Unexpected kindness

I'm taking a quick breather from madcap packing (as soon as I'm finished with this post the computer needs to be turned off and packed up!) to do a quick write up about a small but meaningful act of wedding-related kindness.

So last night Billy and I went out to one of the local bars for our going away party. It took a little while for people to start showing up, but once they did we had a great evening with some of our best friends from school. It really made me realize how much I'm going to miss all of them!

Then completely out of the blue, our friend Marisa (who I've been meaning to ask to be one of our ushers, but our schedules have been so busy I haven't been able to see her to ask!) mentions that she wanted to know when I was going to come back to Michigan so she could throw a bachelorette party for me so I could have one with my school friends! I almost started to cry, it was so sweet. She had no way of knowing I was going to ask her to be in the wedding, and yet she wanted to go out of her way to make sure I had a great party with my school friends. Of course, I asked her right there at the bar to be one of our ushers.

It was a sweet night all around :-)

Where have you found unexpected kindness in wedding planning?

Quiet Weekend

Billy and I are sorting through our apartment and packing things up this weekend. We've been college students for years and have always moved either from one rinky dinky dorm to another, or from our individual rinky dinky dorms into a full size apartment, so we never had to worry too much about sorting/packing before. Both of us always just shoved our crap into boxes, dumped it all into the new place, and sorted everything out once we were settled in.

Now we're going from a full size, one bedroom apartment into a tiny studio only marginally larger than some of the dorm rooms I've had. That means downsizing A LOT. We have to figure out what's coming with us, what's going in the trash, what's going to the Salvation Army, and what's going to be stored at our parents' houses until we're in a place with enough space for all of our stuff.

I imagine it's a little bit like what newlyweds go through when they're combining two households for the first time, except with fewer fights over hideous arm chairs (full disclosure: I'm the one who brought the ratty recliner into this relationship, but even I agree it has to go. It's older than I am and we're not renting a moving van so we have no way of transporting the thing from here to New York!).

Anyway, what all this means is posting is going to be light for the next week or so. I move back to my parents' house for a week starting Tuesday, which means computer access is going to be limited (I have no place to set up my desktop at my parents' house, and when I'm there I have to share the family computer with three other computer junkies). I'm going to be meeting with our officiant while I'm there, so I'll try to squeeze in a post about that, but otherwise it'll probably be radio silence until I'm in New York!

Variations on a theme

Fairly early on, Billy and I settled on incorporating movies into our wedding as the theme. It's perfect for us: we absolutely love movies and we can incorporate our theme and have fun while also easily maintaining a stylish and rather formal flair.

So I quickly began figuring out how we could incorporate movies into our wedding. Of course, naming our tables after our favorite movies was obvious. And back in February I discovered the Internet Movie Poster Awards, which is going to be perfect for printing out postcard size versions of our favorite movie posters.

This poster is currently hanging in our living room, and will definitely be making an appearance as a table name!

Next idea was to have all of our "pre-show" music (I've been a theatre geek for a lifetime; I can only think of these things in theatre terms) be from movies. Maybe just the orchestral scores from various movies? (Easy way to incorporate some Star Wars - Billy's favorite movie(s) - into the wedding. Even though I'm not a big fan of the films myself, the music is fabulous)

Another fun idea: movie-inspired cake toppers! Right now I think we're each going to have an action figure representing our favorite movies: Billy wants Hans Solo, I'm using Elizabeth Swann (I told you I was obsessed!)

And then, as we began figuring out what music we wanted for various parts of the wedding, I discovered our movie theme was insinuating itself in that aspect, too, without me even trying!
Processional: Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, performed by Low Strung (inspired by hearing a few bars of this in The Wedding Singer)



First Dance: Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole as seen in Finding Forrester


Father/Daughter Dance: Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now by Jefferson Starship as seen in Mannequin

We still haven't figured out what our other songs will be (I want "One Day" from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End to be the bride's processional; Billy wants The Final Countdown to be our recessional. Neither of us is 100% behind the other's choice, so we're at a bit of a stalemate at the moment!).

