50 for 50: 1996

YEAR: 1996

AGE: Turned 26 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Madison, Harbor House Apartments

BULLS' RECORD: 72-10

SONGS I LIKED: "A Long December" by Counting Crows; "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers; "Killing Me Softly" by the Fugees

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "Arliss"; "Men Behaving Badly"

MOVIES I SAW: "Twister"; "The Nutty Professor"

MUSIC VIDEOS I ENJOYED: "Spiderwebs" by No Doubt; "Big Bang Baby" by Stone Temple Pilots

CONCERTS I EXPERIENCED: Hootie and the Blowfish; Styx/Kansas

VIDEO GAMES I PLAYED: Wordtris, Liberty or Death

There are certain phases of your life that you and the people around your same age experience at relatively the same time. For example:

  • Most of my friends and and us seemed to have kids all in a span of 5-7 years during the 2000s. In the now, we as parents are beginning to see the empty nest years approach.
  • We all went through a stage where we went to many, many concerts, which evolved into going to less crowded shows at more adult-friendly venues.
  • At some point -- and this happened before kids, we all collectively didn't feel the need to go out every weekend.
  • In the last decade or so, most of us have experienced some sort of post-40 job transition that was scary as it was happening, but we generally emerged fine on the other side.
  • Unfortunately, the phase we're finding ourselves in now is concern for our parents as they get older -- and some have died, including my stepfather back in February.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, maybe even stretching to about 2001, the stage of life we found ourselves in was the wedding stage. At about 25, a few years out of college, Generation X began getting married. 

In the movie "Wedding Crashers," the idea is that there is a wedding season. In my life, that wedding season lasted five years and included our own. And it started about 1996. Thinking about this post, I counted at least 12 weddings during this time -- and I bet there's 10 more that are escaping my memory.

 

Some things defined this wedding era:

  • Disposable cameras on the tables at the reception for guests to take pictures it (we had ours developed the next morning for people to look at during the gift opening)
  • DJs, not bands
  • The backlash (welcomed, by the way -- our photographer actually threatened us) against cake smushing
  • The "Macarena" -- the only organized dance I've ever been able to master
  • A Generation X sensibility that the wedding didn't necessarily have to be huge (although some were; ours was midsized), just fun

I proposed to Lori in 1996, and we were married 15 months later. We got plenty ideas from many weddings before our big day. 

Take out our wedding, which is different experience because you're in the middle of it, and what I remember most about the weddings we attended during this time was that many seemed like an event.

Yes, technically, they were all events, but what I remember just as fondly, if not more, than the actual ceremony and reception was everything else. This could include traveling out of town to the wedding, hanging out with friends before the wedding day or in the hotel, finding someplace to resume festivities after the reception ended, getting breakfast the next day, the bachelor party a few weeks previous to the wedding, and so on. A few years out of college, you weren't seeing friends as much -- a wedding not only let you celebrate the bride and groom, but also gathering with a bunch of people you were missing.

That might have been our best, if inadvertent, takeaway from the weddings Lori and went applied when we had ours. After the gift opening, we basically reserved our apartment complex's clubhouse for the out-of-town friends to hang out some more. We began hearing crazy stories about what happened when everyone left the reception. And we got to spend time with friends we didn't get to interact with as much the day before.

The wedding era that began in 1996 eventually ended. Although we attended a few seriously fun, special "event" weddings in the 2000s, they weren't as generationally clustered as when we were in our 20s. Plus, by then, someone was watching the kids -- we couldn't stay up all night hanging out after the reception ended ... if we even made it to the end of the reception.

My brain turns to what my sons' weddings will be like someday down the road. Experience a wedding as a parent of the people getting married must be a whole different experience. Just one thing that won't be a choice for them -- they have to play "Macarena" because their dad has to enjoy one crazy dance from when he was in his 20s.

 



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