The sweet dulcet sounds of Europe can mean only one thing; it is less than two months until the wedding.

Bearing in mind that I’m in full internal freakout mode, I’m happy we are close to getting the show on the road. Invitations have been sent out, (some autographed! collectors item alert) tux and dress fittings are coming up, my best man is planning a bachelor party fit for a creepy king and I am already picking out sunscreen for the honeymoon (it is called flannel rashguard btw).

In what is a sure sign of my wayward OCD issues, I have been kind of fretting about what reception walk-in song to use. Remember, this will be the one time I get to enter a room like a professional athlete and be showed with (albeit forced customary) applause. Because in reality, that is what the reception walk-in is like.

Look how f’in intense that was. I remember going to Knicks games in that era and the crowd always got up for the intro.  My nostalgia tells me this is a big deal.

Do I go with an iconic rock song like the Europe embedded above? Maybe something a little softer that picks up in the end just as me and the fiance walk in? Or what about some kind of hip hop song with a good beat. I’m still way up in the air at this point.

I suppose, however, is this is my biggest fear at this point I’m at least keeping pace with the game.

After spending a good portion of my 20s in the Keys, I think I lost sight of the fact that real life exists south of Homestead.

And now as an outsider (boo hiss), it has been made clear to me that it is easy to forget that Keys denizens march through the banal steps of life just like anyone else. I realized this during my first few months off of the rock when I fielded questions about all of the wacky things I must have gone through living down there.

When presented with this situation, you have two options. You can lie about your experience living in the Keys, which is morally wrong, or fess up to the fact that the average person pretty much goes through an average life, just with better weather.

So after I tell people about the time I saved all of those swimsuit models from a killer giant octopus that washed ashore of Sombrero Beach, I’m forced to admit that I was pretty much just a regular guy, albeit with a dynamite tan.

Anyone who has had a mainland guest visit them in the Keys can attest to the fact that most people believe we are all kiteboard instructors with unlimited days off down here.

I got experience some of that during my latest weekend trip to the Keys, which unlike my last one involved slightly more than landing in town, loading up a box truck and hauling out with the meager belongings I left behind when I first moved.

In fact, this trip was so high class I got to actually fly both ways. One trip even included my wearing a suit on the plane since I left straight from work. This is the closest my life will ever get to being like Mad Men.

First up on the docket, why only welcoming new life into the world. My friend Christine, longtime readers may remember her as the golf partner who once whiffed four consecutive times on the first tee, and her husband Steve had a baby. When I told baby Nate that he might get mentioned in my column, he seemed rather uninterested, which I though was kind of rude. Although since he is only seven weeks old, maybe he hasn’t gotten a chance to read my full body of work. He’ll be the first to get a signed copy of my upcoming book, “A boring life told somewhat interestingly.” Pre-order now.

I also got to go to my friends Jeff and Laura’s wedding. As I am in the midst of planning my own behemoth of a wedding ceremony, it was nice to be able to kick back and enjoy the fruits of somebody else’s mind-numbing labor.

And imagine my surprise to find out I had been seated at a table that was chock full of fans of my old column. Such worth fans included me, my fiance, my old boss and his girlfriend. What a murderer’s row!

I was willing to take in any kind of recognition that I could get. Now that I live in the vast suburbia of Long Island, nobody cares about my mediocre accomplishments.

All in all, it was great to come back to see my old stomping grounds, and furthermore how the inhabitants of said grounds are moving through life. I probably won’t be able to make it back for some time as I get into the home stretch of all this wedding businesses, so I trust all of you will put your important life activities on hold until a more convenient time for me arises.

Rob Busweiler is a former writer and charismatic face of the Marathon and Big Pine Free Press. Send all birth, wedding and jenga tournament announcements to rob.busweiler@gmail.com. Follow him online at tidewaters.wordpress.com

• Apparently the Free Press has moved its offices out of its location across the street from Herbie’s and into a bunker at an undisclosed location. I hoped they remembered to bring the time capsule I buried in one of the walls. It is full of autographed pictures of me. Businesses that rent out space at strip malls 25 years from now are going to be pumped when they find it.
• The City of Marathon hired a new city manager, in what has become the Spinal Tap Drummer position of Keys politics.
• They are starting to renovate the Holiday Inn, just in time for, no joke, the national hotel chain to bring its “human bed warmers” to the Keys after its trail run in Europe. Sure, you could stay at some other hotel in Marathon and hop into a cold clean bed like a sucker, but if you want, Holiday Inn will have someone decked out in a fleece body suit get into your bed and warm it up before you use it. I hope this service also includes Holiday Inn making a courtesy call to local authorities so any maniac that wants this service can be locked up.

