The Wedding Singer

Adventures in New York City

Early this morning I drove to Queens with my wife from our home in Connecticut. We flew out from LaGuardia in New York City to visit my family in Chicago. While we were sitting by our gate waiting to board the plane, we noticed three people next to us stand up from their seats together — unusual — I thought. They were waiting for a fourth person to arrive, and we turned to see who it was. It was Drew Barrymore!

Let’s rewind a few years. In 1998, The Wedding Singer was released, and I was an 11 year old kid in middle school. Highly susceptible to emotional coming of age movies, this Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore love story became one of my favorite movies. The movie culminated in a scene where Sandler sings I wanna grow old with you to her while flying on a jet.

I loved that song and even had a friend add it to a mixtape CD I made for some girlfriend at the time. This is undoubtedly the best part of the movie, and one of the most romantic movie scenes of all time. Okay, maybe that’s exaggerating.

Before boarding the plane, I said hello to Drew and we chatted for a few minutes about how I loved this movie as a kid. We boarded the plane together and she ended up sitting a few rows behind us! All I could think about was this scene in the movie the entire flight.

As a 12 year old who loved this movie, I never would have imagined that 18 years later I’d meet and fly with the Julia Gulia. It goes to show that you never know who you’ll cross paths with in your travels, and what little dreams will be realized along the way.