I am out in a clearing. It’s very large and there are many clumps of dense forest growth all around. I am on top of a small shack. I am building the shack out of a kit; my former boss is complaining that the shack kit is too complicated, although it doesn’t seem the least bit complicated to me.
We argue about this for awhile, then I notice the tuxedo in the kit. I hold the shirt up to me and see that it is far too small; likewise the jacket and pants. The tags inside say “M,” which is odd since I clearly got the shack kit with the “XL” tuxedo.
I bring this to my former boss’s attention and he says I’ll have to make do with what I have. The wedding is at 4:00, it is now 3:00, and I don’t have a tux. I go looking for other people. I hope that the groomsmen aren’t wearing tuxes, because I don’t think I’ve had time to tell them what to wear. I find them inside a cabin with the bridesmaids. The bridesmaids are all in fancy dress; the groomsmen are in tuxes. Sarah is there in her wedding dress, too, but I’m trying not to look at her because I’m not supposed to see the dress before the wedding.
Oddly enough, the groomsmen are standing in a line, facing me, in height order.
They tell me the tux is no big deal and help me locate some nice clothes in my wardrobe; they’re not much, but no-one seems fazed about the lack of tux. There’s a bustle of activity and we walk across the clearing to another cabin, gathering wedding guests while we go; there’s another clump of them at the wedding cabin, but they’re somewhat confused because I’m not in a tux and they don’t recognize me as the groom.
I open the door to the cabin but I don’t let anyone else in because we’re supposed to have a rehersal first. People are a little upset at this.
As I’m talking to the Rev., I realize that I have forgotten the marriage license and the music we had selected for the service. (In real life, not a dream, our officiant had told us the story of someone who had done this exact same thing.) This freaks me out to no end, but there’s a pianist in the cabin and we enlist her to come up with something. The pianist, a nice lady from a black methodist church, attempts to give me a music lesson about different genres of wedding music, but I am much too distracted. “I think anything will be fine,” I say, “as long as it’s not Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D.’ ”
We get mock groomsmen, mock bridesmaids, and a mock bride and the Rev. shows us where to stand and how to line up and where the groomsmen are supposed to sit during the service. (The altar has two bays behind the rostrum, one stage left and one stage right. The groom’s folk are supposed to sit stage right, the bride’s stage left.)
Seeing as it is now 5:00 and people have been standing outside for an hour, I go to the door and let them in. A mob pushes through the door, most of them people I don’t know. I yell “Groomsmen line up behind me,” and they start to, but everyone else, looking irritated, is lining up behind me as well. “Everyone else can get seated,” I say, and they head off to their seats shaking their heads and grumbling about how this is no way to run an army.
The place has gotten very crowded.
The pianist has managed to recruit an elementary school string ensemble as well and they are terrible.
The groomsmen and I begin our march; I realize we are at least three weeks early on the wedding and that is why everything is so confused. We get to the bay and I try to sort them into their correct seats, but the seats are already filled with elementary school kids with string instruments. I explain I have to have those seats for the groomsmen, but the kids just stare at me.
At which point I wake up.
I had at least three other wedding dreams, including one where there’s great confusion about which side of Sarah I’m supposed to stand on and then my mother sings the service and we go home afterwards to find our next door neighbor is trying to raise a tropical forest in his yard and we don’t have rings yet.
