Bridal Storm

Yeah hi, it's me again.  Sorry I've been out of touch...but seriously, there hasn't been much to write about.  Ever since Dave got home from Scotland, wedding plans have been on the back burner.  We've mostly each been absorbed with work, minor house projects, prepping for our annual St. Patrick's Day Parade party, snuggling on our new couch (yes, I did just use the word snuggle in all seriousness), and avoiding doing our taxes (because it's super boring).  With our own wedding a millenium away...or over a year anyway...there hasn't really been any impending need to do anything.  And for those of you who know us well, Dave and I are pretty good at doing nothing.  We're leading experts in the field.  It's why we enjoy camping so much.

Although I haven't done much in the way of planning my own wedding, I have been dabbling in some secondary planning for my sister Stephanie.  My mother and I recently threw her a bridal shower, and while it went off fairly successfully and Steph seemed to have a great time, it's a bit of a relief that it's over.  If you've ever been involved in planning one, then perhaps you understand what I mean.  If you have not yet had the joy of planning an afternoon party for a bunch of women with sex advice and cupcake pans on the brain, then please allow me to elaborate.

Dave recently told me that at his company they are no longer calling a session of idea sharing as a "brainstorm."  Apparently there's too much negativity attached to the word storm, so they've now adopted the much friendlier brainshower. 

This is not a joke.  This is actually a thing now.

Okay, well if a big corporate bank can reduce a powerful thunder of ideas to a benign sprinkle of musings, then I propose changing the commonly accepted label "bridal shower" to "bridal shit storm".  Any objections? 

I say this because I've never once met a woman who actually enjoys going to the traditional bridal shower: the ooh-ing and aah-ing and pretending to pay attention as the bride-to-be opens her gifts; the polite conversation as you sip brunch-appropriate cocktails; the cutesy-poo games having something to do with love and weddings and animal mating habits and such, etc.

As maid of honor, my first instinct was to put a stop to this madness.  I suggested that we skip the gift opening, hire a DJ and offer an open bar, turning the whole party into a girls'-night-out sort of festivity.  After all, my family of women is a pretty rip-roaring good time, especially when music and a few glasses of wine are thrown into the mix.  My mother, however, does not have my sort of vision.  With pursed lips she reminded me that this is not how bridal showers are done.  Being that this is my first bridal shower planning experience, you can't blame me for trying.  And so we dove into a multiple-months-long process of planning for a four hour event. 

At first things went smoothly.  We chose the venue with little debate - The Greenhouse Cafe in Bay Ridge.  They provided a reasonable and delicious menu, audio equipment for music and announcements, and supplied the wishing well and bridal chair to officially mark the party as a shower.  We went shopping for a favor, and decided (after moderate debate) on a stilletto shoe-shaped bottle opener.  My mother was apprehensive of the modernity of the gift at first, unsure if it was appropriate for older guests.  I reminded her that I've only used about 10% of the picture frames, coasters, and oil and vinegar bottles I've received from similar parties, and it's never once driven me to blind hatred of the hostesses.  If anyone hated it, no one would tell us to our faces, and we could rest easy ever after.

The shoe bottle opener set the tone for the whole party.  The box it came in was pink and black with white polka dots, so we decided to go with a pink and black "diva" theme.  If this seems cliche, I apologize.  As previously mentioned, I've never done this before.  I did spend a very long time researching just what's expected at a bridal shower, and as far as I know, "diva" is one of only a small handful of theme options available; diva, lingerie, and tea party.  I still don't understand how this all got started... 
Anyway, I went online and started ordering little knick-knacks in the chosen color scheme to round out the decor, including a custom banner with Steph's name on it, advice cards for the guests to fill out, hot pink and black shoe-shaped confetti (very rock star!), and pink game cards with her name also personalized on the front.  I even found an invitation with a bride taking a snooze inside of a pink and black polka dot high heeled shoe (it's less hideous than it sounds), which I personalized with a Daniela-original poem (copyright pending).

Props to my mother for coming up with an awesome idea for the centerpiece.  She thought it would be funky to use jewelry mannequins propped up on hat boxes as the centerpiece for the tables.  You know the kind of dolls I'm talking about; they're like Barbie dolls dressed up for Fashion Week, but instead of a head and arms they have metal curly-cue spokes you can hang necklaces and bracelets off of.  Pretty cool, huh?  And for once, I'm not being sarcastic.  I loved the idea and told her to go for it.  She wasn't comfortable making the decision solo, though, and so she asked for my help with the selections.

