Everybody knows there’s two seasons in Vancouver: the rainy season and the wedding season. Between mid-May and mid-September, hundreds of hopeful couples will legally tie the knot, everywhere from Prospect Point to Wreck Beach. Rejoice! I’m here to help you get your big day right.

Plan B

The last Saturday in May is typically the beginning of marriage season. This year it happened to rain all day long on Saturday, May 28. I know of at least two weddings that were washed out in Stanley Park, one of them not having an indoor Plan B! Heels and mud don’t mix. We still live in a rainforest! Plan for an indoor alternative no matter what your wedding date.

Mind the gap

Take all of your lame wedding photos before your guests arrive to avoid the ridiculous “wedding gap” that often occurs between the ceremony and the reception. Where are 150 people dressed in their Sunday best supposed to go on Bowen Island for three hours while you awkwardly pose in your gown and tux down on the beach?

Fuel for the masses

Unless your entire wedding is going to be under an hour, you must must must feed your guests an entire sit down meal, along with plenty of snack options before and after. With the cost of weddings in 2016 cresting an average of $35,000, many couples cheap out on food, thinking cheese and crackers at standing bar tables will suffice. They won’t. If you don’t provide a meal, your guests will quickly get drunk, hangry, and indignant. They will be ordering pizza to the parking lot during the speeches. And the only potluck at a wedding should be the medicinal marijuana in your midnight brownies.

Speakers Corner

Don’t skip the speeches! The speeches are my sentimental wife’s favourite part of any wedding. Why? Because there’s something about a wedding that brings out a raw and honest love that is so rarely spoken in every day life, from speakers who aren’t usually behind a microphone. And if there’s a drunken mother-in-law-trainwreck-speech, all the better, really. Just avoid the open mic.

Beer me beloved

There’s nothing worse than a wedding in full swing suddenly running out of booze. My only mathematical gift is to be able to eyeball exactly the correct amount of alcohol needed for a large number of people. I have literally saved wedding days by making emergency booze runs before the party has even started, just by looking at their stack of beer behind the bar. Always budget for more booze than you think they’ll ever drink. And buy local.

Let’s Dance

Couples trying to save costs by creating an iTunes playlist instead of hiring a DJ or a live band usually have great intentions but ultimately fail. Here’s the secret to a packed wedding dance floor from start to finish: most of us dance to what we recognize. At your wedding, you must respect the multi-generations in attendance. Therefore, plan your playlist chronologically through the ages and don’t let anyone mess with it. Start with hit tunes from the 1950s and ‘60s for the old-timers, then slowly progress into the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s. Schedule one slow dance number for every four upbeat songs. By the time you get to the Black Keys and Robin Thicke ‘round midnight, the grandparents have gone to bed and you can really blur the lines between your bridesmaids.

IndieNoNo

Most crowd sourcing is obnoxious to begin with, so don’t you dare even think about Kickstarting your wedding or honeymoon. Instead, drop a private line to maybe your best man or maid of honour to organize a larger wedding gift from a group of friends. We once surprised my best friend and his wife on their wedding night with a honeymoon to Hawaii that 20 of us all chipped in on. Much more memorable than a collapsible salad bowl from Canadian Tire.

Follow these simple planning vows, invite me to your wedding, and congratulations in advance on a perfect day! Did I miss anything?

I cradled the baseball in my hand, staring down the throw line into the catcher’s glove. I imagined the perfect sizzler releasing from my fingertips, right into the mitt, burning the catcher’s palm. I glanced around, feeling the pressure. It wasn’t the same kind of nervous anticipation the members of the Mt. Pleasant Murder and the Railtown Spikers were feeling for their first game, watching from behind sunglasses in their dugouts on either side of the sandlot. This was a different kind of pressure. I was throwing out the ceremonial first pitch on opening weekend of the brand new East Vancouver Baseball League (EVBL).

Co-founder Justin Banal from the Isotopes Punk Rock Baseball Club offered me a cold can of Postmark Blonde, brewed about four blocks away. I looked at my watch. It was two minutes past noon on Saturday. He leaned in and gave me some words of encouragement for the pitch.

“Just don’t 50 Cent it.” Excuse me? “Rapper 50 Cent did a ceremonial pitch for the Mets and threw it to first base”. Oh… OK. Just before I strode out to the non-existent pitcher’s mound, another skinny punk in an East Van Murder uniform walked up. “Don’t Carly Rae Jepsen it, dude.” It turns out that Mission’s own “Call Me Maybe” star attempted to throw out a pitch for the Tampa Bay Rays and literally dropped the ball. Michael Jordan, President Obama, and even pitching legend Nolan Ryan have all completely blown their ceremonial pitches.

The PA crackled to life. It was a guitar amp with a RadioShack microphone plugged into it. EVBL co-director Sean Elbe introduced me.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome former lead singer of the Smugglers, current beer league goalie, and author of The Lonely End of the Rink, to throw out our first pitch!” A light smattering of confused applause followed. The heat was on. I wound up.