Here is a list of some things we have learned so far:

1) Get the speeches done early

Unless your best man is Tony Robbins, it is not likely that the people that will be speaking at the wedding are trained public orators. Some may try to combat this by letting the best man and maid of honor get a couple of drinks in them before making the all important reception speech.

Don’t do it.

If someone tells you they need a buzz before they can gather the courage to get up in front of a room full of people and talk at the most important day of your life, tell them to take a public speaking class.

The last thing you need is to have a speaker get up and decide to let Jesus and Captain Morgan take the wheel of a toast.

The best way to combat this that we have seen so far is to have the best man and maid of honor give their toasts mere seconds after the first dances are over. Seriously, you don’t even have to wait for me to sit down before you get cranking, lets keep this thing moving. By keeping a tight schedule early on in the reception, you open up the latter half to just relax and have fun.

2) Dine and dance

Most wedding food is pretty standard fare, so there is no need to stretch the eating portion of the reception out for hours on end. Slam that steak down your gullet, walk over to me and tell me how awesome I and my fiance are, then hit the dance floor and/or bar and proceed to embarrass yourself.

We are here to have fun, this isn’t dining on the French Riviera.

3) Stick around for the after party

The reception, after party and hotel rooms are all in the same complex. This is literally one stop shopping for having a good time with old Rob and Maura.

Want to do shots with the bride? What to hear about all of the super cool and interesting things I’ve done in my life? The after party is the place. It is a little less formal and I should be far more relaxed after the actual reception is over.

At the latest wedding I went to, the fiance and I tried blazing a path and started an after-after party. Sadly, nobody else saw the need to drink for an 8th consecutive hour and we were left at the Hurricane Bar and Grill all by ourselves.

If you have any more wedding tips, leave them in the comments.

Look at that. It is in black and white so you know it is classy.

Groom – Rob

As I mentioned before, both I and the fiance are graduates of Manhattan College. This wedding is going to be infested with ManCol grads. That, and people from Florida.

I used to be a newspaper reporter and now I work in public relations, meaning I’ve never had an actual soul. I enjoy blankly staring off into the distance and delusions of mass grandeur. I first met the fiance in passing during my freshman year of college, but it was our senior year when we first started dating.

Bride – Maura

And finally, our last profile is of the bride, Maura. We were going to profile the ring barer an flower girl, but how interesting can a 10-year-old really be?

Maura is a teacher and a far better wedding planner than I. She has a masters degree and wants to get a doctorate, which I think is just showing off at this point.

She has put up with all of my nonsense up until this point, and for that she deserves an accommodation. I guess when you teach a group of little kids all day, dealing with one full size idiot at home is not that hard.

Maid of Honor – Kerry

Kerry is one of the fiance’s two sisters and also currently attends Manhattan College, which is the school the fiance and I attended back in the day. I was under the impression that the maid of honor was supposed to be pretty involved in the wedding planning, but I have yet to get one memo from her, and she also refuses to takes notes when asked.

Since Kerry is a fellow ManColl attendee, more than half of the people in the wedding party (five out of eight) will be Jaspers. This is great news if you are a fan of people who have lived in the Bronx for an extended period of time, but bad if you are a fan of people who had a well-adjusted college experience.

Bridesmaid – Libby

Libby is the fiance’s best friend and former college roommate. She is a magazine editor in New York City [Penthouse] and actually attended many of the same classes as me. While she may have done far better than me in school (showoff), I think I came out the winner since my current job has me working a midnight to 8 a.m. shift.

Libby also just got engaged. Congrats on your failed attempt to show me up.  This is my year.

Bridesmaid – Casey

Casey is also Maura’s sister. Together, the three of them make up some unholy redheaded cabal.