Thus began the most torturous phone conversation I've ever had with my mother.

Things started smoothly.  There were a few we both immediately agreed on:  a flirty hot pink and black cocktail dress; a fuschia sequined cocktail dress; a long, black, one-shouldered evening gown. 

But wait! she protested.  Can we mix short and long dresses?  Won't that look weird?  What will people say! 

And just like that my mother grunted and hacked into the receiver, and over the miles of distance that separated us I heard her painfully morph into...MOMZILLA!  For the next 2 1/2 hours I pulled out most of the hair on my head as my mother over-analyzed the most minute details about these dolls:  cocktail dresses versus evening gowns; casual vs. dressy; shiny versus toned-down; gold versus black spokes. 

The variables, which were not evident before, now seemed mind-boggling, each capable in its own catastrophic way of altering the very fabric of our well-organized party. 

Once I'd finally convinced her that it was okay to have a mix of short and long dresses, I picked out a sexy little doll dressed in a zebra print evening gown, to balance out the number of short and long dresses (per her request).  My mother slowly told me that this doll was not appropriate.  Not getting it, I pointed out that the outfit was awesome and totally went with the whole diva theme.  She again told me that the doll was inappropriate.

"It's a black doll," she said quietly.

Huh?  "Ma, it's black like Crayola-black.  That's only 'cause the dress is white so, you know, it pops more."

"It's for black families."

"Mom, it doesn't have a head or arms.  If anything, it's for headless, armless families."

But alas, my mother refused to let go her fear of a race riot at my sister's bridal shower, so we trudged on, sifting through images of doll after doll after doll, for about another hour before I finally gave up...I could take no more; she was on her own.

And she did just fine on her own.  My mother's jewelry doll selections ended up being pretty fabulous, and were a coveted prize during the games. 

Oh, have I not yet mentioned the games?  Where to begin...

If you have never been to a bridal shower, there is a rule that you are not permitted to simply sit, eat, drink, and enjoy the company of the women around you.  No, you must partake in games the mere existence of which perpetuates stereotypes about the frivolity of women.  If that's too many big words for you, let me break it down easy: they're girly in the stupid way. 

My mother made it very clear that the games were my responsibility.  Looking to make my life easy, I found a pre-printed game card online that included five games, was pink and could therefore be used as part of the table decorations, and could be personalized with Stephanie's name on it.  SOLD!  I ordered enough for each person to have her own, and the plan was to place one at each dish setting.  Easy enough, right? 

Wrong!  Now came the question of how to actually execute the games and award prizes.  Yes, prizes are in fact necessary.  These games are not just for fun.  They are a competition for prizes selected by mother - some very decent prizes, I might add - and as sometimes happens with competitions, things can get ugly.  Our fear was that since the games were pre-printed and everyone would see them all at once, there would be no way to tell who finished each game first.  If there was no fair, accurate way to tell who finishes each game first, then how, oh how! would we know who wins a prize?  HOW?

I actually lost sleep over this.

Then I had the idea of making a polite announcement at the start of the party that each guest please not begin any game without my announcing it first...to keep it fair.  Everyone nodded politely at the end of my polite announcement, and then proceeded to (politely?) ignore everything I'd just said.  Which, by the way, I wouldn't have cared about if there hadn't been such an uproar everytime I needed to give a prize away:  Hey! you said I didn't have the right answers, but I do have the right answers!  How come I didn't get a prize, but she did?  Didn't she already get a prize?  Are you ignoring our table?  

Oh, the horror! the horror! 

Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but when you want everything to be perfect so badly and things don't go your way, one tends to exaggerate.  So after what felt like two hours of being yelled at by our guests, I was covered in sweat and suffering from agita.  I looked longingly at my sister and other bridesmaids, who at this point were about seven mimosas deep, and sighed...something told me it would be inappropriate for me to get drunk right now.  It was the same feeling I'd had in Macy's a few weeks before when my mother sent me hunting for underwear to use at the shower. 

How does one use underwear at a party, you ask? 

The plan was to orchestrate a performance with the other bridesmaids  in conjunction with the reading of a bridal lingerie poem. 

Oh yeah, this is a thing. 

It was a great idea, until I actually had to find the exact pieces of underwear to match the poem and figure out where in the party to work it in.  I decided to boycott the idea when, cracking under the pressure, I broke down crying in the lingerie aisle at Macy's, a pair of leopard print boy shorts in one hand and a pink and black teddy in the other (in my defense, I had my period and had just gotten off a very looooooong, horrible day at work). 

