Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays! Rick is spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his parents in New Hampshire. I am spending Christmas Eve at home relaxing with Oscar and Ducky. I will be spending Christmas Day with my Dads in DC. Rick will be here for the New Year and that will be our "Christmas". What are you all doing for the holidays?

I don't know about New England, but we narrowly escaped a white Christmas here in the DC area. Anybody out there enjoying a white Christmas?

We're looking forward to 2011 and the wedding countdown. We seriously need to get back on track with planning. Anyway. . . .Merry Christmas!

Deck The Malls

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Who comes up with this stuff? Oh yeah, marketing guys (I'm looking at you, Rick).

Rick and I had a lovely Thanksgiving with his family. Bonus! Bevin and Renee were in town and we got to spend some time with them.

We even braved Black Friday to do some Christmas shopping. Despite the insanity, the lines, and the absolute terrifying nature of the local Leominster mall, we had fun and got most of our shopping done. We ended the day by wrapping presents together and Rick made a scrumptious lobster pot pie.

As Rick has mentioned before, we make a great team. We are both naturally creative and effecient. Two great things to have in common when trying to plan a wedding, but equally as useful when it comes to the difficulty of holiday shopping. We got so much more accomplished as a team than we would have on our own.

And. . .drum roll please. . .the stabby beard is gone. I'm sure my sigh of relief was heard worldwide.


As I mentioned in my last post, Rick will be down here this weekend. We have more shopping to do and we are looking forward to taking Ducky and Oscar to see the Bull Run Festival of Lights.

We will also be spending some time with my Dads. I don't know what the plan is yet, but I do know that The Village is being built as I type. The Village is my Dads collection of Dickens Village pieces all lovingly built into a truly beautiful Dickensian scene of Christmas bliss. I can't wait to see it!





We've unintentionally taken a short break from wedding planning to enjoy the holidays. Thankfully, a lot is already done thanks to the one stop nature of having a hotel wedding. We do plan to get our save the date cards out in January, so if you have not provided your address yet, please do so ASAP.

I don't know about everyone else, but the seemingly endless office parties kind of stress me out. Of course, my office is huge and divided into several sub-offices if you will. I can't cook and I can't bake and if I contributed money for all of them I'd go broke in a week. Thank heavens for all these food celebrities! I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while we were getting ready and lo and behold all my office party woes were solved. I can't possibly ruin Turkey Cranberry Pinwheels and they look so festive. The recipe is here:

http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/turkey-cranberry-pinwheels/2760AEB1-498D-4AF0-93EA-985E55EEB42D?WT.mc_id=paid_search_200200_636117&WT.srch=1&esrc=11183

We wish everyone a happy and joy-filled holiday season!

Traditions Old and New

It's almost Thanksgiving and I will be leaving work on Wednesday afternoon and flying to Boston on the busiest travel day of the year. As I'm standing in the TSA line waiting on the person in front of me to quit arguing over what's allowed and what's not, I will try to think happy thoughts about what I'm thankful for.

I'm very thankful for Rick. I'm thankful for the great life we have ahead of us. Including our plans for a kitchen decorated with lobsters. All we have to do now is decide where that's going to be. And deal with that stabby beard issue. . .

I'm thankful for my family. Especially my Dads. They have been my rocks and voices of reason. Love you guys! I'll miss you on Thanksgiving, but I'll be sure to call and say hello.

I'm thankful for Rick's family. They have done so much to make me feel welcome. I'm really looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with them.

What are you most thankful for this year?

Now, on to the traditions. Rick and I love watching movies together. So, naturally movies play a big part in our holiday traditions. Every Christmas Rick watches The Shining. Every Thanksgiving I watch Harry Potter. This year we've added a new movie to the Thanksgiving lineup. . .Thankskilling. Yes, Thankskilling. Worst acting ever. Lamest plot ever. It's so bad that it's good. The killer turkey is hilarious.

One Christmas tradition that Rick has started sharing with me is exchanging Christmas stockings. I collect stockings and it's just not Christmas without a stocking full of little treats. I love finding things to fill Rick's stocking all year long. Then I go and find the perfect stocking for him. The stocking exchange is often more fun than gifts.

