First, let me say that I am so happy that I live in a time where it is no longer a 100% given that a wife takes her husband's name. It's still a hot topic of conversation, but so far I haven't gotten any weird looks over my decision.
And what's that decision?
I'm keeping my last name. Billy's keeping his last name.
Yep, we're radicals.
We'd discussed several other possibilities for name changes. My one qualification was that we either both changed our names, or neither of us did (meaning I wasn't going to become Angela Myname-Hisname while he remained Billy Hisname).
The options we discussed were hyphenating, smushing our names together (probably my favorite), or picking out a new name all together (we were really close to becoming the Blaizers for awhile. Because it sounds bad ass. And when you're choosing your own name, why not go the badass route?).
But ultimately, we currently both want to keep our own names. Billy because he has that stereotypical American male attitude about the man passing along his family name, and myself because I would like to present to the world that not all people with my last name (see: my dad's side of the family) are complete imbeciles.
We're going to be re-examining our position in a couple of years when we have kids. Even if we both keep our own names, the kid(s?) has to have one, whether that's Myname, Hisname, Myname-Hisname or Blaizer. But for right now, I think we'll both be happiest keeping our own names.
This isn't a sign of our lack of commitment. This isn't the end of civilization. It's our personal decision that works for us, like so many wedding decisions are.
So what about your life WON'T be changing after the wedding?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The search for bridesmaid dresses
Figuring out what, in general, I wanted to do for bridesmaid dresses was one of my early priorities in wedding planning. At first it was very general. Everyone in the same dress or let them choose? Should the dresses be purple or gray? Floor length or cocktail length? What designers won't charge an arm and a leg for a dress?
I decided to be rather laid back regarding the dresses. I would dictate the designer, the color (purple or gray - either everyone in one color, two in each color, or the maid of honor in one color and everyone else in the other) and the length (Cocktail) and after that the women could pick whatever they wanted (theoretically I had veto power over anything, since I went shopping with them everywhere, but luckily I never had to exercise said-power. Everyone seems to have good taste).
An early bachelorette party/dressmaking excursion was planned for the end of April, when three of my bridesmaids and myself would meet up in Chicago (one of the bridesmaids was going to school there at the time), hang out, party and find their dresses! So I picked out the two designers I wanted to look at, and with the help of my Chicago-based bridesmaid we figured out where we should go looking. The designers were Alfred Angelo and Wtoo from Watters and Watters. We'd look for the latter first, at Macy's, and then in the afternoon we planned on going to Lily's Bridal and Gifts. And wow, were the two experiences like night and day.
Me outside of Macy's! I'm assuming this was perhaps the original Marshall Fields before Macy's bought them out
The Macy's bridal salon is very pretty and shiny, with a decent amount of dresses to go through. The help, however, I wasn't as fond of.
The three bridesmaids that attended this trip aren't size zero models. Nor are they bridal size 10 models - the only dress size in the store. The sales woman took our dresses to the dressing room, and then completely abandoned us there, leaving us to fend for ourselves as we realized that no one could even get these dresses over their hips, let alone get a real feel for how they would look once they were in the proper size. When I finally tracked down the saleswoman to ask about this, she said we simply had to hold them in front of ourselves, or I could try on the dresses to see what they were like. Now, as much as I like the idea of getting dressed up in pretty clothes, that really wasn't going to give anyone an idea of what these dresses looked like, as I'm built drastically different than the rest of my bridal party.
I think the worst part was when she very snottily told us that we were going to find the exact same situation everywhere. This woman had absolutely no empathy for our situation.
So we left Macy's, thoroughly dejected, but hopeful that we wouldn't have such an abysmal experience at the next shop.
Lily's boutique was much better. There were a couple of dress sizes, so everyone could try on something to get an estimation of what the dresses looked like. Nothing fit like a glove, but we could pull the dresses on, and then I would stand behind someone and hold the dress taut to see what the dress kind of looked like.
Everyone walked out that day, having picked out a dress they liked :-) Here they are...
Maid of Honor Brittany:
(with the sash in Grape)
Bridesmaid Rachel:
Bridesmaid Nicole:
(this will be hemmed so it's knee length. Every sewist we've talked to has said a hem is a hem, whether it's two inches or eight, and we wouldn't be charged extra for cutting the dress down)
Bridesmaid Carling:
(the Alfred Angelo website is being LAME in regards to this dress and won't let me see the front in a different color. This will be in either purple or gray; Carling hasn't told me which!)
With that down, now we just need to figure out shoes! And hair. And makeup...for every small thing I accomplish, it seems the list just keeps growing!
Anyone else have abysmal bridal salon experiences?
I decided to be rather laid back regarding the dresses. I would dictate the designer, the color (purple or gray - either everyone in one color, two in each color, or the maid of honor in one color and everyone else in the other) and the length (Cocktail) and after that the women could pick whatever they wanted (theoretically I had veto power over anything, since I went shopping with them everywhere, but luckily I never had to exercise said-power. Everyone seems to have good taste).
An early bachelorette party/dressmaking excursion was planned for the end of April, when three of my bridesmaids and myself would meet up in Chicago (one of the bridesmaids was going to school there at the time), hang out, party and find their dresses! So I picked out the two designers I wanted to look at, and with the help of my Chicago-based bridesmaid we figured out where we should go looking. The designers were Alfred Angelo and Wtoo from Watters and Watters. We'd look for the latter first, at Macy's, and then in the afternoon we planned on going to Lily's Bridal and Gifts. And wow, were the two experiences like night and day.
Me outside of Macy's! I'm assuming this was perhaps the original Marshall Fields before Macy's bought them out
The Macy's bridal salon is very pretty and shiny, with a decent amount of dresses to go through. The help, however, I wasn't as fond of.
The three bridesmaids that attended this trip aren't size zero models. Nor are they bridal size 10 models - the only dress size in the store. The sales woman took our dresses to the dressing room, and then completely abandoned us there, leaving us to fend for ourselves as we realized that no one could even get these dresses over their hips, let alone get a real feel for how they would look once they were in the proper size. When I finally tracked down the saleswoman to ask about this, she said we simply had to hold them in front of ourselves, or I could try on the dresses to see what they were like. Now, as much as I like the idea of getting dressed up in pretty clothes, that really wasn't going to give anyone an idea of what these dresses looked like, as I'm built drastically different than the rest of my bridal party.
I think the worst part was when she very snottily told us that we were going to find the exact same situation everywhere. This woman had absolutely no empathy for our situation.
So we left Macy's, thoroughly dejected, but hopeful that we wouldn't have such an abysmal experience at the next shop.
Lily's boutique was much better. There were a couple of dress sizes, so everyone could try on something to get an estimation of what the dresses looked like. Nothing fit like a glove, but we could pull the dresses on, and then I would stand behind someone and hold the dress taut to see what the dress kind of looked like.
Everyone walked out that day, having picked out a dress they liked :-) Here they are...
Maid of Honor Brittany:
(with the sash in Grape)Bridesmaid Rachel:
Bridesmaid Nicole:
(this will be hemmed so it's knee length. Every sewist we've talked to has said a hem is a hem, whether it's two inches or eight, and we wouldn't be charged extra for cutting the dress down)Bridesmaid Carling:
(the Alfred Angelo website is being LAME in regards to this dress and won't let me see the front in a different color. This will be in either purple or gray; Carling hasn't told me which!)With that down, now we just need to figure out shoes! And hair. And makeup...for every small thing I accomplish, it seems the list just keeps growing!
Anyone else have abysmal bridal salon experiences?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Fantasy Registry
Some people have fantasy sports teams...I have a fantasy registry.
Billy and I are at an awkward time in our lives, when it comes to an accumulation of "stuff." We moved in together two years ago, and have acquired plenty of necessities. We have a bunch of towels, we have basic (if second hand) cookware, and my mom went kind of crazy buying me dishes. I've lost count of how many sets of Corelle Classic Cafe Black dishes I have.
(Source)
She bought my first set when we moved in together, and then someone at the Corelle outlet told her they had discontinued the pattern, so she went on a binge on eBay and Amazon.Com and bought me, like, three more sets. Plus a couple of sets of additional plates and bowls. So dishware is one thing we DEFINITELY don't need to register for.
So I've been contemplating what I would register for if I could register for anything in the whole wide world. And while I know there are plenty of non-traditional registries out there (for example, the honeymoon registry which we're most likely doing), most of the things I want are just a little too ridiculous to actually expect someone to buy for us.
So, here are a few items off of my fantasy registry:
I didn't save where I got this from...if you know, I'll correct it!
Billy and I are both huge nerds, and proud of it. And "Crafty" is a pun on my last name.
(Source)
(Source)
By virtue of being huge nerds, Billy and I are huge fans of Battlestar Galactica. We're also both a little political, often with very different viewpoints on some issues (there were some very fierce debates in our apartment over Clinton vs Obama). While both of these shirts would be outdated by the time we got married, they'd sure be fun to wear on election day!
And a fantasy registry item that has made it on to the real registry...
(Source)
Yep, I'm one of those brides who's hoping to work on her wedding body via video games. Unfortunately, this darn thing is still impossible to find. Maybe some generous wedding guest will have more patience (and luck!) than Billy and I have.
If you could register for anything, what would it be? Is anything on your registry going to raise eyebrows among some of your guests?
Billy and I are at an awkward time in our lives, when it comes to an accumulation of "stuff." We moved in together two years ago, and have acquired plenty of necessities. We have a bunch of towels, we have basic (if second hand) cookware, and my mom went kind of crazy buying me dishes. I've lost count of how many sets of Corelle Classic Cafe Black dishes I have.
(Source)
She bought my first set when we moved in together, and then someone at the Corelle outlet told her they had discontinued the pattern, so she went on a binge on eBay and Amazon.Com and bought me, like, three more sets. Plus a couple of sets of additional plates and bowls. So dishware is one thing we DEFINITELY don't need to register for.
So I've been contemplating what I would register for if I could register for anything in the whole wide world. And while I know there are plenty of non-traditional registries out there (for example, the honeymoon registry which we're most likely doing), most of the things I want are just a little too ridiculous to actually expect someone to buy for us.
So, here are a few items off of my fantasy registry:
I didn't save where I got this from...if you know, I'll correct it!
Billy and I are both huge nerds, and proud of it. And "Crafty" is a pun on my last name.
