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Kenmore, OH
I attended the wrong wedding. Twice. Whenever a comedy booker asks me to supply a bio for promotional purposes, that’s all I send: “Sean Flannery attended the wrong wedding. Twice.”
It sums everything up.
The Second Time
It was around 2002 or so and I was back in Ohio for my buddy Tom’s wedding. The wedding was at one of those large complexes where multiple weddings occur at the same time, each in its own ballroom. The ceremony was in the afternoon, so I met a friend for drinks beforehand and then left for the venue.
It was a massive white building; I entered and went directly to the information desk.
“Can you point me towards Tom and Jodi’s wedding?” I asked.
“Well sir,” came the reply, “traditionally, a wedding is identified by the bride’s last name.”
The attendant was clearly trying to make me feel small and uncouth, but what this haut monde functionary didn’t know was I’d already been thrown out of a wing joint a mere thirty minutes prior.
The place where I had met my buddy for drinks was a chicken place called “SCORCHERS” and somehow we had got on a run that lead to us chasing tequila shots with the bar’s hot sauce instead of lime; and although though we did not vomit, it still went poorly enough for the manager to suggest we leave “before the lunch rush” started.
“Worry not,” I answered, “I’m on my way to a wedding anyhow!”
So the last person I spoke to tried to throw me out of a bar inside a strip-mall, meaning I was well past any feelings of shame. I looked at this concierge and replied, calmly:
“Come on buddy, do I look like a ‘last name’ kind of friend? I don’t do his taxes. I’m his drinking buddy.”
There was a fifteen second sigh from the booth. You’d think I asked him to fix a clogged toilet.
I still had no answer, so I started pointing at different sets of doors with raised eyebrows, establishing that I was willing to find the wedding myself, which I was pretty sure he did not want. I walked away from the desk, further into the venue—I think I might have even started skipping—and began happily pointing at doors like a contestant on a game show trying to decide which one contained the best prize.
“The point is made, sir,” the attendant finally conceded, “you are, I suspect, looking for the ‘Bednar-Flory’ wedding. It’s in The Oak Ballroom, which is past the fountain, then follow the hallway to your left; second-to-last door.”
“Thank you, my good Marquis!” I yelled back, happily adopting/mocking his stilted language as I skipped past the fountain and headed—visibly and clearly—down the wrong hallway.
As I did so, it occurred to me that this might be the first time I really absorbed the bride’s last name. I had always assumed—rightly or wrongly—that she was Italian (because my buddy, the groom was) but thinking about it in the moment, “Bednar” sounded almost French to me. I began wondering what a French reception would be like. I started thinking about French desserts, and whether the bar would only serve red wine instead of beer. And, as these thoughts rolled around in my brain, it occurred to me that I might not have been paying perfect attention to the concierge’s directions.
But then I reached The Garden Room. Thank God! The exact room the attendant mentioned! I had reached the right place albeit through a totally different, but-not-longer route than was suggested. I burst through the door quickly, ecstatic that I found a shortcut that no one on staff was aware of.
It was a small ballroom with garden murals and a bar near one end. I didn’t see a single, familiar face; however, as the wedding party was not present, and every person I knew was going to be in the wedding party, I thought nothing of it. I walked to the bar and learned that the main wedding group was busy still taking photos, so I ordered a gin and tonic. I met a few people at the bar and we made small talk. Another round of gin and tonics were ordered, and I began to worry: if cocktails were happening this fast, I should probably be proactive and put my card and gift to the couple with the pile of presents before I became too drunk.
“How do you know the couple?” someone asked me, as the G&T’s were being distributed.
“Oh, I have a funny story about that!” I said. “But, first, excuse me: I want to put my card in the gift box.”
The gifts were displayed prominently to one side of the wedding party’s (currently empty) table. I inserted my card and was heading back to my new friends at the bar when the wedding party entered.
That was when I realized I was at the wrong wedding. I didn’t recognize a single person. The bride and groom were the two most unfamiliar people I have ever seen in my life.
This was not the first time I’d done this.
The First Time
The first time was worse. The first time I flew to the wrong state for a wedding.
