A Look Back, with Fondness: 2009

As I was trying to catch up on my favorite blogs, I stumbled across a December post from an excellent one, Pilgrim Steps, about a year-end meme. And while, yes, it is February, I decided to look back on the fabulous year that was 2009.


1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Got married! Went to California and Yosemite National Park!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made any for 2009. I did make one for this year - to get to work earlier - and I'm not doing so hot.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not any of my closest friends - they all did in 2008 and back. Some got pregnant in 2009, though.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, thank goodness. But people that I care about lost loved ones.

5. What countries did you visit?
Just the United States.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Two working showers in the house.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
5/09/09 - my wedding day.


8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Training our puppy Murphy to be the lovely dog that she's becoming.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I didn't exercise at all - seriously.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing worth writing about.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Our wedding (of course, I didn't purchase it alone, but it was definitely money well spent).

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Murphy's - such a good girl.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
People who kill children. I don't think I will ever comprehend.

14. Where did most of your money go?
The wedding!

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My honeymoon!

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
"Swing," by Savage. For some reason it became my and Kyle's theme song. (Ignoring the actual lyrical content, of course)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: (a) happier or sadder? (b) thinner or fatter? (c) richer or poorer?

1. Just as happy



2. Fatter, most likely.



3. Poorer, but not in spirit.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Running

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Tossing and turning in bed.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With family: Kyle's first, then driving to Palatka and spending time with my parents, my brother and his wife, and my husband. :)

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes, again and again.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
"No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

24. What was the best book you read?
I can't remember reading a "best" book.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I didn't really have one.

26. What did you want and get?
A meaningful, lovely wedding and honeymoon.

27. What did you want and not get?
Fitter.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
"Coraline"

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 36 and frankly, I don't remember what I did. It came after the wedding and the honeymoon, so probably nothing too exciting.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If I had made it to Maine.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
A little too casual.

32. What kept you sane?
Kyle, cooking, an awareness of how lucky I am.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Obama.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Health care.

35. Who did you miss?
My Nana Knight.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
I'm not sure I met anyone new in 2009.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
That the only thing good about missing someone is that it brings the realization of how deeply you loved that person and how much they loved you.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Every long, lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true:
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

A Gift from Italy

My cousin Rich, who is stationed in Italy, sent me a wedding present!

His wife is due with their first child any day, and I was tickled to see that items in the box were wrapped in baby diapers! Diapers have come a long way - did you know they have Velcro flaps now? Amazing. Anyway...

They sent us two beautiful Italian crystal wine glasses (suckers are HUGE), a bottle of wine and best of all - boxed wine!

Now, I know what you're thinking. "They shipped a big 'ol box-o-wine to the U.S.?" But that's what's so awesome - it's not what you think it is.

In a cardboard sleeve were three little boxes - juice-box style! Individual servings! I couldn't get over it. So cute!

On the bottle of wine was a blue sticky-note that read "For celebrating!" And the boxed wine has a note reading, "For on the go! :)"

Wedding updates: invites and the shoe blues

1. I got the invites out! Phew! And I've actually received a few of my neat-o tear-off RSVP postcards already.

Word of caution, ladies and gents: My invitations are of a fold-up and seal style. When I took them to my local post office, the counter employee told me that, if I didn't Scotch-tape up one side of the invite, they would, at best, get mauled in the machine and worse, they might not make it to their destination at all. Take this into consideration when choosing your invites.

You may be wondering why I didn't just have them hand-cancelled. I did. But today's postal process involves more than one machine, so even after the very nice lady hand-cancelled my invites, they still had to go through a machine that can read the handwritten addresses and another that sorts the items.I'm still glad I chose the fold-n-seal invites, because it was less paper and thus less waste, and a postcard stamp (for the RSVPs) is still cheaper than a regular one. Although there weren't any love-themed postcard stamps, so I chose these lovely tropical fruit ones instead:

Very spring-y!

