She Went Ahead and Married Him Despite the Scratches on His Back from the Stripper.

So the wedding of the groom from the previous post's bachelor party got married on Saturday. The day after the party, she came to our house with a basket full of cookies - chocolate chip, even! - as a thanks for hosting the party. Apparently, he came home with a bloody shirt, gouges on his back, and no boxers. And she brought cookies to thank us for that. Now THAT'S a keeper!

The wedding was very nice and the bride looked gorgeous and the groom was handsome and the wedding video showed the customary cute baby pictures and awkward teen moments. The beer and wine flowed freely and all was going well.

Until...

The bouquet toss.

Understand that this is one of the first guys from AMBF's circle of friends to fall from bachelorhood. So we're essentially a bunch of singletons in marriage terms, although a few of the couples have been dating for even longer than AMBF and I have been. The rest of the wedding attendees were old relatives that were already married. So there were maybe eight of us unmarried girls, most with long-term boyfriends, who were eligible to go catch the bouquet. Oh, and the four-year-old flower girl. Her too.

As commitment-phobe as most of the guys in the group are, none of the girls wanted to go up and catch the flowers and put that pressure on their boyfriend, or perhaps more importantly, put their boyfriend in prime position for teasing from the guys whose girlfriends didn't catch the flowers.

As the DJ called us out, we all caught eyes across the room and shook our heads in subtle "NO FREAKING WAY AM I GOING UP THERE" cues. That is, until we looked at the empty floor and the poor forlorn bride there by herself. So we sighed, gathered together, and went up, making sure to stay well back from the bride.

She threw!

And the bouquet flew over our heads by maybe five feet. We all just turned and watched it fell. I felt horrible for the bride. After what seemed like eternity but was probably just a few seconds, I picked up the bouquet and tried to give it to the flower girl, who was the only one in the audience who didn't have a boyfriend using all his energy to send "DO NOT CATCH THAT THING" mental thoughts our way.

"Oh, I already have flowers," she said. "You keep them!" What a sweetheart. Right. I tried again. "No, these are different flowers. They're pretty! You should keep them!" Fervently thinking, "Bitch, take the damn flowers so none of us have to accept responsibility!" But she politely declined again. Maybe she realized that the ring bearer had been paying particular attention to her during the dancing and didn't want to put pressure on him to take their relationship to the next level. In their case, kindergarten.

The photographer was desperately looking for someone, anyone to take the flowers so he could get the "bride with the catcher of her bouquet!" photos, and when I turned around from talking to the flower girl, all the other girls had left me. So I was standing there with the flowers and no one to pass them off to. Sigh. I smiled, took the pictures, and bolted back to the table where I tried in vain to head off all the comments I knew AMBF was already getting. "I didn't catch it!" I cried to his friends. "I picked it up! It doesn't count! I tried to give them away! It doesn't mean anything!"

Yeah, it didn't work. Poor AMBF. Thankfully the attention was temporarily taken off him when one of their friends elbowed an eight-year-old boy out of the way to catch the garter.

Ah, weddings.