SUMMER 2024: ONE YEAR BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
As my fiancée and I sit at a table on the top story of the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union, Liz, the woman who will become our wedding coordinator, asks it as if it’s the most normal question in the world. In the same tone she used to ask us what color linens we were thinking for our wedding...
“…and do you think you’ll want Goldy to come?”
We’ve toured a handful of venues around Minneapolis so far and, until the Campus Club, none felt right. Too far out in the suburbs; too hard to get parking for relatives with limited mobility; too stuffy; too avant-garde. Before The Question, my fiancée and I have been flashing each other little thumbs-ups as we collectively realize we’ve probably found the place for our big day. As I sit in its aftermath, though, sipping my ice water and staring at the quavering matcha green of the U’s campus in midsummer, I have two thoughts: Well, I guess this is the place. And: Oh no.
My father is a generous, brilliant, gentle man: a fierce legal mind and crusader for justice for the oppressed, a whip-smart writer whose career led directly to my own, a gorgeous preacher who, a year later, will deliver a beautiful homily at my wedding. He is also, for reasons known only to him and his god, completely obsessed with college mascots. His blog has dozens of posts attesting to his feelings on the subject spanning nearly 20 years, and in more than one post, he’s ranked Goldy his No. 1 favorite mascot of all time.
He is also, I should note, helping pay for the wedding.
“Yeah,” I say to Liz. “I think we’d like that.”
WINTER 2024: SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
Some facts about having Goldy at your Campus Club wedding:
- He costs $400 on the dot. The schedule of prices may be flexible for other events, but not for this. Take it or leave it. (My father has agreed, happily, to pay this fee. I honestly don’t know if there’s a ceiling on the amount he’d pay for Goldy to be at the wedding. I should ask him sometime.)
- Goldy will stay at the wedding for precisely one hour. No more, no less.
- Goldy is a busy—albeit taxonomically contested—gopher. He cannot give you a firm yes until he is certain he’ll be able to attend. Nor can he give you a timetable on when he’ll have his answer. He’ll know when he’ll know.
This last fact provides plenty of dinner table conversation fodder at my parents’ house in the seasons leading up to the wedding.
MARCH 2025: THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
The seamstress is halfway through pinning up my dress and I’m running out of subjects of conversation. Getting the vague impression that she has some connection to the U of M (multiple kids in college, lilting Minnesota accent, wearing a maroon jumpsuit, I think), I mention that Goldy will be in attendance at my wedding. She neither smiles nor frowns. She just sort of says hmm and stares straight ahead the way you do when the cashier at the organic food co-op starts telling you about their polycule drama.
I am beginning to have doubts about having Goldy at the wedding. After a fall of university intransigence over a contract with the grad student union (of which, full disclosure, I remain a member until August) and university-wide funding cuts that killed the job I was hoping to have after graduating from my MFA program, having a living, breathing symbol of the U at the most important day of my life is beginning to feel ominous.
More materially, my fiancée and I have conceptualized most of the reception down to the minute and nowhere in my fantasies of the first dance and cake slice and bouquet toss is there room for a sophomore named Bryce wearing a squirrel head to somersault in and start twerking on someone’s mom or whatever. I stare at my shoes and remember belatedly that my seamstress’ kids might have actually gone to St. Thomas.
MAY 2025: ONE MONTH BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
A consequential month. I defend my thesis on a Tuesday and walk across the stage at Mariucci Arena with my friends two days later on Thursday. There’s a big presentation, lots of photo-ops, a celebratory dinner with my parents at Salut. Still, the broadest smile I see from my dad all month is, without a doubt, when he learns that Goldy has finally confirmed his presence at my holy matrimony.
JUNE 7, 2025, 9:30 A.M.: 10 HOURS BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
My mother sets up a brunch for my bridal party at my parents’ house in the suburbs—dainty pastries on fine china, mimosas and Bellinis, the whole shebang. We eat in the garden surrounded by peonies and ferns. There’s birdsong in the air. My thoughts could not possibly be further from a certain gopher.
