September 2008 Archives

.... and we are totally thrilled!

Our photographers, Paul Grupp and Brenda Tompkins, blogged our wedding and linked to the photos on the Upstate Photographers Blog.

They posted nearly 1,000 images of our wedding day-- the highlights are in the "Best of" album. Paul and Brenda are still editing and adding to the albums, and so far I love what they've captured.

Our guests have been posting photos for the past few days, and we've been attempting to collect them. Here are some of my favorites:

In 4 days I'm marrying the boy I've been in love with since I was 17.

The weather forecast looks perfect (low 70s and sunny... but I'm still knocking on wood, and the rosary beads will still be hung on the clothesline, and I'll still be packing my rain boots).

We are packing up tonight (I'm so nervous about forgetting something...), driving to Albany tomorrow morning, madly working to finish everything that needs to be at the reception venue by Wednesday evening, and family starts rolling into town on Thursday. I can't wait to see everyone-- I was writing out place cards last night, and every name I wrote made me more and more excited about all the people that will be with us on Saturday.

It's going to fly by, and I'm going to do my best to savor every minute of it.

We are back in Massachusetts for our last few days of living in sin. Two more days of work (during which my sweet co-workers are throwing a little party in honor of my "upcoming nuptials"-- this nice gesture despite the fact that I was unable to invite anyone from work to the wedding). Bright and early Wednesday we are headed back to Albany for final wedding preparations and plenty of celebrations. (Wheee!)

I went to church with my parents this morning and had butterflies in my stomach for the entire hour. After mass, we chatted with the organist who is playing our wedding, and who has the music thing totally under control. The gardens look lovely. Our wedding banns was listed in the church bulletin (modern banns are so boring compared to ye olde time banns. No three weeks of proclamations for us, just a listing in italics).

Today we met with our photographers to go over our wedding day time line and various other details. The meeting left us feeling so certain of our choice-- Paul and Brenda "get it"-- they aren't going to try to turn our wedding into a magazine spread, they're going to capture the day as it unfolds, and they're going to capture it beautifully. Also? The meeting ended with hugs. We left even more excited about our wedding and about our decision to hire them.

After we left that meeting, we went to our florist's house to drop off some items for the bouquets. She greeted us with hugs, I chatted with her adorable 3-year-old Oliver ("Where is your house?") and met her new baby Elijah. She ooo-ed and ah-ed over the items I brought her. Again, I left feeling elated that Jolene is in charge of our flowers.

Last night, my parents, Pat's mom, my aunt and uncle, Patrick, and I prepped the centerpieces and did some work on the favors (we would have done more had we not forgotten 2 essential pieces in Massachusetts... oops). These things are so much easier and so much more fun with the help of family and friends. Last Thursday, instead of our usual trivia night, Julia and Seth came over to help with wedding projects and provide us with lots of laughs (also, election-themed beer). All weekend we've been hearing via phone, email, and in person how excited our guests are about our wedding (did I mention that we are, too?). We are so lucky to have so many good people in our lives.

This weekend could have been really stressful and crazy, but instead it was reassuring and fun. Patrick and I were both giddy with excitement, our family and friends were so willing to help, and our vendors are just so nice!

And you know what? We're getting married on SATURDAY!

(Excuse me, I need to go squeal and kiss my fiance and twirl him around the room and give him a big squeeze because I just can't wait to be married to him! I warned you that I just can't hide it.)

I am changing my name.

Reactions to this have ranged from surprised to pleased to disapproving. In most cases, it seems that people assumed I wouldn't be changing my name.

Believe me, I gave it a lot of thought. Hyphenating would probably be my top choice, however hyphenating our last names would leave me with a six syllable last name. I spend enough of my time working on pronunciation with people now-- I can only imagine what the hyphenation of two tricky last names would do. And can you imagine just answering the phone at work? "Hello, this is Nicole Longlastname-longlastname." Whew-- it's a double mouthful!

I really like the idea of sharing a last name with Patrick-- like we're a team, operating under the same team name. I like that we'll both share a last name with our children. While I know many small changes are in store, after 10 years I'm not sure marriage will bring about any huge changes. I like the symbolism of this change and starting a new phase of our life together (in one week!) with a shared last name.

I'm not letting go of my last name entirely. I'm going to keep it as a second middle name (oh boy, filling out forms is going to be fun...) and it will remain (along with my new name) on my business cards and work-related materials. It's getting bumped back in line, but it's not disappearing.