(Source)
(Source)
By virtue of being huge nerds, Billy and I are huge fans of Battlestar Galactica. We're also both a little political, often with very different viewpoints on some issues (there were some very fierce debates in our apartment over Clinton vs Obama). While both of these shirts would be outdated by the time we got married, they'd sure be fun to wear on election day!
And a fantasy registry item that has made it on to the real registry...
(Source)
Yep, I'm one of those brides who's hoping to work on her wedding body via video games. Unfortunately, this darn thing is still impossible to find. Maybe some generous wedding guest will have more patience (and luck!) than Billy and I have.
If you could register for anything, what would it be? Is anything on your registry going to raise eyebrows among some of your guests?
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wedding Planning Binder and the color choice debut!
Well, "debut" might be misleading. An eagle-eyed reader might actually have already caught my final color choice. After all, there are really only two colors on my Save the Date cards.
Purple & Gray color palette.
Complete with my old-school inspiration board...
Which is wear my wedding planning binder comes into play.
Earlier this summer it was oppressively hot. And my computer sits in a poorly ventilated corner of our apartment (seriously. I'll be sitting in my corner, sweating and complaining, while Billy is in the opposite corner on his computer cool as a cucumber. It's really not fair). So while I really, really wanted to put together some inspiration boards for all the various aspects of our wedding...it wasn't happening at the computer. So instead I printed out allllllllllllll of the various photos I've collected and sat down to make a series of inspiration boards to act as "covers" for all the different sections of my wedding planning binder.
A note on planning binders: at this point, I consider my binder to be an absolute necessity! While there are roughly 5,000 pre-made wedding binders out there, I highly recommend just making your own for a fraction of the cost of those other binders. All of the helpful hints and tricks and checklists in those pre-made binders can be found for free online, and setting up your own can be another fun mini-project to do while waiting to dig into the big ones!
Materials:
Three ring binder. This can be as fancy or cheap as you want. I bought a two inch purple binder with the plastic cover that let's you slip in your own paper, for ultimate customization.
Tabbed dividers. Mine even have pockets where I can keep copies of vendor contracts or various notes and have them organized by what part of the wedding they apply to!
Plastic envelope. This is where you keep track of receipts (just in case).
I also bought plastic page protectors so I could have my personalized inspiration board for each section.
My binder currently has five sections, and an inspiration board for each. There's a "general" section, which is headed by the above general inspiration board and keeps track of random wedding notes and the receipts, then attire with an inspiration board dedicated entirely to my dress (more about that soon!), flowers, photography (the inspiration board is for collecting various pictures that I want to recreate on the wedding day) and the reception (where I'm keeping the DJ contract, and the inspiration board is cake pictures and other random pictures that I didn't know what else to do with!).
Since so much of my wedding is being designed by scratch and by people (my mom and I) who aren't wedding professionals, my binder has been a lifesaver when trying to communicate what it is that I want with decorations/flowers/the dress etc. It's keeping everything in one, easy to locate place and is ultra portable. I bring it with me whenever I go hang out with girly-friends who like to talk weddings so I can show them bits and pieces and every single time I go home so I can make sure Mom is staying on track with the designs.
How are you organizing everything?
Purple & Gray color palette.
Complete with my old-school inspiration board...
Which is wear my wedding planning binder comes into play.
Earlier this summer it was oppressively hot. And my computer sits in a poorly ventilated corner of our apartment (seriously. I'll be sitting in my corner, sweating and complaining, while Billy is in the opposite corner on his computer cool as a cucumber. It's really not fair). So while I really, really wanted to put together some inspiration boards for all the various aspects of our wedding...it wasn't happening at the computer. So instead I printed out allllllllllllll of the various photos I've collected and sat down to make a series of inspiration boards to act as "covers" for all the different sections of my wedding planning binder.
A note on planning binders: at this point, I consider my binder to be an absolute necessity! While there are roughly 5,000 pre-made wedding binders out there, I highly recommend just making your own for a fraction of the cost of those other binders. All of the helpful hints and tricks and checklists in those pre-made binders can be found for free online, and setting up your own can be another fun mini-project to do while waiting to dig into the big ones!
Materials:
Three ring binder. This can be as fancy or cheap as you want. I bought a two inch purple binder with the plastic cover that let's you slip in your own paper, for ultimate customization.
Tabbed dividers. Mine even have pockets where I can keep copies of vendor contracts or various notes and have them organized by what part of the wedding they apply to!
Plastic envelope. This is where you keep track of receipts (just in case).
I also bought plastic page protectors so I could have my personalized inspiration board for each section.
My binder currently has five sections, and an inspiration board for each. There's a "general" section, which is headed by the above general inspiration board and keeps track of random wedding notes and the receipts, then attire with an inspiration board dedicated entirely to my dress (more about that soon!), flowers, photography (the inspiration board is for collecting various pictures that I want to recreate on the wedding day) and the reception (where I'm keeping the DJ contract, and the inspiration board is cake pictures and other random pictures that I didn't know what else to do with!).
Since so much of my wedding is being designed by scratch and by people (my mom and I) who aren't wedding professionals, my binder has been a lifesaver when trying to communicate what it is that I want with decorations/flowers/the dress etc. It's keeping everything in one, easy to locate place and is ultra portable. I bring it with me whenever I go hang out with girly-friends who like to talk weddings so I can show them bits and pieces and every single time I go home so I can make sure Mom is staying on track with the designs.
How are you organizing everything?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The colors, Duke! The colors!
I'm colorblind kid
But if your guests aren't colorblind dogs who don't appreciate popsicles, what colors should the wedding be?
This is something I began thinking about right away. I was thinking about colors before I was thinking about dresses.
My very, very first idea, which was quickly thrown out, was black and white, with either red or pink as an accent color.
(Source)
It's an absolutely chic color palette. Having a black-tinged wedding has actually been one of the few "wedding" thoughts I've had growing up. However...one of my friends got to it first. Last summer, when two friends of Billy and I got married (and we were in the wedding), their colors were black and white and red. It was elegant and great and memorable. There was no way I was going to ride on their coattails a year and a half later. (Not to mention such a stark palette just wouldn't work with the jewel toned decorations of our hotel)
So next I began thinking of other colors I/we like. I'm a huge fan of red...and the Oscars are gold...what about a red and gold palette?
(Source)
Except I'm not a fan of gold. And it seemed just a little too themed for my taste. I want to incorporate our love of film into the big day, but I also don't want it to come across as reliving senior prom, either.
Other colors we both like: blue and purple! But I quickly found that I absolutely COULD NOT find images of the two together. In my head it was fabulous, but I could never quite find anything that matched the two shades (rich and deep) I had in mind.
How did you choose your color palette? Why did you choose/reject a given combination?
But if your guests aren't colorblind dogs who don't appreciate popsicles, what colors should the wedding be?
This is something I began thinking about right away. I was thinking about colors before I was thinking about dresses.
My very, very first idea, which was quickly thrown out, was black and white, with either red or pink as an accent color.
(Source)
It's an absolutely chic color palette. Having a black-tinged wedding has actually been one of the few "wedding" thoughts I've had growing up. However...one of my friends got to it first. Last summer, when two friends of Billy and I got married (and we were in the wedding), their colors were black and white and red. It was elegant and great and memorable. There was no way I was going to ride on their coattails a year and a half later. (Not to mention such a stark palette just wouldn't work with the jewel toned decorations of our hotel)
So next I began thinking of other colors I/we like. I'm a huge fan of red...and the Oscars are gold...what about a red and gold palette?
(Source)
Except I'm not a fan of gold. And it seemed just a little too themed for my taste. I want to incorporate our love of film into the big day, but I also don't want it to come across as reliving senior prom, either.
Other colors we both like: blue and purple! But I quickly found that I absolutely COULD NOT find images of the two together. In my head it was fabulous, but I could never quite find anything that matched the two shades (rich and deep) I had in mind.
How did you choose your color palette? Why did you choose/reject a given combination?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Location: Do you WANT our money?
When we had met Amanda at the Doubletree Hotel, I explained up front that we were going to be planning our wedding long distance, first from Ypsilanti and then from New York. She assured me this wasn't going to be a problem between phone calls and e-mails.
I feel rather gullible now, having believed that.
Shortly after we checked out locations I got a job (yaaaaaaaaaaaay) that had me working from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm (boooooooooooo), which meant talking to Amanda on the phone during the week was out, since she kept very similar office hours. After three attempts at e-mailing her, and leaving an after-hours phone message, I finally sent my maid of honor (who was living in Holland at the time) to go check in on Amanda in person and make sure she hadn't disappeared off of the face of the earth.
She hadn't. Turns out she was having "e-mail problems" and she had totally sent me an e-mail! But she would send me another one later that day.
If she did, it never arrived.
Finally giving up on e-mail, Amanda left me a voice mail message during the day that said, if I was available, she would call me around noon on Saturday since she had to do some things in the office then and we would talk and get all of my questions answered.
When Saturday rolled around there was no call at noon. Or at one. At two I finally decided I should make myself some lunch, since she clearly wasn't going to call.
As soon as I pulled my pasta off of the stove my phone rang. Because that's just how my life works!
Once I could finally talk to her, she was very forthcoming and helpful and was helping me figure out what the different pre-made wedding packages could be customized to include, and what we should definitely swap out because really it wasn't a good deal and so on and so forth. While I had been frustrated as all get out trying to get hold of her, I now felt much better and was sure that this was the place we needed to book for our wedding.
So I began e-mailing. And calling. Trying to get some sort of confirmation that yes, our date was still open and we could book the rooms and we could have a contract and how much would the deposit be...it was very frustrating. I took to saving each and every e-mail I sent to her, and her response, as well as documenting any phone calls just in case I needed to take this to someone higher up in the hotel. There were several times I felt like giving up, but every time my laziness and basic faith in people won out. If we chose a different location, that would probably mean going back to Holland to see if there were any other places we could find (we had already booked a photographer and were in the process of booking a DJ for the February 21st date so I didn't feel like bargaining with them to move back to February 28th to go with DeVos). Also, I like to believe that people are basically good and want to help each other, ESPECIALLY when it involves earning large sums of money for your business in the off-season (when we checked out the hotel in January there were maybe five cars in the parking lot. When I went back to visit with my mom to check out the hotel's restaurant in March there were only a few more. West Michigan doesn't get many visitors before Tulip Time in May and then the place, or at least the hotels, is swamped through Labor Day).