2. I have been overestimating the length of my dress - all this time, I've been shopping for heels, and I finally realized, while trying on some hooker-height Jessica Simpson carribbean blue heels, the dress is too short for any heel.That's right - I will have to wear flat shoes. Flat shoes with a dress! Something I've never done before.

I tell you, I wasn't happy. At all. I know, no one else can see, much less care, about my shoes. That's not the point. The point is that I wanted to wear heels. Me. Me me me me me me me.

I finally get selfish about something for "my" day, and I can't even do that. That's the point.

I'm getting over it. However, I need some inspiration on what kind of flat to wear. It has to be light, somewhat casual, but I'm afraid a flat sandal will be too casual. Arrggh!

If it's not a wedding, it's a baby

Seriously, everyone seems to be getting married or on the verge of delivering.

My girlfriend Gail threw me an awesomely cliched bachelorette party a week or two ago. And she hand-made this veil for me:



She sewed the little pearls on the edge of the tulle and everything.

If you know me at all in the brick-and-mortar world, you know that I like to wear my sunglasses. Pretty much all the time. I feel like they give me some height that my flat-ass hair cannot provide. Friends have been joking about making me a veil with sunglasses for years, even before Gail knew me - and yet, here it was - the most awesome bachelorette veil ever!

I was so excited, I didn't even get dressed before trying it on. You didn't think I went out in that, did you?

Gail also orchestrated, along with my other lovely girlfriends, to rent a swanky limo for the evening - and was thoughtful enough to stock it with my favorite girly beverage, champagne.

After playing some games at Gail's, we took off for Durty Nelly's, so I could quaff some Guinness (why yes, it does go well with champagne, how did you know?) and get dirty looks from the hipsters who probably thought I was being held down by The Man by getting married.

Then it was off to 101, where Kathryn got us the hook-up. I'd never been, so what better time than when I'm wearing a veil, a condom and a sash?

(Left to right: my future sister-in-law Melissa, Cynthia, Tabby, moi, Gail, Sonia, Janet)

Wait, we're missing Kathryn and Marilyn!

There they are! (Kathryn is in the center in the photo on the left, and Marilyn is second from left in the photo on the right)

Leaving 101, we stayed in the limo for a very, very long time. Eventually, we graced Sharab with our presence. Except that we lost Kathryn . . . Not that most of us have too clear a memory of it . . .

We finally piled into the limo and were safely deposited back at Gail's (sans Kathryn, sadly), where everyone went to bed - except me and Cyn, who stayed up philosophizing until . . . oh, 5 a.m.

It was lovely. I couldn't have asked for more, and was so touched at all the effort Gail and the ladies put forth - for me!

Next week, I'll whine about my shoe issues and grouse about pew decorations. Ooh, sounds like fun!

My wedding photographer

My wonderful friend and former colleague Mark Basse has agreed to photograph our wedding in May. Mark works at Florida Community College, but his real career is photography. He's amazing.

I started working with Mark while interviewing students to feature on the FCCJ web site. After doing an e-mail interview, Mark and I would meet them on campus to ask follow-up questions and take their picture. I would "assist," mainly by holding that reflective unbrella-looking thingy that does something with the light.

Mark's such a great photographer because he puts you at ease, and he takes a great photo of anybody, even students who were visibly concerned about their appearance.

Just fooling around one day, he called out to me: "Hey Jen!" I look up and poof! Photographed.
Can I tell you, it came out so good that I had it framed and gave it to my parents?

I received an e-mail from Mark today - apparently he was going through files and found two photos of me - both silly, off-the-cuff things.

You might recognize this one as my profile photo. It's the one I had framed for my parents:


This is even sillier:


He took both of these with the camera in just one hand, quickly - you should see his stuff when he's actually doing "photography." Looking at them, I get excited about him taking photos for our wedding. I think they're going to be great - what a great friend!

I also think I might want to grow my hair back out . . . .

This is not a Darryl Worley song.

I miss my friends.

This is not a new topic for my blog, so feel free to move on if you've heard it all before.

