Ask Kyle

I’ll be explaining in a bit while this blog post is titled “Ask Kyle”, but I’d like to take this moment to congratulate Jeremy and Janine! Thanks for inviting me to your wedding. 🙂 It’s definitely going to be different with Jeremy married. Sad to lose a dinner buddy. But as Jeremy says, he’s found me a replacement (a Jeremy′).

Most of my photos have been uploaded to Facebook: Jeremy and Janine’s Wedding

Note: I’ve tried to keep secrets/embarrassing stories to a minimum (unless it’s me or Chad and some of Jeremy’s), but if you feel I’ve disclosed something you’re not comfortable with, please let me know and I’ll remove it.

San Diego

Since their wedding was going to be held in San Diego, I thought this would be a great time to take some vacation and visit friends/family back in LA. I initially had planned to take the week before their wedding, but something came up and I decided to take the week afterwards. Turns out that worked out better as I didn’t realize Memorial Day was the following Monday so I got an additional day for my vacation.

When I tell my friends that I’m back for a friend’s wedding, there’s generally a series of questions that I get asked:

• Oh! Who’s getting married? Do I know them? – Nope, it’s a friend from work
• Oh! Is he originally from SD? – Nope, the bride wanted to have the wedding in SD
• Oh! So the bride’s from SD? – Nope, they decided that SD would be a very nice place to hold the wedding
• Oh! Cool!

So I flew into LA on Thursday to pick up my mom’s car and drove down to SD Friday morning. I met up with Jeremy and Chad and grabbed lunch at Tin Fish. For some reason, it was awfully chilly in SD and it was supposed to get cooler the following days. I had told Chad it was going to be shorts weather and it was anything but that. The sun was out, but the temperature was in the low 60s.

Tux Fitting

After lunch, we went to Men’s Warehouse to try on our tuxes. I was surprised when I saw Jeremy wearing a completely white tux, given that I had expected him to wear a traditional penguin suit. Jeremy has a conjecture as to why he’s wearing a completely white tux.

Another funny thing is almost everyone’s tux required alterations. My sleeves were too long. Chad’s vest had 2 male hooks instead of 1 male/1 female (funnier if you know Chad). Jeremy’s pants needed to be hemmed and he was given black shoes with his white tux, which we all agreed would look better with white shoes. Since Kyle was coming in late Saturday night, we had to pick up the tux for him and we were worried that he required some alterations too.

US Grant

We headed to the US Grant to check in. Chad had already checked in the night before. One thing that we noticed in the email confirmation I received from the US Grant is that valet parking (required if you want to park at the hotel) is $32/night.

Please note that the only parking option at this hotel is valet parking and the fee is $32 per night.

Wifi unfortunately wasn’t free and costs over $10/day. They did provide free wifi at the lobby which I ended up using instead to catch up on email and news. The lobby was rather comfortable and cozy. “Some” found a more convenient unsecured wifi hotspot across the street from their hotel rooms.

I guess these are all part of the 4-star hotel experience. ;p

Given that, the hotel room was really nice, the service was great, and it was fun living among the upper-echelon for a few days. The housecleaning folks would clean our room twice a day: once in the morning to make the bed, open the window blinds, and clean stuff up and once at night to remove the extra pillows from our bed, close our blinds, and give us chocolate.

One night, a high school prom was actually held there and we saw a bunch of high-schoolers all dressed up nice and pretty. Sure brings back memories and I can’t believe it’s been almost 10 years since I graduated from high school.

Rehearsal

We had the rehearsal on Saturday. We found out that Jeremy’s not allowed to know the schedule/times because he gets super stressed out if things don’t happen on time. It was funny that the instructions provided to us on how to get to the destination were incorrect, but people managed to all get to the correct location.

Matt (the officiant of the wedding) apparently went to the wrong Museum of Art. He unfortunately went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is closer to the airport and not anywhere near Balboa Park. He did managed to get to the right one with enough time remaining for the rehearsal.

We were told how to walk out and where to stand and so on. Matt would then give his speech. Apparently there was some miscommunication. Matt had prepared some statements for Jeremy to repeat after him, but Jeremy claimed to have replied to Matt’s email saying he only wanted to say the 2 words. Later we found out that email never left his outbox or something silly like that.

Due to the fact that the original maid of honor couldn’t make it to the wedding (her baby was due like that same week), there was 1 fewer bridesmaid than groomsman. Chad and I had to share.

Bachelor Party

Kyle was suppose to plan the bachelor party, but later entrusted that responsibility to Matt. Dave and Buster’s was the original plan (Jeremy had objected to having strippers). Macie on the other hand seem interested in joining us if there were indeed strippers. The bridesmaids had a very interesting story why there weren’t strippers at their bachelorette party.

We ended up at Dave and Buster’s (an arcade/parlor/bar). Dave and Buster’s was pretty fun, but their alcohol was really bad. Kyle finally made it and joined us.

Last Night As A Bachelor

After getting back to the hotel, Jeremy invited us back to his room where he gave us our groomsmen gifts. It was a very nice box with a glass placard inside. We hung around while his dad tried to get him drunk off Jim Beam. Funny and embarrassing stories started to come out. Unfortunately I don’t believe I have permission to reveal any of this and Jeremy was very stubborn about not letting his dad tell a particular story, which eventually got told. We didn’t think it was “that” embarrassing, but apparently Jeremy did. However I will tell you the following:

There were these paintings in our hotel rooms above our bed and most of the resemble faces. However, Jeremy noticed a bunch of condoms in his. After he pointed them out, there were one or 2 that did indeed resembled condoms, but we wouldn’t have ever noticed it unless he pointed them out.