So far, while the process has been agonizingly slow and frustrating, everything is working out. In May I finally got a correct contract (I had been sent one in April that wasn't even close to correct. We were being charged for 50 more people than could even fit into our reception space, and the food price was way too much as well) and we sent in our deposit, and then in June I made a trip back to Holland in part so I could meet with Amanda in person and make sure everything had arrived correctly and just figure out all of the details. Like when would our tasting be scheduled. I also took the time to show my mom the ceremony space, since when we had visited in March those rooms had been closed.
So my review so far of Doubletree: it's a great space with lots of options for your ceremony or reception. While Amanda is extremely flaky and hard to get hold of, once you can talk to her she is extremely nice and accommodating. I also found out in June that they had recently hired an assistant for her, so it's possible that some of the communication issues will work themselves out.
I feel rather gullible now, having believed that.
Shortly after we checked out locations I got a job (yaaaaaaaaaaaay) that had me working from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm (boooooooooooo), which meant talking to Amanda on the phone during the week was out, since she kept very similar office hours. After three attempts at e-mailing her, and leaving an after-hours phone message, I finally sent my maid of honor (who was living in Holland at the time) to go check in on Amanda in person and make sure she hadn't disappeared off of the face of the earth.
She hadn't. Turns out she was having "e-mail problems" and she had totally sent me an e-mail! But she would send me another one later that day.
If she did, it never arrived.
Finally giving up on e-mail, Amanda left me a voice mail message during the day that said, if I was available, she would call me around noon on Saturday since she had to do some things in the office then and we would talk and get all of my questions answered.
When Saturday rolled around there was no call at noon. Or at one. At two I finally decided I should make myself some lunch, since she clearly wasn't going to call.
As soon as I pulled my pasta off of the stove my phone rang. Because that's just how my life works!
Once I could finally talk to her, she was very forthcoming and helpful and was helping me figure out what the different pre-made wedding packages could be customized to include, and what we should definitely swap out because really it wasn't a good deal and so on and so forth. While I had been frustrated as all get out trying to get hold of her, I now felt much better and was sure that this was the place we needed to book for our wedding.
So I began e-mailing. And calling. Trying to get some sort of confirmation that yes, our date was still open and we could book the rooms and we could have a contract and how much would the deposit be...it was very frustrating. I took to saving each and every e-mail I sent to her, and her response, as well as documenting any phone calls just in case I needed to take this to someone higher up in the hotel. There were several times I felt like giving up, but every time my laziness and basic faith in people won out. If we chose a different location, that would probably mean going back to Holland to see if there were any other places we could find (we had already booked a photographer and were in the process of booking a DJ for the February 21st date so I didn't feel like bargaining with them to move back to February 28th to go with DeVos). Also, I like to believe that people are basically good and want to help each other, ESPECIALLY when it involves earning large sums of money for your business in the off-season (when we checked out the hotel in January there were maybe five cars in the parking lot. When I went back to visit with my mom to check out the hotel's restaurant in March there were only a few more. West Michigan doesn't get many visitors before Tulip Time in May and then the place, or at least the hotels, is swamped through Labor Day).
So far, while the process has been agonizingly slow and frustrating, everything is working out. In May I finally got a correct contract (I had been sent one in April that wasn't even close to correct. We were being charged for 50 more people than could even fit into our reception space, and the food price was way too much as well) and we sent in our deposit, and then in June I made a trip back to Holland in part so I could meet with Amanda in person and make sure everything had arrived correctly and just figure out all of the details. Like when would our tasting be scheduled. I also took the time to show my mom the ceremony space, since when we had visited in March those rooms had been closed.
So my review so far of Doubletree: it's a great space with lots of options for your ceremony or reception. While Amanda is extremely flaky and hard to get hold of, once you can talk to her she is extremely nice and accommodating. I also found out in June that they had recently hired an assistant for her, so it's possible that some of the communication issues will work themselves out.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Logistical break: Save the Date cards!
I'm tired of nitty-gritty details, so here's something more fun. My save the date cards! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Front
Back. Check out the hot smudging action!
Beautiful and fabulous, are they not? Best of all, they were 100% made by me, like all of our other paper products will be. Not necessarily because it's a money saver, but because a) I like a creative challenge and b) I am super possessive over stuff.
These took a couple of hours to make, from beginning the design process to printing them all out.
Tools:
PaperSource Gravel Postcards (bought at the store. I can't seem to find them on the website)
GIMP
Fun fonts (I used MammaGamma and Freebooter Script from DaFont.
Ink Jet printer (I have my trusty HP PSC 1210v all in one printer that my roommates and I bought freshmen year of college. It's still chugging along 5 years later!)
Billy's and my philosophy for our wedding is that we want it to be elegant and beautiful but fun, so my first priority in designing the save the date cards was to embody that philosophy somehow, as well as introduce our movie theme in a classy but fun way.
So eventually I decided on filling the front of the card with famous movie couples.
The first test I saved. Here I was playing with using the full names of the characters, which got a little complicated as some characters either didn't have last names (Riff Raff & Magenta) or weren't really known by their full names (Hoban Washburn? Please, he's Wash!)
I drop the last name idea and add Billy and myself to the front of the card. It still looks weird though, with "Will" trailing onto the last line)
And finally, I sat down and really focused on spacing everything evenly and formatting everything perfectly so that Billy and I got a line all to ourselves. I also added the border (found on Google image search...sorry I didn't save the original source!) to give it a "finished" look.
Now for something that's 98% text, why did I choose to use an image editor rather than typing it up in Word? Simply, using GIMP gave me much more control over placement of the words. The script font is relatively huge, and with the ampersands Word wanted to leave huge gaps between the ampersand and the next word. It looked ugly. GIMP let me make the ampersands a different layer than the names so I could arrange everything in a way that looked natural. It also let me decide how much space should be between the lines and rearrange everything fairly easily to make sure I didn't have names layering on top of each other and obscuring things like the dot of an "i."
Of course, in order to have this flexibility, every. single. word was a different layer. That meant that when I wanted to move one thing, at least three other layers had to be moved with it. It was a tedious process, but I really think it was worth it.
Price breakdown:
2 packs of Paper Source postcards: Approximately $6 for 100 cards total (I can't find my receipt :-( so I don't know the exact price, but I think this was about right), or approximately 17 cents per card.
90 post card stamps at 27 cents each (10 cards were sacrificed to figuring out how to print these things, so I didn't need as many stamps as I had printed cards.
Total cost per save the date card: 44 cents
That's it. No ink costs because I didn't have to buy a new cartridge, obviously I didn't have to pay anyone to actually do the work. Just the paper and the postage.
This was definitely a huge money saver for us. Of course, we could have saved even MORE money by just forgoing the save the date cards entirely (they aren't exactly a wedding necessity!) but I had a few reasons for doing them, and sending them out 7 months before the wedding:
1)Most of our guests would, in fact, be traveling at least some distance in order to attend. This gives them a heads up before winter travel plans can be made that they have an invitation to come to Michigan during the winter and to take that into consideration.
2) Our wedding is the beginning of spring break for our friends who are still attending college. This tells them not to make plans for that first weekend unless they want me to hunt them down ;-)
3) (Discovered after the cards went out) It put us back in contact with some people we hadn't seen in awhile. For example, while I was in middle school and high school, I had two librarians who had an enormous impact on my life. However, as much as I had wanted to talk to them occasionally over the years, I had lost their e-mail addresses and it felt totally weird to call or write an old fashioned letter to these women for no reason other to chat. I mean, they were my teachers! But as I said, they were hugely influential in my life and I knew I wanted them to be invited to the wedding. By sending out the save the date card with our wedding website address (the website which has our e-mail addresses posted), both of my librarians have e-mailed me and we've had some casual e-mail conversations. It's fabulous!
4) It gave me something to do! This may have been the biggest reason. I was unemployed, and it's still a little too far out in the planning process to work on other major wedding projects. This let me do something productive and wedding related.
Are save the date cards for everybody? Nope. But while they are superfluous in the grand scheme of wedding planning, they sure were fun!
Are you doing save the date cards? Why? Have you had any unexpected surprises come from them?
Front
Back. Check out the hot smudging action!
Beautiful and fabulous, are they not? Best of all, they were 100% made by me, like all of our other paper products will be. Not necessarily because it's a money saver, but because a) I like a creative challenge and b) I am super possessive over stuff.
These took a couple of hours to make, from beginning the design process to printing them all out.
Tools:
PaperSource Gravel Postcards (bought at the store. I can't seem to find them on the website)
GIMP
Fun fonts (I used MammaGamma and Freebooter Script from DaFont.
Ink Jet printer (I have my trusty HP PSC 1210v all in one printer that my roommates and I bought freshmen year of college. It's still chugging along 5 years later!)
Billy's and my philosophy for our wedding is that we want it to be elegant and beautiful but fun, so my first priority in designing the save the date cards was to embody that philosophy somehow, as well as introduce our movie theme in a classy but fun way.
So eventually I decided on filling the front of the card with famous movie couples.
The first test I saved. Here I was playing with using the full names of the characters, which got a little complicated as some characters either didn't have last names (Riff Raff & Magenta) or weren't really known by their full names (Hoban Washburn? Please, he's Wash!)
I drop the last name idea and add Billy and myself to the front of the card. It still looks weird though, with "Will" trailing onto the last line)
And finally, I sat down and really focused on spacing everything evenly and formatting everything perfectly so that Billy and I got a line all to ourselves. I also added the border (found on Google image search...sorry I didn't save the original source!) to give it a "finished" look.
Now for something that's 98% text, why did I choose to use an image editor rather than typing it up in Word? Simply, using GIMP gave me much more control over placement of the words. The script font is relatively huge, and with the ampersands Word wanted to leave huge gaps between the ampersand and the next word. It looked ugly. GIMP let me make the ampersands a different layer than the names so I could arrange everything in a way that looked natural. It also let me decide how much space should be between the lines and rearrange everything fairly easily to make sure I didn't have names layering on top of each other and obscuring things like the dot of an "i."
Of course, in order to have this flexibility, every. single. word was a different layer. That meant that when I wanted to move one thing, at least three other layers had to be moved with it. It was a tedious process, but I really think it was worth it.
Price breakdown:
2 packs of Paper Source postcards: Approximately $6 for 100 cards total (I can't find my receipt :-( so I don't know the exact price, but I think this was about right), or approximately 17 cents per card.
90 post card stamps at 27 cents each (10 cards were sacrificed to figuring out how to print these things, so I didn't need as many stamps as I had printed cards.
Total cost per save the date card: 44 cents
That's it. No ink costs because I didn't have to buy a new cartridge, obviously I didn't have to pay anyone to actually do the work. Just the paper and the postage.
