DRUNK CLOWN AT THE WEDDING
January 7, 2019 6:12 AM   Subscribe

There's lots of ugliness in the world right now, so I think it's important to share these photos of what happened when my friend Marvin called me & said: "I'm getting married & we can only invite 100 people. You didn't make the cut. But you can come if you come as a drunk clown." Twitter | Threadreader
posted by Johnny Wallflower (65 comments total) 44 users marked this as a favorite
 
h/t ColdChef
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:13 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


If you're like me and saw the first tweet and thought "what the fuck, who tells someone they 'didn't make the cut' to get invited to their wedding?" and nearly closed the thread in disgust, don't, it's funny and it's clear that the people involved thought it was hilarious. I'm just going to assume that that came off very differently to the people in the conversation.
posted by quaking fajita at 6:15 AM on January 7, 2019 [12 favorites]


I hate weddings but this kind of brought me around to the idea.
posted by The Toad at 6:26 AM on January 7, 2019


gotta call my wife and propose a renewal of vows, brb

unrelated: in need of "ecstasy mime," memail w/references
posted by duffell at 6:33 AM on January 7, 2019 [30 favorites]


I was the drunk clown at my wedding, but she made me wear a tux.
posted by Cris E at 6:36 AM on January 7, 2019 [55 favorites]


I didn't realize Olde English was beer and not hard liquor until I got most of the way through the story, and was very surprised he wasn't dead clown at a wedding.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:42 AM on January 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


I didn't realize Olde English was beer and not hard liquor until I got most of the way through the story, and was very surprised he wasn't dead clown at a wedding.

Ha. That was my first reaction, too, until I saw the OE bottle in the picture. Where I come from, a “40 oz” could be hard liquor or malt liquor.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:53 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


This is very, very good.
posted by minsies at 6:54 AM on January 7, 2019


I've always said that if I ever get married, I'm eloping, but... this is a pretty tempting idea as well.
posted by palomar at 7:03 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


the update at the very end where the groom joined twitter just to point out that the unidentified (unremembered) person having a huge laugh with the wasted crown was HIS OWN MOM was just icing on the (wedding) cake.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:21 AM on January 7, 2019 [18 favorites]


I mean, I was able to find a drunk Elvis for my wedding, but a clown...that would have put it right over the top.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:21 AM on January 7, 2019


I didn't realize Olde English was beer

it's not - i hope he was ok, because two 40s of that is enough to make anyone violently ill
posted by pyramid termite at 7:23 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Olde English is "Malt Liquor" (beer that's had it's alcohol content spiked by adding extra fermentable sugars to the wort). Its alcohol content varies by region but tops out at around 8%.

Two forties of Olde English would render most people incoherently drunk but would only cause alcohol poisoning in a small person or someone with impaired liver function.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:32 AM on January 7, 2019 [10 favorites]


Just get everybody to come as a drunk clown, problem solved.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:42 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


Love the idea, but it would be a better story if there really was an uninvited drunk clown. Now that would be a story to tell your kids one day. My kids just have to hear about my Uncle Robby and the bottle of tequila story.
posted by AugustWest at 7:48 AM on January 7, 2019


who tells someone they 'didn't make the cut' to get invited to their wedding?

I interpret this as shorthand for "We would love to invite you but if we do, that means we also need to invite everyone else in this social circle as well as $SPOUSE's equivalent and doing so will prompt my mom to insist on inviting her entire Bible study group plus spouses, children and grandchildren and which in turn will prompt invitations to the future father-in-law's bowling team and their spouses and children, turning what was to be a small and intimate wedding into a massive event whose costs will preclude us from ever owning property."

So I'm basically okay with that. (Not that I can relate or anything.)
posted by suetanvil at 7:53 AM on January 7, 2019 [58 favorites]


Am I the only person here who's ever played "Edward 40 Hands"?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:54 AM on January 7, 2019 [43 favorites]


The UK variant of Edward 40Hands is Amy WineHands...
posted by terretu at 7:55 AM on January 7, 2019 [13 favorites]


I wonder if this had the side-effect of keeping other guests from getting too wasted?

I can think of at least a couple events where I got way too drunk.

