our wedding: part details

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Today is Tim and my actual anniversary. Happy five years to us!

And, fittingly enough, this is all about the details. Which just goes to show you how anal we both are…with everything. Even the tiny things.

Remember how I said the other day (yesterday? I don’t remember) Tim and I were ALL ABOUT THE DETAILS with our wedding?

Here’s proof.

Anything small and seemingly insignificant that also looks awesome and just MAKES IT PERFECT?

WE DID THAT.

(It took three days to figure out how to curve the text to fit onto those small stickers, FYI.

(I can’t take credit for the flowers…but they’re pretty, right?)

My mom had the sign made…and put this together…thanks, mom!

We tied the ribbons around the pots. We made the cards inside the pots (growing instructions on one side, poem significant to our relationship on the other).

Votives…added by us.

Sparklers…sign…jar…all us…

Pretty beaded stems of the champagne flutes?

Made by us.

Sign-a-ble picture frame…not made by us but, still.

All those pictures of us in those frames?

US.

(Well, obviously us, but we picked them out. Printed them. Put them together. ETC)

This picture again? Yes. Why?

See the table number stands?

Not only did we MAKE them, each table had a different picture AND corresponding story about Tim and me. ALL UNIQUE. ALL DIFFERENT.

You can also see the votives and the small glass containers that held the Hershey’s kisses…

And this one again because….we provided the jars…tied the ribbons around the jars. Made those cards people are writing on…I even bought those hydrangeas from Whole Foods the day before the wedding…ETC.

We also made the wedding programs. And our wedding invitations.

I probably should have known things were about to get real when I had a fit about the evenness of the holes getting punched in the invitations and the direction the bow was tied (MUST. BE. HORIZONTAL.) and had brother Mason freaked out and putting stamps on the RSVP envelopes straight as an arrow, like a boss.

The look on brother Troy’s face says it all. Pretty much, “My makeshift name tag says ‘I’m just here to be the holder.’”

I won’t even tell you how long it took us to find a tree that would be “acceptable” and how many different variations of brown there are…and how we purchased a special font…and how long it took us to get the little swirly thing below the tree to not have a space where it met with the trunk AND still look “right.” We also had a special wax seal for the outer envelope (that requires extra postage, FYI. My perfect invitations were ruined with THREE RANDOM STAMPS after the post mail returned them to my front doorstep all, “These won’t go through the machine.”)…

Ok. I admit. It was a little insane.

But weren’t they perfect??

(The outside flap where the velcro circle is (applied by us) also had a little double-heart charm…

So…if you want to hire us to make your wedding perfect…we’re happy to oblige but fair warning: we are a PITA when it comes to details.

Obviously.

our wedding: part decorations

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I’m pretty sure this post would be better if I just gave you a bunch of eye candy instead of trying to explain it…

So…I give you our wedding…decorations.

Mostly.

five years ago: the wedding (part music)

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Tim and my wedding anniversary is coming up this weekend.

Our five year wedding anniversary.

Five years, people.

WOW.

It really has gone by so quickly. I know it didn’t feel that way sometimes…but this day surely doesn’t feel like five years ago:

But it was.

Since most (read: 99.9%) of you probably weren’t at our wedding, I thought it would be fun to share with you some of the things we did. I loved our wedding. Every single bit of it. Every little detail – and boy did we do it down to the detail.

Today I’ll share with you the music we had during the ceremony. It took weeks of Tim and me sitting in the computer room for hours at a time, listening to song after song after song, trying to decide what to have played during each part of the ceremony (and we had to figure that out, too) and who was going to play it. The whole project was tedious and sometimes annoying because it was like, “JUST PICK SOMETHING” and then it was “BUT IT’S OUR WEDDING.”

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Finally, we settled on a string quartet and, at the time, my brother, Mason, played the trumpet, so we enlisted his services for the Interlude.

The quartet played everything else.

Prelude music (which I heard NONE of, by the way. I was busy in the downstairs part of the chapel, by myself – save the photographer. Nervous as can be.)