This was definitely a huge money saver for us. Of course, we could have saved even MORE money by just forgoing the save the date cards entirely (they aren't exactly a wedding necessity!) but I had a few reasons for doing them, and sending them out 7 months before the wedding:
1)Most of our guests would, in fact, be traveling at least some distance in order to attend. This gives them a heads up before winter travel plans can be made that they have an invitation to come to Michigan during the winter and to take that into consideration.
2) Our wedding is the beginning of spring break for our friends who are still attending college. This tells them not to make plans for that first weekend unless they want me to hunt them down ;-)
3) (Discovered after the cards went out) It put us back in contact with some people we hadn't seen in awhile. For example, while I was in middle school and high school, I had two librarians who had an enormous impact on my life. However, as much as I had wanted to talk to them occasionally over the years, I had lost their e-mail addresses and it felt totally weird to call or write an old fashioned letter to these women for no reason other to chat. I mean, they were my teachers! But as I said, they were hugely influential in my life and I knew I wanted them to be invited to the wedding. By sending out the save the date card with our wedding website address (the website which has our e-mail addresses posted), both of my librarians have e-mailed me and we've had some casual e-mail conversations. It's fabulous!
4) It gave me something to do! This may have been the biggest reason. I was unemployed, and it's still a little too far out in the planning process to work on other major wedding projects. This let me do something productive and wedding related.
Are save the date cards for everybody? Nope. But while they are superfluous in the grand scheme of wedding planning, they sure were fun!
Are you doing save the date cards? Why? Have you had any unexpected surprises come from them?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The final location!
The last place Billy and I looked at was actually a last minute decision. I was tooling around on the 'net after looking at the other three contenders and miraculously found another place that could do ceremonies and receptions (allegedly): the Doubletree Hotel in Holland. So I called them up and, even though it was a little last-minute, they agreed to meet with us the next morning.
We met with Amanda, the event coordinator, and while she wasn't quite as exuberant as our guide through DeVos Place, she was certainly more of a salesperson than some of the other people we'd spoken with. She sat us down with a portfolio of previous weddings they had worked on (only receptions, it looked like), so we could see the different buffet spreads and decoration options. Then we went on a tour to get an idea of spaces. She was really excited when I told her that we were looking to do 100-120 guests; if we could keep our guest list closer to 100 it meant we could use her favorite ballroom space that's usually overlooked for weddings because everyone has huge guest lists.
First we checked out the smaller ballroom(s) that would be used for the actual ceremony. They were simple, meeting-room-esque. Nothing fancy about them, but I thought we could make it work.
Then we went to the ballroom. And here's where I was sold. The ballroom is a funky, asymmetrical space, with a nice little "stage" area where we'll set up the head table (I certainly don't have any stage fright issues, and neither does the rest of the bridal party). There's a decent sized dance floor in one corner, an adjacent room for setting up the buffet tables, and we get to maximize our use of the space because, unlike some of the other ballrooms, we won't have to use a portable bar. Why? Because upstairs from the ballroom is Coaster's Lounge
(Source)
Normally open to everyone at the hotel, it's going to be closed off for the wedding. Here's where everyone can get their drinks AND our smoking friends can go up there for a smoke and still be part of the party atmosphere since it's a balcony style set up where you can stand in the lounge and overlook the party below.
Billy and I left feeling pretty good about the Doubletree. Our ceremony and reception would be held about ten yards apart, which was just the traveling distance we were looking for (there's also an additional bar set up in between the two locations, which we're going to have use of as well so everyone can get their drink on as soon as the ceremony's done). We had a few reservations (chief among Billy's: the entire time we were there, Amanda directed 99% of the conversation at me, and never even asked Billy's name!) initially, but the price and accommodations seemed right, so we decided to stop our search and look into actually booking the hotel.
Oh, if it were only so simple!=
We met with Amanda, the event coordinator, and while she wasn't quite as exuberant as our guide through DeVos Place, she was certainly more of a salesperson than some of the other people we'd spoken with. She sat us down with a portfolio of previous weddings they had worked on (only receptions, it looked like), so we could see the different buffet spreads and decoration options. Then we went on a tour to get an idea of spaces. She was really excited when I told her that we were looking to do 100-120 guests; if we could keep our guest list closer to 100 it meant we could use her favorite ballroom space that's usually overlooked for weddings because everyone has huge guest lists.
First we checked out the smaller ballroom(s) that would be used for the actual ceremony. They were simple, meeting-room-esque. Nothing fancy about them, but I thought we could make it work.
Then we went to the ballroom. And here's where I was sold. The ballroom is a funky, asymmetrical space, with a nice little "stage" area where we'll set up the head table (I certainly don't have any stage fright issues, and neither does the rest of the bridal party). There's a decent sized dance floor in one corner, an adjacent room for setting up the buffet tables, and we get to maximize our use of the space because, unlike some of the other ballrooms, we won't have to use a portable bar. Why? Because upstairs from the ballroom is Coaster's Lounge
(Source)
Normally open to everyone at the hotel, it's going to be closed off for the wedding. Here's where everyone can get their drinks AND our smoking friends can go up there for a smoke and still be part of the party atmosphere since it's a balcony style set up where you can stand in the lounge and overlook the party below.
Billy and I left feeling pretty good about the Doubletree. Our ceremony and reception would be held about ten yards apart, which was just the traveling distance we were looking for (there's also an additional bar set up in between the two locations, which we're going to have use of as well so everyone can get their drink on as soon as the ceremony's done). We had a few reservations (chief among Billy's: the entire time we were there, Amanda directed 99% of the conversation at me, and never even asked Billy's name!) initially, but the price and accommodations seemed right, so we decided to stop our search and look into actually booking the hotel.
Oh, if it were only so simple!=
Location, Location, Location
So once we had finalized West Michigan as our location...that still left a lot of options. Did we want Holland, my home town? Grand Rapids, the nearest city? Somewhere in between?
Ultimately the decision came down to: where could we get married AND have the reception?
Turns out, not very many places.
See, West Michigan is Religious. With a capital R. There are 170 churches in Holland alone, and Grand Rapids is the home of the Christian Reformed Church AND we kicked off the WWJD? bracelet trend.
So West Michigan likes its churches. A lot. So much so that it seems there isn't much demand for getting married outside of a church. Unless you're getting married at the beach, or at an outdoor gazebo. Two options that are soooooooooo not happening in February.
So in January, Billy and I treked across the state to spend a couple of days looking at a handful of locations that could, theoretically, handle hosting both parts of our ceremony.
Why did we look in January? Because my mom had convinced me that if someone was originally planning on getting married on Valentine's day and their preferred location was booked, they might consider moving the wedding back a weekend.
I was not going to let that happen to me! So I scoured, absolutely scoured every possible website I could find that even referenced doing indoor wedding ceremonies in West Michigan. We found...4. I believe. Again, I hadn't been planning on blogging every tiny detail of my wedding-planning-life at that point (I had only an inkling of how obsessed I was going to become!) so I didn't keep copious notes or take any pictures. Here are the places I remember looking at and rejecting:
Celebration Cinema: the Wave Room: Billy and I looooooooooooooove movies. Some people think going out to the movies is kind of a lame date: sure, you're sitting next to your sweetie for two hours, but you're just sitting there, staring at a screen in the dark. There's no interaction for that two hours.
Maybe we're un-romantic, but that's just fine with us. Billy and I are passionate about movies. He wants to write and/or direct for film (or TV. Or theatre. He's really not picky at this point) and I absolutely love studying film. So I had begun kicking around the idea of having a movie theme for the wedding (this was before I knew how popular it was as a theme. As someone who's usually totally non-traditional, I'm kind of kicking myself for this choice now. But it fits us so well I don't know what else I could possibly do!) and what better way to pull that in than by actually getting married at the movies!
Now, the website only mentions having space for wedding receptions, but some website or other that I checked out listed them as available for ceremonies as well, and when I called to make the appointment, the woman I spoke to assured me they had done ceremonies in the past and could definitely accommodate us.
When we pulled up to the theater, Billy wasn't so sure he was going to like it. Actually, he was pretty convinced as we walked in that he was going to hate it.
There's no private entrance (that we saw) for the Wave Room. There's no denying it: you're entering the main lobby of a big, modern cinemaplex. But really, I didn't see anything wrong with that. It was fun! It was us!
I really liked the Wave Room itself. It was really big with an entire wall of windows to catch any sort of sunlight we could get in February (or pretty pretty snowfall! That's what I'm hoping for: just enough to make it pretty, not a blizzard). Lots of space for a dance floor, and really cool food options (STATIONS! I hadn't heard of them before in my wedding research, but it sounded SO COOL!).
And then I asked where we would actually be getting married. I did not like the answer.
We could either have everyone sitting at their banquet tables as we got married (yuck) or have the room set up with a traditional style aisle and all of the chairs set out theatre style...and then banish all of our guests from the room for two hours while they re-set everything for the reception. What would our guests do during that time? "They could go see a movie!" (Yeah, because there are usually so many stellar films in February) "Or they could go eat. There's lots of restaurants here by the theater!"
Wait, seriously? You want me to drop thousands of dollars to feed 100+ people, and then encourage them to go get dinner on their own dime elsewhere?!
It didn't take long to cross the movie theater off of our list.
Crossroads Banquet and Conference Center: This is the place I wanted to cross off of our list as soon as we drove up. There are no pictures of the exterior anywhere to be found for good reason: it's a cinder block box. Maybe in the summer it was wonderful, lush grounds, but in January, it was a big gray box in the middle of a bunch of trampled down dirt.
So not appealing.
But inside it's pretty fantastic. They did a great sell for us. They had two distinct ballrooms for doing the ceremony in one place and then the reception in the other.It was really bright and cheerful inside (the sky in the lobby was painted with clouds!) and the bathrooms were fantabulous. A silly detail, I know, but it's something I noticed. They were also willing to cut us some deals because they were still a pretty new place and wanted to build up a customer base.
Oh, and they're affiliated with a Holiday Inn Express right next door that has a waterpark. Admission is included with your hotel room. That's pretty sweet.
The downsides: Aside from the outside appearance? Well, the dance floor was really small. I forget the exact dimensions but I'm pretty sure I blurted out "That's it?" when I saw the tiny slab of parquet off in one corner. If you don't plan on dancing at your wedding, this place would be fabulous, but we're big on dancing, so we knew this place probably wasn't for us. Plus it was a little bit in the middle of nowhere. Fairly close to the airport for our guests who would be flying in, but that's about the only thing it seemed close to. I'm not the biggest expert on Grand Rapids, so for all I know there were a million attractions right over the next hill, but as we were driving out to it I kept feeling like I must have missed it because there was just nothing out there.