Instead of doing the underwear poem as a performance, I selected an assortment of pink and black lingerie which we strung from the ceiling as part of the decorations.  I thought it was classy and cute, but I could tell my mother was still a little peeved at me.  She was also mad because I'd ruled out the fifth game on the card.  This was the "How well does the bride think her groom knows her" game.  The way it works is before the party someone interviews the groom, asking him questions about the bride.  Then, at the shower, the bride is then presented with the same questions and she must guess which questions she thinks the groom answered correctly about her.  The guests must guess how many the bride will get correct about her groom.  Sound needlessly complicated?  It is, but you know, it's a thing so I was willing to play along. 

That is, until my mother made it even more complicated.  She had a good idea to videotape the interview and play it in conjunction with my sister's answers at the party.  So then for a few weeks we argued about how to make this happen.  Should we set up a television, put it into a powerpoint presentation, rent an LCD projector, ask guests to gather around the laptop (that one was her brilliant idea)?  Eventually, she called the restaurant and they assured us they had all the equipment we'd need there.  Then came the discussion over how to tape this interview.  My mother insisted that I do it.  I calmly reminded her that the three states of distance between myself and Michael might make the task a bit difficult.  So the next obvious choice was my brother, Robert.  Rob agreed to do it, and it seemed like all was fine. 

That is, until my mother called me again in a panic:  "What if Stephanie gets too many wrong answers?  It'll look like she doesn't know Michael, and she'll feel stupid!  I don't want to make her feel stupid at her own party!"

"So we won't play the game, Ma.  No big deal."

"But the game is on the card already."

"So what?"

"IT'S ON THE CARD!  We HAVE to play it!"

By the time we hung up (for like the third time that day), she was reassured that the matter was not nearly as earth-shattering as she was making it, and a final decision was made NOT to play the game.  I called my brother and let him know he need not interview Michael, and that was that.  When I spoke to my mother the next day, I updated her on my conversation with Rob. 

She was quiet for a moment, but then finally said, "So we're not playing it?"

"Mom, YOU didn't want to play it, remember?"

"FINE!  I guess we'll have a boring party with no games and we'll just sit and stare at eachother the whole time and have no fun at all!"

I might have hung up on her after that.

My relationship with my mother somehow survived this whole ordeal.  In fact, I remember hugging her a lot during the party, happy that she was my partner in crime for the day.  And when she teared up during her speech, I teared up, too.  She just wanted everything to be perfect for Stephanie, and I think all of her hard work and creative ideas paid off.  In spite of the fact that there was no lingerie poem, no embarassing interview game, and the games were a disastrous mess, everyone still seemed to have a good enough time.  At the end of the day, when my sister got up to thank everyone for the gifts (which by the way she did NOT open at the party - "Please be a dear, and wrap in clear" - YOU'RE WELCOME!) and she started crying, all of a sudden the drama and stress of the planning and execution of the party was totally worth it.  She'd had a blast and was truly grateful for everything everyone had contributed.

Later that night, as she and Mike genuinely giggled and ooh-ed and aah-ed over her gifts, drunk since we'd taken Steph out for a few drinks after the party, I started to wonder whether or not I was changing my opinion about bridal showers. 

Probably not.

However, you only get married once, and it's not like I'll have to plan my own.  With enough mimosas, I might even have a good time at my own future bridal shower.

After all, it is a thing.

To Be an Attention Whore, Or Not To Be an Attention Whore?

First off, I apologize for not writing in so long. Contrary to what most of you think, this lack of effort is not solely because I am a lazy bum...only partially because I am a lazy bum.  However, I mostly haven't written because I haven't done any wedding planning since last time Dave was in town.  Work has been really busy, with 10,000 meetings a week (or at least it feels that way) and a curriculum I am forever two weeks behind on.  Stress from work coupled with the fact that my motivation (you know him better as "Dave") hasn't been around to remind me I have a wedding to think about.  Besides, I've had more imminent plans to make...like a European rendezvous with Dave.

Although Dave's been in Scotland for almost three full months, I haven't been able to make it out to see him.  You see, while eveyrone in the country seems to think teachers get an inordinate amount of vacation time, the down side to this deal is we don't get to pick and choose when we take that vacation time.  I'm off when the calendar tells me I'm off; so I had to wait for "energy conservation week" to finally hop a plane, even if it meant arriving just a few days before Dave comes back home, making the need for a visit less...well, urgent. 

