This has nothing at all to do with weddings, but it made me laugh SO hard, I had to share it...copied directly from my friend Ali's blog (with her permission, of course). She's spending a year in Korea teaching English.


*Actual conversation during a game of hangman
the board looked like this:

_aterme_on

Students: Teacher, Hint please!
Me: Ok, here is the hint : "This fruit tastes sweet"
Ria: DETERGENT
Me: Please don't tell me you eat detergent.
Ria: yes, one time teacher.
Me: Ok .... OK guys, pick another letter.
Ria: "D"
Me: No it isn't detergent!!!!
Random student:' WATERMELON"
Me: Yes, good job
Ria: OHHHHHHH, much better than detergent. Good word teacher.
Me: Thank you Ria.

Details, details

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of the site A Practical Wedding. I credit that site with getting me AWAY from mainstream wedding media and making me realize that we can do things our way, we can do things simply, and we don't have to spend a fortune to have a beautiful wedding.

But sometimes...I almost think I've gone too far with the practicality. I read about cool, homegrown, DIY weddings that are simple and beautiful without lots and lots of trappings, but our wedding? We really aren't having ANY trappings. This is mostly because I have a very, very hard time justifying anything that isn't necessary. It almost killed me to buy the beautiful expensive lace for my dress, and I wasn't even the one paying for it. I can't stand spending my own money, and I can't stand spending other people's. Even things that DON'T cost money, I can't see spending time on. Napkins cut from old fabric? That would cost us literally NOTHING considering all the fabric lying around my basement, but I just don't see the purpose in it. Pictures of the two of us strung up on clothesline between the trees? I love the idea, but how on Earth will I ever have time to do that the morning of the wedding, and who on earth is going to really notice it?

I'm not out to impress anyone (really, I'm not), but I would like to do SOMETHING to make our guests feel like we put some effort into throwing this shindig. I want them to be comfortable (let's see how comfortable they are in lawn chairs...), I want them to be fed (uh...Chik-Fil-A chicken nugget trays, anyone?), but...well, whenever I go to weddings, I don't marvel at the pretty decorations or the little details. All I can do is think about how many better ways that money could have been spent. And one of the best weddings I've ever been to was when my friends, Hope and Andy, got married at a state park. The groom wore shorts, the bride wore a purple dress, their son ran around barefoot, and ducks waddled in the background during the ceremony. The reception was held under a picnic shelter with "Brown-Eyed Girl" blaring from a boombox. It was a stark contrast to the huge white wedding I had attended only ONE day earlier; a friend of mine got married in a huge church, with a 5-piece string group playing the Gone With the Wind theme as she walked down the aisle. There was a ton of food, all the napkins were monogrammed, there were patterned lights on the dance floor, and if memory serves me, I'm pretty sure there was an ice sculpture. And while it was beautiful, I guess, and while the girl is a sweet woman, I felt SO much more welcome at the lakeside wedding. It was relaxed and carefree, and I really felt like I was witnessing something unique and special. I remember the details of that day...whereas I don't really remember much about the huge wedding from the day before. I'm not even sure I got to speak to the bride.

Anyway, the point is...I'm practical. I like practical, simple weddings. But I really would like to put some sort of effort into the day...I mean, right now the hardest thing is gonna be setting out food and lawn chairs. So, because I am so uber-uber-uber practical about things...I'd like to ask my handful of loyal readers a question. What sort of details do YOU actually appreciate seeing at a wedding? And, if you know Scott and I personally, what sort of details could you see us having that really fit our personalities? Is there anything in particular that makes you feel really welcome at weddings? I'm missing something, I just know I am, and I need some help figuring out what it is!

No _____? No Problem!

Apparently I am a horrible, horrible blogger who hasn't updated in two months. I'm not sure how that happened.

Well, okay, I know how that happened - I started rehearsing for King Lear and all my free time went out the window.

Last night Scott and I were at the amphitheatre, getting ready to start rehearsal, and we were standing down on the grass on the lower level of the stage...and he put his arm around me and said, "We're gonna get married here in three months." And while it's more like four months...it still makes me all giddy and excited to think about.