I respect every decision about whether to keep one's last name, move it to the middle, hyphenate it, or ditch it altogether. Some of the strongest women I know took their partner's last name. It's a personal decision, and it's about what feels right to you. I don't think it says anything about one's independence as a woman or one's commitment to the marriage. It's a name.

(And really, I'm already known by quite a few names: Nicole, Nikki, Nic, Splash, to name a few. By taking Pat's last name I'm just adding one more to the list!)

Sometimes in the wedding planning world it feels like there is this dichotomy: your ceremony is either personal and meaningful, or it's a church wedding. For some reason, there is this belief out there that a church wedding is cookie cutter, impersonal, and only differs from wedding to wedding because of the names inserted in the vows.

Our wedding ceremony will be a Catholic mass celebrating the sacrament of holy matrimony. While the mass has to follow a certain format, we were able to choose readings, songs, participants, and there are sections that we are writing. It is far from impersonal: it is a representation of our faith and what it means to us. It is a ceremony that is about love.

The readings we've chosen are not about man owning woman, they are not fire and brimstone and an angry God: Our readings are about loving one another, about living with kindness, and about love's strength.

We chose our officiant based on his approach to Catholicism that is about love and inclusiveness. I have known our priest since I was 12, and his role in our wedding celebration is important to both Patrick and I.

The music for our ceremony will be sung by a family friend with a beautiful voice. We chose each song based on how the melody moved us, whether the lyrics spoke to us, and how it fit in with the rest of the ceremony.


We will be getting married at the same church where my parents were married, in the parish that my family has been a member of since I was born. My sister and I were baptized there, made our first communions there, and were confirmed there. The building itself is new, but it's a community I've known all my life.



True, the Catholic church isn't up for a bridal processional set to the music of Modest Mouse or readings from The Giving Tree-- but we will be taking part in a ceremony that mirrors the wedding ceremonies of our parents and grandparents and great grandparents-- on back to the roots of our family trees. That link is as important as all the rest.

We never had specific ideas about what we wanted for our cake topper-- I'd been keeping an eye out for a vintage bride and groom, and saw some adorable ones that were just way out of our price range. I even found a little bride and groom on a tandem bicycle, which I loved-- but not enough to justify the price tag.

We had left this detail unfinished and figured we'd come up with something-- if not, no biggie. Early this summer, Pat's cousin Steve, his wife Meg (yep, our invitation designer), and Steve's mom Norma stopped in to visit Pat's grandmother, Voa and check out her newly remodeled kitchen. When we saw them later that week, they mentioned that she had the cake topper from her wedding on display in her newly remodeled kitchen, and that she was talking about it and telling them stories of her wedding (if you know Voa, you know that of course she was telling stories!). The minute we heard that it was still around, Patrick and I both had the same thought: how great would it be if we were able to use his grandmother's cake topper?

When we went to visit Voa later in the summer, she gave us the tour of the latest additions to her kitchen, and sure enough pointed out the cake topper on display in one of her cabinets. We told her that actually, we had heard about the cake topper, and we were wondering what she thought about us using it on our wedding cake. She may have started crying right there. She couldn't believe we'd want to use it-- the flowers were coming apart she said, and it was only plastic. Were we sure about this?

We explained that those things weren't a big deal-- it was special because it was used on the day she married Patrick's grandfather. She was definitely crying then (of course, she cries just about every time our wedding is mentioned-- she is such a cutie). We were so excited that she was going to let us use it-- it means so much to have a cake topper that stood atop Voo and Voa's cake, over 50 years ago.

Voa is the only grandmother we have with us now, and she means the world to us. She has always been supportive and loving and sweet-- I am honored that the same plastic bride that represented Voa will represent me (even if it does look a little more like her than it does me!).

Here it is, Voa's cake topper, our cake topper:

We're sitting here working on music stuff for our meeting with DJ Chris tomorrow. Patrick is putting together a play list of ideas for dinner music and I'm putting together the cocktail hour play list (which probably will be a CD made by us, as cocktails will be outside on the other side of the club from where Chris will be set up).

"So, I just put together a song list for dinner hour which has 28 songs and is an hour and 37 minutes long. Oops." Says Pat.

I took a look at my cocktail hour playlist. It's got 28 songs on it and it's an hour and 37 minutes long.

Freaky! We both think one hour means an hour and 37 minutes!