Rick will be coming down a couple of weeks before Christmas to spend a long weekend. Every year I take Oscar and Ducky (a.k.a. The Boys) for a ride through The Festival of Lights at Bull Run Park. This year Rick will be joining us. The Boys love car rides and they always sleep like little angels in the back of the car on the way home.

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Stabby Beards and The Art of Compromise

Andy left a comment on her birthday post that really made me stop, think, and smile.

Any couple, married or not, will understand (or eventually learn) that one of the crucial elements to a successful relationship is what most people would call "give-and-take". For Andy and I, this has never really been a problem in our relationship. We are almost always on the same page, which for us doesn't necessarily mean we always agree, but it does mean that we are very comfortable being jointly spontaneous, open-minded, and flexible enough to alter our "best-laid-plans" for a better option.

Case in point, Andy's birthday weekend. Despite our initial plans, there were no martinis, no cake, and absolutely nothing accomplished as far as wedding plans or preparation. The majority of our weekend was actually spent burning through Season 4 of Dexter, drinking beer, napping, shopping, and eating homemade pizza and delicious Thai food. (Trust me, we're not complaining. It was a fabulously fun weekend.)

The same can be said for virtually all of our wedding plans. From the very beginning of this process, our decisions have been the product of discussion, brainstorming, and occasionally, substantial compromise. The best example I can think of for this is the music. We each chose certain songs that the other didn't necessarily love, but in the spirit of compromise, we looked at the meanings and reasons behind the choices and arrived at a comfortable understanding and flexibility. We really do make a great team.

It is in this spirit of compromise and flexibility that I am completely comfortable with the idea of certain aspects and routines of my own life being altered for the greater good of the partnership. Behold, my traditional winter beard:

This is a video I made for Andy for her birthday, as she had expressed enthusiasm about me growing my annual beard. I was fairly certain that, although Andy has commented in the past that my beard is good and looks cute, the idea of having it anywhere near her own face was not exactly thrilling to her. She's been a pretty good sport about it so far, though. This is nothing new, by the way. Andy has consistently been a good sport and, as I've mentioned before, very willing to be flexible and leave her preconceived viewpoints behind when it comes to things like eating lobster, or attempting to watch some ridiculous-sounding TV show or movie that I recommend.

Anyway, back to the beard... in the interest of compromise, I have promised Andy that if she still dislikes my beard by the time she comes up for Thanksgiving with me and my parents, I will not hesitate to remove it. No resentment, no regrets, and it will be good practice for a skill that we are already well-versed in, especially when the time comes to make joint decisions far more monumental than any beard could be.

Wedding Salute to Regretsy.com Part 2

I confess that this first picture is not from etsy.com, but I had to throw it in somewhere. No comment required. Yikes!

This is described as a "wedding dress with goblin hood". "Goblin hood". Nice.

A guy "giving me the finger" as a way to ask if I will marry him is a sure way to ensure I say no. . .and then run away. Far away.

I want to grow old with Rick, but this is taking it a bit far. Maybe it's just me, but this would not be my idea of a great wedding card.

Happy Birthday To Me

Martinis and cake. A good birthday plan in my book. I decided to take a birthday day off tomorrow so I can spend my birthday with Rick. Yay!

We hope to do some work on our save the date cards this weekend in between cake and martinis. Rick has been playing around with different designs, so hopefully we will decide on one and get the printing and mailing started.

I also wanted to thank my dad for the many (am I really THIS old?) years that he has kept an important birthday tradition alive. Every year he calls me at the exact time I was born to wish me a happy birthday. I look forward to that call every year.

Cheers!

Happy Halloween!

It was a close call. We almost (almost) had a Halloween wedding. The original plan was to have a Sleepy Hollow themed wedding. Alas, Rick refused (flatly refused) to wear tights and a tri-cornered hat. I can't say I blame him.

It would have been fun, but we just fell in love with the idea of having a beach wedding once we kind of decided Hampton Beach was "our" place.

So, Happy Halloween to all you Boos and Ghouls! Kick back and have a Hex or two. Boo!

And one of my all time favorites. . . .

