Day Three - Saturday September 27th - Part One
Since we didn't have to be anywhere too terribly early, we took the opportunity to sleep in a little bit. When we woke up, we spent a nice leisurely morning with my family at our house before getting showered and packing up to head over to WDW to check into our rooms at the Boardwalk Villas. Since Randy & Jodie had taken all of the supplies for the Hospitality Suite, we no longer had to take both my car and Scott's SUV, which simplified matters immensly. We only had to worry about a couple of small bags, our hanging bags (with freshly pressed suits for the wedding) and a box full of presents to be given out at the Rehearsal Dinner.
We left our house at around 12:30pm, and got to the Boardwalk in short order. There we learned that putting our names on the waiting list for the second night in the Grand Villa had paid off, as we were now booked for both Saturday AND Sunday nights. This was great news, because it meant that we could invite people up to the Hospitality Suite after the reception. We were also told that none of our rooms would be ready until after 4pm.
So we settled ourselves into the lobby at the Boardwalk for a little over an hour, and had a nice time people watching and talking amongst ourselves. On other days, the rooms not being ready probably would have stressed me out, but that day, I was refusing to worry about anything but having fun and enjoying the ride, so I relaxed a little bit and enjoyed spending time with my family.
We finally headed over to Pleasure Island for the wedding rehearsal some time around 2:30pm to meet Marion (our amazing wedding planner), Renee (our friend who is officiating), David and Tyler (Scott's attendants) and Randy Chapman (our photographer, who had called the day before to let us know that his Saturday wedding had cancelled and he'd like to tag along to the rehearsal and take some shots of that since we'd never managed to set up an "engagement shoot" which was part of the package we'd paid for.)
Now, here's where things get interesting. Back when they made the announcement that they were closing the Adventurers Club the day before our wedding, we contacted our wedding planner and raised our concern about the rehearsal (among other things), specificaly we were worried about my mom, who walks with a cane, having to fight her way through the crowd that we were sure would be camping out all day in front of the club for its last night. We requested that we be able to enter through the cast member entrance near the back of Comedy Warehouse and then through the tunnels where the dressing rooms, etc are located, thereby completely bypassing the crowd of AdvClub fans who probably wouldn't be happy about 10 people waltzing into the club at 3pm after they'd been waiting all day. On Wednesday before the wedding, we were told that P.I. Management had decided that this wouldn't be a good idea and we'd have to go through the front door of the club. We were extremely ticked off. But they weren't budging from their position, saying that it was due to increased security for the last night. We simply planned on fighting our way through the crowd as neccessary while trying to protect my mom from being jostled too much.
When we got to the Adventurers Club, here's what we saw.
Yep. A tent city of people who had been camping out since 7:30am, just as we'd predicted. (It wasn't hard to predict, our friend Sharon was the first one in line.
). This picture doesn't really show the tarps that people had strung up to sit underneath, either. It was quite the elaborate set up.
So we walk up to this crowd, and the event manager that was supposed to meet us at the door says "We can't go in through all of this. They're right up against the doors!".
Well duh! What the heck have we been saying for the past three months!
So he then tells us that we'll have to go in via the outside stairs (in the picture, right where the light pole is on the extreme left of the photo, there is a staircase that leads down into a small courtyard and a service entrance into the club.
We point out once again that my mother uses a cane, and can't do stairs very well. (as we're standing near the stairs, surrounded by sweaty people, who are trying to protect their place in line).
The event manager turns and looks at the BET Soundstage club (which has no line at all, of course) with a questioning look on his face. I jumped right in. "I know that club connects. Is there an eleveator in there?" He says there is, to which I respond "Then you go down those stairs, and into BET and let us in that way." And he looks at me with a blank look and scurries off.
Honestly, if they'd just have listened to us in the first place.
In short order the BET door opens, and we're ushered inside (nice club, we'd never been in there before) and then down the elevator, through the tunnel and into our beloved club for our rehearsal.
Details about the rehearsal and the rest of Day Three coming soon.
Y'all have followed along as I obsessively stressed on every detail of the planning. 
Did you think I'd miss telling about every detail about when it actually happened?
It turned out that Gary had stopped by the bar and ordered it while we were getting seated. He then toasted us and said some nice things about how obvious it was that Scott and I are meant to be together and we're great guys, and other embarassing things. We were touched. Renee told us later that before he'd met us, Gary was a homophobe. Didn't know any gay people, didn't want to know any gay people, and was happy to never know anything about anybody gay. Just by being ourselves, and hanging with our friends and dealing well with Geoffrey, we'd changed his mind. He was truly happy for us and honored to be invited to join us for our happy day. (A quick note about Geoffrey, I guess I should have explained sooner, but it never crosses my mind. Geoffrey is 22 and is developmentally disabled in some way. I don't really know how, it's never been important to me, so I've never asked. He can't speak, but he can hear and understand quite a bit. He communicates via some signs, and gestures. He loves elevators, and watching things go in circles, and having people mimic his gestures. And he's just an amazing positive presence. We met Renee, Gary & Geoffrey at the Adventurers Club. We'd ridden up and down that AdvClub elevator with Geoffrey countless times, as had the performers and bar staff. We'd slapped our bellies along with him, and picked up our feet and rotated them in circles with him. As far as we're concerened it's simply impossible NOT to love Geoffrey and want to see him smile when you play along. When Renee offered to officiate for us, we made it clear that Gary & Geoffrey were "part of the family" and were most certainly welcome at all phases of our weekend. )
I know! 