Then, in a quiet moment, my friend Olivia offers a chilling thought:
“Do you think Goldy’s going to try to get into your pictures?” she asks. “Like, the ones that are just for you guys? Like, you’ll be cutting the cake and his fucked-up paw’s just gonna be in the foreground?”
This idea haunts me for the rest of the morning.
7:55 P.M.: MOMENTS BEFORE THE ENTRANCE
Everything has gone right, and I am a complete emotional wreck. Why did no one—aside from the entirety of pop culture—tell me that weddings are a lot, emotionally? The ceremony was everything I wanted: The rain held off until the moment we stepped inside from the terrace, friends mingled across milieus and scenes, the toasts were beautiful, my new WIFE(!!!)’s dad played a moving acoustic set, I barely kept from sobbing as we box-stepped together for our first dance, Big Star’s “Thirteen.” We’re running half an hour late, but who doesn’t run late on their wedding? I cannot imagine a more perfect wedding. I am overwhelmed by love.
And then.
Alex Chilton’s voice fades. Our DJ fiddles with her phone, and Prince begins to intone the sermon/eulogy/wedding prayer from the start of “Let’s Go Crazy.” I grip my wife’s arm, struck by something beyond fear or excitement, close, I assume, to what Moses must have felt when he heard the burning bush speak the Tetragrammaton.
A paw emerges. A head peeks around the corner of the dance floor.
He’s here.
8 P.M.: GOLDY IS IN THE HOUSE
The thing about Goldy that you don’t really appreciate until he’s been in your wedding venue is just how much larger he is in any space that is not a football stadium. He, or more specifically his head, is absolutely huge, the size of a feral hog, his grin so blinding it makes you forget how threadbare the paws on the suit are starting to look. In his gold-sequined tuxedo, he looks like precisely four-hundred bucks.
I worry, for a moment, that I’ll be expected to be Goldy’s host, his equivalent of the guys at Disneyland who make sure the line to get photos with Goofy moves along at a steady clip. That fear dissipates the moment I see Goldy get on the dance floor, though. He’s getting DOWN, busting out all the same wild moves that straddle the line between “wow!” and “that’s medically concerning!” that you’d see him doing on the sidelines at a game.
We spend the next 15 or so minutes in the care of my dad as he takes photo after photo of us with Goldy. I am beginning to suspect that this is, in point of fact, the happiest day of his life. Here are some of those photos:
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned anything so far about Goldy being present at, specifically, a gay wedding. This is because, as his Instagram attests, Goldy has long since “gone woke,” something his actions bear out at the reception. He is thrilled to pose for the photo pretending to marry my wife and me; he kind of annoys one of my friends by assuming that she and one of her platonic female friends are a couple; he flirts with virtually every single person at the venue regardless of age, gender, or obvious marital status.
Goldy’s affection knows no labels or limits. When he erotically feeds my cousin’s boyfriend a bite of wedding cake, his felt smile does not waver. Love is love, and, reader, Goldy loves everyone.
My wife and I step out for some air on the terrace and chat with some friends who are smoking a furtive cig out there. When we come back, Goldy is gone. I’d assumed he would stay for a full hour even though we were running late, but nope, he’s out the door at exactly 8:30 p.m., per his contract. Goldy may put on a fun face, but at the end of the day, he’s a professional.
LATE JUNE 2025: THE AFTERMATH
My father posts an album of wedding photos on Facebook. My wife tells me (a non-Facebook-user) that 80% of them involve Goldy. (Multiple family friends ask for the registry link after seeing my dad’s photos, so Goldy is indirectly responsible for my new stand mixer.)
Racket—a fantastic news outlet you should support!—writes up a friend’s Bluesky post about Goldy’s presence at my wedding. I am only half joking when I tell friends that this is my equivalent of a New York Times “Vows” column.
My dad offers to pay my wife back for Goldy’s fee in beer, as is traditional among our people (Minnesotans).
Generally, aside from writing this piece, I have thought very little about Goldy in the weeks after the wedding, save for the occasional intrusive thought about how fucked up the inside of that suit must smell. Believe it or not, there were other important memories I made that day.
Still, I truly wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recommend Goldy to other lucky couples celebrating at a U of M venue. He may be a bit of a diva, but damn, that gopher can party.
