June 03, 2006

Emma and Rob's Wedding

I met Emma Taylor back in 2001 when I started working at Nerve.com. Almost exactly five years after her very first appearance on this site, Grant and I rented a car and drove from NYC down to Cape May, NJ to attend Emma's wedding to Rob Tourtelot!

Thursday, June 1st

The wedding was held at the amazing Congress Hall Hotel. This place used to be run down mess until a friend of Emma's bought it, renovated it, and turned it into one of the nicer hotels down in Cape May! Grant had been doing a lot of writing for travel magazines and managed to finagle himself a free room! I offered to pay for the rental car if he'd be willing to share his free room with Meredith and I and he reluctantly agreed. (It's a good thing he shared the room because despite his "writer" credentials, this website is the first time someone's mentioned the hotel! Hahaha)

grant, posh tony — Antony Ellis got in on our rental car action and rode down from NYC to Cape May with us. Here's Grant in his free room pretending to be excited about having to spend the entire weekend with Posh Tony (aka - Grant's ARCH NEMESIS!).

grant, posh tony — Here's Grant and Posh Tony two hours later at the welcome dinner. Can't you tell how thrilled Grant was to be sharing a table with Posh T? Every time Grant smiled it looked like his face was going to break. Hahaha.

grant — Damn you, arch nemesis.

The nice thing about living in NYC is that you probably don't have a car which means you can always take "full advantage" of an open bar. I ended having to keep my rental-car keys on the table as a reminder to take it easy.

I don't remember what happened, but something made me laugh so hard I cried.

The whole reason Grant took this photo of me is because we were really trying to take a sneaky-photo of the crazy, long-bearded lead singer of the band that appeared out of nowhere and started rocking the banquet hall! You can kind of see him all the way in the back left of this photo, but I knew we could do better...

grant — ...so Grant walked around the room and then headed back towards the table and I took a picture of him while also managing to get a better of Captain Longbeard. (What's that you ask? Why did we play this whole stupid game instead of just walking right up to Longbeard and taking a photo? Well that's because...er, wait. Nevermind).

emma, hannah — After dinner, we went back to the hotel for a cocktail hour in the lounge! Here's Hannah (Emma's sister who used to live in NYC way back in the party days of 2001) and the bride-to-be!

hannah, me — Hannah and me. Hannah also made her IKAD deput at the Mermaid Parade of 2001, but she doesn't properly show up until later that same night when we had a prom party at Indoorvillage!) A few minutes later, Hannah introduced us to two other girls that were in town from England for the wedding...

ally, chloe, grant, hannah — ...and Grant fell in love (Hahaha. Check out his expression). Here's Grant and Hannah with Ally and Chloe.

ally, grant — Totally. Smitten.

chloe, grant — Hahahaha. There's only one surefire way to impress cute, possibly jailbait girls, and that's...

...an UGLY FACE CONTEST! We started out slow with a little "smoosh your face" action. Awwww, yeah! The ladies love it!

grant — Hahaha. I love how he one-upped me by even managing to smoosh his eyes!

posh tony — ~~Posh~~ Smosh Tony!

ally — Hahaha.

chloe — Chloe was feeling a little shy, so I had to reach in and lend a hand.

grant — A little before 1am, Meredith called to let me know that she'd arrived in town! She didn't want to miss a day of work and so after she got out of work, she took the Greyhound bus all the way down to Cape May (an EIGHT HOUR endeavor! All so she could be my wedding-date. Thanks, baby!) Here's Grant's reaction to having to leave the girls to go to the bus station and get Meredith. Hahaha.

grant, meredith — Here we are back in to Grant's hotel room that the three of us would be sharing!

grant, meredith — Two in the bed! Room for one more? I set the auto-timer on my camera...

grant, me, meredith — ...and made it in bed just in time! Three peas in a pod! G'night!

Friday, June 2nd

grant — What? Can't two guys iron...

grant, me — ...while wearing only towels and/or underwear and then feel each other muscles without it being gay? What? What?

grant, me — I thought I was so funny for doing the whole "flex-down while ironing" thing until I looked at the photo later and realized the reason Meredith was laughing so hard was because Grant had managed to brain me in the background.

grant, meredith — Emma and Rob's wedding ceremony was on the beach, so after we'd finished getting all dressed up, we headed a few hundred feet down to boardwalk and awaited the arrival of the bride and groom.

grant, meredith — Meredith and Grant. Awww!

ally, chloe — Ally and Chloe.

grant, meredith — Hahahahaha. I love how you can tell exactly what Grant's thinking about in this photo.

meredith — A little before 4pm, we took our seats out on the beach.

grant, me, posh tony — Hahaha. I love this photo!

emma — Right around four, Emma rolled up in a fancy car! Here's she is being walked down the sandy aisle by her father!

The ceremony!

meredith — After the wedding, we headed back to the hotel...

...we had an hour before the reception and I wanted to grab a quick nappity-nap to ensure I'd have the juice for what was sure to be a full night of drinking and antics. Grant, Meredith and I all went up to our room and just as I was falling into dreamland...

grant, me — ...guess who decided to sneak over and brain me!

grant, me — OMG, this photo makes me LOL on so many levels. I love how Grant's covering his mouth. That's because he knows that if he makes so much as a peep, I'll spring awake with the quickness and swat him right in the bean bag. I also love this photo because it looks like I'm dead and I can already envision my own funeral where my friends will be pulling this same exact bullshit next to my open-casket. (And Meredith will probably be the accomplice that takes the photo. Just like she did here!)

