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Bombers’ quarterback Brian Brohm skips his honeymoon to attend the team’s mini-camp

Offseason trades can come with a lot of challenges, but one of the worst has to be missing your own honeymoon. That's what happened to Winnipeg Blue Bombers' quarterback Brian Brohm, who the team acquired from Hamilton in March. Brohm had his wedding set for April 12 in Louisville, Kentucky, which would have been fine with the Tiger-Cats' late-April minicamp, but wound up conflicting with the Bombers' earlier one (which started the same day at Florida's IMG Academy), one day after Brohm's wedding to Ashley Krawczyk ). The team was good enough to let Brohm miss the first two days of camp (arrival and one day of practice) for his wedding and travel to Florida, but as he told The Winnipeg Sun's Kirk Penton after arriving in time for Monday's practices, he's had to postpone his honeymoon:

“My honeymoon is coming here to minicamp,” quarterback Brian Brohm said Monday morning. “My wife, I gotta make it up to her later, so we put a few extra days on to our actual honeymoon coming up here in a few weeks.”

The Brohms are basically the most famous football family in Louisville, so the newest member of the family no doubt knew what she was getting into when she said yes to Brohm’s proposal. Everything would have worked out fine, too, if the Hamilton Tiger-Cats hadn’t traded Brohm to Winnipeg earlier this year, because their mini-camp isn’t until the end of April.

“She’s a football wife. She knows my family’s a football family,” Brohm said. “My brother’s a coach (at the University of Louisville). The wives in our family kind of know they gotta put up with that.”

Brohm's used to football taking a high priority in his life, as he was a star at Louisville, then had stints in the NFL (as a second-round draft pick, no less) and the UFL before coming to Hamilton in 2013. Still, having to miss a honeymoon for minicamp is a bit rough. It's far from the first time a wedding's been mixed into the CFL schedule, though. The most famous might be the case of current Hamilton special teams coach Jeff Reinebold, who got married in the middle of two-a-day practices in Las Vegas in 1993 while working as the short-lived Posse's special-teams coordinator (a story hilariously detailed in Ed Willes' great End Zones and Border Wars). At least Brohm didn't have to return to a practice immediately after his wedding. Also, his wife seems quite understanding:

While the timing's highly unfortunate here, it's certainly important for Brohm to be at this Bombers' minicamp, as this may be one of his best chances to solidify his spot in their crowded quarterback lineup. While Drew Willy has been anointed as the starter, it's worth remembering that he doesn't have a lot of CFL experience and wasn't Winnipeg's first- or second-choice offseason targer; if he underwhelms, there could be opportunities for Brohm. There are plenty of other competitors, though, including last season's year-ending starter Max Hall, who has NCAA and NFL experience, and former Purdue star Robert Marve, who looked like the team's most impressive quarterback Sunday. Thus, while having to put off his honeymoon likely was painful for Brohm, it may substantially help his chances of staying in the CFL and perhaps even improving his spot on the depth chart. It certainly gives him a good story, at the very least.