the cold. We also stopped at this beef jerky shop, one I haven't been to before. Mskate got a jerky stick and I got a jerky making kit. After the jerky store we walked around a little more and went to this toy shop. Nothing super exciting, except for when we left we saw a group of goth teens with the full black clothes and what not; one girl even had these 4 inch platform shoes. Our last and final stop was the store that used to be BeeBee's arcade and fun center, with this giant ball thing. It's now a t-shirt store, but there's still a small arcade in the restaurant area. I wasn't planning on playing games, mainly just wanting to look around and sight see; but then I saw it, a pinball table. Not just any pinball table, a very special pinball table, the first pinball table I ever remember playing. The same pinball table that was at the pizza arcade my grandparents used to take me to when I was really little. The pinball table that played a key role in making me the pinball fan I am today. Super Mario Bros pinball. It has been over 20 years since I last played this table, and I HAD to play it. Just look at how happy I am.
While I normally never pay more than 50 cents for a game of pinball, I happily payed the 75 cents to play this table. It was pretty awesome playing this again. When I was little I used to just mash the flippers while I hoped to hit the ball around the colorful table, and now as an adult I actually tried to play the table with some skill as it was intended to be played. I was still taken in by the colors, and mario characters talking. It was quite the nostalic rush, and I might have been able to last longer if I wasn't so distracted by those happy memories. After the game I still had 1 token left, so I looked for a game that could be played for 1 token. I found an arcade multicabinet that could be played for 1 token, and I played the arcade game I'm probably best at, digdug. I think I made it to level 8 before I started losing lives, an made it to level 12 before I got the game over. Fun fact, I actually made it to the kill screen of digdug when I was a teenager; it was a GBA port and required many continues, but I still made it to the kill screen.
After river place we went to dinner at the Bavarian Inn. I wanted to go in at a special entrance. See, there's this one entrance that is a 100+ foot ramp to the castle shops in the basement, and the railing along the ramp is kind of this long track that stretch from the very start all the way to the end. Since I carry around bouncy balls and no one was around, I put one at the top of the railing and followed it as it rolled all the way down. Immature, I know, but it's fun. After that little bit of fun we went to the restaurant area to make a reservation. I didn't really care which dining room we ate in, just that it wasn't a long wait. We ended up eating in the fairy tale room, which was really cool since that was the room we always ate in with my grandparents. I was able to tell mskate about all that fun times I had as a child. Now the Bavarian Inn is known for their fried chicken dinners, and when I would go with my parents and grandparents that's what they would get, but I don't like chicken and mskate's allergic to gluten, so I got sausage lunch and she got fish lunch with gluten free bread, even though it was dinner time. It's kind of important to specify, because they have different menus for lunch and dinner, because dinner means you get a bunch of sides (Bavarian noodles, pasta salad, and cranberries if I remember correctly). Since my grandparents are REALLY into food (as you can see here), the last time I was there they completely lost it when I said "I was going to get the lunch portion instead of the dinner portion."
"But [Pokematic], if you get the dinner you get the butter noodles, and the cranberries, and the pasta salad."
"Yes, and I don't like any of that, but if I get the lunch I get French fries which I do like."
God bless them, they were probably thinking I was worried about price, but it really was because I wasn't going to have them spend more money in order to get food I wouldn't eat. Back to the story, we did get the really good bread and soup, and it was really good. After dinner we were able to watch the Glockenspiel with the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin (can also see that embeded here). It was about 4 minutes before the show started, so we cut it really close. She enjoyed it enough, but it was mostly for me. After the show we went to the castle shops. She enjoyed looking around, and we bought some fudge from the fudge shop and tried to buy some gluten free bread from the bakery but they didn't have any. Now that it was dark I took her on the lights trail at Bronner's. Bronner's has this great light display that's run year round, where they have different Christmas and winter lights, some with 2-3 frame animations (like a waving snow man and toy soldier with a waving flag), and she really liked it. After the lights we went back to the air B&B, and we had a little trouble finding it because off the highway an long drive. We watched Monster's Inc on a DVD we brought, and then went to bed.
Now it's time for our 2nd day, this was our Bronner's day. We had breakfast with snacks my mom packed for us in a goodie bag. We got to Bronner's right before they opened an got in line. We were some of the first people in and mskate was just in awe. I've been there many many times and it just kind of "is" for me, but she's never seen a place where ornaments as far as the eye can see, all organized by different categories. We of course had to get a "first Christmas together" ornament, but we also needed a nativity and some gifts. Our families all have "painted family ornaments" of 3 inch spheres with our names on them, and now it was time to get the spouse ornament to officially join the family; a [pokematic] ornament for her family an an [mskate] ornament for my parents and grandma. She also needed to pick up some gifts for her friends and family. We were looking in the pet section and she found an ornament that looked almost exactly like her family's dog, so we got one and got it customized with the dog's name. We also found some Disney stuff for her friends, and a nativity for us. I don't remember a whole lot of other details about it, but primarily we just kind of looked around and took in all the atmosphere while we waited for our ornaments to dry. Around noon time we went to the food court thing and I had a soft pretzel with cheese. After we saw everything but still had time to kill we just kind of went to the theater room and I watched hulu while she called her mom to talk about how cool Bronner's was. Once the ornaments were ready we picked them up and did some stuff to ship some of the gifts to her friends so they can ship professionally packaged instead of our armature packing.
Since Bronner's kind of tired mskate out we went back to the house and just relaxed for some hours. Mskate took a nap and I watched the Monster's Inc bonus features and played the TV plug and play game the air B&B owner supplied. It wasn't super awesome, no NES classic or even a genesis flashback, but it had 6 different Atari-like 4-bit games and it kept my attention. It had burger time, which is always fun. It was also fun revisiting the Monster's Inc bonus features, because the last time I really looked at them I was only interested in the part that was "for monsters," which is the bonus features that appeal to children with sing alongs and games and such, whereas the "for humans" is the behind the scenes and making of stuff which appeals to me now as an adult. When it came to dinner we were going to go to Zender's, the other famous restaurant in Frankenmuth, but the wait was an hour and after looking at the menu we realized they didn't really have anything we would eat, so after looking around the basement shops (because they also have basement shops), we canceled our wait list and went to the Bavarian Inn. I think I had the sausage lunch again, and she had grilled chicken lunch. I had an adult hot chocolate, which was really good. Check it out.
For desert we had the ice cream, and I made sure we got the little plastic toppers that they include so we could have a little memento. That night wasn't super exciting. The main thing we did was download some episodes of Suit Life of Zack and Cody when we had wifi at the restaurant and then watched them together before bed. The next morning wasn't super exciting. We had breakfast at the house again, and packed up all our stuff. We did what we had to to check out and then we went on our way back to our condo. I carried mskate across the threshold and we were greeted by a fun thing my mom set-up. She put these paper flowers on our stairs up to the unit (it's a 2nd story unit) with cards saying a story as we begin to start our lives together. It was really sweet. It was a really great long weekend. Sure, I would have enjoyed a more traditional big event with the week long honeymoon I saved all my vacation time for, but this was a crazy year and we did the best with what we could. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
with me. Why? Because it's wonderfully 80s and is about classic arcade games, something all 3 of us really enjoy.