(and I don’t remember what any of these sounded like, for the record)

1. Eine Kleine
2. Queen of Sheba
3. Music of the Night
4. Only Time – Enya
5. Water Music – Hornpipe
6. Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring

Processional: Cannon in D

Bride’s Entrance: Edelweiss

Unity Candle: Bless The Broken Road

Interlude: Trumpet Voluntary

Recessional: Spring from the Four Seasons by Vivaldi

I have no idea why all of that took forever to figure out, but it did. I wanted something special for my walk down the aisle and I don’t even remember the reasoning behind anything else…that’s how unimportant these things end up being AFTER THE FACT.

While you’re in the thick of it?

MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. DEAD SERIOUS.

I know the music was awesome with the string quartet…I just wish we had recorded it because, honestly? I barely even remember the ceremony, much less the music. The only part I actually remember is the unity candle and that is only because it took five seconds to light that thing and the song was a few minutes long. I looked at Tim like, “We didn’t plan for this dead air part. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

He whispered to enjoy it.

I think I tried?

I remember feeling really exposed, like the entire world was staring at me.

Which, technically, it was, if the “entire world” meant the tiny chapel we were in with our friends and family.

The song was over soon enough and we went on with the business of getting married, as most people do in that kind of situation.

I really wish someone had recorded it, though. I’d really like to relive that day…that moment…in something other than pictures.

Also? I just wanted to say hi! and thank you! to anyone and everyone who follows my little blog. I know it isn’t much, but it means something to me when I get an email letting me know that you decided to follow along…

commitment

Let’s talk commitment, shall we?

More specifically, relationship commitment.

I really should save this post for next month, but meh.

I like now.

Why next month? The ‘why’ is coming…

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’d already know that “commitment” wasn’t really something practiced by my family…namely my dad…who decided another family/woman/person other than his blood were more important than, well, us – his family.

I grew up almost expecting guys to cheat on me…I thought that’s just what happened…that’s just how it went: I bend over backwards and he takes advantage of me.

Obviously, that is not at all how a relationship is supposed to work. It took me a long, long time to develop enough faith and belief in “the other person” to trust them and not be suspicious if they were late or didn’t call or what have you.

To this day, the only “other person” I have ever trusted implicitly is Tim. Granted, it didn’t start out that way…it started out completely the opposite. It started the same way it always had in the past: I didn’t trust him farther than I could throw him – and that wasn’t very far. At all.

It took years – YEARS – of him having to prove himself (for lack of a better phrase) to me. I really can’t even imagine how that must have felt for him…I was too wrapped up in my own insecurities to even notice how my non-trusting attitude affected him. It did get better, though. I learned to trust him. I learned to not “assume the worst.”

Once that happened? I was free! I felt like I was flying. I felt more freedom than I ever have in a relationship. I don’t really know why it feels like freedom when, really, you’re letting the other person free…out of their trust cage…but that’s exactly the sensation.

And it was wonderful.

Then, like the cruel joke life is sometimes, I soon realized that fully trusting another person is just step one in a myriad of phases that never seem to end.

Trust is just the beginning of a long, winding road that takes you through more twists and turns than you’d think was reasonable. Once you learn to trust someone, that’s the easy part.

Where it gets difficult and tricky and muddied is with commitment.

It seems like trust and commitment go together, like peas and carrots, and they do, to a degree. What I’ve learned, though, is that you can trust anyone.

What you can’t do as easily is commit to that person. Committing to someone requires a hell of a lot more effort than trusting them. Commitment is an on-going, daily task that requires lots of work and time. When you slack off commitment, it slacks off on you. You slack off on each other. Everything just starts to go into autopilot and autopilot doesn’t allow you to see any of those twists in that road I was talking about earlier.

WHAM!

We’re all hit by a bus because no one was paying attention.

It’s at that point you realize you haven’t been practicing commitment like you should be and that realization usually stems from some kind of tiff or disagreement or full blown argument. It is so easy to slide into autopilot and just keep on living like you always do…taking the other person for granted and turning into a sour puss because you don’t feel like you’re getting what you want or need or both – all because you’ve been neglecting the thing that keeps you fulfilled: commitment.

One month, exactly, from today, marks Tim and my seven year “meet-a-versary” – which is really the beginning of our “dating” (waaay back) in 2004. I asked him if that date still counted, since it’s not like we officially became exclusive on that date…and he retorted, “Did you see anyone else after that?”

me: No…

Tim: Me either. So. Yes. It counts.

(He actually called and cancelled a previously scheduled date with some other chick after he and I went out for the first time…talk about timing. What if *I* had been the other girl who had the later scheduled date?)