An actual drunk clown would have been a welcome object lesson/distraction.
posted by spacewaitress at 7:57 AM on January 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


who tells someone they 'didn't make the cut' to get invited to their wedding?

I interpret this as shorthand for "We would love to invite you but if we do, that means we also need to invite everyone else in this social circle...


I interpreted it as "I still remember that hilarious conversation we had back in college about how we'd like to go to a wedding as drunk clowns, but I don't know whether you remember it, or really even whether you would want to come to my wedding because we don't talk much anymore, but we're still Twitter friends."
posted by Etrigan at 8:03 AM on January 7, 2019 [10 favorites]


He could totally turn this into a side hustle and get hired as a drunk clown for other people's functions.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:04 AM on January 7, 2019 [12 favorites]


Most couples don’t say “you didn’t make the cut”, the response is typically “we’re keeping it small”.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:07 AM on January 7, 2019


100 guests is a small wedding? I mean, I have no problem with a 100 guest limit; everybody's got to draw the line somewhere. I'm just surprised 100 guests is considered small.
posted by ardgedee at 8:20 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


The trick here, of course, is that you need someone who's going to be the right kind of drunk clown. A fun drunk clown is fun. An angry drunk clown or a grabby-handed masher drunk clown are not going to liven up your reception. So if you're going to do this, you have to audition with potential candidates. Get seriously drunk with a bunch of people, or maybe several times in one on one situations, and decide who's going to be the right drunk clown for your particular social event.

Me, I'd be a lousy drunk clown. I'd be fun for a brief while, but then I'd get all morose and go sit in the corner by myself somewhere and mope about my troubles. No fun at all.
posted by Naberius at 8:20 AM on January 7, 2019 [12 favorites]


I'm just surprised 100 guests is considered small.

The wedding appears to have taken place at a vineyard in Paso Robles; gonna guess the budget for this was probably, uh, substantially more than most weddings I've been to.

But good on them for still keepin' it real with a drunk clown.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:43 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Perfect for a morning laugh! I'm so happy that he was in the professional wedding photos, the lurking photos were what made it exceptional.
I assume they asked him to be a Drunk Clown bc they knew he'd be down for it and would perform the role with well, and I believe he discharged his duties with aplomb.
posted by honey badger at 8:46 AM on January 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


A fun drunk clown is fun. An angry drunk clown or a grabby-handed masher drunk clown are not going to liven up your reception.

Strongly disagree, you need a wide variety of drunk clowns for any proper wedding. If at least half of them are not kicked out for their behavior then something is wrong. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
posted by Meatbomb at 8:54 AM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


That this happened is proof that we're not on the darkest timeline after all. Absolutely love this.
posted by Fezboy! at 9:06 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


I love this! I took the 'you didn't make the cut' as a joke.
posted by Braeburn at 9:10 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


I dressed up in an Elvis costume for a friend's wedding. This friend really wanted an Elvis-themed wedding, so she planned a destination wedding at the Graceland Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas. The six of us in the wedding party conspired to dress up as Elvii for the ceremony and reception as a surprise for the bride. The plan was actually cooked up by the bridesmaids who couldn't find matching dresses they all didn't hate, alcohol was involved in this process. The best part was the reaction of the chapel's official Elvis, he just smiled and called us devils in disguise and got on with his routine like a pro. The worst part is that Vegas is hot, a rented wig and sequined polyester jumper gets gross quickly.

Other takeaways:
* It was surprisingly difficult to find six rental Elvis costumes in Las Vegas on short notice.
* It's slow to walk anywhere in a group of Elvii, everyone wants a selfie; this included a producer at one of those pawn shop shows who wanted us to come in to film some b-roll of us in the store.
* It's good to be the king, Elvis doesn't buy his own drinks in Vegas.
posted by peeedro at 9:15 AM on January 7, 2019 [46 favorites]


I didn't realize Olde English was beer and not hard liquor until I got most of the way through the story
It would have been funnier if they had gone with Old English instead, though I don't think it comes in a 40..
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:22 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


I am always a drunk clown.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:25 AM on January 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


This is wonderful. There are cultures in which a clown is traditionally part of the wedding festivities, but I bet they’re never actually as funny as this, what with tradition and all.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:29 AM on January 7, 2019


[ed: that is, a comedic figure or jester, not a literal Pennywise-looking sonofabitch]
posted by Countess Elena at 9:31 AM on January 7, 2019 [15 favorites]


100 guests is a small wedding?