I wasn't alone in my travels.  His brother Chris made the trip out with me, a person with whom I realized I travel extremely well.  Mainly, this is because Chris and I discovered that we are both total attention-whore-divas.  How did we make this random realization, you ask?  Well, since Dave had to work during the week of our visit, Chris and I found ourselves on our own as tourists in Edinburgh.  Channelling our inner cheese-ball, we made our best effort to hit every tourist trap we could fit in, along with sporadic searches down sketchy alleys (known as "closes" in Edinburgh) for hidden bars.  With every tour we went on, we somehow managed to steal all of the tour guide's attention from the other tourists.  At the Museum of Scotland Chris was given a private lesson on the history of bagpipe design, while my learned instructor and I had a chuckle at the disembodied head of a Pict slave carved into a Roman gatehead.  At the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center, we demanded to be told the history behind 60% of the nearly 4,000 bottles in the collection (NOT an exaggeration...this room might as well have been wallpapered in whiskey bottles), while our co-tourists resignedly gagged back their Scotch in the uncomfortable shadow we cast over them.  At the Edinburgh Dungeon, we giggled as the actors threatened to disembowel and devour us while still somewhat alive.  Even out on the town we demanded special treatment, refusing to settle for cocktails on the menu, opting instead to give the bartender step-by-step instructions on how to make a drink more suitable to our tastes (in our defense, neither of us thought of dirty martinis as exotic, and quite frankly it's irritating that no one, not even at the swanky restaurants, knew how to make them...I mean, COME ON! who uses black olive juice?).  The point is, we couldn't get enough attention.

At first, I attributed my newfound sense of diva-hood to my thirst for an educational experience.  With each tour I had questions that needed answering, and if no other tourists would ask these questions, then gosh darn it, I would!  However, what seemed like an insignificant event at the time would bring me face to face with my ugly, inner Joan Rivers.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I need to back track a little to tell the story properly.  I received an email from TheKnot.com, as I'm sure many, many other brides also did, asking me if I wanted to apply to be on a wedding show.  I've seen the program before, and understand the basic premise of the show is to compete with other brides for the title of "Best Wedding", and the winner gets a free honeymoon to someplace with sun and a beach.  Dave and I have been somewhat stressing over the expense of wedding planning, so I thought why the hell not?  I know a girl from high school that had appeared on the show, and if she could pull it off without looking like a total ass, then why couldn't I?  They'd probably never pick me anyway...

Wrong.  I got an email from someone from the network apologizing that they couldn't move forward with the process because my venue doesn't allow filming of their facilities.  HOWEVER, would I be interested in applying for another show where Dave and I would exchange vows in Times Square LIVE on air with two other couples?
Ummmmmmm...sure? 

The next step is for Dave and I to interview on camera at their offices in NYC, I guess to determine if we're easy enough on the eyes.  I hiccuped and giggled the details via Skype to Dave, absolutely giddy with excitement.  So excited was I, in fact, that I failed to notice the look of panic and dread in his eyes.  Apparently, a Times Square wedding broadcast live to "Keeping Up With the Kardashians"-enthusiasts isn't the small, intimate affair he'd envisioned for us.  He slowly explained that he's not comfortable being the center of attention even in small groups, but I ignored his pleas and insisted we proceed with the interview-- just in case there's "awesome free stuff" they'll give us for participating.  After all, a free honeymoon is all I'm really interested in, right? 

Right? 

I don't know anymore.

I haven't responded to the last email yet.  The woman there informed me that this weekend, the only convenient time Dave and I have to travel to NYC for the video interview, won't work for her.  She needs us to come in on a weekday, and as previously mentioned getting time off work is not an easy task for me.  Nor will it be for Dave, who's returning from a three month sojourn abroad and needs to get back into the swing of his life here.  She requested that I offer another time to come in, seeming to indicate that she genuinely is interested in having us on the show.  The question now is how do I respond to the last email?  How badly do I want this that I'm willing to disrupt my whole life (and panic my poor boyfriend) just to have my happy moment televised to the whole country?  More importantly, why do I even want this?  Am I that desperate for 15 minutes of fame?

I think I've made up my mind not to move forward with this experience, and to be content with my originally planned intimate affair.

But DAMN it would've made a GREAT story to tell the kids!

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!