I'm feeling a little left out of the big deal of She's Getting Married. I have come to the realization that there are some things that I'll miss out on by going the solitary, online route, like trying on dresses with my friends.

I was watching the TLC show about a New York bridal salon, "Say Yes to the Dress" (we can go into the shame of that later), and maybe it was because I'd had a couple glasses of wine and it was, oh, 1 a.m. on a weeknight, but a particular scene got me a little blurry-eyed.

A bride pulls this (admittedly gorgeous, albeit stupidly overpriced) wedding dress over her head and stands on the little platform to see herself in the mirror, and suddenly the camera cuts to her mom, and then to her bridesmaids. The look on their faces said it all. "Wow. This is the dress." And everybody started laughing and smiling and hugging. Very touching.

I didn't get to have that!

And while, yes, I realize that in the long run, it's much better to have ordered my dress online, paying a pittance, a fraction of the cost of your run-of-the-mill David's Bridal thing than to blow a wad of cash on something I'll wear once so that I could experience that "moment," right now I don't care. I want that experience! I want someone besides me to get excited about this wedding.

Don't get me wrong. Kyle wants to get married. He wants a wedding. He's had opinions on things, like food and music and hiring a friend to DJ and whatnot. But it doesn't feel like anyone else is really into it.

But should they be?

Am I letting the artifice of the media version of weddings cloud my emotions? After all, it's me that's getting married, not my friends. Of course they're not being kept awake at night, thinking, "My God, what will Jen and Kyle do for a first dance?!" That would be silly.

Yes, I know why it has come to this. I have no bridal party. Showers and bridesmaid dress fittings are the stuff of which wedding buzz is made. How can they be interested in that which they are not involved? And Kyle and I made that choice ourselves; it's not as if people were begging me to not drag them into something that required random dress purchases.

If I had bridesmaids, by definition they'd have to be interested - people would be deciding who's throwing the shower, everyone would worry about their dresses (Will it suck? Will it be obscenely expensive? Will it make my butt look gargantuan?) and thus, they'd HAVE to talk to me, keep up with what's going on.

But I didn't want to burden anyone. My friends live in other towns and are very busy people (hell, most of them have children, do you know the time good parenting entails? I can only imagine). These people don't have time for standing around looking at each other in pastel-colored nightmares, deciding which one is boring enough to not make any particular person look horrible.

Not being a bridesmaid isn't the only reason why I don't see my friends as much as I'd like to, of course. We're all busy women, with jobs and/or kids and new homes or new relationships. And when you're on different tracks, it's hard to run into each other. Many of my friends have been married for several years, and now they're parents - that's a completely different social life than someone who's just starting a relationship, or someone like me, still trying to figure out just what my routine is, as a wife-to-be, new homeowner and employee. Some of us are going to Disney World, or are camping with our kids. Some of us are still going out on dates, or have the free time to fritter away on Christmas tree placement (against the wall? which one?). We're not exactly going to run into each other like that.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere, really. There is nowhere to go.

I think, perhaps some of this is really about growing up. This is not the wedding of someone right out of college. I'm trying to plan a big-ass party of a lifetime, and I'm squeezing it in between buying new tires and finally getting around to registering for homestead exemption - and my friends are too. So I guess it comes down to this: I just can't have that TV show wedding experience; I don't live a TV show life.

Knot a Good Idea

I was up the other last night, unable to sleep and I'd read pretty much everything in the house. I trawled through my magazines: October "Vogue"? Can't find it. October "Real Simple"? Boooring. This week's "Entertainment Weekly"? Feh - I blew through that fifteen minutes after it arrived in the mail.

And then I found it - a fat summer edition of the bridal magazine . . .

"The Knot." And I started flipping through.

It was innocent enough at first. "I'm just bored," I thought to myself. "I'm just going to look at ads and hairstyles . . ."