Of course, we're no closer on the details than we were before. I still don't have any bridesmaids dresses picked out, although I have a lead on where to find them. I still haven't bought my dress fabric, although my mother and I are supposed to go hunt for that tomorrow. We haven't booked anything...mainly because there's nothing to book. Scott occasionally stresses out on me, thinking we have to do this this and this, but really...I think we're okay. We aren't renting chairs; we're telling people to bring their own lawn chairs, and we're using the twenty or so nice lawn outdoor chairs at the theatre for our close family. We're mostly borrowing the tables for the food, and there won't be tables to sit at because we're doing kind of a finger-food reception. We're running the music through the theatre's sound system and my iPod.

Of course, if it rains, we are absolutely screwed because we haven't got a backup plan. So we're telling people on the invitations to bring umbrellas as well as lawn chairs.

Am I really crazy in thinking we can do all this so simply and it will work out? Sometimes I read the beautiful wedding graduate posts over at A Practical Wedding and I feel like we don't have enough cool things planned. Or...any cool things, for that matter. I mean, our cool thing is that we're getting married at a theatre, and we're actors. That's special to us. But...I don't know, sometimes I wish I had the ambition to find some friends to play music for us, or to make cool DIY decorations. Right now we have no plans to decorate. Our decoration is going to be whatever the Twelfth Night set looks like.

But what can I say? Neither one of us are very detail-oriented. Neither one of us are control freaks. We're both kind of going "Eh, yeah, that'll work! And we'll be married, yay!". Scott freaks out more than I do, but I'm convinced that's because he still thinks there are things We Have To Do that we really don't. He worked sort of alongside the wedding industry for a long time, they sorta brainwashed him.

Anyway. Here's to everything working out and not stressing.

Of Corsets and Secrets and True, True Love

First of all, I totally stole that title from a "Road to Avonlea" paperback book I loved as a kid.

Second of all...I am a horrible, horrible procrastinator who isn't really much closer to having anything decided about her wedding than she was six months ago.

I have my dress pattern, but I STILL haven't picked out the fabric. I've had the pattern for six months. I've even splurged and bought a corset to wear under the dress (from here). The main reason for the corset is that no matter how sturdy those undergarments you see in stores are, they never seem to stay up on me or offer any actual support. My friend Laura got married last August and wore one of those white bustier things you get at bridal shops, and she swears it held up well, but I just don't trust them. Plus I practically have to special order anything like that. So...I got a corset because they actually hold me up, and because I like corsets. Here's what it looks like:



Of course I took the green ribbon off the minute I unwrapped the package, because a) I don't much care for green and b) it would probably show under the dress.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I still haven't done any work on my actual dress. And because I've put it off for so long, I'm beginning to doubt my choice. Which is silly; I LOVE my dress pattern, it's exactly the kind of dress I've always, always wanted to wear. I've dreamed of this dress since I was a little girl. But recently I keep thinking...am I going to look too old fashioned, even for me? Is the big skirt going to make my already ridiculously short frame look even shorter? Or worse, is it going to make me look fat? All silly questions, really - I should wear what makes me happy, appearances be darned. But I won't lie; I WANT to look pretty on my wedding day. I want to look pretty in a dress that suits me.

...and you know what? I just stopped mid-post to go put on my dress mock-up (a rough version made of cheap muslin and by-the-pound curtain lace) and see how it looks again. And I still love it, and could probably just wear this dress that I made in a couple of hours out of scraps sitting around my basement for my actual wedding dress. I won't, of course, because I really really want something a little more satiny for the bottom layer and something a little more flowy for the lace, but still.


(The sleeves aren't actually going to be like this - I just didn't finish them since it's a mock-up and not the real dress).

You know what else? It DOES make me look short. Then again, I am short; the dress just doesn't do much to camouflage that. And it DOES make me look kinda fat. But then again, I'm a pretty buxom girl. And it IS incredibly old-fashioned. But then again, I wear made-by-me 1950's style sundresses every single day of the summer.


In the end, it isn't about the satin or the lace. It isn't about how perfect the dress may or may not be. It isn't about the fact that we bought Scott's awesome suit jacket for $5.50 at the local community theatre's rummage sale last Saturday. No matter how much or how little we end up spending, what matters is the marriage.

