These boys had the chance to be ring bearers at their parents wedding.
It was a cloudy Sunday evening in Nashville, TN and yours truly had the honor and priviledge of being the Best Man for their father and my longtime friend (since we were 3 & 2 yrs old), Marcus.
He and his beautiful bride have been married for 5 years now, but he wanted to give her the wedding that she always wanted and deserved. The sentiment alone is enough to make a grown man cry.
And some did.
Marcus and his family have meant a lot to me over the years and when he asked me to be his Best Man I was, to say the least, touched. By the time the wedding came around and it was time to make my toast, my emotions got the best of me.
Just before I was about to speak I could hear all of the kids playing on the lawn in front of the
Timothy Demonbruen House when I flashed back to those days spent playing Space Harrier on the Sega Master System while eating pepperoni pizza and drinking apple juice in my house and being at his house pretending to be the WWF tag team champions in his basement (we would kick serious stuffed animal ass!). We spent our childhood in each others houses.
The memories of those days of childhood and friendship and the impact of the moment just made the emotions come out. The pride, joy, and love I felt made me speak from the heart. It was such a moment, I actually don't remember all of the things that I said. For the remainder of the evening over a dozen or so people came to me and said that they were touched, and some moved to tears, by what I said. I'll have to see the video.
The man's family has been there for me in my darkest hours and treated me like a son. His mother came to me after I spoke and I told her how much it meant to me to just be a part of this event. She said to me, "
You're family. We could not have any family event and not have you here."
So to Marcus and Jessica, John and Isabel, Tristan and Ciaran:
Thank you.
