Let Them Eat Cake: Going to a Wedding with Andrew Bird

I’ve reached the age where a lot of my friends are starting to get married (congrats to April & Conrad, the latest to tie the knot).  Luckily, I love a good wedding.  Music, dancing, drunk relatives, and cake… mmm, cake…

Know what else I love?  The new Andrew Bird album, Armchair Apocrypha, due out later this spring.  Lucky for me, Paste was sent an advance so we could review the album.  iTunes tells me I’ve listened to one of its songs, “Scythian Empires,” 32 times already.  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

So over the weekend I dreamt that I was not invited to a wedding for one of my casual friends.  Normally I wouldn’t care so much, but this was a big outdoor wedding at a Dallas country club and all of my other friends were going.  Didn’t matter how I felt about it though; the wedding was during SXSW so I would be in Austin and unable to attend.

In this dream, I was having a lot of fun in Austin (I have a lot of fun there in real life, too) but something wasn’t right….  I was at showcase after showcase, but felt like I had to be at that wedding.  At one of the showcases I met Andrew Bird.  He was backstage tuning his violin and invited me to come talk to him.  “You look sad,” he said. 

I told Andrew about my dilemma.  He completely understood.  Turns out he liked weddings, too, and suggested we crash the country club wedding after he finished his set.  Move over, Vince and Owen – we were going to refine the art of wedding crashing.

We took Bird’s tour bus to Dallas and arrived at the wedding.  It was very classy – yellow daffodils, white daises, and Tiger lilies adorned all of the tables. There was a security guard checking invitations, which meant we would have to sneak in.  Bird and I formulated the perfect plan…

Andrew grabbed his violin case and walked up to the doors of the country club.  The security guard assumed he was with the band, and let him in.  Bird pulled out his violin and played a few tunes while guests were arriving.  Meanwhile, I went in through the service entrance and pretended to be a waitress.  When the party got going, Bird and I joined in on the fun until he had to take off for another gig.  I waved goodbye and took a seat at one of the tables in the reception hall.  The bride saw me and walked over.  “Why are you at my wedding?? It’s costing my parents $250 a head!”

I smiled and offered a simple explanation. “Free cake.”

And they all lived happily ever after.  The End.