Invite musings

First of all, Go read this! Meg over at A Practical Wedding asked for reader input on self-catering weddings, and I wrote up my experiences helping Scott's aunt in the kitchen for her wedding. Never dreamed any of my advice would be useful enough to make it onto the blog, but there you have it. I'm feeling this neat little kind of excitement...it's kind of akin to seeing my name in the newspaper. It's more exciting than a newspaper because it's actually words I've written (which I've only seen in print before when I wrote a letter to the editor about how horribly arts are represented in schools), but less exciting because it isn't a tangible thing that everyone I know will read (which is the case with my local paper) so all in all, it evens out to about the same level of excitement as seeing the old "with Mandy ____ playing so-and-so in such-and-such play".

So. On to the main topic of my post, which is invitations. Because tonight, I had an interesting thought. Now, let me preface this by saying I in no way intend to do this. I never rebel against the norm merely for the sake of being different; I just do things the way I like, and if that happens to be out of the ordinary, then fine. If it happens to be exactly what everyone else does, that's fine, too. However, I do understand that some things have a social importance attached to them that is legitimate and not just made up by the WIC. Now, with all that out of the way, this was the thought I had:

Why send invitations at all?

This is just my own personal life, but honestly...I really do believe that if we just sent out a big Facebook announcement and made the effort to call a few relatives who are not tech-savvy, we could skip invites all together. My way of thinking is this: if people really care about coming to our wedding, they will want to know when and where it is, and they will find out. People have already asked us the date and location a hundred times. We're getting married in a place where a really huge chunk of my friends spend most of their time anyway, at least during the summer show season. We have a few out-of-town friends coming in, but honestly...not that many, that I know of. Scott's family is sort of out-of-town, but they're only an hour away, so as long as we sent them directions, they could find it.

I know this wouldn't really work for us for a number of reasons. For one thing, we're going to HAVE to have RSVP cards to find out how many people are actually coming. For another thing, too many people in both our families would be royally offended if they didn't receive an actual invitation. But man, wouldn't it be NICE? Because honestly, I'm not even picky about who comes to the wedding. There are certain people I definitely want there, but for the most part, I'm already telling people, "Yeah, the amphitheatre seats at least 400, we'll probably just see who all shows up and then if we run out of cake, we run out of cake."

I really don't like the idea of invitations. I know some people love them, and love making them all cool and artsy and personal, but...I've never been big on them. When I graduated college, I bought my announcements for a total of $0.52. That was the total price for fifty announcements, no joke, because I found them on a forgotten top shelf at Staples and they were THAT far clearanced. The clerk who rang them up was totally shocked when the price rang up. Were they pretty? No. Were they exactly what I would have picked if price weren't a factor? No. Did they serve the purpose I wanted them to serve? YES.

Really, though, I know I'm going to print up some kind of wedding invitation, but...I'm beginning to wonder, is it viable to actually invite some of my more tech-savvy, less traditional friends via Facebook? Some of them might actually appreciate the fact that I didnt' waste any paper on them. After all, everything in my wonderful town is trying to go green and be eco-friendly.

I'm really tempted to do this now. Why waste stamps on people who check their Facebook more often than their snail-mail? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

And now, for a special treat (to myself, mostly) since I've got the amphitheatre on my mind and since I've had a pretty awesome day, here are some pictures of me onstage at the place we're getting married. This is also pretty relevant to this blog because I'm hoping the guy that shot all these photos will also shoot our wedding...if he ever gets back to me. I know where he lives, I'm gonna have to go beat on his door one day. I stole these off Facebook, but William Lawrence gets all the credit for shooting them.



I guess this photo is technically the FIRST time I got married on the amphitheatre stage: that's me as Hermia, another Scott (not my fiance) as Lysander, and Hamilton as Egeus, my father, giving me away!




One of my lovely bridesmaids as Helena and me as Hermia in the middle of our epic catfight onstage. My face looks so funny. I love it.



A much calmer shot of the two of us, and one of my favorite images of all the promotional ones that were taken.

And now, last but not least, possibly one of my favorite pictures ever, ever taken of me.....





As SOON as we all first saw this picture, the other Scott cried out, "THIS IS SPARTA!!!" and now no one can see it without yelling that. Including me. This picture is so not a pretty picture of me, but it makes me so darn happy every time I see it.

Six months

So you know how I was all kerfuddled about my own indecisiveness to pick a real, official wedding date?

Well. While reading my friend's blog entry (hi Ali!) about how she's going to be in Korea for another six months, it suddenly hit me that six months from today, my boy and I will be married. And somehow, that realization made everything okay.