I really can’t believe we’re coming up on seven years…so much has happened and so much has changed since then. We’ve grown together and figured out how to live with each other without killing the other person. We know how to deal with our faults and weird quirks. Though, personally, I think Tim is better at dealing with me than I am with him…even though I’m trying to improve…

Point is: we’re still learning how to be committed to one another each and every day. It’s not that we aren’t 100% on board with marriage and with the idea of FOREVER, it’s more like we have to navigate around obstacles that arise and learn how to best handle each one in a way that still keeps the other person in perspective. Sure, we could go off and just do it “our way” and say screw it…but that isn’t commitment. That isn’t what marriage is about.

The girl (me) who likes to compete in every.single.thing. in life is still learning that marriage isn’t a game where you keep score. Keeping score pulls you farther away from being committed and puts you into this box where you are still trying to be an individual in a relationship. I mean, yes, you’re always supposed to be yourself…stay individual…grow together…but what I am (unsuccessfully) trying to say is that if you’re always looking at your relationship – your commitment – as YOU versus HIM, then you aren’t really committed…are you?

The change in me is happening slowly – much unlike Tim, who seems to do a better job of staying present and thinking of us as the “whole” instead of the sum of its parts. I’m going to say his progression is because he has thirteen more years of life experience than me…or something like that.

Maybe I’m still trying to grow up.

Maybe it’s because I still have the daddy baggage.

Maybe it is something I don’t even see, yet.

But through all of those maybe’s, I have realized what it means to be committed and where I may be slacking off and not trying as hard as I should be. I see where I may need to make a course correction and I can see, usually in hindsight, where I was wrong and should have been the (first one) to apologize.

I think that probably counts for something.

because your reader didn’t tell you…

That I posted a gift guide. And it’s awesome.

(The reader kinks…we’re still working on them…which is why I’m posting this…so you aren’t left out. You’re totally welcome ).

you should be here, already. like, now.

What happened today? Well, today I was retarded.

And today you should be visiting booshy’s new home. Yay!

i’m a wife? what the hell? since when?

I actually thought way back when Tim and I got married…I’d FEEL married…right from start.

You know, like, all hitched and stuff. Married couple. The “wife.”

WRONG.

Didn’t happen.

In fact, it has taken me TWO YEARS to finally stop looking at people like they have a slimy, green snot booger clinging to the side of their face when they say “Mrs.” or lump me into the “married” category.

TWO. YEARS.

Tim seemed to understand the whole 1 + 1 = 1 mentality a lot faster than me.

Which, is weird, cause he’s like, a math person…and that kind of math doesn’t make any sense…in fact, it completely goes against his years and years of beating really hard equations into his brain.

And to me, anything past like, multiplication, is hard…cause sometimes I can’t even get simple addition right. In my defense, the miscalculations only happen when I have to do it in my brain without any paper OR a calculator…which is totally unfair. Now, the shit he did I don’t even try to understand…all these “pretend” numbers for a scenario that might or might not happen where the answer is infinity raised to the twelfth power.

What the hell? When is that ever relevant?

Exactly. It’s not.

So…we’re not going to waste any more time on shit that can only occur in a scenario that is only possible inside a black hole when moving five times faster than the speed of light.

And there is no transition from pretending you are inside a black hole to marriage…unless you start to think about that if you ever find yourself getting sucked into a black hole, you’re basically dead…cause it like, crushes you. Shit, no…that doesn’t work…maybe for a divorce…but not marriage…

Let’s move along, because this is just going the wrong ass direction from the point I’m trying to make…

The other day, while we were watching something…I don’t remember what…in the middle of some random commercial I also don’t remember, I looked over at Tim and said, “Honey, is it still weird for you?”

Tim looks at me all, What the hell are you talking about?

See, I ask him a question…and he is supposed to know what I’m talking about with no context.

He’s supposed to know exactly what’s going on in my brain.

1 + 1 = 1…which, to me, means NO MORE EXPLAINING.

Again, WRONG.

It actually means MORE EXPLAINING.

Me: Ugghhh…being married…you knew what I meant…is it weird to you….the whole husband and wife thing?

Tim: Uhhh…noooo…and how the hell am I supposed to know what you were talking about?

( 1 + 1 = 1…..IS HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW)

Me: When did it stop being weird?