So since that discovery, finding clever, understated and tasteful ways to incorporate our theme has been my obsession. By choosing a relatively common event theme (we certainly aren't the first wedding to choose this theme, and I think everyone attended a high school dance themed around the Academy Awards!), I find myself walking a fine line between doing something cliche or elegant. But here's some of the ideas so far:

An Oscar ballot guest book: instead of everyone signing a traditional guest book (or even some of the awesome guest book alternatives out there), we'll make up short Oscar Ballots covering the big categories, and then throw in either some fake categories (I have no idea what they would be at this point!) or leave lots of extra lines for well-wishers to leave their own input. Of course, this is something that I can't really do too far in advance: the nominees are only going to be announced one month before our wedding! I'm also thinking that maybe after the honeymoon, when we're looking through the "ballots," we'll post whoever got the most categories correct and send them a small prize.

Oscar trivia kissing game: Mentioned first by our officiant, and the idea further solidified by this kissing menu: we come up with a bunch of movie/Oscar trivia questions. If someone wants us to kiss, they have to correctly answer the trivia question

Rejected idea: movie clapboard card box

(Source)
For me, this delves too much into cheese-y territory. It's just a little bit too much. Instead, I think I'm going to stick with her original idea: a wooden treasure chest that served as my Christmas "stocking" a few years ago (when she only bought my Pirate-related things for my stocking. Mom loves a good theme as much as I do!)

How are you incorporating your theme into your wedding? Anyone else worried about coming off as cheesey?

Bachelorette Weekend!

I am an incredibly lucky bride, because my bachelorette party wasn't just one night. Nope, I got three whole days in which to hang out with some of the most important women in my life. Three days of shopping, playing and eating. Totally awesome :-)

(BM Nicole, myself, MOH Brittany and BM Rachel, in front of Lush!)

At the end of April, three of my four bridesmaids and I met up in Chicago for a fantastic couple of days. Unfortunately, my other bridesmaid, Carling, couldn't join us :-( :-( :-(

Chicago was chosen for two reasons. First, a few years ago when Nicole got engaged, Brittany, myself and another friend took her to Chicago for a few days since the poor girl had never been there! Our hometown is a mere three hours away from Chicago by train, and with train tickets costing something like $8 at the time, there was no reason not to go! We hung out, went to various museums, and topped it off with seeing the original Chicago cast in Wicked, which had opened only a few weeks before we showed up.

(Ana Gasteyer as Elphaba)

So when my turn to have a bachelorette party rolled around, Chicago was a natural choice. To make it even more convenient this time around, Rachel was living in Chicago and had room for us to crash in the living room of her apartment!

I had a couple of things I wanted to do while we were there: try on bridesmaid dresses, and shop at Lush and Paper Source (which were even on the same street, just a few blocks apart. Super convenient!)

In addition, since we are all theatre geeks, I got to make suggestions for what show I wanted to see. We ended up seeing Sweeney Todd!

(Source)

It's no secret that I have a ridiculous crush on Johnny Depp, so I had seen the movie version and loooooooooooooved it, but definitely wanted to see the theatrical version as well, especially since this was the 2005 revival version, which had all of the actors playing the music on stage! Very cool.

We also got to see it at the very cool Cadillac Palace Theatre

(Picture by Brittany)

Best of all, we got to dress up all pretty for the show - it was the sort of theatre where if you showed up in jeans you would feel seriously underdressed.

There was also a sex toy party...of which there are no pictures :-( But I'm sure they would have been hilarious. (It was awesome to be the bride there. The rep had only brought one of a couple of the toys with her, so everyone would defer to me to see if I wanted it first!)

We also found out that, despite being a resident of Chicago for several years, Rachel had never been to the Field Museum!

(Look out! Sue's gonna getcha! Photo by Brittany)

Billy also requested that if there were any triceratops at the museum, that I get a picture for him.

Brittany, Nicole and I also checked out the aquarium while Rachel was doing some emergency repair work on her computer, which had been soaked in a rainstorm.

(Ahh! Big fish!)