And then it started. The articles. Their demands and insinuations. Wait, I have to tip everybody? Omigawd, I can't afford that many flowers - but it will look so tacky if I don't . . . What? I'm a bad daughter if I don't have my mom and mother-in-law out for a spa day with me? I really do need boutonnieres? What? Ack! Omigod, this wedding is going to suckandeverybodyisgoingtoblamemeandmaybeIshouldspendalittlemoneyImeanafterallit'sthebiggestdayofmylifeandIshouldhaveitexactlythewayIwantitbecauseI'maprincessandnowIneedZoomwhiteningand
Yeah, that's what looking at Satan's bridal handbook will do for you.

I threw the magazine into the recycling bin immediately.

The weird part is, I don't get that looking through "Martha Stewart's Weddings" magazine - why? While I don't think I'm in the socio-economic market for this magazine, I think I like it because it focuses on quality, DIY elements and true originality, whereas "The Knot" seems to be about reinforcing bridal stereotypes, even as it supposedly "breaks the rules" (do we really have to send out "save the date" cards? Of course - but you can be daring! Put your photo on it! Ooooo.... daring.) Don't get me started about the weight loss articles. Pathetic.

Butterflies, beds, and another goodbye

After all that talk about grandparents, Kyle received a call last night - his grandfather had a heart attack. He passed away some time in the evening. He was Kyle's last grandparent.

************************************************************************************

Our frustrating efforts to get a bed continue. After ordering a bed from Home Decorator's in August with the expectations of an end-of-September delivery, we got an e-mail stating that it would be early November before we'd receive the bed (evidently it's one damn popular bed). I sent off an angry e-mail and got a miniscule discount along with an apology.

Then I get a call last Friday - to schedule the delivery of the bed - this week! Turns out Home Decorators (owned by Home Depot, by the way) doesn't make the bed, and there was some confusion between the manufacturer and them. A happy mistake.

I had explicitly asked if they could call an hour before delivery - I don't want to be sitting on my ass at home for four hours waiting on these people. They assured me it would be no problem. So when my phone rang this afternoon, I was not expecting the testy dispatcher, who was wondering where I was. Someone forgot to tell the driver to call me. "Can I come now? Will the driver wait?" I ask. They say sure, and I rush out of the office.

As I'm pulling into my neighborhood, I see a delivery truck pulling out - my bed! I call back and the (still-testy) dispatcher says I took too long, they had to move on, and it's the manufacturer's fault anyway, for not telling the delivery people in the first place. I'll have to reschedule. Keep your fingers crossed for me; we're going to try this all again tomorrow.

************************************************************************************

Did I mention that we're having our wedding reception at the Florida Museum of Natural History? We had considered it, and then decided it was too much. But Kyle changed his mind - the convenience of it being literally down the road from the ceremony site was too appealing to him.

We are saving a bit by not purchasing tickets to the Butterfly Rainforest for people, but I still hope people check it out before the wedding. Seriously, if you have kids, you've got to go see this. When they gave me a tour, I thought I'd see one or two flitting around. No - you walk in and it's like the IBM commercials about going green - it's like landing in technicolor Oz after being in sepia-toned Kansas. Butterflies are everywhere. They land on you. You have got to take your kids!

In fact, they're having a ButterflyFest this weekend, October 18-19.

Regrets and Memories

I was thinking about my grandmother.

If there had to be a downside to my age at the time of this wedding, it would be that none of my grandparents are still alive.

At one time, I was incredibly close to my maternal grandmother. And I wish like hell that she could have been here for my wedding. That part of my family lives far, far away from me, in Maine. When I was little, I, along with my baby brother and my mom, would fly People's Choice Airlines to Maine for the whole summer (People's Choice being the cheapest airline at the time, and there's a very good reason why they're no longer in business...). While my poor father toiled away in Florida, the three of us stayed with my mother's parents, who lived in the middle of nowhere - there's a lot of that in Maine. Did I mention that my mother doesn't drive? Needless to say, I spent vast amounts of time with my mom and my grandmother, going wherever my grandmother wanted to go.