Casey graduated from St. Mary’s College in Maryland and now works in Washington D.C. She has also traveled to a bunch of exotic places like Thailand, meaning there is a slim possibility she could be harboring some weird disease that could potentially unleash itself at my wedding, turning it into a horror/zombie film.

Check back next week when we wrap up this series by looking at the two principals in this whole deal, the bride and groom.

The Best Man – John

I’ve known John since we were both shitheads growing up in Long Island, so it is fitting he is in charge of several duties, including the bachelor party and keeping me sane as we get closer to the big day.

John graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in swindling people out of their money, and now sells commercial property insurance on the West Coast.

Groomsman – Justin

Justin was my roommate through four years of college and also played lacrosse with me for the vaunted Manhattan College Jaspers.

He graduated with a degree in engineering and is currently poisoning our water supply with fluoride.

Groomsman – Andrew

Andrew is my little brother. Andrew, even at his young age, by all accounts is way better socially adjusted than I ever was. He is currently attending classes at SUNY Oneonta.

We didn’t buy anything mind you, save for a box of those Kurig coffee pods everyone at my office uses. Turns out while I was living in the Keys for four years, single serving coffee technology grew by leaps and bounds in the north-east.

Instead of buying things, the fiancé and I completed our wedding gift registry. We now have a whole big list of things that, should you be lucky enough to get invited to our wedding, you will be required to buy for us.

That’s right. There is no freelancing at this wedding. Either you bring cash, or a gift that was pre-approved by me, my fiancé and the really f’in perky lady that showed us around the store for four hours.

This is probably for the best, since much of the guest list is comprised of people who would probably pick the wedding gift up at Spenser’s Gifts if given the chance.

There are links for all of this registry nonsense that I will pass along as soon as I figure out how to. Devoted readers of this blog will get first crack at some of the cooler items on the list.

Despite its relativity small population, there are a litany of newspapers in the Keys. I was fortunate enough to work for one of the larger organizations, but there still is a healthy population of smaller alt weeklies.

One of the more famous of those publications is Key West The Newspaper, which is affectionately known as the “Blue Paper” due to its, spoiler alert, blue color scheme.

The paper tends to take some pretty strong stands on local issues, and as a result people either tend to love it or hate it. A good rule of thumb for living in the Keys is that you never want to end up in the front half of the Blue Paper, as their stories focus on local corruption and incompetence. The back half of the paper focuses on local arts and entertainment and bar listings.

So imagine my surprise to find my name gracing their editorial pages today, despite leaving the Keys two weeks ago. Thankfully, the mention was a positive one. Their columnist Rhonda Linseman-Saunders noted she was a fan of the old print version of Tide Waters, and gave her thoughts on a piece I wrote about going to the eye doctor.

FYI, we write about some pretty heady and important stuff in the Keys. Serious journalists take note.

Rhonda spends most of her column comparing her thoughts about the eye doctor to mine. Who cares. Lets look at the part where she talks about me. The quotes from her column are in bold, my comments are in italics.

Rob Busweiller from the Marathon Free Press has left the Keys. He was one of my favorite local columnists.

She spelled my name wrong – only one “l” – so that will take away some of the luster when I get this newspaper framed and hung on my wall. She immediately makes up for it by saying I am one of her favorite local columnists. Although, now when I look at it, she did throw a couple of qualifiers in there. I’m apparently just “one” of her favorite “local” columnists.  Who else is jockeying for position on that list Rhonda?

You know a columnist is good when you find yourself reading him regularly, knowing very well that you probably won’t be able to relate personally to his single guy, pseudo-narcissistic perspective on life. I am a married woman (with a boatload of children) and my egotism is real.

Sorry Rhonda, my pseudo-narcissistic perspective on life is coming from a guy that is getting married in seven months.  Other than that, spot on, although when I showed this to my old boss Marc, he said he would have dropped the “pseudo” from the description of me. Screw him.

Rob is going to New York, a place I imagine to be chock full of all the best things in life, including a Ross and a Target on every block.

It is also currently subjected to a blizzard warning. FML.

Since I lived in Marathon, I never thought I would wind up getting a mention in the Blue Paper, since it primarily covers Key West. This inclusion however now completes a vertical row on my “Local Celebrity Media Mention” bingo card.

You can check out Key West The Newspaper online at www.kwtn.com.