Pets In Weddings

Just wait until you go to sleep tonight.*

Oh yeah? Well, I know where your favorite pair of Jimmy Choos are.*


You better get this hat off my head before I rip your face off!*

You know that look pets give you when you tell them you're taking them to the park and instead you go to the vet? The one that says I hate you and how could you at the same time? My fussy Cocker Spaniel, Ducky, has perfected it and Oscar has mastered the "how could you?" part. Spooky has her own brand of look that smacks of pure disdain. I do not like being on the receiving end of those looks. Rick and I love our pets dearly. They are family to us, but alas they are not "invited" to the wedding. We're not saying we don't love them, we're just saying no to dog tuxedos and cat dresses. Cat dresses? Seriously.

_____________

*Not our pets, we're not that stupid.

Ashworth Wrap-Up

As we've mentioned in previous posts, the recent weekend of September 25th and 26th was a pretty huge milestone for us as wedding plans go. I just received an email from the hotel we stayed in, asking me to take their customer service survey and rate the various aspects of our stay and the amenities that we enjoyed during that wonderful weekend. I had been intending to review and summarize our stay here on our blog for a few weeks, and this email reminded me that I still had not done so.

We spent an extended weekend at the beautiful Ashworth Hotel, and, as Andy pointed out, the weekend resulted in us making some of the biggest and toughest decisions concerning our reception. Decisions like food and beverage service, size of the function room, and an attempt to put a strict range on our number of guests. It had never really occurred to me until that point how many variables were involved, and also how much math we would be required to do in order to plan this thing out properly. Luckily for both of us, I am a whiz at Microsoft Excel, and after our weekend at the beach, I immediately got started putting a fairly tight budget and expense plan together based on the decisions we had made so far. Our stay and the tour and meeting with the Sales and Catering Manager also helped us to visualize the logistics of seating, decoration, and other minutae of our plans.

But let's get back to the Ashworth. I can really only speak for myself with certainty, but it appears that Andy and I share an attraction to Hampton Beach for the same basic reasons: It manages to be beautiful and fun, while still maintaining the incredibly tacky circus freak-show vibe that American beach towns tend to exhibit. And at the northern end of this freak-show, you will find the surprisingly classy Ashworth-By-The-Sea Hotel.

While considerably more pricey than virtually any other lodging in Hampton Beach, the old adage "you get what you pay for" rings true here. The hotel is well-staffed with valet parking attendants who never once failed to hold the entrance door open for us, helpful and polite concierges, and energetic and efficient waitstaff at their Breakers restaurant.

Speaking of which, Andy and I did take the opportunity to sample a meal or two while we were there. Dinner was prime rib au jus for me, and baked haddock with sherry lobster sauce for Andy. The food was excellent, the portions were reasonable, and we paid our check with a sense of pride, knowing our guests will be enjoying excellent meals next October. On our last morning at the hotel, we also checked out the Sunday Jazz Brunch Buffet. Realizing that our plans for the reception were also a buffet-style meal, I was overjoyed to see the degree of style, elegance, and quality the Ashworth showed, and this was just brunch. My mind reeled at the thought of what our reception dinner would be like.

The room was also very nice. If you will recall, our stay at the Ashworth was originally part of my plan to propose to Andy, so I had reserved the nicest room they had, which is called the Luxury Studio Suite. It featured some little balconies, and a full ocean view.



This was the view... pretty nice, especially during sunsets.
Not a great photo, sorry about that.

Unfortunately, much of the oceanfront area of Hampton Beach is undergoing some kind of elaborate revitalization project right now. Cheri, the hotel Sales Manager, assured us that construction would be completed by the time we got married. (crossing fingers)



I'm pretty sure that red circle is where our room was.

 So, having thoroughly checked out the venue, the hotel, the food, and even the swimming pool, I know I am absolutely convinced that neither we nor our guests will be disappointed in the service or atmosphere of this historic beach landmark. The deposit is in, the contract is signed. On to the next steps!

Wedding Tribute to Regretsy.com

Just what every newlywed couple wants! No, this will not be on our registry.

The most depressing cake topper ever or a good argument for why marrying your brother or sister is illegal.

Or how about the 'til death do us part business card holder--takes that concept a bit far, no?