DeVos Place: When I first told my mom that we were thinking about getting married over in her neck of the woods, the first place she looked up was The Amway Grand, which is the luxury hotel over in Grand Rapids.
Which is definitely reflected in the price.
So I was hesitant to check out DeVos Place, which is the convention center connected to the Grand. But I was very surprised to see that the place was downright cheap in comparison, and probably wouldn't have cost us much more overall than the place we ended up with.
The event coordinator at DeVos was wonderful, she gave us a full tour of all of our options, changing course as we explained more and more about what we were thinking, telling her what we did or didn't like about the rooms she was showing us. A great salesperson (I feel absolutely terrible for forgetting her name! But this was also almost 8 months ago, so I really shouldn't feel too bad), with a really creative mind. Her brain was constantly clicking along, proposing creative ideas for how we could pull off the ceremony and reception in a limited amount of space. They actually have experience doing receptions and ceremonies, something the other sites we'd visited had lacked. Crossroads had the space, but being so new they didn't really have the experience.
Ultimately, the only real reason we opted to go with some place else was a boat show was already booked for our desired date. They were wide open the next weekend, and if we really, really wanted to we could have figured out a way to make the 21st work...but it just wasn't meant to be.
If you're getting married in the Grand Rapids area, I would highly recommend checking out DeVos place for a very modern ceremony and/or reception.
Next post: Where did we end up going?
Ultimately the decision came down to: where could we get married AND have the reception?
Turns out, not very many places.
See, West Michigan is Religious. With a capital R. There are 170 churches in Holland alone, and Grand Rapids is the home of the Christian Reformed Church AND we kicked off the WWJD? bracelet trend.
So West Michigan likes its churches. A lot. So much so that it seems there isn't much demand for getting married outside of a church. Unless you're getting married at the beach, or at an outdoor gazebo. Two options that are soooooooooo not happening in February.
So in January, Billy and I treked across the state to spend a couple of days looking at a handful of locations that could, theoretically, handle hosting both parts of our ceremony.
Why did we look in January? Because my mom had convinced me that if someone was originally planning on getting married on Valentine's day and their preferred location was booked, they might consider moving the wedding back a weekend.
I was not going to let that happen to me! So I scoured, absolutely scoured every possible website I could find that even referenced doing indoor wedding ceremonies in West Michigan. We found...4. I believe. Again, I hadn't been planning on blogging every tiny detail of my wedding-planning-life at that point (I had only an inkling of how obsessed I was going to become!) so I didn't keep copious notes or take any pictures. Here are the places I remember looking at and rejecting:
Celebration Cinema: the Wave Room: Billy and I looooooooooooooove movies. Some people think going out to the movies is kind of a lame date: sure, you're sitting next to your sweetie for two hours, but you're just sitting there, staring at a screen in the dark. There's no interaction for that two hours.
Maybe we're un-romantic, but that's just fine with us. Billy and I are passionate about movies. He wants to write and/or direct for film (or TV. Or theatre. He's really not picky at this point) and I absolutely love studying film. So I had begun kicking around the idea of having a movie theme for the wedding (this was before I knew how popular it was as a theme. As someone who's usually totally non-traditional, I'm kind of kicking myself for this choice now. But it fits us so well I don't know what else I could possibly do!) and what better way to pull that in than by actually getting married at the movies!
Now, the website only mentions having space for wedding receptions, but some website or other that I checked out listed them as available for ceremonies as well, and when I called to make the appointment, the woman I spoke to assured me they had done ceremonies in the past and could definitely accommodate us.
When we pulled up to the theater, Billy wasn't so sure he was going to like it. Actually, he was pretty convinced as we walked in that he was going to hate it.
There's no private entrance (that we saw) for the Wave Room. There's no denying it: you're entering the main lobby of a big, modern cinemaplex. But really, I didn't see anything wrong with that. It was fun! It was us!
I really liked the Wave Room itself. It was really big with an entire wall of windows to catch any sort of sunlight we could get in February (or pretty pretty snowfall! That's what I'm hoping for: just enough to make it pretty, not a blizzard). Lots of space for a dance floor, and really cool food options (STATIONS! I hadn't heard of them before in my wedding research, but it sounded SO COOL!).
And then I asked where we would actually be getting married. I did not like the answer.
We could either have everyone sitting at their banquet tables as we got married (yuck) or have the room set up with a traditional style aisle and all of the chairs set out theatre style...and then banish all of our guests from the room for two hours while they re-set everything for the reception. What would our guests do during that time? "They could go see a movie!" (Yeah, because there are usually so many stellar films in February) "Or they could go eat. There's lots of restaurants here by the theater!"
Wait, seriously? You want me to drop thousands of dollars to feed 100+ people, and then encourage them to go get dinner on their own dime elsewhere?!
It didn't take long to cross the movie theater off of our list.
Crossroads Banquet and Conference Center: This is the place I wanted to cross off of our list as soon as we drove up. There are no pictures of the exterior anywhere to be found for good reason: it's a cinder block box. Maybe in the summer it was wonderful, lush grounds, but in January, it was a big gray box in the middle of a bunch of trampled down dirt.
So not appealing.
But inside it's pretty fantastic. They did a great sell for us. They had two distinct ballrooms for doing the ceremony in one place and then the reception in the other.It was really bright and cheerful inside (the sky in the lobby was painted with clouds!) and the bathrooms were fantabulous. A silly detail, I know, but it's something I noticed. They were also willing to cut us some deals because they were still a pretty new place and wanted to build up a customer base.
Oh, and they're affiliated with a Holiday Inn Express right next door that has a waterpark. Admission is included with your hotel room. That's pretty sweet.
The downsides: Aside from the outside appearance? Well, the dance floor was really small. I forget the exact dimensions but I'm pretty sure I blurted out "That's it?" when I saw the tiny slab of parquet off in one corner. If you don't plan on dancing at your wedding, this place would be fabulous, but we're big on dancing, so we knew this place probably wasn't for us. Plus it was a little bit in the middle of nowhere. Fairly close to the airport for our guests who would be flying in, but that's about the only thing it seemed close to. I'm not the biggest expert on Grand Rapids, so for all I know there were a million attractions right over the next hill, but as we were driving out to it I kept feeling like I must have missed it because there was just nothing out there.
DeVos Place: When I first told my mom that we were thinking about getting married over in her neck of the woods, the first place she looked up was The Amway Grand, which is the luxury hotel over in Grand Rapids.
Which is definitely reflected in the price.
So I was hesitant to check out DeVos Place, which is the convention center connected to the Grand. But I was very surprised to see that the place was downright cheap in comparison, and probably wouldn't have cost us much more overall than the place we ended up with.
The event coordinator at DeVos was wonderful, she gave us a full tour of all of our options, changing course as we explained more and more about what we were thinking, telling her what we did or didn't like about the rooms she was showing us. A great salesperson (I feel absolutely terrible for forgetting her name! But this was also almost 8 months ago, so I really shouldn't feel too bad), with a really creative mind. Her brain was constantly clicking along, proposing creative ideas for how we could pull off the ceremony and reception in a limited amount of space. They actually have experience doing receptions and ceremonies, something the other sites we'd visited had lacked. Crossroads had the space, but being so new they didn't really have the experience.
Ultimately, the only real reason we opted to go with some place else was a boat show was already booked for our desired date. They were wide open the next weekend, and if we really, really wanted to we could have figured out a way to make the 21st work...but it just wasn't meant to be.
If you're getting married in the Grand Rapids area, I would highly recommend checking out DeVos place for a very modern ceremony and/or reception.
Next post: Where did we end up going?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Where on earth are we going to DO this, anyway?
Because Billy and I come from opposite ends of two different states, with family spread out all over the place, and were planning on moving to New York City, once we had a date in mind, we had to figure out where we wanted to get married. Not just a ceremony location or a reception hall, but a state. And then what part of the state!
It was a little daunting, and even got a little bit heated at times.
Possibilities we considered:
Destination Wedding: Ooh, go some place tropical in the middle of February! Who wouldn't love that? Billy and I took our first vacation together to Hawaii - wouldn't that be romantic, going back there for our wedding? Plus it gives a tropical vibe without requiring passports (the exact reason we chose Hawaii over a more exotic tropic locale). Or what about Las Vegas? I loooooooooooooooove Vegas, my parents loooooooooooooooooove Vegas, Billy has family iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin Vegas (sorry, felt like I had a theme going with repeated vowels).
But we ditched the idea pretty quickly, as Billy was telling me he had about a hundred family members that needed to be invited, and there was no way his mom was going to take 'no' for an answer, and destination weddings (in my mind at the time) pretty much implied a limited guest list. Add in the fact that we wanted to invite all of our friends from college, who would essentially still be poor college students at the time we got married...we eliminated this one pretty quickly.
New York City: Would be home for us, but a destination wedding for everyone else. Still, it would be a slightly more reasonable destination for our mostly-midwest located families and friends.
Except that we still didn't know when, exactly, we were going to move out there. Which meant I'd either have to plan everything from afar, or plan everything in six months, on top of moving and finding a job. Oh, and New York is expensive. The midwest would stretch our dollars farther than New York would.
Ohio: Get married down in Billy's home town. Has the advantage of being where he's from and all of those hometown connections...but I felt like my hands would be a little bit tied planning a wedding in Billy's backyard from afar. I pretty much would have had to wait for him to be free before making any planning trips down there, because while his family is charming and sweet...they are still his family at this point. I would feel totally awkward being down there around them without Billy present. Plus, and maybe this is a bit selfish and/or stereotypical, it was really important to me to have my mom help plan this, something that would be hard to do if she was six hours away.
See, while I have a younger brother, I am most likely the only child of my parents who will get married. My younger brother is autistic, to a degree where the likelihood of marriage is slim to none for him. So this would be my mom's only chance to help plan a wedding for one of her children. Billy would counter by saying it might be the only one his mom gets to plan...but Billy has an older brother AND a younger sister, both of whom are in or have had very serious relationships. They're certainly not out of the wedding pool by any means.
So that left us with...
Michigan: My home state, the state where we met and went to college...it just fit. Especially once we decided that, yes, we were going to get married in or near my hometown. We briefly considered getting married near where we went to school, but since neither of us have family in town it seemed like it would be easier from a logistical perspective to do it on the west side.
