Sunday, July 31, 2011

Pleather and Pasties: Rollercon 2011 derby wedding.

When we saw the red sleeve poking out from the rack, the immediate response - the only acceptable response - was: "Perfect."

It was 9-something in the morning, and I had only slept for a few hours - but there was some serious business to attend to. I was getting married that night, and I didn't have a thing to wear.

Thank god for Savers.

After an evening spent in the back of a Hummer limousine, being refused entry to a strip club because we didn't have any pants on, and then flooding the bathroom of my hotel room, I was a little worse for the wear. Care Bear had blown into town the night before in daddy's Caddy, and was willing to drive me around because she is pretty fucking amazing - so with a pit stop at Starbucks and a few trips to the potty, we were on a mission. First stop: Walmart. I wore a leopard print strapless dress for the occasion, keeping with my "no pants in Vegas" rule that I had been strictly enforcing. And also because I had not packed any appropriate clothing whatsoever for a trip to "civilization" aka "not rollercon".

Walmart didn't have a damn thing that we needed, so we went next door to Savers and got ourselves some lace curtains, a pink apron with a heart on the front that said "Jesus Bakes" or something like that with a quote from the bible, and the piece de resistance: A red pleather motorcycle jacket that fit like it was made for me, if I were to have a pleather jacket custom made. Which I would not. But I digress. I had hit wedding gold, for the very reasonable price of $7.99.

Our next stop was the American Apparel outlet. After wandering the aisles, I was getting a little anxious. I had felt sure I would find some sort of amazing bodysuit that was going to pull my whole look together, and yet, somehow, the leotard of my dreams was nowhere to be found. I took a closer look, and found something that I still cannot quite get my head around. I found a glittery gold skirt that American Apparel was calling a strapless dress (which is a perfect example of why I love that place so damn much) and a matching zip-front bodysuit.

Oh, it brought a tear to my eye.

We returned to the hotel triumphant, and I presented my fellow bride with her "dress". When she pointed out that while American Apparel might think it was a dress, she did not necessarily agree, I suggested that she wear it as a skirt, and just put on some pasties. Problem solved.

I withheld the jacket, as I wanted to keep some element of surprise for the actual wedding night, and then she rushed off to class and I went back to my room to take off the animal print and slip into something smaller. A few hours later found Carrie and I in my bathroom, which had mostly recovered from being completely submerged the night before. The damp carpet smelled like feet but it was clean, so rather than get hair all over it (YOU'RE WELCOME HOUSEKEEPING) I sat on the edge of the tub and Carrie climbed in behind me and proceeded to cut off approximately 75% of my hair. Since my hair was pretty short to begin with, and after a few minutes of watching massive amounts of hair fall to the floor, I mentioned that while I had given her carte blanche with the haircut, I would prefer to avoid a bald spot.

She wasn't amused.

15 minutes later I had a new amazing haircut, and another bathroom disaster on my hands.

Carrie had to leave, which broke my heart because I had really wanted her at my wedding - so we went downstairs and she drove off into the desert and I went in to watch my future derby wife skate. When she came off the track, we had a quick conversation about the evening's nuptials, wherein we discovered that neither of us had thought to buy rings. No matter, there was a convenience store in the lobby, surely they would have something......this IS Vegas after all.

An hour later I discovered that even in Vegas, next door to a wedding chapel, convenience stores do not carry rings. Which is, in my mind, a huge oversight on their part. They did, however, have dangly dice earrings and vodka, and I am nothing if not flexible.

My bride, meanwhile, had snuck off and bought some really spectacular wedding rings, so all of my worry was for naught - we had both earrings AND rings and all was right with the world. I hopped in the shower, and she went off to her room to get her pasties on and whatever else brides do. I wouldn't know, because I spent half an hour trying to secure my bodysuit with double sided tape which I am pretty sure is not what brides usually spend their time doing. In my excitement at finding such great outfits I had neglected to try anything on and, sadly, my bodysuit gave me both cameltoe AND wedgie which was remarkably uncomfortable to say the least.

I can say with certainty that getting ready to get derby married took much longer than the amount of time I took getting ready for my wedding to my husband. Choosing the perfect amount of unzipped for maximum cleavage, deciding whether I should wear fishnets or leggings with hearts on them, and securing that curtain to my head was a lengthy process. My counterpart was busy with adhesives and a sharpie, so she had her own set of issues to work out. All of which meant that we missed the first wedding ceremony of the evening. Thank goodness, they had more ceremonies scheduled later on - with all of the trouble we had gone to getting ready to get hitched, I was getting married that night - even if I had to drag the minister out of the pool party that was raging outside to do it.

Finally we were both ready, I in my red pleather and she in her red pasties, both in fishnets. Our officiant was an eight months pregnant derby girl in an Elvis suit, and as we repeated the vows and stuck rings on fingers and smiled for the cameras, I looked around the room and thought to myself -

"I must never let my children see these photos".

You, on the other hand, will get a peek. Like my facebook and/or follow me on twitter - in the coming days I will review the documentation of our big event with my brand spanking new derby wife (Though I must confess, there is no spanking involved. Yet.) and with her permission I will post a few choice photos of the evening. In the meantime, you can read a version of our vows here.

I don't know if getting married will change things between us, but in the meantime I'm going to get us registered at Macy's TOOT SWEET and then sit back and wait for the wedding gifts to start arriving. I could really use some new towels.

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