What are you Drinking?

I've said before that I want our wedding to be like a party, and one of the most important things for a party to have (in my experience) is a nice selection of booze.  This is something that I think is a little tricky, since we are going to be doing the bar ourselves (essentially).  For a big party like this, some cases of Natural Ice, some handles of Popov vodka, and a whole bunch of orange juice would be an easy solution.  But we actually want it to be a bit classy, so this might not be the way to go.

Our opinion on the best way to handle the bar is to have some basics, first of all: a keg of some nice beer, bottles of red and white wine, and of course champagne.  After that, we figured we would come up with a few signature drinks, basically just slight variations on some standard drinks that we really like and will cover the bases to have a well rounded bar.  The main goal is not to need a huge selection of different kinds of liquor and mixers, to have a small selection that will cover drinks everyone will like.

Gorgeous cocktail from The Science of Drink.

As far as our personal preferences, we are planning to have a drink or two involving some good bourbon, maybe something with cachaca (a brazilian alcohol that is sort of like a cross between tequila and rum), and we're not entirely sure what else.  We're still doing some research on that.  But here's your chance to help us out!  If you have drink recipes you really like, let us know.  And definitely clue us in if you know of good quality booze that isn't too pricey; the cheaper we can get it, the more we can buy.  We will have a bartender on duty, but just to make it easy on him we are avoiding any drinks that involve muddling stuff, so no mojitos.

We are excited to see you all there!

Decisions, decisions

One of the major things you have to decide when you're throwing a wedding is who to invite. And maybe the biggest question about the guest list is whether or not to include children. I've read a lot of opinions in favor of having them there, and a lot in favor of having an adults-only affair.

Our conclusion on the matter was that we would prefer to have only adults at the wedding. I don't look at it as an exclusion of little ones, but as an opportunity for parents to enjoy themselves and not have to worry about entertaining their children. Also, let's be honest here: weddings are not exactly fun for kids.

Look at it from a kid's perspective.  There's cake, but you're not supposed to touch it. There are presents, but they're not for you. You have to sit still and be quiet kind of a lot - through the ceremony, for pictures, during dinner and toasts. If it's mostly adults at the wedding, it's hard to get someone to play with you because they're busy socializing with the other grown-ups. If there are other kids to play with, you still don't get to be too rambunctious. You can't run  around that much because you're probably wearing a special outfit that you're not supposed to get dirty. If you're under the age of about 5, you're not going to remember being there. If you're between 5 and 12, you're going to remember being bored to tears.

Over the age of 12, well, odds are you'll still be bored. However, you're old enough to deal with the fact that sometimes you've got to do these family events even when you'd really prefer to skip them.

The bottom line is: Morgan and I want people to have fun at the wedding, and we believe that everyone will have a better time if the kids sit this one out.

I Guess We're Supposed to Have One of These

While it feels tacky to ask for stuff to celebrate our special day, we did decide to make a registry to give suggestions to anyone who felt inclined to bring a gift.  We are in a little bit of an unusual situation, since we are going to spend about 9 months in China a few months after the wedding; I will be teaching there for an academic year, which is very exciting for us.

Given that we will soon be leaving the country, it was a little difficult to think of what would make a good gift.  However, we did manage to find some items that we could use before we leave, a few things that would be great to have on our trip, and things that could help get us on our feet when we come back.  That being said, we are not expecting gifts out of you.  We just want you at the wedding, celebrating with us.

George Foreman iPod-ready Grill; I don't want this.
Okay, maybe I do, but it's not on the registry.

For those who are interested, our registry can be found here.  It is hosted as an Amazon Universal Registry, which means a few of the items are not actually sold through Amazon; clicking on them will take you to a different page where they can be purchased.

Another thing off The List

Miraculously enough after that last story, the invitations were not only finished, but mailed. I was so happy just to have them gone.

So, on to other things. I ordered a pair of shoes, not sure if they'd be quite what I wanted. But once they arrived and I tried them on, I was in love.  I was ready to try on hundreds of shoes to find the perfect ones (oh okay, it's not that much of a sacrifice - I love shoes!), but it only took one.

Behold the shoes! (Er, shoe, I guess.
There are two of them though, I promise.)

And as a bonus, they're actually comfortable! I didn't wear them around for hours or anything, but you can certainly tell right away when a pair of heels is uncomfortable. Now that I have shoes, I can start figuring out where I'm getting alterations to the dress done, and that'll pretty much take care of me. We'll be focusing on getting Morgan ready this week - he has an appointment to try on his suit and see what color combination we want to go with.

