craig and i had a huge wedding celebration to attend in memphis, tn this weekend. one of the events was a group tour of graceland. i said bring it on.
this wedding was particularly fancy. one of the fanciest i've been too (not to say it was the nicest, though, because all of the weddings i've been to have been extraordinarily nice and beautiful) they chartered TWO buses for the weekend to cart the guest's asses around to the wedding and the rehearsal dinner and saturday picnic and to graceland.
graceland is nestled between pawn shops and krystal burgers and the days inn and laun-dro-mats. you get your ticket and get in line for a small shuttle bus to take you across the street to the manse. graceland. hmmm. what should i say? i expected it to be sooooo cheezy that it was awesome. but it was a bit painful, i'm sorry to say. the tour only takes about 30 min. the cool thing was that everyone gets their own headset for the walking tour. the mansion is a fairly small house and the rooms were cramped. sure, it's decorated in 70s style but, c'mon, my parents had a wood-paneled family room and avocado green kitchen appliances too!!
the jungle room had green shag carpet - on the ceiling! every room had a teevee except the teevee room which had three of them. you're not allowed upstairs on the second floor out of respect for elvis. the man died on the terlet up there, people! you can't be traipsing in and out of the bathroom now! i really wanted to bust through the velvet rope and run upstairs screaming "elvis! i'll coming up, baby!!" but i didn't want to get arrested at graceland. elvis is buried at graceland so i don't know why people still think he's alive - there's his grave plain as day. his parents are buried there and so is his twin brother who died at birth. i wonder what would've happened had he lived?
it was pretty amazing to see all his gold and platinum records. some of his outfits were a riot as well. i swear i saw one woman tear up a little when we watched a video play of elvis giving a press conference. all in all, it was nice to find out how humble elvis was. he raised a lot of money for charity and was known to give away cars, homes, pay medical bills and donate money to folks around memphis.
i bought my mom the official guidebook. we always talked about making a pilgrimage to graceland. my mom loves elvis and my dad finally consented to take her to a concert back in 1977 and then elvis up and died on the crapper. i had to call my mom and tell her that the pilgrimage is off - now it's dollywood or bust. (i guess i should say "AND bust". har har.)
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