Are you and your fiance from different places? How did you decide where to get married?
It was a little daunting, and even got a little bit heated at times.
Possibilities we considered:
Destination Wedding: Ooh, go some place tropical in the middle of February! Who wouldn't love that? Billy and I took our first vacation together to Hawaii - wouldn't that be romantic, going back there for our wedding? Plus it gives a tropical vibe without requiring passports (the exact reason we chose Hawaii over a more exotic tropic locale). Or what about Las Vegas? I loooooooooooooooove Vegas, my parents loooooooooooooooooove Vegas, Billy has family iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin Vegas (sorry, felt like I had a theme going with repeated vowels).
But we ditched the idea pretty quickly, as Billy was telling me he had about a hundred family members that needed to be invited, and there was no way his mom was going to take 'no' for an answer, and destination weddings (in my mind at the time) pretty much implied a limited guest list. Add in the fact that we wanted to invite all of our friends from college, who would essentially still be poor college students at the time we got married...we eliminated this one pretty quickly.
New York City: Would be home for us, but a destination wedding for everyone else. Still, it would be a slightly more reasonable destination for our mostly-midwest located families and friends.
Except that we still didn't know when, exactly, we were going to move out there. Which meant I'd either have to plan everything from afar, or plan everything in six months, on top of moving and finding a job. Oh, and New York is expensive. The midwest would stretch our dollars farther than New York would.
Ohio: Get married down in Billy's home town. Has the advantage of being where he's from and all of those hometown connections...but I felt like my hands would be a little bit tied planning a wedding in Billy's backyard from afar. I pretty much would have had to wait for him to be free before making any planning trips down there, because while his family is charming and sweet...they are still his family at this point. I would feel totally awkward being down there around them without Billy present. Plus, and maybe this is a bit selfish and/or stereotypical, it was really important to me to have my mom help plan this, something that would be hard to do if she was six hours away.
See, while I have a younger brother, I am most likely the only child of my parents who will get married. My younger brother is autistic, to a degree where the likelihood of marriage is slim to none for him. So this would be my mom's only chance to help plan a wedding for one of her children. Billy would counter by saying it might be the only one his mom gets to plan...but Billy has an older brother AND a younger sister, both of whom are in or have had very serious relationships. They're certainly not out of the wedding pool by any means.
So that left us with...
Michigan: My home state, the state where we met and went to college...it just fit. Especially once we decided that, yes, we were going to get married in or near my hometown. We briefly considered getting married near where we went to school, but since neither of us have family in town it seemed like it would be easier from a logistical perspective to do it on the west side.
Are you and your fiance from different places? How did you decide where to get married?
First step - picking a date
After I calmed down from my epic engagement freak out, Billy started saying how he wanted a long engagement - like, a year and a half or two years. I was totally fine with that. It made sense: we were planning on moving half way across the country, start our careers, etc. It would give us plenty of time to figure life out, as well as things like where the hell we should get married (Ohio vs. Michigan vs. our new home in New York).
That idea didn't last long.
I waited about 15 hours between getting engaged and looking up wedding blogs and websites.
It was a sickness.
I forget when exactly I started looking at the calendar on my computer, but I know it was less than a week before I realized that in 2009, our anniversary was going to fall on a Saturday. Which would mean an engagement of just over a year. But it would be one less important date to remember!
See, I have a thing about choosing easy-to-remember days for important points in Billy's and my relationship. For awhile, Billy tried to argue that we started going out on February 20th, as we hadn't actually slept yet, thus we were operating like it was (really really) late on Friday when we were out.
But February 21st is exactly one week after Valentine's Day. It's much easier to remember the date that way.
Our six month anniversary, August 21st, was also special as well, because it was an easy date to remember...but those details can't be published on a public blog. I think Billy would kill me (which would totally put a damper on the whole "wedding" thing).
And then, of course, Billy proposed on New Year's Eve. No forgetting that date!
So it totally made sense to me to get married on what will be our fifth anniversary. Billy was hesitant at first - but I convinced him!
I think our parents thought we were a little crazy at first, especially since nowhere we were considering getting married at is exactly the nicest place in the middle of February. Which meant for a very brief time we (read: I) considered a destination wedding...but I'm too much of a control freak for that!
So, to re-assure everyone, I also had some non-sentimental reasons for 1) shortening the engagement and 2) making it the middle of February.
1) It was very important to both Billy and I that our friends from the forensics team be able to attend the wedding, something that may have been difficult if we waited for more than a year as all of our friends are or were near graduation and making plans to move away. This way we could catch them before they left, or at least before we lost contact with them.
2) It's the middle of winter. Who gets married in the middle of winter? Especially on a non-holiday weekend. I was positive we'd catch at least some deals on prices that way.
Eventually everyone saw my logic :-)
How did you choose your date?
That idea didn't last long.
I waited about 15 hours between getting engaged and looking up wedding blogs and websites.
It was a sickness.
I forget when exactly I started looking at the calendar on my computer, but I know it was less than a week before I realized that in 2009, our anniversary was going to fall on a Saturday. Which would mean an engagement of just over a year. But it would be one less important date to remember!
See, I have a thing about choosing easy-to-remember days for important points in Billy's and my relationship. For awhile, Billy tried to argue that we started going out on February 20th, as we hadn't actually slept yet, thus we were operating like it was (really really) late on Friday when we were out.
But February 21st is exactly one week after Valentine's Day. It's much easier to remember the date that way.
Our six month anniversary, August 21st, was also special as well, because it was an easy date to remember...but those details can't be published on a public blog. I think Billy would kill me (which would totally put a damper on the whole "wedding" thing).
And then, of course, Billy proposed on New Year's Eve. No forgetting that date!
So it totally made sense to me to get married on what will be our fifth anniversary. Billy was hesitant at first - but I convinced him!
I think our parents thought we were a little crazy at first, especially since nowhere we were considering getting married at is exactly the nicest place in the middle of February. Which meant for a very brief time we (read: I) considered a destination wedding...but I'm too much of a control freak for that!
So, to re-assure everyone, I also had some non-sentimental reasons for 1) shortening the engagement and 2) making it the middle of February.
1) It was very important to both Billy and I that our friends from the forensics team be able to attend the wedding, something that may have been difficult if we waited for more than a year as all of our friends are or were near graduation and making plans to move away. This way we could catch them before they left, or at least before we lost contact with them.
2) It's the middle of winter. Who gets married in the middle of winter? Especially on a non-holiday weekend. I was positive we'd catch at least some deals on prices that way.
Eventually everyone saw my logic :-)
How did you choose your date?
Friday, July 18, 2008
THE ENGAGEMENT
The first story everyone wants to hear when they meet a newly engaged person.
Billy and I had been talking about marriage for...awhile. I don't know exactly how long. I remember that only a few weeks into our courtship freshmen year that we were talking about things like future houses and marriage and whether I'd change my last name. But that quickly weirded us out and so we put that on the back burner for awhile. But for whatever reason, we've been very serious about our relationship since day 1, and for years it's seemed like only a matter of time before we made it legal.
Last July, Chris, the same friend of Billy's I'd met way back in September of freshmen year, married his girlfriend since November of freshmen year (and my roommate for a year and half of college) and Billy and I were both in the wedding. That was when we began to seriously talk about getting married. And Billy eventually said that he didn't want to get married until we had both finished school and had settled...wherever it was we were going to settle (at that point we hadn't decided on New York yet; we were still considering Las Angeles).
We graduated in December, but we knew we weren't going to be moving for awhile yet. Shortly after graduation, Billy and I split up (again) to spend Christmas with our respective families. So when Billy called me on Christmas eve, just 5 days after our official graduation, to say we were going to go out to a fancy dinner at the Chop House on New Year's Eve, I figured this was just going to be a fun chance to get dressed up and have a wonderful dinner on "our" holiday.
Since our families live roughly one state and 6 hours apart, we often end up getting split up for holidays. Or we're both with one of our families on the actual holiday and then have to visit the other one a short time later, meaning we never get to be just us during vacations from school. Except that, at first by coincidence and then by design, we have managed to spend every New Year's together, by ourselves, in Ypsilanti. While we had never done anything as grand as a fancy dinner together (activities usually range from watching terrible horror movies on DVD to going to Harry Potter themed parties), this just seemed to be a natural progression. Nothing out of the ordinary there!
Billy and I as Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange at the afore-mentioned HP-themed party
Once New Year's Eve finally rolled around, I was a complete bum all day. I dyed my hair in the morning, then spent the whole rest of the day lounging on the couch in my pajamas, playing Wario Woods on our Wii. Billy, meanwhile, had changed into his suit half way through the day and was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Which I didn't notice because I was busy kicking Wario's ass. When I did begin to notice, I kept double checking that our reservations weren't until 7 in the evening, and that my cell phone did in fact have the correct time on it.
They were, and it did. Billy was just crazy.
Around 5:30 Billy announced that he had to "go out and get something." Which I thought was weird, as he's usually much more forthcoming about his activities. But if it meant he would stop walking in front of the TV, I didn't much care (I had a serious Wario Woods problem for awhile. But I'm better now).
An hour later he returned...with nothing. I was beginning to wonder what was going on, but didn't press the issue too hard. It was now my turn to start getting beautiful. I had to pause while getting dressed, however, because I couldn't zip my dress up all the way by myself. I needed Billy's help, but he had sequestered himself in our bathroom, with the door shut. Which is weird, because our bathroom has two parts: a room with the shower and toilet, and another room with the sink. Since the door doesn't really latch to the sink-room, we never close it (our cats push open any door that's in their way). After haranguing him for a minute through the door, demanding to know what was going on, Billy finally emerged holding a jewelry box...filled with a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings!
I wasn't obsessively taking pictures to blog with at that point, so here's the best picture I have of them from our engagement picture session
I squee'd and gave Billy a great big hug. I was so blinded by the sparkle that I missed Billy's big (if inadvertent) clue that something else was coming; when I was hugging him he had to pull his suit jacket back so that I wouldn't feel the lump of another jewelry box in his inner pocket. When I asked why he was giving me these, since he'd already given me a Christmas present of a nice espresso machine, he said he thought I deserved to have a sparkly Christmas present. While I loved my espresso machine, and certainly didn't expect anything more, I wasn't going to turn down these suckers!
So we finished getting ourselves together and when we got out to Billy's car I discovered more gifts: a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates waiting for me on the front seat of the car. Awwwwwwwwwww!
