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/