ShareThisOnce upon a time the only destination for a father of the bride was the poorhouse, but the trend of destination weddings has changed all that. The poorhouse now comes after a visit to an exotic locale.
This explains what I was doing on a recent Saturday on a beach in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, dressed in coat and tie and loafers with little tassels on them, which is not what I usually wear to the beach.
My daughter, Allison, was wearing her wedding dress.
It was late afternoon. The sun was low in the tropic sky and the coconut palms were waving at the sea. The guests were seated facing the surf on little pews that had been rented, I suppose, from the Costa Rican equivalent of Pews R Us.
The guests had faced a challenge coming this far. They found themselves in a paradise of bountiful creation.
Monkeys were everywhere in this Garden of Eden and I am glad to report they knew better than to mess with the sort of person who would wear tasseled loafers to the beach.
I was particularly impressed with the howler monkeys. How they howl! Their calls are a great Jurassic Park-like roar. I can only surmise that the males were trying to get in the last word with their spouses. Poor under-revolved creatures. I did not have the heart to tell them that this was impossible.
We saw sloths. I had never seen a sloth before, at least outside a government agency. Birds were abundant, too, and one morning a pair of toucans perched in the tree outside our room. As I remarked at the time, two can but three's a crowd.
In the days before the wedding, we went zip lining, which is what all potentially suicidal tourists do. The idea is that you are attached by hooks to a wire so that you can zip above the canopy of the rainforest and take in the sights.
Forget the sights. Traveling at the speed of light, you spend all your time suppressing a shriek while figuring out how you can avoid hitting the tree at the other end. One of our party did hit a tree and it was very painful for him. The laughter of his friends afterward was especially bruising.
While I did not hit any trees, I was mortified to be chosen for a special industrial-strength harness that I believe the guides use for the larger adventurers they fear may come untethered and leave craters on the forest floor.
When it came time for the guests to gather on the beach for the ceremony, they were tired, happy, sprained, bruised and burned to a crisp.
In that latitude close to the equator, the sun shines fiercely and some people got burned through their shirts or under beach umbrellas. Fortunately, I had time to get to know these guests before they became human lobsters.
Such was the prelude to the hour I had been waiting for all my adult life. Allison stood at my side, looking radiant and beautiful in the traditional way of brides.
True, I had not imagined it like this. We waited in the shadows of tropical foliage for Gen. Rommel in high heels -- that would be the coolly efficient wedding planner -- to give the command to advance.
To my right, at the end of the public beach, locals were playing soccer. To my left, I saw the human lobster guests sitting on the open-air pews, holding their programs in their claws and wondering if they might self-combust in the setting sun.
Then the violinist struck up the march as the booming surf provided the percussion section. A father's pride kept me sublimely calm. I registered little beyond joy as we walked up the coconut-studded path.
I did notice that just about everybody else was dressed with sensible casualness, including the bridegroom, in contrast to me, the father of the bride, whose solemn duty was to assume a look that would deter monkeys.
This done, I muffed the only line I had, then delivered Allison to her new husband, Christopher Gilpin, aka Critter, and took my place off to the side.
At one point during the ceremony, I remember seeing a fat fellow in a bathing suit jogging slowly along the beach behind the happy couple. I felt like yelling to him, "Hey, buddy, I am the only big-harness-size guy allowed on this beach. Why don't you zip off?" But I forever held my peace, because I knew we could Photoshop him out of the wedding pictures later.
This is how we lost a daughter but gained a Critter. That night I danced with Allison to a Beatles song ... "In my life / I love you more." Ah, bring on the poorhouse. I am rich in memories.
(Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. E-mail rhenry(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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