The founders of the EVBL, a bunch of baseball-obsessed punk rockers, are living out their own Field of Dreams-meets-The Bad News Bears baseball fantasy, bringing a lost era of baseball back from the dead. They’ve built the EVBL from the sand up with a very specific heritage-style design. They built it, and the players came. Those players just have to play by the EVBL’s rules. The EVBL maintains complete artistic and aesthetic control over the teams in the league, right down to the logos. EVBL merchandise is already a hot property, and the league, for this year anyway, is full.

Banal explains the concept. “This city is really good for a lot of things – street hockey, soft ball – but there was no one playing real baseball for fun.” Co-founder Court Overgaauw, of the East Van Black Sox, continues. “At a certain point, many of us who grew up playing real baseball got turned away or off from the sport of a variety of reasons. This league gives us the opportunity to play the game the way it should be played.” And what is real baseball? Think hard balls pitched overhand against wooden bats.

Besides the Isotopes, the league is heavy with members of the local arts community, specifically of the punk rock variety: members of the B-Lines, the Courtneys, Nervous Talk, the Tranzmitors, the Parallels, Uptights and more all suit up, but true to the EVBL word, this ain’t ultimate Frisbee. No shorts allowed.

“Shorts are just not appropriate for baseball”, says Overgaauw. Really? “We’re serious,” says Banal. “You don’t wear shorts in baseball.” Luckily, the rule doesn’t extend to fans watching the games down at the sandlot in Strathcona Park, southwest diamond, corner of Hawks and Malkin. Games are most Saturdays through August.

I let the ball fly from my right hand and watched it smack into the catcher’s glove. In an instant, I managed to achieve what I never could as lead singer of the Smugglers for 17 years: perfect pitch. PLAY BALL!

Read more of my Vancouver Shakedown column here.

I hope you have successfully navigated another winter season like the hero of The Revenant, as we push forward into the glorious spring of 2016 (speaking of The Revenant… the movie was pretty good, but have you read the book?! It’s incredible!)

Our family started the year with my wife successfully pushing forward our new little hero: on January 1, 2016, our daughter Grace Heather Lawrence came into the world in a planned home birth at our house in Vancouver. Grace is doing very well, and is now giving big smiles to her loving big brother Joshua.

With two kids under three at home, I’m in the midst of taking my longest break of my career from the CBC: an entire year of paternity leave! And while I temporarily miss the day-to-day honour and hustle of working at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I’m treasuring the time I’m spending with the kids and Jill. Just not right now while writing this.

Besides trying to learn how to be a better parent (don’t bring peanut butter snacks to the family drop in at the Community Centre!), I’m also ever-plugging away at my third book: the trials, travails, and treachery of 17 years in a touring rock ‘n’ roll band. I think I’m on my… sixth or seventh re-write?

Just like the tours, the book has been a slog, but it’s also been amazing to re-connect with all the musicians and mentors the Smugglers crossed paths with 20 years ago or more on the touring trail, while I try to piece together the stories like the time the Hoboken club caught fire (while we were in it), the time the Cleveland club flooded (while we were in it) and the time the Denver club erupted into a riot (while we were in it).

Since I’m still writing, the publishing date of the next book is moving target… will it be fall of 2016 or spring of 2017? I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

In the meantime, I continue to plunk out the Vancouver Shakedown, my weekly column for the Westender, Vancouver’s longest-running entertainment weekly. On any given week, the column tends to either delight or enrage.

And just because Jill gave birth to our second child doesn’t mean my ever-prolific wife is slowing down. On April 1, Jill Barber and her brother Matthew Barber release The Family Album, their first record together, a radiant mix of covers and originals, performed as beautiful folk duets.

Both Jill and I will be on the road this spring and summer… hope to see you around and thanks as always for your support!

Grant Lawrence Spring 2016 tour dates

Fri – Sat, Mar 11 – 12, Words on the Water Literary Festival, Campbell River BC

Fri – Sun, Apr 8 – 10, Okanagan Writers Festival, Penticton BC

Fri Apr 15, North Shore Writers Festival, North Vancouver BC

Sat Apr 30, Authors for Indies, 32 Books, North Vancouver BC (afternoon event)

Sat May 7, A Whisky Library, Lynn Valley Library, North Vancouver BC

Sat May 14, LitFest, New Westminster BC (afternoon event)

Mon Jun 13, Canadian Independent Music Association Awards Gala (CIMA), Berkeley Church, Toronto ON

Fri – Sat July 8 – 10, Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, Nelson BC

Fri – Sun July 15 – 17, Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Vancouver BC

Jill Barber Spring 2016 tour dates (all dates w/ Matthew Barber for the Family Album Tour)

Fri Apr 15, Arden Theatre, St. Albert AB

Sat Apr 16, Arden Theatre, St. Albert AB

Sun Apr 17, Eric Harvie Theatre, Banff AB

Thu Apr 21, Casino Regina, Regina SK

Fri Apr 22, West End Cultural Centre, Winnipeg MB

Sat May 28, the Great Hall, Toronto ON

(more dates to be announced soon across Canada and North Eastern USA)