Beautiful Day

OUTTAKES

Jim Graham (father of the groom): I am a man who has lived and learned. I married the right woman, but I didn’t know it, I married the wrong woman and I did know it, I married the right woman a second time. My advice to all four of my sons has been “Look before you leap.” This may be a cliché, but as with most clichés, it contains a hard kernel of truth. I like to think that advice was what kept Stuart from making a mistake several years ago. But he’s got the right idea now. Jenna is a beautiful girl and she brings out his best self. Really, what more can you ask?

H.W. (brother of the groom, groomsman): Open bar all weekend long.

Ann Graham (mother of the groom): I was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, I attended Duke University, I have served in the North Carolina General Assembly for twenty-four years. When Jim and I take vacations, we go to Savannah or the Outer Banks or Destin. Once to London, once on a cruise in the Greek islands. But I can’t tell you the last time I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. It might have been New York City, 2001, when Jim and I went to the funeral of one of his fraternity brothers who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. It will be nice to head north this time for a happier occasion.

Jethro Arthur (boyfriend of the best man): Unlike Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket is no place for a black man. I told this to Ryan and his response was that Frederick Douglass spoke on the steps of the Nantucket Atheneum in 1841. Frederick Douglass? I said. That’s what you’ve got? Yes, he said. And you know who else spent time on Nantucket? Who? I said. Pip and Daggoo, he said. Pip and Daggoo? I said. You mean the characters from Moby-Dick? Yes! he said, all proud and excited, because literary references are usually my territory. I said, Pip and Daggoo are fictional black men, Ryan. They don’t count.