MADISON – In a tribute of sorts to the wedding scene in the 1988 quintessential baseball comedy “Bull Durham,” the Rocket City Trash Pandas are bringing that script back with a couple of rewrites.
The Minor League Baseball club continues to ramp up preparations for the upcoming season with another in a stream of promotions, this one fitting squarely into the category of unique – a Wedding Giveaway for the winning couple.
Couples can submit a form detailing why they should be selected for a wedding to take place during the Trash Pandas game Aug. 31. The winners, selected by a panel of Trash Pandas staff ahead of the season, will receive a pregame ceremony on the field, reception for up to 40 guests in a double suite, a wedding cake, flowers, decorations, and festivities throughout the game.
The club announced the promotion Thursday and, by midday Friday, already had received 23 applicants.
“We’re asking for couples to go on our website and enter and tell us why they should be selected as the couple to win,” said Executive Vice President Lindsay Knupp. “Within this month, we’re gonna contact the lucky couple that we deem the best one, the best nomination to be the one to actually come out on that day and receive all of these things at no cost to them from our sponsors in the Trash Pandas and then get married on the field during the game.
“That’ll actually be their ceremony pregame on the field that everyone can watch and be a part of.”
In a plot twist different from the movie starring Kevin Costner, which had a wedding of one of the players and a club groupie, the celebrants will be actual fans. Also, instead of their regular home uniforms, the Trash Pandas will wear special tuxedo-style jerseys during the game against the Tennessee Smokies. A postgame fireworks display will follow to cap the celebration.
Team mascot Sprocket will also be in a tuxedo provided by Oxford Street Menswear at Bridge Street.
“We’re working withrelationships with all these different vendors to have one specific vendor in each category,” said Knupp, who was part of a wedding giveaway while working for the Triple-A Lehigh Valley (Pa.) IronPigs.
To enter, visit https://www.milb.com/rocket-city/fans/wedding.
“… throughout the course of the game, we will continue to celebrate the couple. So like the Kiss Cam will be the cutting of the cake and we may have a dance where they do their first dance,” Knupp said. ‘The garter toss and the bouquet toss could be part of our slingshot teams. It’s all those things that you do during the course of a wedding that are kind of the key standard points of a wedding. We’re gonna try to offer that throughout the game and things that we do from a Trash Panda standpoint.”
And don’t forget, “Candlesticks always make a nice present, and uh, maybe you could find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay let’s get two.”
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