This is called "take my hand". Imagine the dress that would go with this. *shudder*


For those that are unfamiliar with etsy.com it's a site that encourages people to "Buy, sell, and live handmade". And some of the items sellers come up with are bizarre to say the least (see above for great examples). Regretsy.com finds the bizarre of the bizarre and posts the items in a humorous context.

Wedding Weirdness Part 2

I like Star Wars, but this is a bit much.

You may now cut the bride?

This is just wrong.

Maybe we should go for this look. . .

Seriously, what were these people thinking? See more of the weirdness here:

http://www.stellasmagazine.com/bizarre-weddings/

Let Them Eat Cake

We just had a really big (OK, huge) decision making weekend. Thinking about all the "details" makes my head spin. One thing we decided on is the cake. Red velvet it is. We haven't decided on how we want the cake to look just yet, but there is plenty of inspiration out there.

One thing that has not escaped our notice is how inflated wedding prices are on everything. The cake is no exception. Regular cakes start at $3.00 per serving. Same cake as a "wedding" cake and it starts at $5.00 per serving. Is there some sort of magical ingredient in the wedding version that makes it cost more?

More Bridezillas

Andy and I have watched this clip together, and we are absolutely appalled that any human being could possibly act the way these horrifying women manage to, especially the Spawn of Satan, a.k.a. "Valerie" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ8PL9f3g6s#t=2m35s) . The behavior exhibited on this show sickens me... like, literally makes me feel nauseous.

After our initial laughter and subsequent revulsion, the fianceé and I have agreed that any similar behavior from EITHER of us will be a pretty definite dealbreaker.

Laugh and cry, my friends:

The Dress

I've been getting a lot of questions about what kind of dress I'll wear. What color? What length? What style?

I have plenty of time to find the perfect dress, so I haven't really spent a lot of time focusing on that. I would like something no frills, knee or tea length, and in an ivory color. I'm just too white to pull off a white dress.

I have also decided against getting ultra fussy with accessories. I'd rather have my hair done nicely than covered up with a veil. I will opt for a nice pair of earrings and probably skip wearing a necklace.

As Rick said before, we want to be comfortable so we can enjoy the festivities with our guests and being too done up just isn't our style. Stay tuned, I might ask for opinions once I start looking at dresses.

Getting the Ball Rolling

After a few days of playing phone-tag, we have finally made an appointment with the Sales and Catering Manager of the Ashworth Hotel in Hampton Beach to discuss pricing and details of our reception, as well as a tour of the facility. Andy will be coming back to New England for the last weekend of September, at which time we will be staying at the beach and spending some quality time with my Mom and Dad.

Next step is to start making a list of the 1 billion questions we will need her to answer. I'm looking forward to it. This will be the first concrete step (aside from the obvious "me proposing and Andy saying yes" thing) that we will have taken to officially start making wedding plans.

After our meeting, we're thinking of taking an early fall ocean cruise out to the Isles of Shoals. I've never been out there, I imagine it is beautiful.

We Are Going to Dance and Have Some Fun

So... while we are in the limbo-like process of nailing down dates and details for our big day, Andy and I have been putting some thought into the incidentals of the reception. Things like shoes, theme drinks, favor packages-- the details that will make our wedding special, unique, and personalized.

Of course, one of the most important "details" is our choice in music. We have already decided that there will not be any Hokey-Pokey or Chicken Dance, none of that corny stuff. Our goal is to pick music that is fun, uplifting, and clearly dance-able, while still making sure it's music that holds some special meaning to us and, of course, is also enjoyable for our guests. In the past few weeks, we have been compiling a sort of "rough draft" of song ideas that we think would be fun for everyone without resorting to the tired wedding reception cliches.

Thanks to a site I just discovered called MixPod, we're able to publicly share the playlist with you here. Keep in mind that it's just a list of the available songs for the pleasure of blog visitors... what you see/hear here may not necessarily be the same versions or edits we ultimately choose.

So, here's what we've come up with so far... keep checking back as we continue to add to it:

We would love to hear any thoughts, questions, comments, suggestions, et cetera.

Feel free to leave a comment, or contact one of us directly.

 

Wedding Weirdness

Andy and I are fascinated by interesting lists about bizarre things. It all started when I introduced her to Cracked, where breaking their articles down into numbered lists is standard operating procedure.