And finally, the most important part of any party: Food. I was obsessed with getting a Chicago-style hot dog (best food in the world - if I could serve them at the wedding, I probably would!). Luckily, right outside of the aquarium was a hot dog cart.

Yum!

Probably the most attractive picture of me ever

I did it! (mostly - the pickle wouldn't stay on the bun! I swear!)

Anyone else have a multi-day adventure for their bachelorette party (or any other wedding-related festivity?) What were the highlights?

Family Drama

It seems like one of the most common bridal horror stories has to do with family. Maybe it's Dad not wanting to contribute his share, or a future mother-in-law going crazy with her guest list demands. Possibly everyone who has ever gotten married has a story like that (my mom has a hilarious one regarding my dad's parents), but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone else with my particular conundrum before...

As I mentioned in my last post, for me my family consists of my mom, my dad, and my younger brother, Dan. Totally average American family, right? Except for one little hitch: Dan is autistic.

Autism is an incredibly complex disorder, so invariably when I share with friends that I have an autistic brother I'm hit with a barrage of questions. Thankfully, most people have figured out that Dennis Hoffman's portrayal is less-than-accurate, but there are still lots of questions.

Dan is what we describe as "moderately autistic." He can speak and hold limited conversations with people, but he's also very regimented with his schedule and hates change of any sort. Also, heartbreakingly, he functions just high enough to recognize that he's different from other people, but he can't define it or understand why.

He is also ridiculously good at video games. Like, we don't buy video games for him any more because he beats them in an afternoon. It's kind of crazy.

Because of Dan's special needs, we didn't have the sibling relationship that most other people had. We didn't roughhouse (because when we did I usually ended up falling down a flight of stairs!), nor did we have a lot of sibling rivalry. Instead, I spent half of my childhood as a third parent. Not because my parents forced me to, I just picked it up on my own. When we were little I acted as his translator because his speech was often too garbled for the adults to understand (or he was talking about cartoons or toys our parents hadn't caught on to yet, so he really might as well have been speaking a foreign language to them), and I constantly defended him against anyone who would dare make fun of him or people like him.

But there never seemed to be much of a mutual relationship between us. I loved him, took care of him, helped him with school work and video games (before they got too complex for me), and he...didn't care, it seemed. Once I moved away for college my parents said he'd occasionally mention that he missed me, or hoped I would be home for Christmas or whatever, but I didn't really come up very much.

Billy, however, seemed to become his best friend the first time they met. Because Billy knew video games! Billy was a guy! Billy was cool!

So imagine my complete surprise when I told my family that Billy and I were engaged...and Dan freaked out. He was angry and sullen and told everyone that Billy was taking away the person that was most important to him and ripping out his heart.

Ouch.

He also must have heard my dad refer to Billy as "son" at one point, because he also got it into his head at one point that Billy was going to replace him.

Luckily, my family does have some community resources that help people like Dan and we were able to get him in to talk to a social worker and a counselor. They've assured us that we didn't do anything to set Dan off; most likely any sort of major change, like Dad retiring in a couple of years, could have made this happen. It's also revealed that most likely there's some other disorder like depression simmering under the surface, as often happens to people in Dan's situation, so he can get help for that as well.

So while I'm glad Dan is getting lots of help and support, it's also making planning the wedding rather difficult. I can't talk about it on the phone with Mom if Dan is in the house, and even when I go home to visit Mom and I usually do most of our planning out at lunch or holed up in her craft room. Also, if Billy comes home with me, we have to rent a hotel room, since his presence at the house can often send Dan into a fit. Since we've been saving money for both the wedding and moving to New York, this has meant very few trips back to my place together.

But possibly the hardest part of this? At this point, my little brother is not going to be attending the wedding. Occasionally I'll get depressed and feel like I'm probably the only sister in the world who has ever had to exclude her brother from any part of the wedding festivities. He's not standing up in the wedding party, he's not maintaining the guest book...he probably won't even attend the ceremony or reception. Because no one wants a meltdown in the middle of the wedding day. It sucks, it hurts, but unless there's a major breakthrough in the next six months, this is just the way it's going to have to be for everyone's well being.