Those were formative years. I learned a lot from her. She wasn't some old fuddy-dud; she still worked as a legal secretary, wore an ear cuff (remember those?) with a silver feather dangling from it. She loved dolls - she gave me two of my mother's childhood dolls, that I try to discreetly display, much to the consternation of my fiance - and she loved Roger Whittaker and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

She would try to sneak grapes into desserts just to torture my lovely, patient grandfather, who for some reason, really hated grapes. She loved the tinny sound of her Japanese car's horn, and would honk at cows just for the hell of it.

I don't know why - I'm sure money was involved - but we stopped going to Maine altogether around the time I was in grade school. And we didn't go back for over ten years. Of course, my grandmother still wrote me and I her, but we lost of lot of time. I lost of lot of time with her - oh, to be so young and foolish; to not realize that the clock doesn't tick forever for those older than you.

When I got my first "professional" job and had a little money, the first thing I did was fly me and my mom up to Maine for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. I think it was shocking to both of us - how grown up I was to my grandmother and how much older she looked to me. A lot had changed. She had stopped dying her hair, she had gotten religious and was teaching Sunday school (!!!). She had spent years raising one of my uncle's two boys during turbulent times.

It was such a blessing that we went on that trip, because a few months later, she had a stroke. And it demolished her. There was a body that still needed to be fed and bathed, but it was not my grandmother. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when she passed away, free from that prison at last. At the funeral, I was a stranger. No one knew who this woman was. "Oh, that's the granddaughter from Florida?" My cousins, two wonderful young men that she had help raise, were the "children" everyone comforted.

People got up and spoke, lovingly and respectfully; I just sobbed. And they were selfish tears. All that time. Gone. All those years I could have had with her, learned from her - missed. I was mad at all these people for not knowing how important I was to her at one time. I was (irrationally) jealous of my cousins for having those years. (Never mind that they would probably have rather had their parents together and happy instead.)

I know I sound like your mother, or some old auntie, but I can't help myself from writing it: if you still have your grandparents, or other older relatives, be glad. Be thankful that they love you and are there. We have no idea how important these moments are to them, seeing their grandchildren become adults, marry, have children or publish a book, start a business. I wish my grandparents could share this time with me.

A rather self-indulgent post, I know. But I expressed similar sentiments in a wedding forum, and the reactions were positive, and incredibly touching - so many women had stories of grandparents loved, never known, lost. Reading over this, I have to say, it's bittersweet; at least I had time with these wonderful, loving people. I can't imagine the hole that might exist for those who never knew their grandparents, or had cold, unloving grandparents.

Not too cool

I am, by nature, a timid person.

At first glance you wouldn't think so. I talk - a lot. Sometimes loudly. And I got my blog title the hard way - I earrrrrned it.

(John Housman just rolled over in his grave.)

And I've accomplished things of which I'm very proud. I worked my way through college. I bought my first home as a single woman on a public salary.

But I'm afraid of so many things.

I'm afraid to go into my own attic alone. I'm afraid to jump into water from even the slightest bit of height. I hear every noise in the house at night, and sometimes they keep me up.

But it's my fear of change that's the most frustrating - my fear of doing something wrong, different, embarrassing, "not cool."

I rely on the people around me for acceptance.

There is a certain style of dress that I've always loved: a printed, empire-waisted hippie-type cotton number. And I would try them on and someone would always say, "No - that's not flattering on you" or just "Really?" with an arched eyebrow.

And I would always put it away. Even if I loved the swishy-ness, the wild floral, the silliness of it. And even when I thought it looked nice on - it felt nice on. I put it back on the rack.

I was afraid of looking different than I always look, of looking like I'm trying to be something that I'm not, of trying too hard. That arched eyebrow stayed with me, and I cringed at the idea of people thinking badly of me. Really, I'd rather not be thought of all than be thought of with disdain.

I wish it was only a dress. But it's not. There are classes that I've signed up for and never attended, races I registered for and never ran. If it was something different, something people like me don't do, I was afraid to do it. And more often than not, I didn't.

I think about this now with my wedding. I've looked at so many pictures, web sites, magazines, books. And I've seen some amazing, fantastic stuff. Check out these shoes:

I'd love to show you the whole bridal outfit for context, but that's a little invasive. But I love these shoes - they're like ruby slippers!