(At least the second time I was in the right state! Hell, I was even in the right venue; just the wrong room.) People ask me how it’s possible that I flew into the wrong state for a wedding, and I always counter with: “How have you not?” Our minds have been rotted by the internet; take Twitter for example, where the whole concept is you can’t communicate thoughts more complicated than a sentence, and then—after becoming used to that level of writing—we suddenly get a wedding invitation, which reads like a 12th century armistice.
As far as I can remember, my mailboxes have been filled with mass-produced credit card offers for me and the previous resident, then, one day, a hand-written epistle—as though delivered by a crow—arrives. I might partially recognize the sender, but it always takes me a moment to decode; “Mister Theodore Paynter?” Could that be my buddy, Cowboy Ted? Then I open the invitation and, yep, it’s Cowboy Ted inviting me to his wedding in language I barely understand:
“Mr. Percival Montgomery Dakota and Mrs. June Rosemary Dakota request the honor of your presence at the wedding of the daughter Amelia Suzanne Dakota on the seventh day of the month of August in the year of our Lord 2022.”
How does anyone get the details correct? These invitations read like Beowulf. I usually find myself just sighing and saying: “Fuck it! I’ll buy a ticket to Cleveland and figure out the rest after I land.”
And that plan worked pretty well, the first few years out of college. I would fly to Cleveland, unaware of the details of the wedding, crash with family, then call friends who I knew were also invited to the wedding and get more concrete details. One time, I did fly in a week too early, but it was no problem: I called work, told them I had appendicitis, stayed in Cleveland for a week, and went to the wedding.
Now, admittedly, the plan becomes harder to salvage when you get the date right but the state wrong; there’s less wiggle room.
In this particular instance, it was a Saturday morning, about an hour before the event. I knew fewer people at this wedding, but I was very good friends with the bride’s cousin, so I called her, to get more details:
“Hi. Where’s the wedding at?”
“The Good Shepherd,” she replied.
“The Good Shepherd?” I repeated. “I’ve never heard of that! And I know every church in this town! I thought the wedding was downtown?”
“It is downtown,” the cousin replied, “right by the river.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped back, baflled. “There’s no river in downtown Akron!”
“Sean, the wedding is in Louisville, Kentucky.”
At this point I did recall that on the back page of the wedding invitation there was a map of Ohio and Kentucky, with a route detailed on it and I remember thinking, “Ha, those hillbillies from Kentucky are so unsophisticated they need a map on how to get one state north!” I even took some pride in having a wonderful, natural sense of directions as I booked a flight to the wrong state.
“Louisville? That could be a problem for me,” I answered eventually.
The cousin expressed her confusion as to how and why I was in our hometown of Akron—two weeks after I had moved to Chicago—when the wedding was in Kentucky. My mistake was so great, she struggled to grasp the scope of it; she thought she was mishearing the details.
“I think,” I confessed, “that I may not have taken in all the details of the wedding invitation as well as I could have.”
“What are you going to do, Sean?” the cousin gasped. “It starts in two hours; you can’t possibly make the ceremony.”
“Let me talk to my date and get a plan going here.”
“You brought a date?” She started to laugh; a loud, boisterous laugh—a cackling journey that went on for at least a minute—before she left me with an extended, “Goooood luck!”
The Second Time
Back at Tom’s wedding—or, that is to say, back in The Garden Room for the wedding of two total strangers—I realized I needed to find the correct room, but I also needed my card.
“Where was that gift box again?” I thought, while scanning the room. Suddenly I remembered: “Oh, yeah, it’s located right next to the bride and groom,” who were now seated with all eyes on them. I noticed a woman dressed in a pantsuit, ordering staff about; she was clearly the wedding planner, so I approached decorously, thinking it would be more appropriate if she fetched my gift rather than me rifling through the well wishes.
“Hi, beautiful wedding,” I started.
“It is!” she responded, adding, “Doesn’t she look gorgeous?”
“I’ve never seen her look more radiant. Are you the wedding planner?”
“I am!”
“Well, you have done an amazing job! Everyone’s been raving about how great the entire day has been!”
“Thank you!”
“I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you? Due to an error: I am at the wrong wedding.”
“I’m sorry?”
“This is not the wedding I should be at. And...I was wondering if you could fetch my card out of the gift box?”
“But...well,” she stammered, “even if I opened the gift box...how would I know which card is yours?”
“I think the easiest way to identify it is: it will be the card with the wrong names on it.”