I think it helped that today seemed like a very eventful day, in a lot of good ways, and getting married six months from such a good day has to be a good thing.

Things that happened today:

- My mom got to come home from the hospital (she'd been in there since last Friday with a blood clot).

- Because the other preschool teacher had car trouble and never made it in today, I learned that I can successfully take care of 11 children singlehandedly. This includes 6 toddlers in diapers, and only 2 children total that I could trust enough to say "You there - watch the door, come tell me if anyone tries to go out in the hall while I'm getting paper towels."

- My nephew turned 6. He still hasn't fully committed to being our ring-bearer, but I don't think he quite understands what he's agreeing to yet. But today I gave him some awesome soft comfy grey dress pants to wear if he does decide, and I told him that I will make him a penguin pillow to carry down the aisle if he wants one (he's way into penguins right now and every present he opened had at least one penguin-related thing in it). If he's over penguins by then, I'll make him whatever kind of pillow he wants, because I have no interest in my wonderfully spunky nephew carrying some silly satin pillow down the aisle. Why would a 6 year old boy want a satin pillow? He's gettin' something COOL.

- My nephew's birthday is also kind of significant because, although it isn't the EXACT day by any means, I know for a fact that right around this time six years ago was when I first fell head-over-heels for Scott. I remember because I was crocheting a baby blanket for Jake right before he was born, and I was working on it during rehearsals for The Beggar's Opera, and it was during those rehearsals that I first realized I was completely in love with this blue-eyed man.

- My cousin's fiance's brother's daughter (hehe, this is how my family works) is selling her car, and I test drove it today. It's in awesome shape, it's perfect for me, and it's exactly what I wanted to pay for a car. Considering I've been badly in need of a new car for some time, this is great news.

- Something that didn't actually happen today, but...today is Richard O'Brien's birthday, AND it was 5 year ago today that I saw my very first shadowcast production of RHPS. Which led to a very big, interesting, and fun chapter of my life, as well as a relationship that was ultimately wrong, but I'm still happy I experienced and have kept a good friend from.

- I had Thai curry cashews, and they were awesome. Okay, that might be stretching my "good things that happened today" list, but...it was a good thing. I love food.

So. Long story short (too late!), all of these things tying together somehow made me feel like we made the right decision. And it's exciting to think that exactly six months from today, we will have a new little family all our own, and I'll be moving in with my new husband.

...and, I kid you not, I just got so excited about all of this that I clapped my hands. Briefly, but loudly. In a house where everyone else has been sleeping for at least an hour. Oops.

Indecisiveness and certainty

People keep asking me when the date is. I keep telling them September 25th, but for some reason, no matter what I do...I end up adding, "At least, that's what we're planning on." Even though we decided on the 25th, even though I was the first one to suggest it...for some reason I have such a hard time giving people a real, definite answer. And I can't quite figure out why. And that bothers me.

Are we picking the wrong date? It took us forever to pick this one, and now that it's picked, I can't make myself settle on it. Am I just putting too much stock in "the day that will become our anniversary forever and always"? Am I actually feeling this hesitation because God is trying to send me some kind of signal that we should have gone with the 18th, instead? Heck, am I just leaning towards the 18th because it's the birthday of someone who used to be a good friend of mine, and therefore I already have that date stuck in my brain as a special occasion? Or, in the end, does this all tie back to the fact that I dislike planning things so far in advance, so having a definitive date seems weird to me?

I don't know the answer. I wish I did. Maybe it's a combination of several of these things, or other things entirely. One thing I know for do certain is that my hesitation in picking a date has nothing to do with my desire to get married. Because honestly, if it weren't for the fact that we actually do want a wedding...I would traipse on over to the courthouse tomorrow to get that piece of paper signed.

I remember I had an English teacher once, a really sweet, smiling, plump little woman, and for some reason in class one day (I forget the context), she said to us, "Well, so-and-so isn't the best man in the world. I married the best man in the world...sorry, girls!" and we all laughed and 'aww'ed and thought it was absolutely adorable that she loved her husband so much and was so damn cute about it. I thought, "Man, I want to love someone like that." And now I do. Because no matter what anyone else may say or think about other men, I know absolutely for certain that I'm marrying the best man in the whole world. Of course, everyone else is entitled to their own opinions, but nothing is ever gonna convince me otherwise.