TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPICS: PATRICK GETS MARRIED IN VEGAS

Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California...

As I mentioned in my last post, Christine Bayless and I were married in Las Vegas on Saturday, July 7, 2007 [07/07/07]. Normally what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I figured you wouldn't mind if I asked my father -- Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen [no relation to "Dr." Bob Rankin] -- to sum up what happened:

The Grand Design

Patrick is often afflicted with CDO (that's like OCD, but in alphabetical order like it should be). So he overplans. This time he listened to Christine, and between them they hit it brilliantly:

Thursday, July 5 o Afternoon: Wedding party picks up tuxes o 5:30 PM: Dinner for Bayless & Crispen families at the Rio Carnival World Buffet

Friday, July 6 o 10:30 AM: Rehearsal, Venetian o 12:30 PM: Rehearsal lunch, Lucille's BBQ o 6:00 PM: Poker tournament

Saturday, July 7 o 12:30 PM: Seating for the wedding, Venetian o 1:00 PM: Wedding o 4:00 PM: Cocktails, Bouchon o 5:00 PM: Dinner, Bouchon

Sunday, July 8 o 9:00 AM: Family Breakfast, Bellagio buffet o Morning: Wedding party returns tuxes

This was an absolute masterpiece of a plan. First of all, it let people who had just been gnawed on by the highways or the airlines for most of the day crash after dinner the first night and get up late Friday morning.

Good thing we landed more or less on time: the tux shop in Decatur [AL] who took measurements for the shop in Vegas had evidently never measured anybody before. [Patrick's brother] Robert ended up with pants that looked like the Penguin's and a vest that looked like Luca Brasi's. But a few tries to converge on the actual size and all was well.

Dinner was splendid. The [Carnival World] buffet at the Rio [see http://tinyurl.com/2tr78h ] has to be 100 yards long. They had some pork things that were like a cross between enchiladas and tamales and some amazing fish enchiladas. And pot stickers. And sushi. Wonderful food.

The rehearsal the next day was brilliant. The wedding coordinator [at the Venetian -- see http://www.venetianweddings.com/ ] gently but firmly told us who was going to do what, when, and how photographs were going to be fit in. I think I said yesterday, she had 77 weddings to run the next day, and she treated us all like honored guests, she treated the happy couple like royalty, but she wasn't putting up with any nonsense.

Lunch, brilliant as usual: they ordered for 15, seated 20, and had a loaves-and-fishes thing at the end when they took enough food home to feed everybody at the poker game. Hint: Lucille's Barbeque [ http://www.lucillesbbq.com/ ]serves a lot of food. Then after lunch we had Friday afternoon off (some of us hung around in Patrick's suite) until what may or may not have been a Texas Hold-Em tournament in an undisclosed location. Half the buy-in money went to the bride and groom. The reason I'm being coy is, I think otherwise we might be busted for gambling in Las Vegas -- similar in potential for embarrassment to being busted for solicitation of prostitution at the Mustang Ranch.

But if the poker tournament had taken place, it would have been a great way for the folks in our about to be extended family to get to know each other. And I might have reported that I made it into the second half of the game when we combined tables and I ran into a couple of whole different kinds of player. Dotty, I discovered after it was too late, had been comped at Caesar's Palace. And I suspect some of the other folks had played the game before. Gene and Dotty and Don attacked each other, and I just sat there watching my chips disappear ...

Saturday morning, the fateful day, Patrick took us out to breakfast at Bouchon [see http://tinyurl.com/jfcrt ]. Bacon, eggs, sausage, rolls, what could you say about that? The best sausage (there were like 3 flavors going on there), rolls..., the best toast I ever ate. Just incredible.

[For pictures of the wedding, point your web browser to http://picasaweb.google.com/crispen. Once you have clicked on the cover picture, click on the Slideshow button. Mike Rowe recently had a television show where workers had to determine the gender of a box of baby chickens. Christine's four nieces? Cuter than a box of baby chickens.]

I need to mention that it wasn't until that afternoon when Patrick's attention was otherwise occupied that my hand got anywhere near my wallet. They bought us plane tickets, a hotel room, meals, and even bought us into the poker tournament. I finally managed to buy a couple of bottles of water. After the wedding there was a hang in Patrick and Christine's suite. The younger and more energetic adults went out to try their luck, the grandparents went up to their rooms, the flower girls snoozed and played, and we all talked.

That gets us to the reception [at Bouchon]. The cocktails were free soft drinks and cash bar for alcohol, since nobody in the wedding party drank and not that many of the guests did either. Has everybody stopped drinking without telling me?

And the dinner at Bouchon was simply outstanding. Definitely not the rubber chicken at the VFW like so many receptions I'd played in the band for (hint: everybody loves a polka). Hey, Kelly's and my reception was sandwiches and punch in the church basement. But this was pure class.

There was a great mix between events for just the family and events for family and friends (one of Patrick's friends used to work for Wind River Systems, for goodness sakes). And the folks who had sort of adopted Patrick and Chris in Chicago were wonderful. There was lots of free time and just the right number of planned things so everybody came and had a relaxed and special time.

Finally Sunday morning, Mr. & Mrs. Crispen stuffed us full of food at the Bellagio brunch bar, took us to the airport, and no doubt heaved a mighty sigh of relief as we flew off into the sunset.

Abbie Hoffman once said a demonstration should be planned meticulously and executed organically, which was exactly the way I ran my sleepovers when I was a YMCA director, sometimes to the chagrin of my staff, and not always successfully. Patrick and Christine accomplished that with this wedding. An event, and a brilliant setting in which love shone like a jewel.

           .~~~.  ))
 (\__/)  .'     )  ))       Patrick Douglas Crispen
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