WHAT THE HELL AM I READING HERE?
Hi. My name is Sean Bair-Flannery. I live in Oak Park, Illinois, with my wife Jessica and our three kids. I perform standup comedy at night and during the day I fix computers.
This is chapter from my book, “Places I Can’t Return To”.
Each week, I release a new chapter (the current one completes below). If you enjoy the stories, you can buy the full book below or, next week, you can come back and read the subsequent chapter.
Purchase Full Book:
Digital
$4.99
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$19.99This book is true stories, but it is not a memoir. It is a more an illustration — maybe a warning — of what your life will look like if you decide to live everyday like it’s your last. I actually followed that advice. I followed it for a good fifteen years.
I can’t re-enter most the places I visited in that time.
—S. B-F
The Oak Ballroom
(Still the Second Time)
I had now located Tom’s wedding in The Oak Ballroom. I had too much pride to ask the concierge to repeat his directions, so I walked in on two more incorrect weddings before finding familiar faces. I had my card too; the wedding planner was not thrilled about opening the gift box, but I convinced her that the retrieval was only going to get messier if we waited (“Given the open bar and all.”). I also made damn sure that when I did walk into those two additional, incorrect weddings, that I took a good look at the bride and groom before putting anything into the gift box.
You should know, the worst part of flying to the wrong state for a wedding is the greetings you receive at every future wedding you attend. Have you seen those videos where a soldier comes home from deployment sooner than expected and surprises loved ones at some event? Everyone goes crazy upon seeing them back home in the flesh. That is also how I am greeted at weddings except, unlike the solider arrivals, everyone is being deeply ironic. They are feigning happiness and surprise that I am attending the correct event.
This occasion was no different. As I entered The Oak Ballroom, I saw Joe, the cousin of the groom, and one of my good friends at the bar. Joe flung his arms in the air derisively, like he just saw someone kick a ninety-yard field goal.
“OOOAAAH! Look at this! He made it, all! Sean Flannery flies to the CORRECT state for a wedding!” I shared his laugh and we hugged. Joe ordered us two drinks and, as the bartender fixed them, I confided:
“Actually, I was at the wrong wedding inside this venue.”
“No way!” Joe started laughing. “For how long?”
“Two gin and tonics.”
“Oh, that’s not too bad,” he answered.
I like to measure time in drinks. Studies have shown people are terrible at measuring time when the available stimuli are unfamiliar: a prisoner locked in a room with nothing to look at will believe themselves to have been in there for days when it was actually just hours and, conversely, a person busy with many interactions—a waitress, say—will think what was only an hour of time was actually their entire shift. But gin and tonics always go down at the same rate. It’s a more accurate, more objective gauge of time, like the half-life of radioactive material.
Four gin and tonics later, dinner was served. As is the custom, the bar was shut down while the guests ate. Some people (well, some drunks) were annoyed with the cessation of liquor service, but I used it as an opportunity to return to the other weddings I was at previously, since I figured. “Hey, they’re probably well past dinner and the drinks will be flowing.”
I walked back to The Garden Room and ordered a gin and tonic. I saw a few of the people from earlier and we started chatting again. “How do we know you again?” they asked, clearly struggling to remember how I connected to their event, to the loving couple that was just married. Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” and I think there is a related corollary: “If drunk enough, you don’t know how to lie.”
“I’m supposed to be attending a wedding three auditoriums down but the bar is closed,” I answered, “and I was here earlier because I didn’t know the names of the correct wedding party.”
They loved that answer and, after a long hard laugh, they agreed with me about how wildly outmoded the language of wedding invitations are. We hit it off so well that I invited them to join us after the reception: “We are going to Brubaker’s in the Valley! Huge group! It’s gonna be a blast!”
Much later, say ten more gin and tonics or so, I was at Brubaker’s with Tom’s cousins and friends after the reception. I told Joe about how I stopped into that other wedding again and invited them to join us, and how I was disappointed they didn’t meet us because they seemed like fun.
“What Brubaker’s did you send them to?” Tom asked.
“The Valley, of course,” I replied
“Sean! We’re at Brubaker’s downtown!”
“Well,” I answered, chewing on the mix-up, “that’s what they get for listening to an asshole who walked into the wrong wedding.”