From there, it became kind of an off-and-on nightly ritual for us to find an interesting or funny list from Cracked or some similar website, and read it together. At some point, we discovered a site called Oddee.com which seemed more like an aggregate site that collected lists of stuff that had already been published on other sites. A bit lazy, in my opinion, but honestly, the best way to get a wide-angle view of some of the most insane things ever unleashed on the internet-viewing public.

It recently occurred to me that over the years, Oddee has collected several lists of bizarre wedding and wedding-related stories and features. Most of these are too insane to wrap my mind around, others seem really fascinating and innovative, and still others are just pathetically depressing lessons on "How NOT To Do Your (proposal/ceremony/vows/dress/DJ/et cetera)". After recently re-reading through some of my favorites, I thought I'd share a few:

10 Most Bizarre Wedding Rings

 

Cute idea, but a little less than tasteful.

 

7 Wedding Proposals Gone Bad



Whoops.



World's Strangest Marriages and Relationships



This guy married a pillow. Seriously.



You can find many, many more of Oddee's lists of strange proposals, weddings, etc. here. Enjoy.

It's nice to look at all the insane choices people make in this world, and all the horrible failures, and be fairly certain that Andy and I will not be counted among them.

Something Blue

I saw the coolest thing in one of the wedding magazines I picked up on my last trip to MA and I thought it might be perfect for our reception. This couple had a blue and white winter themed wedding and they served their champagne with Blue Curacao. Since our colors are blue, sand, and chocolate brown I thought it would work just as well for a beach wedding.

My Wedding Shoes

Andy and I are very set on the idea of having a much more casual wedding atmosphere. In fact, we are hoping for it to be more like a celebratory party than any kind of formalized sequence of events.

In that spirit, we have been discussing what we're going to wear. Thanks to numerous bridal and wedding-planning magazines, we realized that it would be perfectly fine to do whatever we want, as long as it's tasteful and somewhat consistent.

I am looking at going semi-formal. Nice pants, jacket and tie. Probably not going the tuxedo route. They can get pretty uncomfortable. Most of the weddings I've been to have included me as a member of the wedding party, which meant tuxedos. In nearly every case, I can recall removing at least the jacket and vest or cummerbund, and untucking the shirt so I could dance more comfortably during the reception.

When it comes to wanting to dance for hours, though, the most important thing is the shoes. Formal shoes, especially rentals, are amazingly painful after a few hours. Sure they look great, and they have nice slippery bottoms for dancing enhancement on polished hardwood floors, but they HURT.

Not wanting to approach our special day as something whimsical or to be taken lightly, I asked Andy what she'd think about me adding my own special "sauce" to whatever outfit I chose, by adding some custom-made Converse All-Stars. Anyone who knows me well knows that this particular style of shoe is a staple of my casual wardrobe, and I felt it would be a nice touch to personalize the wedding plans.

She seemed supportive of the idea, so I went to Converse's website and started designing some shoes using our theme colors: A light blue (theirs is a little more saturated than what we chose, but oh well), sand, and dark brown.

I wanted brown laces too, but Converse doesn't offer them.

Here's a 360º view of how they turned out so far. (requires Flash)

Memories of the Beach

When I was little, my parents took me to Ocean City, MD just about every summer. Some of my fondest memories are of those trips. Riding all the rides at Trimper's on the boardwalk, drinking the best lemonade ever, going through the Haunted House, and just having a blast in general.

I'm not really a beach person in the sense that I spend hours perfecting my tan so that someday I can be the makings for a lovely purse, but the beach just seemed like the right place for us to get married.

I found this site that has some great pictures and historical information about Hampton Beach and the surrounding area.

http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/vignettes/NHhistoricseacoast.htm

If you're wondering what the weather will be like in October. It looks like the average high is 61 and the low is a chilly 39.

Enjoy!

Six Things You Will NOT Find at Our Wedding

You've heard of "dos and don'ts". Here is a list of "please, for the love of God, don'ts", courtesy of one of our favorite websites, CRACKED.
(Warning! This article contains some strong language and also a lot of fighting.)