Depends on the size and closeness of the extended family and if the parents insist on inviting their friends or business contacts. Our "parents' friends" list was pretty small (only 8), but between siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews, there were 36 invited guests from our families. Families with cousins more closely clustered in age or geography can easily produce more "yes" RSVPs than that. That was 44 guests before we even got to the wedding party and the rest of our friends (of that 44, six or eight were "no" RSVPs and three were supposedly planning to come but never RSVPed and didn't show up). If you don't have that kind of extended family or you can get away with "friends only" you have a much better shot at keeping the whole guest list under 50 or so. I suspect this is why some people choose "destination weddings."

Also, 100 is often a venue breakpoint, IME. We found lots of places for 40-50 guests, a fair number of places for 80-100 guests, and a smaller number of places that could handle more than 100 (but the ones that could could often handle up to 150 or more). There are rules of thumb for how many "yes" RSVPs to expect (and how many guests to expect to show up after that) but depending on your social circles you can find yourselves bumping up against the worst case scenario as you count up invitations. If you really want to invite 120 people, can you count on enough "no" RSVPs and no-shows to make a venue limit of 100 workable? What happens to the social circles where you can't invite Alice without also inviting Bob and Carol and David? Do you skip them all or invite them all? What if you have a falling out with somebody after you've sent the save the date? (On that last one: etiquette says you send the invitation and they respectfully decline).

We once got an invitation five days before somebody's wedding. They both came from large families and we'd been on the Alice/Bob/Carol/David list. That whole list had been cut for space, but then they had a lot of "no" RSVPs and thus had plenty of seats left to fill. "Let's take the groom out for drinks before he leaves town" turned into "hey, do you guys want to come up to Princeton this weekend? Sorry this is late, but, uh." We went. Turns out they'd invited like 200 people and had around 75 RSVPs. The ceremony seemed empty and there was lots of room between tables in the banquet hall. On the other end of the scale we invited 140, had 122 "yes" RSVPs, and I think 116 actually showed up. Our venue limit was 120, although they admitted they could fit more people than that if necessary. Lucky for us it wasn't necessary and the space was the perfect size, but planning a wedding for exactly 100 people is, in fact, really hard.
posted by fedward at 9:37 AM on January 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


210 people at my wedding. I knew about 100 of them. Held in the Temple social hall. Not as expensive as 210 sounds. Of the 210, I would say 10% or 20 of them might as well have dressed up as drunk clowns. They certainly acted the part. The only say I was given in the entire planning and execution besides saying, "I do.", was that we have two bars not one, and that the beer be in bottles not kegs. Turns out the drunkest person there was my buddy dressed in his Marine Dress Blues complete with sword.
posted by AugustWest at 9:49 AM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


Nobody got freaked out by a clown?

Man, the great clown panic of '16 has passed rapidly away.
posted by doctornemo at 9:50 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Nobody got freaked out by a clown?

Perhaps the father of the bride? Although he seemed more pissed off than scared. We all compensate in our own way.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:54 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


How y'all out here frontin' like there are sober clowns?
posted by East14thTaco at 9:57 AM on January 7, 2019 [16 favorites]


Best Man ☑️
Maid of Honor ☑️
Drunk Clown ☑️

A checklist to live by....
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:57 AM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


who tells someone they 'didn't make the cut' to get invited to their wedding?

I believe he clarified this in a later tweet/article. They were college friends but hadn't really stayed in touch. There was no expectation that he would be invited.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:01 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


TheWhiteSkull: Am I the only person here who's ever played "Edward 40 Hands"?

Ah, college, the time of bad choices. Also from that era: 20-40 club/race, in which people raced to down 20 chicken nuggets (or veggie/vegan equivalents) and a 40 oz beverage.


The Toad: I hate weddings but this kind of brought me around to the idea.

palomar: I've always said that if I ever get married, I'm eloping, but... this is a pretty tempting idea as well.