Tim: Three days past the show is back on.

Me: You aren’t helping.

Tim: Seventeen days after the second full moon in the ninth equinox.

Me: …the hell?….and…what, exactly, is an equinox?

Tim: As in: IT STOPPED BEING WEIRD SO LONG AGO I DON’T REMEMBER.

Me: Try! Try to remember.

Tim: You’re making my head hurt.

Me: Pleeeassse…

Tim: Hey!..Look! Football’s on…you no longer….DAMN! DID YOU SEE THAT TACKLE!?!

And at that very moment, as I was being ignored, I finally realized it:

I am a wife…to a man who loves football and doesn’t remember WHEN it stopped being weird…because I’ve been “his” since before the titles legally applied…he mentally committed to me LONG before he actually proposed…

Which is why he doesn’t remember. He ticked off the “I-found-my-mate” box a long ass time ago.

So, just a little warning to all those engaged or soon to be man and wife…

(I cannot say that without thinking of The Princess Bride… MAN AND WIFE! MAN AND WIFE!…and that…actually, let me stop right there because you just witnessed a milestone moment here…cause I’m that person who is all, who is Tom Cruise, again? Top Gun? What’s THAT?  No, I haven’t seen Top Gun and no, I had no idea he was in it. Yes, I’m totally serious. So the fact that I just yanked Princess Bride from my memory bank is like, I may as well have just won the lottery…cause an accurate movie reference like that will never happen again).

Anyhow, little love birds…newsflash: It takes more than just a simple “I Do” before saying husband doesn’t feel like you committed blasphemy and seeing ”Mrs.” in front of your name isn’t weird and picking up dirty under-things (boxers, briefs, the combo pack, banana sack…whatever) doesn’t make you gag.

I am JUST getting to that point. TWO YEARS AFTER the “I Do.”

TWO

DAMN

YEARS

And that is a long ass time to walk around confused, having conversations with yourself all, You are married, dumbass…Why did you yell at her?…She only called you by your name…yes, the real one and yes, it changed, remember? The new one you had to practice signing for like, a month so you didn’t accidently revert back to what you’ve written for 23 years? Get a grip, self. Seriously…grace period’s over. I THINK AFTER SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY DAMN DAYS YOU CAN ACCEPT THAT YOU. ARE. MARRIED.

Shit…I think there was a Leap Year or something in there somewhere…

Dear math: I quit.

it’s official! happy anniversary…to us.

Two years ago today…I was standing in a room underneath a stone chapel…waiting with one of our wedding coordinator’s assistants for the green light to make my way out the door and up the stairs to walk through the red, wooden chapel doors to marry the love of my life.

While I sat in silence, trying not to allow my nerves to take over and result in me running from the room, busting into the chapel, racing down the aisle, ripping the rings from the flower girl’s hand, laying a sloppy wet one on Tim and then, remembering we had an audience, straightenig my tiara and bowing gracefully…

Tim was having his own pre-ceremony fun by trying to figure out how to tell the pastor that he was absolutely not holding his hand whilst walking down the aisle without causing a scene at the back of the little chapel, short of slapping his hand while shooting him a sideways glance all, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.

Tim confessed to me the other day that when he greeted James Gwin – the man who was about to marry us – at the chapel entrance, he looked as if he wanted to walk down the aisle, man-hand in man-hand.

Blame Tim’s terror-stricken confusion on nerves or the recent memory of he and our photojournalist, Hassel, skipping down a gravel path during our engagement photo session, their hands clasped tightly together.

Don’t ask. Bene, Hassel’s wife, and I still haven’t figured it out.

And while Tim was recounting his painful minutes of indecision, he stopped.

He stopped right in the middle of his thought and looked me square in the eye, and in total seriousness, he was all, “What if I was supposed to hold hands and didn’t? What if he stamped his foot, completely insulted at my brush off, and promptly walked out, refusing to marry such an asshole?”

What I would give to go back to THAT MOMENT to see the look of complete panic.

DO I SUCK IT UP AND HOLD HIS HAND?!? IS THIS NORMAL? MAKE. A. CHOICE. DAMMIT.