6pm = reception time! Check out the amazing ballroom at the hotel!

posh tony — HAHAHAHA. Posh Tony had his "I'm smooth" moment hijacked when Grant managed to sneak in an expertly-timed "fuck you" finger.

grant, meredith — Meredith showed off her utensils.

emma, rob t — Mr. and Mrs. Rob Tourtelot!

emma — Standing ovation!

mr. taylor — Father of the Bride speech!

I don't remember his name, but this guy is a famous song writer who sang while Rob and Emma...

emma, rob t — ...had their first dance as hubby and wife!

emma, rob t — Awwww.

emma, rob t — Congrats, you two!

Then some dancing broke out.

posh tony, steve e — Posh Tony with his older brother Steve.

emma, rob t — Emma and Rob cutting the cake!

emma, rob t — No cake-smashing antics here!

emma, rob t — They did it by the book.

emma, rob t — Hahaha.

Although Meredith wasn't feeling well (having most likely picked up any number of airborne illnesses on her eight-hour Greyhound bus ride), she wisely managed to hold out for some cake! As soon as she'd finished her slice, she announced her retirement and headed up to the room.

After the cake, the entire party hit the dance floor.

jack w — Jack Wright and his date!

The bridal party lined up...

rob t — ...and Rob took to the mic to serenade his new wife!

emma, hannah, lorelei — Bridesmaids! Lorelei (the "Lo" half of the "Em & Lo "), Hannah, Becky (the third Taylor sister!) and Emma.

jack w, joey, lorelei — Joey, Jack and Lorelei!

grant — Grant was already annoyed at Posh Tony for also being British (because it ruined Grant's "accent mojo"). He got even more pissed when he realized that he and Posh...

posh tony — ...were also pretty much wearing the same exact outfit. (Awwww, Twinsies!)

After the ballroom closed, the entire party headed down to a bar in the basement of the hotel. Here's everyone drunkenly welcoming the second arrival of the bride and groom!

Everyone formed two lines, held hands...

chloe — ...and made a tunnel for Emma and Rob to walk through! Hahaha.

ally, chloe, grant, posh tony — We also met Rob's step-sister Katie and she joined our crew.

ally — I asked Ally to give me her best "blue steel" face and this is what she came up with.

ally, grant — Grant looks like he's trying to do a "blue steel" while at the same time also trying really hard not to fart. Hahahah.

ally, grant — Every time Ally would walk away, Grant would stand behind her and pretend to swoon. Comedy gold.

ally, posh tony — Ally and Posh T.

ally, chloe, grant, me — Group shot courtesy of Posh. A little before 1am, the bar announced last call!

So we all decided to leave the hotel and seek out another bar in town that was still serving! Here's Becky, Lorelei and Hannah in all their shiny, gold-lame glory!

We ended up stumbling into some bar called Carney's. There was an awesome cover band called The Union playing. After playing a few more songs, the band took a break and I went up and asked their female singer if they'd let me sing a song with them. She was like "Sure, what song?" When I asked if they knew "Don't Stop Believing" she was like "Yup, we know it. If you can hit all the notes, it's all you." (And by the way, this was years before this song was used in the Sopranos finale! Fuck all you Johnny-come-lately Journey fans!)

becky, lorelei, me — Hahahah. Here's Lorelei and Becky's reaction to me telling them that the band was willing to let me sing with them! Hahaha.

becky, hannah, lorelei, me — Hi, can you tell that we're all a teeeeeny bit drunk?

When the band got back on stage, they called me up to sing! "Don't Stop" is pretty much one of the best karaoke songs of all time and one of the few times that I actually don't mind that fact that I was pretty much born with a woman's voice. Check out the singer all like "Holy shit, this guy's a eunuch!"

Hahaha.

Doubling up for the big outro. This was probably one of my most favorite accidental karaoke moments. (In fact, it's probably only eclipsed by the time that Seth and I ended up accidentally karaoking with Tracey Morgan back in 2003!)

Oh, that's right. And then at the very end of the song when I dropped to my knees for the final high-note, Lorelei reached up and ripped my shirt open (popping off ALL of the buttons except for one).

Hey, at least the one button she left me was up top. That way I could cover my chest up (er, sorta) and simultaneously look like a fashionable Hispanic west coast gangbanger. Thanks, Lo!

lorelei — I was sort of peeved at the time, but now that I look back at these photos and see you straight-up chugging bottles of Bud Light I remember "Oh yeah, it was THAT kind of night!" and all is forgiven. Hahaha.

grant — At first Grant was a little miffed about how AWESOME my song was...

grant, me — ...but even he had to eventually give me a little lovin.

grant — Hahahahah.

joey, lorelei — Here's Joey doing the ol' "I can't believe Lorelei ripped open your shirt" routine.

After the bar, we actually ended up crashing a local Cape May house party with Katie, but apparently I was so drunk that I forgot to take any pictures of it! Afterwards, Katie walked Grant and I back to our hotel...

grant — ...and we called it a night. Here's drunk and grumpy Grant wishing me death.

NO MORE PHOTOS! Hahaha.

Saturday, June 3rd

emma — The next morning we hit the "post-wedding" breakfast, congratulated Emma and Rob (note the rhinestone-studded "Mrs. Tourtelot" shirt. Ha!)...

grant, meredith, posh tony — ...and then hopped in our rental and headed back to NYC! Here's a picture of Grant, Posh T and Meredith at a rest stop somewhere in the swamps of New Jersey! Congrats Emma & Rob! Thanks so much for having us!