Ask Kyle

Kyle had flew in from Georgia and I informed him that the maid of honor wanted to talk to him in the morning. Since Jeremy was not allowed to know what’s going on, Kyle had to bear the burden of orchestrating the groomsman and the groom’s side of the wedding. A common theme that popped up early on was if you ask Jeremy anything in regards to the wedding, his response would be, “Ask Kyle.” We joked that that the 2 words he should say at the alter should be “Ask Kyle.”

Popular Breakfast Location

On the day of the wedding, we decided to check out this breakfast joint called Broken Yolk Cafe. We found this while flipping through one of the magazines/books in our rooms. I think the strawberry waffle really called out to us and apparently they have huevos!

When we go there, there was this giant line of people waiting. We looked both ways down the street and no other restaurant had line of people waiting to be seated. It was like all of San Diego who wanted breakfast was here at this joint.

We were originally told the wait time was going to be ~20 minutes. 20 minutes later, it was going to be another 10 according to the guy holding the clipboard. Jeremy didn’t really have the time, so we headed back and ate at Panera instead. There were some really tasty looking omelets too! Oh well.

Photographer

I was shocked to learnt how much it cost to hire the photographers. I was even more shocked at how much it would’ve cost extra to hire the videographers (is that what they’re called?). Anyway, we probably won’t be seeing any of the official wedding pictures until Jeremy and Janine gets back from their honeymoon.

The first time we met one of the photographers was in our hotel room. Apparently they wanted to take pictures of us changing into our tux which most of us found to be weird. So everyone was in a different state of undress when the photographer showed up. *snap* *snap* *snap*

Ceremony

The ceremony was really beautiful. All the bridesmaid carried a parasol, apparently another word for umbrella. Poor bridesmaids, they were freezing in their dresses. When we saw Janine, she was very beautiful in her white bridal dress. I learnt that giant piece of cloth that follows her dress is called the train. Choo! Choo!

They even hired violinists to play at their wedding. Initially I called them the string quartet, but apparently you only call a group of 4 musicians a quartet. I guess this was a duet. I wonder what you call them when there’s only 3, triplet?

Matt started talking and then there were “I dos”, an exchange of rings, nice passionate kisses mixed with cheers!

Looking back at the altar pictures, I realized how short I am. Haha. Everyone else was like 6′ or taller. Sigh…

After the reception, the bridal party had to accompany the bide and groom for more picture taking while the remainder of the guests got to enjoy snacks and drinks. When we finally got to the drinks table, we were told that our duties weren’t quite over yet and not to drink that much.

This being Chad’s first time drinking, I asked the bartender to make something sweet with vodka. He made us a vodka + cranberry + splash of orange juice drink which was really good. He didn’t know the name of the drink when we inquired, but later told us during dinner that it was called a madre. After searching online, it appears it goes by either madre or madras.

Reception

The reception was held inside the Musuem of Art and apparently they only do 1 wedding/month. As guests, we actually got to check out the museum. They had guards everywhere in case people started touching or breaking stuff I think. I mean people were expected to get drunk.

As the bridal party, we got a secret tour of the vault. Honestly, it was not that impressive. It was over before I even knew it began. The reason we got the secret tour was to get us the 2nd floor by going into the basement, so we can come down the stairs.

The food was very yummy. There was butternut-squash soup, Caesar salad, choice of beef steak/salmon filet, and of course cake. There were originally plans for 60 guests, but only about 30 were able to make it. So they reduced the catering, but didn’t resize the cake. So there was cake meant for 60 people, but only 30 people to consume it. Chad’s main reason for coming to this wedding was to eat cake and he was super happy about this news.

The cake was heavenly. They had 2 types of cake, some German chocolate one and some other strawberry one. Both were awesome and the frosting was not only edible but delicious and soft. I only made it through 2.5 slices though. Chad probably made it through more.

I wouldn’t say this is another reason Chad came, but Chad wanted to get drunk tonight. So we kept on ordering drinks. We had a whiskey sour, a rum and coke, and a long island ice tea. The rum and coke was really nasty. Chad didn’t really like any of them, so we went back to the madre.

Then there was dancing and jumping. It was really fun.

Somewhere along the line, we decided to become explorers and Chad and I wanted to see what was upstairs. Apparently there’s more galleries. What we didn’t know was that the upstairs were prohibited. We found that out when some guy comes running and tells us that we tripped the silent alarm. Haha. After we went back down, they put up little blockades preventing more people from making that mistake.

I also found out from Astrid (another bridesmaid) that the wedding planner decided to cut us off from alcohol. I’m not sure if this is related to the incident above or if we were just making a fool of ourselves. I asked Jeremy if I was banned from drinking and if he said yes, I’d stop drinking. Jeremy went and inquired with Janine (smart move and he’s only been married for less than a few hours) and they agreed that I should probably stop.

The night finally came to an end and we all headed back to the hotel.

Returning the Tuxes

Since I didn’t have to catch a flight, I became the designated person to return the tuxes. At the end of the day, I had been commissioned to return 6 tuxes (including mine). I did get to visit Jeremy at his “secret hideaway resort” to pick up his tux and wished them a safe and fun honeymoon.