The Montagues vs. The Capulets

Don’t worry. I’m not reverting back to the days of High School Literature here. Frankly, I’m not even 100% sure which family was which. I think Romeo was a Montague and Juliet a Capulet, but I’m really not sure. Anyhow, I digress.

So I spent the weekend in LA as my cousin was getting married. It was one hell of a long flight (about 10 ½ hours each way) considering I was in LA for all of around 72 hours. But, it’s family. So, as I saw it, I really had no choice. Besides, wedding are always really fun, and I was able to use my parents’ frequent flyer miles for the trip, defraying much of the expense.

Anyways, back to the story. It actually dates all the way back to July of last year, at the engagement party in Silver Spring, Maryland, where the groom (let’s simply refer to him as G, for Groom, for the purposes of discreetness) and his family are from (my cousin is the bride, who hails from, of course, Cerritos, California – we’ll call her B, for bride). After a very civil engagement ceremony, we all headed to the groom’s parents’ house for a little post-game barbeque to properly celebrate the pending union of our beloved cousins. It was at this point that one of our female family friends (let’s call her S) informed me that most of G’s family doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages. Which is a direct contrast to our side of the family, which generally doesn’t drink non-alcoholic beverages, except for the next-morning coffee and water. Of course, at this point, I was afraid that there would be no alcohol served at the barbeque, and I deeply regretted leaving my bottle of Goose behind at the hotel. Alas, I was pleasantly surprised, as G’s family – despite not being drinkers themselves – were gracious enough hosts to stock their house with beer and liquor for our benefit. Whew! Anyways, that night ended up turning into a big, par-for-the-course, drinkfest – for our side of the family. It was hilarious observing, as our side of the family (aunties and uncles included) pounded drink after drink and shot after shot, while the other side just watched with their arms crossed and disapproving frowns on their faces. Maybe we would have been embarrassed about all this, if we weren’t so drunk.

Fast forward 10 months to Saturday’s reception. I quickly learned that G’s family – specifically, his female cousins, were not too fond of our group of cousins, which I just attributed to the engagement party and more generally the fact that we have one huge collective drinking problem. Color me surprised when I saw all of these female cousins boozing it up at the cocktail hour. Granted, these were a bunch of Patels, and the drinks were free, but I still found it quite hypocritical that they disliked us for our drinking as they chugged their glasses of champagne. Fast forward a few hours, after the speeches, first dance, dinner, etc., and pretty much all the “kids” – as we will be referred to by our parents until we have “kids” of our own – were tipsy/buzzed/drunk. So, it seemed peace had been made. Once it got kinda late and all the aunties and uncles got tired of dancing, and the rap started flowing, we all danced together in a big circle as one big happy family (sidebar – have any of you ever been to a wedding where the DJ didn’t play the 112/Biggie/Ma$e Only You Remix? I don’t think I have either. Great f’ing song.). Towards the end of the reception, we even started discussing postgame plans together. One of G’s female cousins repeatedly invited me and another male cousin on our side (R for the purposes of this entry) to their room to postgame, where she claimed to have “a shitload of alcohol.” Room 4361. She even put the room number in my cellphone, and it was NOT fake.

Fast forward another hour or so. I’m not sure how I got separated from my cousins, but somehow I ended up going up to Room 4361 with the groom and one of his cousins. It was then that I discovered that their “shitload of alcohol” consisted of maybe 4 oz. of vodka and a big bottle of bright blue God-knows-what. Maybe it was Hypnotiq, who the hell knows. Again, my memory fails me, thanks to the Patron shots and 10 or 20 7 & sodas I had at the reception, but the next thing I know, some of the groom’s female cousins kicked me and my cousins out of their room. What the fuck just happened? Didn’t they invite us up? Hadn’t I showed up with the groom himself??? After they closed the door to Room 4361 on us, we just kinda stood in the hallway with these blank looks on our faces, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Then one of them actually opens the door – not to invite us back in – but to tell us to leave the hallway. What the???!!! Still bewildered, we wandered down to the lobby to try to find our other cousins and figure out a new postgame plan. It was there that we ran into the bride and, soon after, a group of the groom’s male cousins and/or friends. Trying to figure out a gameplan with them, it eventually turned into a mild argument. I’m admittedly not sure of the context, but one of the guys then told my female cousin to “shut the fuck up.” Keep in mind, this was the female cousin who had been married about 12 hours earlier. Now, as all of you know, I’m not the most polite person in the world, but there are certain things even I won’t do – and telling a girl who got married earlier in the day to “shut the fuck up” is one of those things. At this point, the bride wanted to pretty much throw down and those of us with better – albeit clouded – judgment, held her back and said it wasn’t worth it. Though in hindsight I kinda regret not clocking the asshole myself.

At this point, it’s probably 1am or so, and so our side of the family just headed back to our room to kill the Captain Morgan and Jager that I had brought. Within a couple hours, the liquor had run dry, and the group had thinned to about 4 of us. At this point, S, R, and myself decided to head back to Room 4361. We knocked on the door – rather politely I might add – and were legitimately stunned when someone actually opened the door for us. It was at this point, we realized we didn’t have much of a plan. We kinda just wanted to wake them up and disturb their sleep I guess. So we made stupid, useless chitchat with the girl for a few minutes, then said our good nights. S decided to leave a little present for them – a cigarette stuck into the peephole of their room door. Of course, we would find out the next morning that the 4361 girls had simply assumed that this was the work of R and myself. I guess these Montague guys won’t be making nice with the Capulet girls anytime soon. Oh well.

MINOR REVISION:

So some other people who were at this wedding have emailed me offline. I'd like to clarify for the record that it was only a select group of the groom's cousins who disliked us, kicked us out of the room, etc. The rest - as I suspected based on the drunken fun we had at the reception - are not on the shit list. So if any of the groom's cousins/friends somehow stumble upon this blog - i'm not singling you out unless you were the ones who kicked us out of the room or told my cousin to "shut the fuck up". Glad we got that settled.