What sort of family problems have been thrown your way? How are you working around them?

Gaining a Family

I come from a relatively small family. Unlike a lot of people in my home town, my immediate family was the only family close by; everyone else was living within five minutes of their cousins and grand parents and great-grand parents.

For me, it was just Mom, Dad, my brother and myself. I had an aunt in Kentucky, an uncle who had married an atrocious woman who didn't want him to have any contact with the rest of the family (they finally divorced so now I actually do get to see him and my cousins occasionally), and grandparents that ranged from average to terrible several hours away.

Billy's family is pretty much the opposite. Not only does he have an additional sister in his immediate family, but both of his parents come from large families, one of which lived near him in Ohio. The other half of the family was centered in Arizona, but it sounds like they get together at least once a year for a big family bash.

So for me, every time I attend a family gathering, I'm completely overwhelmed! I'm trying to get over it, but still I usually end up in a corner with a stiff drink half way through the evening. And never referring to anyone by name.

This evening, however, it really hit me that in the process of marrying my best friend, I'm also going to be gaining a family with him. And perhaps best of all, I'm going to be getting a sister in the process.

What's interesting is that, growing up, I never particularly wanted a sister! My hands were full enough with my brother (who is going to get a post entirely dedicated to him soon). And then by the time middle school rolled around, I quickly acquired several friends who became my family and we would often refer to each other by some permutation of sister (coincidentally, these women make up the rest of my bridesmaids, after Billy's sister).

Since my bridesmaids are all over the place currently, we've been keeping in contact via Facebook to plan everything. This week there's been a flurry of activity to make sure everyone has had their measurements taken, what sorts of shoes do they want to wear, and whether everyone can pay for their dresses up front so we can go with the overall cheaper dress shop. While everyone else has sent me rather perfunctory messages just letting me know the specifics I asked for, my future sister-in-law sent me a pretty chatty message, updating me on how life is going (she's currently competing in a pretty competitive semi-professional golf tournament. Or maybe it's straight-up professional? It's not the LPGA - yet - but the whole golf thing leaves me totally in the dark!) and saying how much fun she had hanging out last time Billy and I were in Ohio.

It wasn't anything extravagant. Just a nice note that left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside with the realization that in a little over six months I was going to have a sister!

How does everyone else feel about gaining a family?

I'm back!

Sorry for disappearing there for a little while. Billy and I had a very important trip to attend to...

New York City!

(Source)

In less than 20 days, Billy and I will be moving out of Michigan and into a brand new, teeny tiny studio apartment in Queens. Seriously, the size of this apartment is a little ridiculous...but as we told ourselves, it's only for a year. We can handle it for a year.

So while it's definitely exciting to finally have our place in our dream city, I'm excited for the new avenue of wedding planning it opens up for me: registering!

I started my registry on Wishpot a few weeks ago, because I was insanely bored. However, I put a limit on myself for what I could register for, because at that time we weren't sure if we were going to be getting a studio or a one bedroom apartment, and the sort of furniture/linens/etc that we would need would depend on how much room we have.

So as soon as Billy is up and going for the day, we're going to browse around various home-furnishing websites and figure out what sort of colors we should decorate with. It's exciting, but also a little overwhelming. We can only put so many colors in our apartment without overwhelming it...but I like so many colors (that won't necessarily look good together), that I hardly know where to start!

Any suggestions for small-apartment living?

Engagement Photos

Billy and I had our engagement photos taken way back in May, the day after I returned from my bachelorette trip (I'll blog about that experience soon!). I was super nervous leading up to the day because at a week out, this was the weather forecast:


Eeek! Nooooooooo!

See, our photographer, Jen, was traveling all the way from Grand Rapids to do our engagement photos for us in Ypsilanti. At the time Billy was working in retail, which meant that trying to get an entire weekend off so we could make the trip back to Grand Rapids was nearly impossible. A Sunday afternoon, however, we could manage. So I was hoping that this day would work out, since Jen's schedule for engagement photos during the summer was quickly being filled.

Everything worked out however. (Insert big sigh of relief here!)