But really, weird, right?

Choosing our wedding date was a process of elimination, really.

• It couldn't be during any month when there was a chance of snow, since we'll have many people flying and driving in, including relatives coming from Western and Northern NY-- areas often snowed in. In upstate New York, ruling out the snowy season eliminates November through April.
• Neither of us do well in super hot weather, so we ruled out July or August
• Rich and Jen had already set their date for mid-October, and we didn't want to get too close to that for fear of cramping honeymoon schedules.
• Early September was ruled out due to a plethora of family Birthdays that fall around Labor Day.
• In addition to the fact that June is crazy busy for me at work, we swore our engagement wouldn't be much longer than a year. A May or June wedding would mean a 21 month engagement-- something we were not at all interested in. Just over a year has been the perfect length of time for us to prepare without second guessing things over and over.
  
• I love September light.
  

We never could have predicted the way things went this summer, but in the end the timing of our wedding is just right-- good timing for a happy occasion.

As our wedding grows closer, people's questions have changed a bit. Rather than 'How's the planning going?' and 'When's the wedding?' the questions have become 'Feeling stressed?' and 'How many days now?' and the charming, "Should I not talk to you for the next 3 weeks?'. Um, thanks, I'm busy but I haven't become a monster (however, if you're going to say silly things like that maybe not talking is ok).

People also seem very concerned over whether I have my something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. I wasn't really worried about this list (I have enough lists as it is), but all these questions have me thinking... do I have my bases covered? I don't want to miss one of these items and have our marriage crumble upon our exit from the church! It also seems to really disappoint the question-asker when I imply that I haven't given this much thought.

Here's the status:

• Old- lots of old things: my engagement ring and wedding band, the piece of my mom's wedding dress that will be wrapped around my bouquet,various other jewelry I plan to wear.
  
• New- dress, shoes, etc. Easy.
• Borrowed- this one I'm not sure on-- I'm confused about what counts as borrowed (lots of items have been passed along to me, but I think it's expected that I'll keep them until it's time for me to pass them along to another woman in the family). I suppose I should borrow a bobby pin or something to be safe.
  
• Blue- A blue brooch of my grandmother's will be pinned on my bouquet or in the hem of my dress.

Did you know that this verse actually involves a 5th item? The last line is "and a six pence in your shoe". Honestly, I don't think I'll find a six pence in the next two weeks, and I'm working hard to make sure my shoes are comfortable-- a six pence shoved in there is not part of the plan.

I feel better about all our wedding chores after this weekend. So many checks off so many lists! Is there anything more satisfying?

Things that got done:

*We successfully made it to Guilderland before 4:30 on Friday and acquired the application for our marriage license. Among the hardest questions: Is the place we live a city or a town? Having lived here for just a few weeks, we had no idea. Luckily, they accepted our guess. The application was filled out by the clerk of our hometown, and while she entered our information we chatted about her son whom Patrick graduated with. It was very small town, warm and fuzzy (and everyone found our giddiness adorable rather than obnoxious).

*We finally had a chance to ask my cousin Lisa to do a reading during the mass. We really wanted to ask her in person, and we were finally able to schedule a visit (added bonus: fresh oatmeal cookies from the best baker in the family).

*We set up a pre-wedding meeting with our photographers, who continue to be extremely helpful, available, and fantastic to work with.

*We met with the cook and general manager of the restaurant where our rehearsal dinner is going to be and decided on the menu. Oh my is it going to be delicious!

*Mom and I worked on some more pew decorations for the church. The craft therapy was so relaxing.

*Place card and favor plans are in place, materials are (mostly) in place, and the plans are ready to be executed this week.

*And we assessed the RSVP situation... we are allowing a couple days for responses sent Saturday to roll in, and then the harassing calls begin. Seriously, people, send 'em in! Argh.


Things we have not done that we probably won't do (due to time/money/not caring anymore) and that's ok:

*Take dance lessons
*Create custom Mad Libs for each table
*Schedule enough time to go to a third location for photos
*Hire a videographer
*Make or buy a cake stand
*Create a slideshow/photo display


Really? It's all ok. We are executing our most exciting wedding project, the details we care most about are happening, and the name of the game now is maintaining sanity for the next 18 days.


Everyone we saw this weekend expressed their excitement for us, and for sharing our day. While there have been times when elopement has been tempting, I can't imagine missing out on the community celebration that's in store.