So after three surprise presents in a row, we get out to the Chop House and order our ridiculously expensive (and ridiculously delicious) meals (and champagne!). The steaks were amazing, which was to be expected; the salad and the champagne a little less so, but I was still enjoying myself. I was forcing myself to drink all of the champagne (it was the most expensive drink I've ever had in my life; you bet I wasn't going to let it go to waste!), and had nearly finished it when Billy excused himself to go to the restroom.
After about five minutes I realize that Billy's taking a really long time. As I took the last swig of champagne I had a fleeting thought: I wonder if he's going to propose tonight? I quickly shot down the idea and finished the glass.
It wasn't a minute later when I heard shuffling and what sounded like something falling behind me. When I turned around, there was Billy down on one knee, holding out a gorgeous diamond and sapphire ring to match the earrings from earlier in the evening.
Oooh, more shiny!
The first words out of my mouth were "oh my god!" As were the next one hundred or so as Billy asked if I would make him my husband (words he was agonizing over in the bathroom). I swear I said "of course!" but Billy claims he never heard me. So now we pretend that I could, in fact, call this off at any time because I never actually said yes. I'm just wearing the ring because it's pretty! Especially since it's been dubbed by our friends as the magic bling, because it's actually two rings: a diamond solitaire and then an enhancer with the sapphires and more diamonds on it.
So anyone else's engagement coincide with a special day in their relationship?
Billy and I had been talking about marriage for...awhile. I don't know exactly how long. I remember that only a few weeks into our courtship freshmen year that we were talking about things like future houses and marriage and whether I'd change my last name. But that quickly weirded us out and so we put that on the back burner for awhile. But for whatever reason, we've been very serious about our relationship since day 1, and for years it's seemed like only a matter of time before we made it legal.
Last July, Chris, the same friend of Billy's I'd met way back in September of freshmen year, married his girlfriend since November of freshmen year (and my roommate for a year and half of college) and Billy and I were both in the wedding. That was when we began to seriously talk about getting married. And Billy eventually said that he didn't want to get married until we had both finished school and had settled...wherever it was we were going to settle (at that point we hadn't decided on New York yet; we were still considering Las Angeles).
We graduated in December, but we knew we weren't going to be moving for awhile yet. Shortly after graduation, Billy and I split up (again) to spend Christmas with our respective families. So when Billy called me on Christmas eve, just 5 days after our official graduation, to say we were going to go out to a fancy dinner at the Chop House on New Year's Eve, I figured this was just going to be a fun chance to get dressed up and have a wonderful dinner on "our" holiday.
Since our families live roughly one state and 6 hours apart, we often end up getting split up for holidays. Or we're both with one of our families on the actual holiday and then have to visit the other one a short time later, meaning we never get to be just us during vacations from school. Except that, at first by coincidence and then by design, we have managed to spend every New Year's together, by ourselves, in Ypsilanti. While we had never done anything as grand as a fancy dinner together (activities usually range from watching terrible horror movies on DVD to going to Harry Potter themed parties), this just seemed to be a natural progression. Nothing out of the ordinary there!
Billy and I as Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange at the afore-mentioned HP-themed party
Once New Year's Eve finally rolled around, I was a complete bum all day. I dyed my hair in the morning, then spent the whole rest of the day lounging on the couch in my pajamas, playing Wario Woods on our Wii. Billy, meanwhile, had changed into his suit half way through the day and was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Which I didn't notice because I was busy kicking Wario's ass. When I did begin to notice, I kept double checking that our reservations weren't until 7 in the evening, and that my cell phone did in fact have the correct time on it.
They were, and it did. Billy was just crazy.
Around 5:30 Billy announced that he had to "go out and get something." Which I thought was weird, as he's usually much more forthcoming about his activities. But if it meant he would stop walking in front of the TV, I didn't much care (I had a serious Wario Woods problem for awhile. But I'm better now).
An hour later he returned...with nothing. I was beginning to wonder what was going on, but didn't press the issue too hard. It was now my turn to start getting beautiful. I had to pause while getting dressed, however, because I couldn't zip my dress up all the way by myself. I needed Billy's help, but he had sequestered himself in our bathroom, with the door shut. Which is weird, because our bathroom has two parts: a room with the shower and toilet, and another room with the sink. Since the door doesn't really latch to the sink-room, we never close it (our cats push open any door that's in their way). After haranguing him for a minute through the door, demanding to know what was going on, Billy finally emerged holding a jewelry box...filled with a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings!
I wasn't obsessively taking pictures to blog with at that point, so here's the best picture I have of them from our engagement picture session
I squee'd and gave Billy a great big hug. I was so blinded by the sparkle that I missed Billy's big (if inadvertent) clue that something else was coming; when I was hugging him he had to pull his suit jacket back so that I wouldn't feel the lump of another jewelry box in his inner pocket. When I asked why he was giving me these, since he'd already given me a Christmas present of a nice espresso machine, he said he thought I deserved to have a sparkly Christmas present. While I loved my espresso machine, and certainly didn't expect anything more, I wasn't going to turn down these suckers!
So we finished getting ourselves together and when we got out to Billy's car I discovered more gifts: a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates waiting for me on the front seat of the car. Awwwwwwwwwww!
So after three surprise presents in a row, we get out to the Chop House and order our ridiculously expensive (and ridiculously delicious) meals (and champagne!). The steaks were amazing, which was to be expected; the salad and the champagne a little less so, but I was still enjoying myself. I was forcing myself to drink all of the champagne (it was the most expensive drink I've ever had in my life; you bet I wasn't going to let it go to waste!), and had nearly finished it when Billy excused himself to go to the restroom.
After about five minutes I realize that Billy's taking a really long time. As I took the last swig of champagne I had a fleeting thought: I wonder if he's going to propose tonight? I quickly shot down the idea and finished the glass.
It wasn't a minute later when I heard shuffling and what sounded like something falling behind me. When I turned around, there was Billy down on one knee, holding out a gorgeous diamond and sapphire ring to match the earrings from earlier in the evening.
Oooh, more shiny!
The first words out of my mouth were "oh my god!" As were the next one hundred or so as Billy asked if I would make him my husband (words he was agonizing over in the bathroom). I swear I said "of course!" but Billy claims he never heard me. So now we pretend that I could, in fact, call this off at any time because I never actually said yes. I'm just wearing the ring because it's pretty! Especially since it's been dubbed by our friends as the magic bling, because it's actually two rings: a diamond solitaire and then an enhancer with the sapphires and more diamonds on it.
So anyone else's engagement coincide with a special day in their relationship?
How Billy and Angela got together
Last time, on Angela's Wedding Tracker...
Billy and Angela are clearly great friends, who share a love of theatre and nerdy things. But with both of them interested in other people, how will true love bloom?
I think that Billy's and my relationship took a turn for more serious territory right before we split up for our first Christmas break from college (this will become a running theme in our relationship; just watch).
A few days before the end of the semester, we were invited to go watch one of our friends sing at a Christmas service in a church "near Detroit." What we didn't realize was that to this dear friend, "near Detroit" meant Windsor, Canada. And we didn't have any sort of documentation that you need in order to go to Canada.
You find out who your true friends are when you are detained by customs because you're trying to cross the US/Canada border to attend church without proper ID.
The Canadians were super nice and actually didn't "detain" us for too long. They searched the car, didn't find anything suspicious, so they let us go on our merry way, warning us that we probably wouldn't be able to get back into the US without our birth certificates or passports.
So Billy and I bonded at the McDonald's that's right across from the bridge to Canada (Wikipedia tells me it's the Ambassador Bridge, but all of the highway signs on I-94 around here simply say Bridge to Canada. It's kind of imposing, actually). And after several frantic calls to our parents, we were urged to at least try to get back into the country.
So we did. And lo and behold, they let us! It was a very happy day for us. We were very giddy on the way back to school (in between being pissed off at our friend who had led us astray). While Billy and I had been hanging out for months, for the most part it was in a group. This was really the first time just the two of us had done anything together.
And then two days later we had to leave each other for three weeks. It sucked for both of us, though I simply thought it was because Billy was really cool and fun and of course I missed being stuck at home without any of my college friends!
Actually, my friends, this was when Angela began her slow descent into terror. Because it didn't take long after we got back to school after the long break that I didn't just like Billy. I liked Billy. A boy. A guy. A man.
That didn't sit to well with my self-identifying-lesbian self. For the past two years I had identified myself as a lesbian. I had absolutely no interest in guys and lots of interest in women. It had only been the summer before entering school that I had ever registered being attracted to a guy in any sense, and that was after seeing Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
So for awhile after returning to school, I was a little uncomfortable, but got over my fears quickly. I mean, if I was going to have a crush on a guy, Billy was a pretty safe choice, because there wasn't anything I could do about it. He had been dating the same girl for almost four years! I couldn't touch a relationship like that.
Until Billy dumped his girlfriend. Then I went "oh crap!" and into full-on panic mode for awhile. What was I supposed to do! I'd never had a crush on someone who could maybe-possibly reciprocate those feelings! Actually, who am I kidding, I was convinced Billy would never reciprocate my feelings. Not even after we spent lots of time alone together (we had a class together! We had to study!), I joined the forensics team (I had been planning to join during the second semester since the beginning, even before I knew Billy!), and we did silly things like have staring contests in the forensics room in front of all our friends, and other friends made comments to us about being able to "cut the sexual tension with a biscuit."
We have weird friends.
But eventually, I began to figure out that maybe Billy liked me in the same way I liked him. Because we were friends (and I was trying to drop anvil-sized hints), I had told him that I thought I was bisexual. So he offered to take me on a "practice date" so I would know how to handle myself on a date with a guy, whoever he ended up being.
We went to Panera Bread. Very romantic, I know.
After the practice date, we went to a forensics dinner party where we flirted like mad. After the party he came back to my dorm, ostensibly because he had left one of his books up there earlier in the day. Instead we started talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And eventually the topic of the mystery guy I liked came up. And after that I finally confessed that it was him I liked.
Luckily, he felt the same way!
My stomach was absolutely filled with butterflies as we went out on our first official date to Denny's, somewhere around 3 in the morning on Saturday, February 21st. I ordered a salad and a drink (Sprite with Grenadine) that I could barely touch because I was so effing nervous. I had never been on a real date before, with a woman or a man, so I was freaking out so much I'd had troubling buckling my shoes before we left my dorm, let alone choking down a salad.