And isn't this one of those very few moments in life where the event is supposed to be an expression of you and your spouse-to-be? Where you get to really do what you want to do?

Would I ever wear those shoes? No. Why? Because nobody else I know wears those shoes. And I know, for a fact, that certain people in my life would roll their eyes. "Please. Who's she trying to be?"

I don't know. Maybe this post is my way of chafing at the bit. Stamping my feet and saying, "I'm going to wear what I want wear, damn it! I'm going to go to that concert - if I have to go by myself. I'm going to that 'flaky' seminar on meditation, f*ck you." Maybe not.

Maybe I could just start with the shoes.

Everything Changes

Do all brides have bouts of insomnia? And do they all use them to start thinking, in ever-greater detail than before, about the wedding plans - the very thing that sent them to this hellish sleeplessness in the first place?

I've always had trouble with insomnia, and the combined craziness of my brother's looming nuptials (this Saturday!) and planning my own wedding isn't helping at all.

A few nights ago, it was full-on Talking Heads. Or, at least, one talking head. I couldn't shut my thoughts up to focus on sleeping. To-do lists, gifts to be purchased, home-repair needing to be done, a little thing called My Job, all clamoring for attention at 11:30 pm.

And still, at 2:30 a.m. By 3:20 am, I thought, "This is ridiculous. I've gotta get up," and pried myself away from my hotwater bottle of a fiance.

What to do? I know, we'll stare at the guest list and will it mentally to shrink. Shrink, list, shrink.

Or we'll think about colors. I had thought we'd go for nature-inspired, warm colors. I flipped through my inspiration book, "American Bungalow" magazine. Every house, every ad for hand-crafted, Stickley-inspired furniture glows with a warm, sunset light. Everything is gold, olive, taupe.

Hmm.. writing that down, it doesn't sound beautiful - but it is. This wallpaper frieze is a little picture I've been dragging around with me for a couple years:

So, since this is what I love, this would be my wedding colors, right?

But wait - I'm not marrying myself. And while my hunk of burning love doesn't care "that much" about the colors, shouldn't this be a reflection of us - I mean, isn't that why we're going through all this?

So I start writing. What is "us"? What do we love to do together? We love to travel, to go camping, to go to the beach, or the springs. In three years, we've been to the Grand Canyon to whitewater raft down the Colorado, we've been to Brazil to see friends marry, we've been to Mexico to, uh . . . lay around in the sun and drink margaritas. What's the continuing thread?

Water. I love the beach and can't imagine living too far from the coast. Kyle is scuba-certified and has dove many of the springs around here; he lives for the springs in the summertime.

I look up from my writing and find my inspiration. A large, framed photograph of a Florida spring hangs over our bookcase. I don't have it digitally, but here's something similar:

If you've never seen a Florida spring before, you are missing out. It's the most beautifully clear water. And it's so cold - great when you're baking in the hundred-plus Florida summertime. And that blue - that beautiful turquoise blue.

That's it! It makes so much more sense than my Arts & Crafts-driven plan. Kyle and I are both Florida natives, and in this town, that appears to be unusual. I want to celebrate what he and I love - Florida. And not the beachy, Miami, Disney World Florida. The inner heart of Florida, with its moss-hung oaks, numerous springs and rivers, fields of everything from St. Augustine turfgrass to lowly cabbage. And the spring water would be my inspiration.

Impressive, for 4 am.

Here's what I've got so far:



(Click to see full size)

Getting inspired

I've said before that I'm not the most creative/imaginative person. Thus, many of the decisions to be made in wedding planning are not coming easy to me.

I had said I didn't want to have official "colors," and then I decided to get some "save-the-date" type thing for our out-of-state guests.

It was then that I realized - I gotta pick something.

The "thing" has to be some color, has to have some sort of imagry (sic?) on it. I mean, this is much like having an party. You're going to decorate, so you have to have some sort of overlying format to pull it all together, be it a theme or a palette. I don't want to just pull some colors out of my tuchas, excuse my language. The one thing I know we want this wedding to be is something personal, something meaningful for us.

