The Toast of the Town

My younger brother Joe got married back on March 10 of last year. It was a fantastic day – the sun was shining, everyone was dressed to the nines, and the day went off pretty much without a hitch.

He and Michelle had gotten engaged back in January 2011, and I was honored when he asked me to be his best man. But when I accepted, I did so with a little sadness. I knew this day would be coming, and I dreaded the thought of having to stand up for Joe with “the gentlemen’s agreement” still in place.

The reception started at 8PM and within few minutes, the time had come for me to give the toast. I began by saying that when Joe, my youngest brother Brian, and I were in our 20’s, we had entered into a gentlemen’s agreement, where we decided that when we each got married, we would pick a brother to be best man instead of a friend so that each of us would have the opportunity to stand up for one brother without one being slighted. Everyone would get a turn to be best man just once. . .or so we all thought.

When I got married, Joe was my best man, and when Brian got married, I was his best man. So now it was Joe’s special day. If you do the math, I wasn’t supposed to be Joe’s best man – it should have been Brian’s turn.

Unfortunately, Brian was suddenly taken from us in a car accident roughly 11 years ago. It was a sad day for our family. I think it’s safe to say that there isn’t a day that goes by when everyone who knew him doesn’t think about him at least once a day.

But I wanted to do something that would mark that day as being Brian’s turn to be best man, even though I was physically performing the duties. I truly believed that Brian’s presence was all around us . . . smiling down on us . . . watching over us, and I wanted everyone at the reception to believe that, too.

So right after the rehearsal dinner the night before, I went under my bed and pulled out my box of stuff – a collection of knick knacks and things I had amassed over the years – and I found the one item that I best thought would capture Brian’s essence for everyone.

Towards the end of my best man’s speech, I held up a pewter shot glass that Brian and his wife Meredith had given me as a gift for being a part of their wedding party twenty years earlier, and I told the crowd that in all the years that I had this shot glass, I had never taken a drink from it – until that night.

With Brian’s gift in my hand, I proposed a toast to my brother Joe and his new wife Michelle – “What you have today is infinitely better than what you had yesterday . . . and tomorrow is going to be unbelievable!”

I never would have imagined the cheers that I got for that speech and the accolades I received afterwards from many of the wedding guests. One of cousins told me he was almost in tears when I mentioned about Brian and tied the shot glass in with him and the toast.

The reception lasted until midnight, with the after-party held immediately following at The Bungalow in Pier Village, where a lot of my sister-in-law’s family was staying. My wife, son, and I had a good time chilling out with everyone. At one time during the party, my wife walked away to get a drink and then called me over to meet someone.

Lo and behold – Miles Austin, the former Monmouth University football stand-out and current Dallas Cowboy, was staying at the Bungalow that same weekend. He had come back to the Jersey Shore to promote a friend’s new training facility that had opened up in the area that weekend, and he was around to sign autographs and take pictures with the kids.

Even though “the gentlemen’s agreement” had been marred by tragedy, I came away with the feeling that it had still been fulfilled. Along with my brother Joe’s happiness, that meant more to me than anything else that day. 

(The entire Jersey Shore Retro Blogography can be found at http://longbranch.patch.com/blogs/kevin-cieris-blog. You can also follow Kevin Cieri's blog on his Facebook page, "Jersey Shore Retro" as well as on Twitter @jsretro).