Remember how I said Billy and I have excellent timing? Here's where it comes back into play: mere hours after the end of our first date, we had to split up because it was spring break and the dorms were closing. So just hours after I had made the most agonizing decision of my life, to date this perfect, awesome and amazing guy, I had to leave him for a whole week!
The universe has a cruel sense of irony.
Billy and Angela are clearly great friends, who share a love of theatre and nerdy things. But with both of them interested in other people, how will true love bloom?
I think that Billy's and my relationship took a turn for more serious territory right before we split up for our first Christmas break from college (this will become a running theme in our relationship; just watch).
A few days before the end of the semester, we were invited to go watch one of our friends sing at a Christmas service in a church "near Detroit." What we didn't realize was that to this dear friend, "near Detroit" meant Windsor, Canada. And we didn't have any sort of documentation that you need in order to go to Canada.
You find out who your true friends are when you are detained by customs because you're trying to cross the US/Canada border to attend church without proper ID.
The Canadians were super nice and actually didn't "detain" us for too long. They searched the car, didn't find anything suspicious, so they let us go on our merry way, warning us that we probably wouldn't be able to get back into the US without our birth certificates or passports.
So Billy and I bonded at the McDonald's that's right across from the bridge to Canada (Wikipedia tells me it's the Ambassador Bridge, but all of the highway signs on I-94 around here simply say Bridge to Canada. It's kind of imposing, actually). And after several frantic calls to our parents, we were urged to at least try to get back into the country.
So we did. And lo and behold, they let us! It was a very happy day for us. We were very giddy on the way back to school (in between being pissed off at our friend who had led us astray). While Billy and I had been hanging out for months, for the most part it was in a group. This was really the first time just the two of us had done anything together.
And then two days later we had to leave each other for three weeks. It sucked for both of us, though I simply thought it was because Billy was really cool and fun and of course I missed being stuck at home without any of my college friends!
Actually, my friends, this was when Angela began her slow descent into terror. Because it didn't take long after we got back to school after the long break that I didn't just like Billy. I liked Billy. A boy. A guy. A man.
That didn't sit to well with my self-identifying-lesbian self. For the past two years I had identified myself as a lesbian. I had absolutely no interest in guys and lots of interest in women. It had only been the summer before entering school that I had ever registered being attracted to a guy in any sense, and that was after seeing Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
So for awhile after returning to school, I was a little uncomfortable, but got over my fears quickly. I mean, if I was going to have a crush on a guy, Billy was a pretty safe choice, because there wasn't anything I could do about it. He had been dating the same girl for almost four years! I couldn't touch a relationship like that.
Until Billy dumped his girlfriend. Then I went "oh crap!" and into full-on panic mode for awhile. What was I supposed to do! I'd never had a crush on someone who could maybe-possibly reciprocate those feelings! Actually, who am I kidding, I was convinced Billy would never reciprocate my feelings. Not even after we spent lots of time alone together (we had a class together! We had to study!), I joined the forensics team (I had been planning to join during the second semester since the beginning, even before I knew Billy!), and we did silly things like have staring contests in the forensics room in front of all our friends, and other friends made comments to us about being able to "cut the sexual tension with a biscuit."
We have weird friends.
But eventually, I began to figure out that maybe Billy liked me in the same way I liked him. Because we were friends (and I was trying to drop anvil-sized hints), I had told him that I thought I was bisexual. So he offered to take me on a "practice date" so I would know how to handle myself on a date with a guy, whoever he ended up being.
We went to Panera Bread. Very romantic, I know.
After the practice date, we went to a forensics dinner party where we flirted like mad. After the party he came back to my dorm, ostensibly because he had left one of his books up there earlier in the day. Instead we started talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And eventually the topic of the mystery guy I liked came up. And after that I finally confessed that it was him I liked.
Luckily, he felt the same way!
My stomach was absolutely filled with butterflies as we went out on our first official date to Denny's, somewhere around 3 in the morning on Saturday, February 21st. I ordered a salad and a drink (Sprite with Grenadine) that I could barely touch because I was so effing nervous. I had never been on a real date before, with a woman or a man, so I was freaking out so much I'd had troubling buckling my shoes before we left my dorm, let alone choking down a salad.
Remember how I said Billy and I have excellent timing? Here's where it comes back into play: mere hours after the end of our first date, we had to split up because it was spring break and the dorms were closing. So just hours after I had made the most agonizing decision of my life, to date this perfect, awesome and amazing guy, I had to leave him for a whole week!
The universe has a cruel sense of irony.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Obligatory Introduction Post!
Welcome to my latest blog on the world wide web! (Do we still use that term anymore? Or am I dating myself?)
This blog is dedicated to keeping track of all of my wedding planning thoughts and do-ings. I've been posting about them on my personal blog, but I have a lot of people on my friend's list there that aren't necessarily interested in the finer details of wedding planning. And I also post a lot of non-wedding related things there that would hold no interest for the wedding-blog related world, so I figured it was time to start yet another blog (this is my...seventh blog since I started blogging 9 or 10 years ago. I've been doing this since before it was cool!)
About me: I'm 23 years old, originally from a small, conservative city in Michigan but currently living in a college town on the other side of the state. For a few more weeks, anyway. Then I'm moving out to the Big Apple, where my fiance and I hope to start our grown up careers! He wants to work in theatre or television, while I'm currently trying to break into publishing while debating whether I should go back to school to get a master's degree in...something.
About us: The "us," of course, being my fiance and I. Billy and I met the very first weekend of our freshmen year at college. We were auditioning for the school's fall shows. I was sitting in a corner with a few other freshmen girls as we tried to figure out the audition form. Billy's best friend, Chris, apparently knew some of those girls, and he dragged Billy along to talk to us.
While it was Chris who knew the other girls, he, Billy and I ended up doing most of the talking. The three of us bonded over having done some of the same (crappy) shows in high school and eventually decided that the three of us should go get dinner at the school's food court, since none of us were due to be called in for our audition for awhile.
So we talked, we laughed, we ate bad pizza. When we went back to the theatre, they were making the final call for me to get my butt in there and audition. I freaked out and ran in, and didn't see Billy and Chris for the rest of the night.
There's nothing truly romantic about this meeting. Some women meet their future husband's for the first time and declare that evening that they will marry that man some day. Me? When I went home to do my obligatory blog post, I could hardly even remember Billy's name. (I totally got it right in the blog entry, but I was very hesitant about it and wasn't sure if I got it right. Billy has never let me forget this!)
Billy and I were both cast in the same show, but Chris had obligations to other extra-curricular activities so he didn't make the cut.
Billy and I were essentially the only two people in the show that didn't already have a built in group of friends. Everyone else was either an upper class men, a clearly tight-knit group, or they were a freshmen from the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area and had known each other since diapers. I was the only person from my side of the state at the school, and Billy really only had Chris as a friend there. So Billy and I hit it off immediately - strictly as friends! He'd been dating someone since freshmen year of high school, and I was looking for a girlfriend at the time. But Billy was fun and charming and played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade.
A man after my own heart. Together with Chris and a few of our other new friends we set up a group that played various role playing games loooooooooooong into the night on Thursdays after play rehearsals, often not finishing the games until after dawn on Friday morning (all of us had lucked out on not having any Friday classes).
But for the longest time, that's where it stayed: just friends. He was in his long-distance relationship with his (rather jealous) girlfriend and was active in forensics with Chris and our other friends. I had plays and school. We had fun together, but really, dating was pretty far from my mind.
Until...
Next up: how Billy and I drove all of our friends CRAZY by not acknowledging how crazy we were for each other!
This blog is dedicated to keeping track of all of my wedding planning thoughts and do-ings. I've been posting about them on my personal blog, but I have a lot of people on my friend's list there that aren't necessarily interested in the finer details of wedding planning. And I also post a lot of non-wedding related things there that would hold no interest for the wedding-blog related world, so I figured it was time to start yet another blog (this is my...seventh blog since I started blogging 9 or 10 years ago. I've been doing this since before it was cool!)
About me: I'm 23 years old, originally from a small, conservative city in Michigan but currently living in a college town on the other side of the state. For a few more weeks, anyway. Then I'm moving out to the Big Apple, where my fiance and I hope to start our grown up careers! He wants to work in theatre or television, while I'm currently trying to break into publishing while debating whether I should go back to school to get a master's degree in...something.
About us: The "us," of course, being my fiance and I. Billy and I met the very first weekend of our freshmen year at college. We were auditioning for the school's fall shows. I was sitting in a corner with a few other freshmen girls as we tried to figure out the audition form. Billy's best friend, Chris, apparently knew some of those girls, and he dragged Billy along to talk to us.
While it was Chris who knew the other girls, he, Billy and I ended up doing most of the talking. The three of us bonded over having done some of the same (crappy) shows in high school and eventually decided that the three of us should go get dinner at the school's food court, since none of us were due to be called in for our audition for awhile.
So we talked, we laughed, we ate bad pizza. When we went back to the theatre, they were making the final call for me to get my butt in there and audition. I freaked out and ran in, and didn't see Billy and Chris for the rest of the night.
There's nothing truly romantic about this meeting. Some women meet their future husband's for the first time and declare that evening that they will marry that man some day. Me? When I went home to do my obligatory blog post, I could hardly even remember Billy's name. (I totally got it right in the blog entry, but I was very hesitant about it and wasn't sure if I got it right. Billy has never let me forget this!)
Billy and I were both cast in the same show, but Chris had obligations to other extra-curricular activities so he didn't make the cut.
Billy and I were essentially the only two people in the show that didn't already have a built in group of friends. Everyone else was either an upper class men, a clearly tight-knit group, or they were a freshmen from the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area and had known each other since diapers. I was the only person from my side of the state at the school, and Billy really only had Chris as a friend there. So Billy and I hit it off immediately - strictly as friends! He'd been dating someone since freshmen year of high school, and I was looking for a girlfriend at the time. But Billy was fun and charming and played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade.
A man after my own heart. Together with Chris and a few of our other new friends we set up a group that played various role playing games loooooooooooong into the night on Thursdays after play rehearsals, often not finishing the games until after dawn on Friday morning (all of us had lucked out on not having any Friday classes).
But for the longest time, that's where it stayed: just friends. He was in his long-distance relationship with his (rather jealous) girlfriend and was active in forensics with Chris and our other friends. I had plays and school. We had fun together, but really, dating was pretty far from my mind.
Until...
Next up: how Billy and I drove all of our friends CRAZY by not acknowledging how crazy we were for each other!
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