A Wedding Face-Off
 
Let's detract a bit from the usual sports banter, shall we?
 
It’s one of every guy’s dreams - to get married at the venue of your favorite sports team. The 50 yard line at the ‘Shoe. Home plate at Yankee Stadium. For me, the dream is coming true. And I wasn’t the one pushing the idea.
 
Last Easter, when I proposed to my wonderful fiancé, never in my wildest dreams did I think that our wedding was going to happen at Center Ice of Nationwide Arena, home of our dearly beloved Columbus Blue Jackets. The idea was hardly even mentioned. Sure, we needed to decide if the wedding would be in Columbus or New Orleans. (Liza is from New Orleans, and traditionally, weddings are in the city of the bride. What can I say? We are not traditionalists.) We contemplated for months. We wanted it somewhere cool, yet memorable and nice. I threw the arena idea out there, but the realization of it all seemed impossible. We decided to have it the Columbus Zoo. Liza worked there in the summer, dressed up as Sydney Koala or Patriot Eagle, but she also loved animals and zoos. They had just opened a new area, Southeast Asia, which included a deck overlooking the Scioto River. The décor was cool. The ambiance was great. They also had reception halls. The zoo houses many weddings each year, so we felt confident in everything they offered. And we got a discounted rate since Liza worked there. Yahoo! We were set to do it Labor Day weekend of 2004.
 
As the summer of ’03 came to an end, the fear of having an outdoor wedding grew on Liza. What happens if it was raining? The zoo had alternate plans, but it didn’t seem like she was sold on the idea of getting married under a tent. Maybe we should look into other ideas. Liza mentioned the Franklin Park Conservatory and some place called the Plantation. The thoughts of running to Vegas or Hawaii were entertained. Then Liza mentioned the thought of the Arena again. She thought that deep down inside, that’s what I wanted, and it very well may have been, but I wanted her to be happy with what we decided. Just so we could rule it out, we called the arena.
 
Jay, our friendly neighborhood arena GM, informed us that no one had ever been married on the ice (Yahoo again, we could be #1!). But there were plenty of hurdles. The ice doesn’t go in until mid September (there goes Labor Day). It would be hard to reserve the ice/arena for the wedding, unless we were going to rent the whole damn place out (thousands and thousands of dollars). They could mark us down, until George Strait wanted to have a concert that same day, then we were hosed. There was a tad bit of shining light though. Jay stated that the only way to reserve the ice would be to have the wedding on a game day. The Blue Jackets have the ice reserved all day on game days, for morning practice and then the game that night. He told us to pick a few dates, and they would see if anything worked well for them. This posed a problem for us though. Hockey season typically runs from October-April. We now wanted to do the wedding in June. We obviously were willing to cut into our planning time. Who cares! Could this really happen at the arena?
 
We gave them some dates and met with them. We toured the arena, walked around on the ice, everything. Things were looking good. We could have the reception at the arena also. Hell we could even rent out one of those party towers for the game that night. This really was going to happen?! They were letting us do anything we wanted. Well almost. We wanted to drop the puck for the game that night. But you have to petition the NHL to do this and it’s a big hassle. Oh well.

So here we are today, 25 days until the wedding. The big day has now taken on a hockey theme in terms of décor. In the middle of the ice will be a blue CBJ rug for us to stand on. Our wedding arches are going to be a pair of Marc Denis goalie sticks. After writing him a letter, he actually gave us one of them, personally signed and dated with our wedding date (how cool is that!). All of our guests will be seated on the player benches. Our colors are blue and red (CBJ colors). Being the Photoshop geek I am, I converted the Blue Jackets logo into Liza and my initials. We have a few other surprises up our sleeves, but I can’t give them away just yet. If you are one of the few people invited, it will be a blast; otherwise, we will be renting out videotapes in April.
 
I want to thank Liza for everything. Deep down inside, this is what we both wanted. She was the one who pushed for it, especially after they told her she could skate on the ice after the ceremony. I love ya, babe!
 
Next month, I’ll get off the ice and back to the cheap seats for the big ole Baseball preview. Hmmm, I wonder who I’ll pick to win the Series this year?


Cousy is a regular writer for the footnote. We're not sure exacty where he's registered, but it might not hurt to check The Blueline team shop at Nationwide Arena.