charles and all the groomsmen took the limo from lisa's parents' house to lisa's apartment, where she and her bridesmaids had stayed the previous night. according to tradition, it was the maid of honor's duty to prevent charles from entering the house at first.

before being allowed entrance into the home to see his bride, the maid of honor may require the groom to perform any series of challenges or tasks to prove that he is worthy of the bride's hand in marriage. as it turned out, i thought he got of relatively easy.

in order to show he was worthy of lisa, kayee had charles do a number of challenges. first was a physical feat, with charles and we the groomsmen doing ten jumping jacks, that was a piece of cake. thank god it hadn't been push ups, i would have been in trouble.

next charles showed his talent and romanticism by singing a song to lisa, which turned out to be some bette midler song that we backed him up on. luckily again charles is an oxymoron, a straight fan of show tunes and the like.

the real sticking point came when charles was ordered to make all the bridesmaids laugh. there one sure way to make someone unfunny is to demand of them all of a sudden to be funny. that one he postponed and moved onto another challenge. next they had charles show his resourcefulness by constructing a wedding gown for kevin out of toilet paper, with our help. we did the best we could in five minutes and they accepted it.

next we were instructed to come up with exactly $9.99 among us, which i thought was no problem. we'd heard at other weddings the groomsmen had to come up with $999, that would have been tougher. still, coming up with the exact change proved to be a challenge, but finally the limo driver kicked in the final nickel and dime we needed to get it right on.

finally it was charles' best man mike who came through with the comedic advice to finish off the tasks. he pulled charles aside and gave him a thirty second crash course in nose humming. he then performed a stirring rendition of a hula song while us groomsmen danced along. thankfully it was enough to make the bridesmaids laugh, and charles was granted entrance to claim his bride.

next it was back in the limo and back to lisa's parents' place for a traditional tea ceremony. check out the next post...