This was the realest fake wedding I’d ever attended

While deep in the throes of the pre-camp planning last summer, I got a message one evening in early June: Can you help me by working something fun and embarrassing into programming for my anniversary on Thursday June 27th without telling Meira, of course?

As an assistant director of Camp Nageela Midwest, I’ve received interesting and unusual requests before. But something was funny about this one. Every summer, the Spivaks travel from Portland, Oregon, to Camp Nageela Midwest, where Meira is director of our girls’ teen division. They’ve been coming to camp for about ten years, and camp always falls out on the same dates, give or take a day or two.

Ummm…Is this the first time your anniversary is during camp? I texted back.

The response was quick in coming. Oh man. Don’t ask. I bomb this one every time.

Now this was exciting. Getting the go ahead to plan “something fun and embarrassing” for a head staff member is almost like getting an unlimited camp budget. Almost.

Plus, we had a history. Two years earlier, the Spivaks had pulled their own camp shtick behind my back, so this was the perfect opportunity for some friendly payback.

This wasn’t going to just be an anniversary. This was going to be a wedding.

There were two important elements that needed to be done right for this to work. Number one: the surprise component. If Meira were to find out about this in advance, she’d put a full stop to it… or at best, follow lamely. And keeping programming secrets is really hard at a senior-staff level, where everyone has access to the internal calendar and is constantly in touch with each other. All it would take is one benign comment from a maintenance staff member about something on their to-do list and all our efforts would go up in smoke.