Six Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Wedding

My personal pick for most cringe-worthy is the deliriously drunk bridsesmaid hogging the spotlight during what starts out as a cute little dance number between her and the bride. Incredibly awkward and embarrassing moments like this are part of the reason Andy and I decided to keep our wedding as simple as humanly possible, which means no wedding party, no idiotic staged photographs of the groom trying to run away, no Chicken Dance, no Electric Slide, and definitely, DEFINITELY no shoving cake in each others' faces.

EDIT: Ok, actually 7 things. We will encourage everyone at our celebration to have as much fun as possible, but please try not to destroy the entire place and injure the other guests like the following drunken Russian:

Enjoy.

Bridezilla!

I refuse to become a Bridezilla, and I don't see Rick turning into Groomzilla. We want this wedding to be as fun to plan as it will be for our guests. I've been pouring through wedding magazines searching for ideas that will make our special day memorable and FUN.

It's great that Rick wants to be involved in all the planning. This is not my wedding or his wedding, it's OUR wedding and that's the way we're approaching this.

So far we've decided that we don't want a pompous or stuffy wedding--it's just not us. We've also decided on our colors: blue and brown. Like the blog.

We hope you all will come along for the ride with us as we plan our big day. I know, I know, who wants to read a blog full of nauseating wedding dribble? We'll try to keep our sense of humor as we go along. We hope you will laugh with us (and at us if you choose) as we bummble along with our plans.

The Engagement Story

It recently became very, very clear to me that Andy was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I bought an engagement ring for her in late July, and booked us a room at our favorite place, Hampton Beach, for the last weekend of September 2010. The room was at the Ashworth, the place where I had envisioned us having our wedding reception. My plan was to take her back to Hampton for that weekend, and propose to her on the beach.

Just one problem-- I totally screwed it up. I panicked about the ring, worrying about whether she'd like it or not. We had looked at a few possibilities on one of her previous trips here, but the setting we both agreed on was no longer available. I had used my best judgment to pick out a worthy substitute, but I didn't want to mess up what would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. In a fit of anxiety, I told Andy that I had bought her a ring. The conversation over the next few days also revealed that she was not fooled about my reason for booking the nicest room at the nicest hotel in Hampton for us to stay at in September. She knew exactly what I was planning.

With both secrets out of the bag and our ideal wedding date of September 24th, 2011 unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances (my plan was to propose to her exactly one year before our wedding date), I decided to come up with something that would completely blow her mind. We have always enjoyed an extremely unconventional relationship, but I decided that when it came to the proposal, it had to knock her off her feet.

Andy was coming back for a visit this weekend, August 14th. We knew we wanted to have the actual wedding ceremony on the beach somewhere, but we weren't sure exactly what spot. So, I suggested taking a ride up to Hampton to pick out our perfect marriage spot (which actually ended up being in Rye, the next town north along the coast from Hampton). Here it is:

Check it out on Google Maps if you like.

When we finally found it, we looked around and agreed that, yes, this was it. IT. So, I took her hand and explained to her that since we were changing the wedding date, I thought it was only fitting to change the engagement date too. I took the ring out of my pocket and asked her to marry me.

After recovering from being absolutely stunned, she said "Yes." A million times. I have never been more happy in my life.

A passing stranger who was there with what I assume was his girlfriend approached me moments later. He said "I couldn't help noticing what just happened here. Congratulations! I proposed to my wife here too." He went on to explain that she had passed away, but it was still a special place. He asked me for my camera so he could take a picture of us, and congratulated us again before we went off on our own.

We stopped to collect some rocks and seashells as souvenirs of this momentous occasion. After a few minutes to collect ourselves and let the awesomeness of the moment sink in, we headed back to the car. As I was opening the door to get into the drivers seat, a strange old man made his way through the bushes that formed the border between the parking area and the rocky shore.

He looked at me and said: "Son, I don't know who you are... but you done good."

Andy and I have always believed that the Universe has somehow brought us together, and has been giving us signs all along that we were right for each other. I have to wonder about this strange old man in his safety-orange outfit and wide-brimmed fishing hat who appeared almost out of nowhere to offer his comments. Was he just a regular guy who happened to witness our special moment? Or, could it be that the Universe was giving us its blessing?

Engaged!

On August 14th, 2010, Rick asked Andy if she would marry him.

She said "Yes."