Weddings are what you make of them, as the couple getting married. Yeah, there are a ton of expectations on how the day should go from all sides, but in the end, it's the two people who matter most in terms of what makes them happy. And don't get overwhelmed by wedding industry shows, if you go to one at all (though they are helpful to quickly gauge differences in styles of photographers, flower designers, etc., so you can know who is worth while meeting later, and who you can skip).

Invite a friend to show up as a drunken clown? Why not? Have a zombie graveyard for the main cake (with custom cake topper of the bride and groom as zombies) and an active volcano (with dry ice or whatnot) as the grooms cake? Sure! The first dance is "Monster Mash"? Who's going to stop you?

Yes, my wife and I did all that (except the drunken clown) and our officiant wore really old Batman-themed Converse shoes, while I wore new red Cons. Though my wife wore heels for the wedding, she kicked off her shoes and danced barefoot, and people still talk about how much fun they had at our wedding (which is kind of weird, but also rather sweet).

We caved on the wedding list because my parents footed a big chunk of the wedding costs (which we otherwise kept pretty low), but it was our wedding.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:05 AM on January 7, 2019 [5 favorites]


I was really hoping this was going to be multiple drunk clowns.
posted by agregoli at 10:28 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


We got married in NY city hall, with my wife's second cousin and husband as witnesses and wedding party. That's what we think of as 'our wedding'.
When we came home to Chile, my parents and inlaws had gotten together to throw a big party, with a lot of their friends and family and a handful of our friends, which was fine as they were paying for and organizing the whole thing. That's what most other people think of as our wedding.
Years later, since we never got the US wedding officialized in Chile, we had a civil-union non-wedding ceremony to make it legal and also because if our gay friends couldn't get legally married, we weren't going to either.
So we have 3 anniversaries and celebrate them all.
posted by signal at 10:35 AM on January 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


A farmer friend of mine said to me a few years ago, "I'd rather go out into the field and find my best heifer dead than to to see a wedding invitation coming through the door". I don't have any heifers but I don't disagree with the sentiment.
posted by night_train at 10:45 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


100 guests is a small wedding?

In families where 40-year feuds have been generated by the lack of a wedding invitation? Yes. I feel like we invited about thirty heads of household with their families from my side of the aisle alone.
posted by corb at 10:56 AM on January 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


Yeah, it's very much a question of what the family expectations are. If your parents came from even slightly more than average size families, the aunts and uncles and cousins and their partners can add up quick.
posted by tavella at 11:00 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


We spent some time before our wedding developing a contingency plan in case one or two relatives turned into drunk clowns. Fortunately everyone behaved themselves.

We had just under 90 people. We invited over 100, but knew that most of the overseas family wouldn't be able to come, but would appreciate being invited anyhow.
posted by sfred at 11:03 AM on January 7, 2019


I'm getting married & we can only invite 100 people.

I'm trying to think if I have 50 friends and am coming up short...
posted by zardoz at 11:07 AM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


100 guests is a small wedding?

My wife and I tried for as small a wedding as we could. We barely squeaked by at I think 90 guests, because that's how family expectations work sometimes.

(in my case my dad has 11 siblings and they rarely have an occasion to get everyone together, so right off the bat that's 22 seats taken because I wasn't about to tell him I was only inviting the 6 I saw regularly growing up ...)
posted by tocts at 11:16 AM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


A farmer friend of mine said to me a few years ago, "I'd rather go out into the field and find my best heifer dead than to to see a wedding invitation coming through the door". I don't have any heifers but I don't disagree with the sentiment.

I just googled heifer prices, and I don't really understand what I'm looking at, but it seems like there's a range of $700 to $2400, which is indeed around what some clueless couples would expect you to pay in gifts, travel, and clothing.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:00 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Just returned from India where last week, i kid not, i heard someone refer to a 300 person wedding as small.

Shared this with my wife's best friend who took the bait exactly as i'd hoped and replied with some of the more epic pictures "commemorating" my wife's performance as her matron of honor - ill say that while my wife did not wear a rainbow onesie or traditional clown makeup, this particular performance happened at the peak of the selfie-stick era, and we must have 100 really bad/blurry selfies featuring everyone from the groom's mom to members of the wedding band.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Am I the only person here who's ever played "Edward 40 Hands"?

