License to Steal

I'm going to be funny again after I get married - I'm certain of it, but right now the stress of planning a rehearsal dinner is making all my chest hair fall out.

Choosing a rehearsal dinner location is alot of responsiblity for someone who still has linoleum in his kitchen, but after great travail; I finally found a place I like. I even managed to meet with the convicted felon they had masquerading as a party planner. Do you know what this extortionist quoted me, total, for the event? Bear in mind - we're talking about a seated dinner. Dinner. Where you get together and eat with other people. Just dinner - not a talking dog and pony show followed by lion-taming. No magic tricks or murder mystery theater. We're talking food, drink and possibly a slide show of all my conquered animal heads, but basically - just dinner.

$10,000.

That's TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. TEN THOUSAND. When the chirpy idiot who quoted me the price dropped that piano on me - I immediately felt simultaneously hot and cold all over. Then, I got furious.

If you so much as gently breathe the words "wedding" or "rehearsal dinner" towards these greedy, twisted, evil, party planning thieves; it's like a license to steal.

It boggles my mind.

I immediately thought of so many terrible things to say to her that it created a mental logjam right at the front of my brain and all that came out was "eeeeeek!!". I wanted to say "You, madame, are smelly and shaped like a walrus", but I literally couldn't get a word out.

Tyler, who happened to see my eyes bug out and my nostrils flare, managed to pipe up with "well, thanks! we'll be in touch" just in time, then steered my catatonic, lumbering frame gently towards the car.

If you pay $100-a-plate for hotplate food prepared in advance and cheap beer - you better be eating sauteed Passenger Pigeon served with a light Tazmanian Devil compote and it better be beer brewed by Benjamin Frankline himself and dredged up from the wreck of the Titanic or you're just plain getting screwed.

You know what they wanted $100-a-plate for? Grilled chicken or an 8oz filet. Not BOTH, mind you - either /or.

Seriously, I am in the wrong industry. I need to figure out a way to capitalize on someone else's joyous occasion and if I can potentially ruin it by piling on financial worries - I'll just consider it a bonus.

So, to the ASS who tried to stick me for a $10,000 dinner with a grin on her face like I'm a full-grown newborn with a wallet - even though YOUwere going to charge ME for EVERYTHING (linens, candlesticks, chairs, trash, servers, lighting, parking) I left you something for FREE

...it's smeared all over your door handle.