So I've started something that seems popular in the wedding forums I'm in, an "inspiration board." A real-life board would have fabric swatches, pages torn out of magazines, etc. An electronic inspiration board, from the examples I've seen, has photos of where you're getting married, somewhere you want to get married or a place like it, thematic stuff (stars, fish, polka dots), and pictures of dresses and bridal whatnot.

Well, all I have so far is some photos of where I'm getting married and art I love, but it's a start, right?

Butterflies!

Today, I visited the Florida Museum of Natural History, to scout it out as a reception location.

It was pretty nice. We'd have the museum to ourselves for three hours, with all of the regular exhibits available for the guests to check out. However, it's not cheap. I'm not sure it's in our budget.

But one of the coolest things is the Butterfly Rainforest.

It was like a Disney movie - you walk in and BAM! Butterflies everywhere - hundreds of them. And the variety was amazing - blue ones, little tiny yellow ones, huge tiger-striped ones. I can't do it justice with a description.

Even if we don't go with the museum as a reception site, I'm still going to suggest my guests visit the museum before the wedding; it's not that far from the ceremony site as they're both on campus. I may be able to get a group discount if I bought the tickets myself...

What happens at the tailgate...

First, I have to brag: my insanely talented friend Douglas Matthews has agreed to play at my wedding ceremony.

He and his wife Melissa have been two of the best friends a girl could have. Along with a few others, they were my rock at an especially low point in my life.

I was so nervous asking him, because, well, he plays piano for a living - what a pain, right? Invited to a wedding and now you gotta work? But he was terribly gracious about it.

I have a hard time asking people for things, even people who, rationally, I know love the heck out of me and want to help me. But there's this stupid part of me that's so afraid to ask. It's stupid. I think I said that already. Moving on...

Tile update: I cut the tile too small and we didn't get it fixed before our guests came. Turned out we had less than expected, so it went smoothly anyway.

The tailgate was a success. Kyle got up around 6 a.m. and headed out to campus. The tailgate was set up, and manned, from 7 a.m. until roughly 1 a.m. that evening/next morning. Crazy, I know. But it's Kyle's thing and it was before I showed up - I'm just an observer/assistant/beer bitch.

Yes, beer bitch. Half of my "job" is to be kinda nasty about who's sticking their hand in our coolers. It's not fun, but if you don't make it known that somebody's paying attention, there are plenty of jackasses who are ready to suck you dry. Food, too - but I left that up to our cook.

A ton of people showed up, including many I hadn't seen in months. It really was fun. And we had a most important element at the tailgate: hot women. And strangely enough, that's part of my "job" as well - taking photos of everybody, including the hot chicks.

A sample:

Okay, I'm kidding. That's just a cute chick and her pretty mommy.

More like this:

Luckily, as we age, so goes the tailgate. It's a lot more "chill" this year, and I had plenty of people come up to me to agree and that it was a good thing.

I had to run off some little girls, but not before they got their fill of our beer and BBQ. You'd be surprised how much a skinny little thang can eat when someone else cooked it and it's free. :)

An exhausting weekend, but great fun.

Oh yeah - the Gators won. Forgot about that...

Two posts in one day? Inconceivable!

Perusing my blog, admiring the lovely photo of Cancun I used as the header, I realized I had forgotten to post my photos of the Baughman Center, where indeed, Kyle and I will be getting married May 9.

I snapped a few shots after paying the deposit and getting a contract. They're all small here, but clicking a photo should bring up a larger version (if you so desire).

The front of the Baughman Center:



The view of Lake Alice immediately behind the center (any closer and it would be in the water):



Inside - you can see how small it is:



The ceiling:



The view from the grounds:



I also have my dress! But I'm not showing those photos. Suffice to say it feels completely me, and my mother got the littlest bit teary when I tried it on.

