SASKATOON – Foregoing the usual tradition of congratulating the bride and groom and wishing them a happy future, Ben Swanson instead used his best man’s toast at last week’s wedding between Jerry Williams and Lee Ann Reed to promote his failing landscaping business.
Guests were invited to raise their Swanson and Swanson, inc, embossed champagne flutes to toast ‘Good lives, good loves, and good lawns.’ In addition, the boisterous Swanson snuck in before the reception to replace the centrepieces on every table with sample swaths of imported grasses, replete with design suggestions and personal business cards promoting the “Grass Tsar” and “the number 6 landscaping company, Northeastern Saskatoon region.”
“Now I wish Jerry and Lee Ann the best,” he reportedly said during the 45-minute speech, “but we all saw how their lawn looked during their engagement party. I mean, a good marriage is like a good lawn; if you don’t invest time and money into it, you might as well be that weird family at the end of the block that ends up on the news all the time.”
“I’ve been friends with Ben for quite a while now,” Jerry Williams, the groom, said in response. “He’s always been a self-promoter, but I thought he knew his limits.”
His wife took a less charitable view, stating that “if that lawn-jockey think’s he’s getting a Christmas card, he can cram it right up his Virginia creeper-shucking, rustic-gazebo-installing, dirt-mongering sod-hole.”
An inside source claims that the tactic may have been motivated more out of desperation than opportunism. A person describing himself as a “former business associate” claims Swanson’s ex-wife really ran the business. When she left him for “Lawn King” Donnie Morris it reportedly “really took the diesel out of his two-stroke motor, so to speak.”
It appears weddings now act as a trigger for Swanson’s marketing impulse and his closely related inferiority complex.
“I mean, I had a yard once. It was a great yard,” Swanson said near the end of his speech. “I guess that yard is Jennifer’s yard now. The dog too – she didn’t even like that dog!” Swanson stated, trailing off in soft whimpering before violating several court orders by publicly disclosing the terms of his divorce settlement. “Really? Limited access, no custody AND alimony payments? It’s like, why don’t you just kill me and take this shitty landscaping business too? You’d like that wouldn’t you, goddamn judge.”
Donnie “the Lawn King” Morris, owner of Northeastern Saskatoon’s number 2 landscaping company, refused to comment on what he termed “that weak-willed grass huckster.” However, he did generously offer members of the press a discount on large orders of premium, uncut shale.