It was a fabulous sunny day. We wandered around Depot Town and Frog Island Park and got some fabulous photos.

I have to say, one thing I cannot wait to do after the wedding is over is write up a full vendor review about Jen. Not only is she incredibly talented (as the forthcoming pictures will make obvious), but she is always so bubbly and happy and is clearly very passionate about her work. She's a completely unobtrusive photographer; when we met up she told us to "do our thing" and she'd take the pictures. True to her word, there wasn't a lot of formal posing done. Occasionally she'd make a suggestion, or stop us in a nice stand of trees to do the "traditional" engagement photo for our parents/newspapers, but nothing demanding. Billy had been sure he was going to hate doing this, but he found that he actually had fun!

Of course, since we had so much fun, Jen has now created a monster. Not only did I leap at the chance to get boudoir pictures done by her, but I'm plotting how I can convince Billy in the future that we need to make periodic trips back to Grand Rapids to have more pictures taken. I'm a total prima donna sometimes :-D

Here are some of my favorite pictures:

I want to put these two in a folding frame side by side. We're both just so cute!


Ha, this photo confused both sets of parents. Luckily, Jen and I share a love of shoes, so I thought this one was great (and is, I hope, a foreshadowing of the lovely shoe shots I'll get at the wedding!)


There was a vintage car show going on at the park! The owner of this car even let us hop inside for a few pictures, but I think this is my favorite of the bunch. I'm going to give a copy to my grandfather who loves cars (when I got my senior pictures done in high school, we took a picture of me with my car and gave that one to my grandfather, too. It's a theme!)


This, however, is probably my favorite photo of the day. I absolutely LOVE it.

I know some people hesitate before getting engagement photos taken, but if it's in your budget (or included in your wedding package like it was for us!), I definitely recommend having them done. Not only do they capture a unique moment in time, but they give you a chance to get to know your photographer before the big day!

Why I wedding blog

There are probably as many reasons to blog, in general, as there are individual bloggers. Some people just want their own little corner of the internet, others have ideas on a much grander scale for setting up the Next Big Thing in blogging.

But what about wedding bloggers? Back in May, the New York Times implied that cultivating online friendships around your mutual weddings was, at the very least, a novelty. But it also brings up excellent points about why someone might spend a lot of time at the Knot message boards: filling in the gaps in excitement. The rest of the world really doesn't care about our centerpieces, however other brides in the exact same situation can get themselves quite worked up on your behalf.

And that is precisely why I'm blogging specifically about my wedding. I haven't found a message board where I really fit in yet (all of the pertinent Knot boards seem a little too fixated on various traditions for my taste). Having my own blog lets me set the tone and guide the conversation.

It also lets me wax poetic about any given wedding-related subject without worrying about boring my audience to tears. Most likely if you're reading this, you have at least a passing interest in the planning process of someone else's wedding, but if part of my planning process doesn't interest you, you can always skip that post and come back later to see if I've gotten interesting yet. My bridesmaids, the people most brides turn to first to share their wedding excitement, are absolutely lovely women (obviously), but it doesn't seem like they have a whole lot of excitement for the accomplishments of finally getting all of the necessary addresses, or discovering that silk purple peonies came in at Michael's.

I was finally prompted to spin this blog off from my personal blog after going out to the bar and meeting another soon-to-be married friend there, where we would do nothing but talk about our various wedding planning experiences for an hour or two at a time. She was constantly worrying that she was boring me, and I her, I think in part because we aren't the type of women who normally get caught up in the excitement of something that, at the end of the day, is rather superficial. I mean, the last deep conversation we had was tag-teaming on extolling the virtues of feminism to a mutual acquaintance!

But I also realized that, as unexpected as they were, these conversations have been the highlights of my day. Because for an hour at a time, I got to let my hair down and actually have a conversation with someone about how awesome my photographer was, or figuring out whether or not I should wear a veil. And as girly as it was, it was fun.

And since I can't have those conversations every single day (especially since Billy and I are moving soon!), I've now turned to having my own, personal wedding blog.

Why do you blog?