Today's Wedding Theme Idea

"Mayonnaise-Based Salads."

Think about it. Egg salad. Chicken salad. Macaroni salad. Potato salad.

Best idea EVER.

Musing on tradition, and how much weight moral outrage gets in wedding planning

One afternoon last week, I found myself napping on some friends' couch in Long Beach for a couple of hours. It had been a long couple of days, including two trips to LA and back, some hospital visits, lots of nerves and worrying, and finally a happy ending. I was completely wiped out exhausted and prone to falling asleep wherever I was sitting, which, in this case, happened to be our friends' house. When I woke up, Adrienne had retrieved their toddler from preschool and Jeff, who works nights, was awake and sociable. I showed him my engagement ring and Nate and I squeed about wedding stuff briefly, and in a flurry of conversation about naming children, family traditions, and cultural traditions and expectations, we came across my opinions on lots of modern traditions.

I had just asked Nate if there were any naming conventions in his family (Nature willing, we'll be reproducing someday, and if I'm marrying into a family where every firstborn daughter is named Euphegenia, I want plenty of warning). He said he couldn't think of any, and I said okay, but to let me know if he could... and that if he wanted to adhere to those conventions, I wanted to know that, too, so I had time to mull it over. This prompted a comment from someone (and I'm not being intentionally vague, I'm just completely exhausted and my memory is bad) about being surprised to hear that from me, because I'm usually pretty anti-tradition.

The website lives!

We've officially completed our first co-task! We sat down, went through all the templates on mywedding.com, picked one out, and have the teeny tiny rudiments of a wedding website.

Also, welcome! This blog? Officially and entirely completely about wedding shit. It will all be this trivial, silly, self-absorbed, and childish. I make no excuses. There will, occasionally, be a contemplative post or two around here, but the vast majority of it is going to be the lightest and fluffiest of posts. Enjoy.

There will also be frequent use of the word "motherfucker."

Strange Encounters

It's funny how getting engaged pulls people out of the woodwork.

I'm thinking specifically of a few friends from high school, none of whom I've heard from in the last four or five years. I saw a couple of them at group functions once or twice during college (mostly at winter get-togethers hosted by a mutual friend who stayed in touch with them), but never one-on-one, and we never kept up communications independently.

How it all went down

This is the proposal story in its entirety. It'll almost certainly get cut down for Facebook and emails. Really, it's quite long.

Guest list, round 1

Preliminary total from our first draft "include everyone you've ever met and talked to for more than 10 minutes" spreadsheet: 213 people, not counting our extended families. On the other hand, it includes all the people who a) probably won't travel out to the wedding, b) I know and used to hang out with a lot but haven't seen in years (college roommates from sophomore year, etc.), and c) people I don't really want to invite, but will if politeness dictates.

That might, might, might be manageable, but I doubt it. And frankly, I'd like something smaller. We'll see.

I am such a cliche.

I had my first wedding dream last night. All I remember is having a big, vision-obscuring headpiece a la Lady Gaga, having about fifteen bridesmaids, some of whom matched and some of whom didn't (and some of whom I haven't seen in the last five years), and the ceremony being about fifteen seconds long. Then I had to go update the drivers on my little pink netbook, like, right after the ceremony. 

Oh, and there was a big banner covered in hearts that said "MR. AND MRS. [His Last Name]" on it. *Headdesk*

Ring sizing and Conversations with Mom.

I'm working on the bigass engagement post, but just wanted to jot a few things down.

I dropped my ring off at the jeweler to be sized yesterday, which was way more nerve-wracking than I'd anticipated. I know it's just a thing, I shouldn't be so attached to it, but I love the hell out of my engagement ring and I didn't love the way the jeweler talked to me--he was pretty bored-looking and dismissive and tried to get me to size my ring down smaller than I wanted originally. I was very direct about what I wanted, and he wrote down the correct size on the order sheet, but it didn't do a lot to inspire customer confidence. I know sizing a ring he didn't make is a small-potatoes job for him, but still. They've done good work for me in the past, so I have no reason to expect them to screw up the ring, but the combination of being nervous about having it altered to begin with and the way the jeweler acted doesn't exactly encourage my confidence. :/

I moved the ring Nate got me for Xmas over from my right hand to my left, which helped. It's still a silly thing to worry so much about.

On a brighter note, my mom seems to be coming around to the whole engagement thing. My mom and I are really close (like talking on the phone 4 or 5 times a week close), and I know she'd been and, to a certain extent, still is nervous about me getting married so young. I imagine telling her we planned to wait a year or two to get married helped assuage her fears, and last night on the phone she said she'd had some time to think about it (we'd been out of town for the weekend and I hadn't spoken to her for a few days) and was actually getting excited. She went far enough to ask if we were planning an engagement party and said "Okay, and I'll help you plan it. I'm the mother of the bride, that's my job." which made me and Nate laugh--her initial reaction to the engagement was "That's wonderful! ...But you're only twelve!"

We haven't spoken more about it in detail, but I'm really glad to hear she's slowly getting on board with the idea. As Nate said when I related the conversation to him (after laughing) "Your family loves you so much!" to which I responded "They love the shit out of me," and it's true. 

Warm fuzzies

The drive to work has officially become "Holy shit my ring looks great in sunlight" time. Seriously, I've been super busy this week, but I have to take some time to get some pictures this afternoon for Facebook and Picasa.

I also have to find time to write down how it all went. I have to get crackin' at work right now, but I definitely want to take some time to write and remember. I have a feeling things are going to start to go very fast.

It begins!

Yesterday at around noonish, I created this blog.

Yesterday at 5:00, I got proposed to.

I have a feeling I know what most of this blog is going to be about. For now, anyway.

:D