(2nd) Best. Wedding. Ever. (Part I)
This past weekend, my friend Julio Bermejo married Liliana Camarena in Arandas, Mexico. I was surprised and delighted to have received an invitation, and knowing Julio, I couldn't possibly say no: this would be one hell of a party.
And so it was. Seriously, it was nuts.
As with many such things, it begins as a grand adventure. I was at ApacheCon in Austin last week, so Kristen and I met up in Dallas on Friday for our connection to Guadalajara. My flight into Dallas was delayed, so I had to book it on over to the next gate, which, of course, was in a different terminal, and found my sweetie just in time to catch our flight.
Unfortunately, my roll-aboard, which I checked due to increasingly difficult to navigate rules for bringing things with you onto airplanes, didn't run as fast as I did, and missed the flight. So, when we arrived in Mexico, we picked up Kristen's bag, and checked in with the baggage person for American Airlines to find out where my bag was.
To my pleasant surprise, they actually knew. It was coming on a later flight, which should be arriving late that night. OK, cool. Sort of. Because I was going to Arandas. "No problem", she tells me, "we'll send it to you. Where are you staying?"
At this point, I again mention that this is Julio's wedding. Everyone loves Julio; you can't stand within 100 feet of him and not feel taken care of. In this case, however, he was much farther than 100 feet away. More importantly, I had no idea where we were staying. See, the wedding planners were taking care of that. Somewhat confoundingly, I hadn't been told where that was yet.
I had actually flown into central Mexico knowing nothing more than the name of the town I needed to be in. I hoped that I had a reservation in some hotel in that town; I hadn't gotten any confirmation here. And I hoped that someone in this town would be able to tell me which hotel that was. Julio is, I figure, a great adventurer. And if you want to keep up with him, you have to play the game. So here I was, in Mexico, wondering where I would be spending the night.
Which was all fine, except my luggage was somewhere between there and Dallas, and wouldn't be there until late (11:30 PM or so). It was 2:00 PM. So I gave the nice lady my cellular phone number and hoped that it would work, so she could call me and find out where to send the bag the next morning. (I also got a number to call them.)
We went through customs to the main entrance and had to come up with a plan. Option A: stay in Guadalajara until the bag arrives. This is appealing because I really need the bag. I'm not wearing suitable clothes for a Proper Catholic Wedding In A Church, for one thing, and, oh yeah, the suit I got married in myself was in that bag. I want that back. Option B: head over to Arandas and hope for the best. This is the option of the adventurer. We need to find out about our hotel. And we're missing out on some serious tequila action, I'm quite sure.
Speaking of which, Bill is already there. Aha! Let's call Bill. Or his wife Christine. Yes, this will lead to all sort of useful information! A brilliant plan, but a flawed one; neither of them had a working phone with them in Arandas. Kristen, being smarter than I, decided we needed food before making such decisions, so we had our first meal at Wings in the airport.
Fully fed, we decided that we are adventurers and boldly chose Option B. I explained to our cab driver that we need to go to some unknown hotel in Arandas, and he agreed to get us there and help us look for a hotel to stay in. The cab ride itself was actually kinda nice. The driver was friendly and let us chose which CDs to play and offered to stop for tequila or beer if we wanted. I decided I really needed to stay sober at this juncture and declined the offer.
About two thirds of the way into the trip, American Airlines calls up and tells me the bag arrived. I am a bit annoyed here, since it is 3:45 PM. If I'd know the bag would arrive in less than two hours, I'd have stayed at the airport. Anyway, I still don't know where I am staying, so they can't deliver it tonight; it'll have to wait until the morning as planned, because they close the baggage office at 4:00 and I wasn't going to know anything in 15 minutes.
Once we got to Arandas, I got pretty nervous. While it's no metropolis, it didn't look like a small enough town to walk around in search of every hotel for anyone associated with this wedding. We stopped at the Santa Barbara Hotel, where a fellow came out to tell us that they are quite full. I said we're here for Lily and Julio's wedding and just like that we were welcomed in. Unfortunately, I wasn't booked at this hotel, and they had no information about where I could go find out more. They did point out three other hotels which had groups of wedding attendees in them, so off we went.
Next stop: the Castillo de Cristal Hotel. This place was quite noticeable. Blue glass mirrors lined the outside of this "Crystal Castle". I hopped out of the cab, and saw an envelope with my name on it sitting on the front desk. Bingo! Adventure doesn't disappoint.
I gave the drive a nice tip, we checked in, and got settled into our crazy room. All of the rooms in this place were unique. Some were tiny and square, and ours was an oval shaped room on the top floor with two double beds. We had a primo tower setup. We then came downstairs to check out the neighborhood.
The church was immediately across the street. Behind it were several small vendor setups and in front was a square with some shops and bars surrounding it. We walked down the street past lots of shops. Kristen, being tall, white, and blonde, got a lot of interested looks from the locals. When we returned, a bus was parked in front of the hotel, and Bill was in the lobby. Predictably, he had a bottle of tequila in his hand.
And so we have arrived.
In short order, we met the first match of many fellow members of the Tommy’s Blue Agave Club. (I have a Masters Degree in Tequila, Bill has a Ph.D.) Most of the group had arrived early in the morning on a charter flight from San Francisco, were bussed in from Guadalajara, and had spent the day on tours of the Centinela distillery, which was apparently a load of fun. So they were loaded up with bottled of fine tequila, and we spent a while in the lobby having drinks.
And then American Airlines calls again. Impressive, since they presumably closed hours before. I gave them the name of the hotel and the street address, and they told me I'd get my bag that night! This is exciting news. Back to drinking.
We then walked over to the Paradiso bar, down the street, where tequila is on the house, as long as it's an El Tesoro product (El Tesoro and Tapatio). You see, Lily's grandfather, Don Felipe, founded El Tesoro de Don Felipe. Julio, the Embassador of Tequila to the United States, was marrying into a tequila empire. Tequila was flowing like water. We had a impossibly great time. I vaguely remember dinner at a restaurant next door, and don't really know how we made it home.