I got married on Saturday night in New Orleans, La. Over 200 of my favorite people were in attendance. Nothing went wrong, nobody was stressed. There was no wedding cake, just hundreds of cookies and eclairs. Someone read a passage from an old romance novel. We had bagpipes. The bride and I hung out all day until she got dressed.

My point is it was non-traditional. So non-traditional that even me calling out its non-traditional-ness doesn’t affect how opposite of traditional it was. I could even mention it again if I wanted but I won’t because I told myself I would never write a sports column and not mention anything sports related within the first two paragraphs. So let’s talk about the New Orleans Saints.

Around 10:30 on Sunday morning I woke up completely alarmless. I laid in bed for a few then did a Shawn Michaels kip-up (not really), put on my favorite Saints shirt (really) and with about 5 hours of sleep under our belts we rode our bikes to Avenue Pub on St. Charles Avenue. We were the first Who Dats in the place. After ordering a Bloody Mary and a Purple Haze we sat down to the pre-game show and checked Twitter to catch up on injury reports (game, not wedding) and whatnot.

Sometime around 11:30a the place started filling up (though it remained pretty slim for the remainder of the game, including the fancy upstairs that was mostly empty…Avenue Pub is ripe for any “I’m looking for a good bar with easy parking for me and my 20 friends” types). Before kickoff, I thought about how fun the wedding was and how lucky I am to watch the Saints play football. Before you get all cranky with your “Chris, stop getting all sentimental in your columns” remember that you didn’t get me a wedding present so consider this your gift.

The Saints looked really good in that first drive and really meh for most of the rest but I wasn’t that concerned. There was no way New Orleans would lose the morning after I got married. Every 20 minutes a new batch of wedding guests stumbled into the Pub and they all knew it too. Some of them didn’t think I’d make it out to watch the game because of the previous night’s festivities or some sort of make believe rules of marriage. But what they didn’t realize is that this is New Orleans and we don’t miss Saints games for things like weddings. Weddings enhance things like Saints games.

A zillion articles have been written about the unique culture of celebration we enjoy down here and I won’t compete with them. I’m just here to say that I’ve always enjoyed being an audience member for such journalism and I’m proud that I’m living proof that it’s real.