I live in the Pacific Northwest, which I only mention because we don’t have a ton of famous people here. Yes, yes, Nirvana. Jimi Hendrix. Bill Gates, though he seems odd to add to that particular line-up… We have a few homegrown heroes but born here, raised here, got famous here folks are few and far between.
One of the most recent examples is Macklemore.
Personally, I’ve been on the fence about Ben Haggerty (a.k.a. Macklemore) since he beat Kendrick Lamar for that Grammy but I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t skip a beat when the bride told me that Macklemore might be at her wedding.
This was during the first face-to-face meeting I had with this particular client. She and her fiancé knew Ben (Ben!) because the groom worked for him and Ryan Lewis (Macklemore’s former partner and, imo, the more attractive of the two).
She told me about Ben (Ben!) because, she explained, Ryan Lewis was the best man and I should probably know that, too.
I was embarrassingly nervous for this wedding, nervous in a way that I hadn’t been in a very long time. Do famous people — even famous people you feel pretty neutral about — always have this effect on us plebs? How odd.
I got over my butterflies pretty quickly when I met Ryan at the rehearsal. He had that kind of cranked up energy that would make him excellent on stage and exhaust me after one song. Also, his wife was very pregnant and who wants to imagine being a homewrecker when clearly these two are quite happy together?
As for Macklemore, he was a no-show. The groom told me during the happy hour. “Ben can’t make it,” he said. There was some excuse about a conflicting commitment, which would have stung more if in the very same text Macklemore hadn’t offered to fly the newlyweds anywhere in the world as their wedding gift.
I, unfortunately, wasn’t included in this generous gift so instead salved my sore feelings by stealing Macklemore’s place card. I stuffed it into my pocket and later, at home, took a photo.
At the end of the wedding, this couple — who were really very sweet and I hope went somewhere amazing for free — hugged me goodbye and left for the night. I ran into Ryan while cleaning up. He told me I’d done a good job and then, like the rock star he was, vanished in a cloud of glitter and smoke.
The next day, I opened my phone to this text:
I saved that photo, too.