James Gwin DID kinda send mixed signals…I mean, look at the hand placement. Who shakes hands on the same side, anyway? (thanks, Hassel, for capturing a moment funnier than I realized):

I have no recollection of walking down the aisle, I just know I made it, thanks to modern technology. Had it not been for a camera, someone would have had to convince me it actually happened…that I wasn’t hallucinating from dehydration or lack of oxygen to the ol’ medulla oblongata.

I’ll never forget our wedding day. As hard as we worked for an entire year for these few short hours…it was worth it.

Though, I must admit, I had no idea what to expect with marriage…it is more complex and exhausting and time consuming than I ever imagined.

But I’m loving every single minute.

Because I’m spending them with my best friend.

My other half.

The only person who knows exactly what to say to make it all better.

AND…honey…guess what?

We’re officially done with year two!

Year two sucked, remember?

my bouquet…is a painting

During the crazed year of planning my perfect wedding, I decided that preserving my bouquet in formaldehyde and sticking it in a shadow box was just…gross.

So I searched…for MONTHS for a solution. A nice, functional way to forever preserve my flowers.

Press them and put the flattened calla lilies and roses in a scrapbook?  

No.

Throw them away?

No.

Pull all the petals off and stick them in a jar?

No.

Make a PAINTING out of your flowers?

Now…we’re on to something,

Enter genius artist from Louisiana who turns bouquets into art.

The only negative: your flowers must be OVERNIGHTED.

And if you’re off on your honeymoon like we were, SOMEONE ELSE will be responsible to make sure the flowers get to the artist EXACTLY AS DIRECTED.

She gives you a detailed, step-by-if-you-don’t-follow-my-every-word-exactly-as-I-say-it-will-ruin-everything step.

Not following directions means your flowers will wilt and die and you’re left with nothing.

NOTHING.

My mom got the bouquet. She drew the short straw.

And I learned later that this ONE TASK – the shipping of the bouquet - was so riddled with pressure, she almost decided to pack up and drive the bouquet to Louisiana herself.  She didn’t want to be the one to tell me that my flowers were shipped without enough cooling packs and they arrived at the studio as potpourri.

My mom ended up shipping them.  And whatever she did, it must have been exactly right because the artist had PLENTY of semi-fresh flowers to work with.

My bouquet went from this:

 

 

To this:

i’m not a thief!

My grandmother, Omi, God rest her Catholic, German soul…had this fixation that reared its head whenever we went to restaurants or special occasions like weddings where the tables were laden with delicate silverware and ornate salt and pepper shakers.

Those objects…were too shiny and perfect NOT TO TAKE HOME AND ADMIRE.

My brothers and I always prayed we were seated in a place other than the chair next to her, right in the midst of the crime scene.  Because one was never enough.  It always had to be a SET…or multiple sets if said items were particularly eye-catching.

Once, during one of my cousin’s wedding…I was about 12… and I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the fact that my perfect, blond haired, blue eyed cousin got pregnant BEFORE SHE GOT MARRIED…but Omi went on a utensil rampage…stuffing forks and knives and those cute little dishes for candy into her over-sized pocketbook.

Jeff and I just sat there and stared while my mom kept trying to pry the items from Omi’s hands as they were moving under the table to hide away said treasures.

Let’s just say…mom wasn’t successful.  She caused more of a scene just trying to stop her, so she eventually just gave us a raised eyebrow look that said, “JUST LOOK AWAY AND DON’T YOU DARE FOLLOW HER EXAMPLE.”

On the way out, Omi had a difficult time just carrying the load.  Jeff and I were snickering behind her the entire time, hearing the clanging of the knives and forks and the bag swayed back and forth.  I guess we got a little too loud, because Omi looked back at us and just said, “SHHHHHHHH!!  YOU’RE GIVING US AWAY!”

Wait just a second here.

US ??

Jeff and I looked at each other all, “I don’t know about you…but I’M CLEAN.”

And since then, I’ve always resisted the urge to take small items…in fear of becoming a silverware thief.

Then, this morning, as I’m putting clothes into the washing machine, I see this cloth “dirty laundry” bag that I swiped from a hotel a few months ago.

I froze.

Didn’t we also sneak out a shoe bag in Utah…one that doubles as a buffer?

I couldn’t believe it.

The Omi fixation has manifested itself in my needing to take any and all cute-yet-functional bags from hotels.

Guess I shouldn’t have laughed on my cousin’s wedding day…came back to bite me right in the ass.