I attended a "Bad Decisions" themed party (just after the 2016 election; it seemed apropos), where we—a bunch of grown-ass adults—decided to do this. This turned out to be endlessly entertaining on several levels.

First, the guy at 7-Eleven, where we went to buy a number of 40s of "Steel Reserve" malt liquor, seemed... mildly concerned for our safety, or maybe just sanity. I can only assume he knows his 40oz regulars, and we weren't them. He kept feeling the need to explain malt liquor to us.

Second, most of us had played Edward 40-Hands in college, and remembered much dumb shenanigans involving use of the bathroom with 40s duct-taped to one's hands. As it turns out, if you are not a drunk 19-year-old, this is not really as much of a problem as you might think. You just drink all of one 40, freeing up that hand, before starting on the second one. Taking alternating pulls from one hand and then the other, the traditional technique, is simply a failure to plan ahead. This will be something I remind myself of, if I get a time machine.

Third, the realization that with age comes, if not wisdom, then at least a significant increase in alcohol tolerance. But this apparent ability comes at a terrible price: you get half as drunk, but twice as hungover.

Anyway, A+ would make same bad decision again.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:28 PM on January 7, 2019 [19 favorites]


"Many years ago, I sent a white-faced silent clown to a friend's wedding. He turned up, sat in the back during the service, and when my friend said "Who ARE you? Who SENT you? Did NEIL have anything to do with this?" he said nothing. It was an excellent wedding present." - Neil Gaiman
posted by Kyol at 12:34 PM on January 7, 2019 [36 favorites]


I have a new goal in life:

Whenever someone or something really outré appears in a friend's life, I want them to ask "Who ARE you? Who SENT you? Did JACQUILYNNE have anything to do with this?"

That's the kind of friend I aspire to be.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:18 PM on January 7, 2019 [33 favorites]


Saw this this morning in my feed and mentioned it to my wife as an approach for renewing our vows (maybe we could work off the karmic entanglement shitshow of inviting my ex-gf to the first one), and she upped the ante by suggesting a new catering business model. I cook, she clowns.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 1:25 PM on January 7, 2019


Metafilter: Drunk clown at the wedding
posted by Twang at 2:22 PM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


I am always a drunk clown.

Verified.
posted by me3dia at 3:04 PM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


Man, my fiancée and I have both lived in a number of places where we made a bunch of close friends and all before we met each other, so we have one ~100-person semi-destination wedding (destination for us and some guests, not so much for others) and then another ~80 person celebration once we're back in NY for all the people that we had to cull down. And there's no family coming outside of our immediate families. Guest lists get out of hand fast.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:11 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


100 guests is a small wedding?

When my best college friend got married and I was her maid of honor, they invited the bare minimum necessary to avoid hurt feelings in both families, and it worked out to about 100.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:05 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


I secretly eloped. Was just me, the guy, the official, and two professional witnesses. Many years later, my kid eloped. Unlike me, it was not a secret. Also, she wore an actual wedding gown (I wore a pair of pants with a shirt I had borrowed from my husband to be). Best of all, she allowed me to hire a photographer for the occasion. It was a massive win-win, A+++ would support her decision again.

Ten years after I eloped, the husband and I had a big anniversary party, made a turkey at a friend's house, and had an Italian wedding cake we got at a bakery in North Beach in San Francisco. A+++ would have that party again. Get married again? Nah, probably not but happy to be a drunken clown at someone else's nuptials.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:59 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


His next friend's wedding will feature six drunken clown bridesmaids piling out of a tiny limousine to a yakety-sax rendition of "O Promise Me."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:37 PM on January 8, 2019


No one else yet? Really?

Drunk clown at the wedding
I know, I know it's serious...
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:16 AM on January 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


I was at a party this afternoon and an old friend introduced me to his wife, then told her: “honey, this is the drunk clown I told you about.”
very good stuff
posted by churl at 3:33 PM on January 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


holy shit you guys

Beers of a Clown
posted by duffell at 12:23 PM on January 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


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