Dear Lord, these invitations are killing me

Some of you who are attending our wedding may have noticed that you have not actually received a formal invitation in the mail just yet.  Well, we are working on that, and we will get them out soon if we both don't die trying.  We decided to design and make them ourselves; it didn't seem like it would be too herculean a task.  Ursula does plenty of paper crafts and is very creative; we both know how to do layouts in Illustrator; it should be a piece of cake, right?  Unfortunately, there was another element that we failed to consider.  The people we would need to print our project for us.

So we have these invitations designed and ready to go.  Taking them to the printer should be easy, they print it on card stock and cut it to size, then we're out the door.  So we take our flash drive down to Office Max.  And then Darryl happens.  Fucking Darryl.  Our encounter started bad;  there was a woman behind the counter when we arrived helping someone else, and a guy who was on the phone.  After standing there for a minute the girl asks if we've been helped, and when we say "no" tells Darryl to get on it.  So he ends his phone call and comes over.  Darryl was a mess; he talked too fast, and had question after question.  But he didn't seem to really listen to our answers.  He didn't understand how our booklets were supposed to be laid out.  Dude, they're a card.  I'm sure you've seen them before.  A page on front, two inside, piece of cake.  But he didn't get it.  Finally we drew him a picture, which he decided to keep in with the order in case he forgot.  Around this time, Ursula had to walk away, but for some reason I stuck with it.  I don't know, I figured I could get through to him somehow.  So the next thing is he decides he can print it on larger paper, to get more on a sheet and save us some money.  Sure, sounds good.  Then he asks again about how the cards are going to be laid out.  Look at the picture, Darryl!  I don't know how long this went on.  I asked him how long it would take, and he would tell me prices.  Finally I got a manager to come over.  He says the order form looks right, and it should be 24 hours.  Then comes the kicker: Darryl asks if the other stores would have the larger paper size to print it on.  They don't actually have it in stock.  Now to be clear, I didn't ask him for the larger paper size; he suggested it.  And now I realize I should have walked away when Ursula did.

Anyway, we took our print job to another shop.  The guy seemed to know what he was doing, but his printer was broken.  He told us to make sure our images were pdfs, submit them online, and he would call us to let us know if they could be printed Friday.  Well, I submitted them, received an automated "your job was submitted" email, and never heard a thing.  They are closed all weekend (I'm not sure about Monday).

So long story short, you will see the invitations soon.  If this process doesn't kill the two of us.

Pictures!

It's not all that easy to have many pictures of yourselves as a couple when it's just the two of you. Your choices are really tripods and timers, cameras held at arm's length, strangers in public places, or mirrors. None of those options make for really great pictures.

If only we could teach Penny to use the camera.

While we were in California over the holidays, Morgan and I asked my daughter Emily if she'd be willing to take some pictures of us together, sort of informal engagement pictures. She was game, so we headed down to Santa Cruz on a gray day. Surprisingly, an offer of going letterboxing and having lunch were enough to bribe her. (But lunch was really, really good. Definitely bribe-worthy, I'd have to say. If you're ever in Santa Cruz, stop by Hula's Island Grill and Tiki Room.)

She did a great job, don't you think? I have more, but you'll have to wait a couple of days until I put them up on Flickr.

It's (almost) Official

The wedding is getting close; we now have an official copy of our marriage license in hand.  So, while we are not actually married yet, it is really just a few signatures on a piece of paper before it's done.  I mean, we are still going to put on a party, but it's exciting to know that we are practically there.

Getting the license was a bit of an adventure in itself.  We had to drive out to Martinez; we took a scenic route through the hills and then headed down to the bay.  The weather kind of stunk, but it was still gorgeous.  At the county clerk's, there was a party getting married in an adjoining room.  It was very cool to see a couple getting married while we were there getting our license.  Definitely fun to see.  While filling out the paperwork for the license, I realized I did not know my mom's original middle name, or what state my dad was born in.  I had to call my grandma to ask, which was a bit embarrassing.  Also, we marked that we would be married by a judge, so they kept asking "Do you actually know a judge?"  We didn't really know what to say except "Of course we know a judge, why else would we mark that?" Apparently people frequently mark that by mistake, so they felt like they had to check.

It feels really good to be getting this close to being married.  I think we had started to get a little exhausted by all of the wedding planning, especially with it colliding with Christmas and other responsibilities, but with this step, I feel like I sort of have a second wind.  I'm really looking forward to celebrating with everyone in March; see you then!