I've been waiting to try it on; I've had it since June. But it was very important to me to try it on with my mother. I don't have any sisters, my oldest/closest friends live out of town, and I don't have a sister.

It had to be pointed out to me that I'm an only daughter. I've been rather flippant about the whole wedding thing, and I didn't realize that both of my parents are feeling some strong emotions about this. After all, I moved out at 18. I bought my own home three years ago and lived alone in big scary Jacksonville for two years. Why now? I had no idea that your little girl getting married would still be a big deal at ... 35. But it is, so I'm making efforts to keep my parents, who live about an hour away and work what seems to be all the time, in the loop on the process of putting together a sane, meaningful wedding.

But more on that later.

Okay, let's try this one more time ....

Last night, a coworker of Kyle's called. She had been talking about our wedding with her husband, who is a professor at the community college here. When he heard the date, he pointed out that May 2 is also graduation for both the college and the university. There wouldn't be a hotel room left in the city on that weekend.

"Don't you work at the university?" This is what you're thinking, aren't you?

Well, technically. But I work for the Extension service, which has almost nothing to do with students. My "customers" are Florida gardeners and college students don't tend to fall within that demographic. So we don't pay much attention to that sort of thing over here.

"Well, doesn't the university own the building in which you're planning to be married?" You could be thinking that too. "Why didn't the staff mention that?"

I don't have a good answer for that one.

Luckily, it all worked out. I called back this morning, and the next Saturday was available. And with graduation out of the way, it will be a little quieter in town as well.

Kyle and his friend got most of the baseboards up last night - it's amazing the difference it makes.

No baseboards:

Baseboards!

Well, we had a date...

I got a bad-news e-mail this morning: apparently the date I thought I had reserved at the lovely meditation center/chapel here on campus for our wedding was given to someone else. We had wanted a sunset time as the Baughman Center is on Lake Alice and has an amazing sunset view.

But our choices are now either smack-dab middle of the day (1-3) or at night (7-9). Obviously, not the end of the world, but I had a whole week to get used to having an actual wedding date and now I'm back to g-ddamn square one.

Two Wedding Books - One hilarious and inspiring

I recently finished two books on weddings. The one I finished last night, "The DIY Wedding: Celebrate Your Day Your Way," by Kelly Bare, was a disappointment. I don't know what I was expecting. Either more - more resources, more details, or less - with more theory and fewer suggestions. It didn't help that much of the font was pink-on-white, and even worse, sometimes it was pink-on-(lighter) pink! Hard to read, and a little boring.

However, "Offbeat Bride" by Ariel Meadow Stallings, was a real pleasure. More for inspiration and ideas than step-by-step suggestions, it's the story of Stallings' own offbeat wedding, interwoven with anecdotes from other brides, including how to deal with not-so-offbeat friends and family who want to reign in your vision.

It's also hilarious. I wish I had the book next to me so I could type the excerpt where a concerned friend-of-the-family asks if she's considered the the "c-word."

The author's mental reaction?

"The only 'c-word' I knew ended with '-unt', and while I had given it consideration, I'm not sure where she was going with this."

Of course, the family friend meant "children."

Just as importantly to me, it wasn't "indie-than-thou." While I am not the most traditional bride, I'm not very "indie" either. I won't be wearing a big white cream-puff from David's Bridal, but I won't be wearing a goth-bride purple gown either - as one of the brides who posted to Stallings' awesome web site http://offbeatbride.com did.

Stallings has this to say about wedding-as-contest:

I've run into this a lot in talking to people about their weddings — the dirty flip-side of "my wedding is too weird" is "my wedding isn't weird enough." Both sentiments make me sad because your wedding is not a contest.


As your resident alt-lifestyle consultant, please allow me to state this clearly: brides do not need more ways to feel bad about our weddings.

I didn't write Offbeat Bride as a judgment — I've gone to traditional weddings that were beautiful expressions of the couple's backgrounds and beliefs. I wrote the book to act a cheerleader for those wrestling with making nontraditional decisions about their wedding — not as an admonishment of those who chose otherwise.