I wasn't quite expecting the backlash of anger from people upset over the way I ended my last blog.  So to calm your anxiety, dear friends...here's how the wedding date decision went down.

When ideas of marriage first entered my head a few years ago, long before an engagment ring would actually make it onto my finger, I pictured myself having a summer wedding since summer is afterall my favorite season.  Plus, I'm a teacher so I already have my summers off to travel on a honeymoon time-restraint-free. 

However, as I came to fall in love with New England, the season of autumn really began to grow on me.  My friend Colleen had a wedding in October in western Massachusetts, and I remember that to kill some time since we were there too early, Dave and I decided to drive around.  We came across the entrance to a park reservation with an unpaved driving road running through it.  As we drove along through the reserve, instinctly we both became incredibly quiet, lost in looking through the windows as the gold and red leaves dropped and fluttered around the car as though God was casually throwing confetti on us.  My friend did not have an outdoor ceremony, but from that point on I started imagining my own Fall wedding outdoors.

When Dave proposed on Thanksigiving 2010 and everyone immediately began demanding to know when we would seal the deal, my gold and red ceremony vision skipped its way from the back of my mind to my vocal cords, and I began to tell everyone that I would be a Fall bride.  There was one problem though.  I wanted my father to walk me down the aisle, and I'm pretty sure that if I told him I wanted to get married just five months after my sister's wedding his wallet would have exploded in fire and brimstone and the poor man would have dropped dead right then and there.  Plus, there is a lot going on for me with her wedding as well that I need to be on my game for.  I've never been a maid of honor before, and my little sister is only getting married once.  I want to enjoy planning the bridal shower and bachelorette party without having to worry about financial suffocation because I would have my own wedding looming right around the corner.  She's already done too much wedding planning stuff without me since I live four hours away, so the stuff that I can be there for and help with I want to be 100% totally focused on.

So as far as we knew when Dave boarded the plane for Scotland, our wedding would happen sometime in October of 2012, over a year after Stephanie's wedding.  I checked a calendar for 2012 and saw that both Rosh Hoshanah and Columbus Day provided long weekends during that month, which would make travelling for our MA guests a little less of a burden, so these were the weekend dates I armed myself with when asking questions at the reception hall appointments.  I also knew that I needed to have a Saturday night wedding since our travelling guests would be too pressured to make it in time for a Friday night reception and too tired to drive back after a Sunday party.

As I continue to plan I am now learning that the second you think you are settled on any one detail, be it a minor one like the type of flower you'll use in your bouquet or a major one like the date of the actual event, the second you begin saying it out loud to people you will immediately start second guessing your decision.  As I began hinting to those who asked that we were leaning towards an October 2012 wedding, all of a sudden October 2012 seemed really, really, really far away!  Impossibly far away!  I would grow old and die before October 2012!  The sun would burn itself out and the world would end before October 2012!  How could we possibly wait that long?

Suddenly, although I'd been obsessed with the idea of a Fall wedding, other seasons were now seeming much more appealing.  I began pondering other times of the year that would be convenient for me and my travelling guests.  I have a week off in February which could be somewhat extended for a honeymoon, so that was an attractive option.  But alas, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it could never work.  For one, although I laughed a little at the thought, it would just be way too cruel to give Dave so many dates (a future anniversary plus Valentine's Day plus my birthday) to worry about all in one month.  More importantly, though, I couldn't risk a winter snowstorm stranding my guests in MA and Brooklyn while Dave and I sat alone and downhearted by ourselves at our wedding in Long Island.  February was out.

Late April was a safe bet for a snowstorm-free wedding.  Plus, it was way cheaper than the Fall wedding I'd originally hoped for.  Even better, I had a week off in April where I could extend for a honeymoon.  There was one unavoidable obstacle though...Shakespeare Festival.  What is Shakespeare Festival you ask?  It's a Renaissance Fair the 8th graders put on at my school in early May that takes a month and half of planning and long hours of hard work.  It's actually the most stressful time of the year for me, and the thought of tying up loose ends for a wedding while working my butt off for a showcase of the Bard made my back hurt and my eyelids feel heavy.  I wouldn't even be able to feel excited for my own wedding because I'd be too stressed out about work.  April was out.

In the end, we decided to go with early June.  School is still in session, but my major units will be over and the days will consist mostly of field trips, graduation assemblies, and watching movies (with educational value of course).  My summer vacation just a few short weeks later is a stress-free and flexible time to take a honeymoon.  The weather will be warm without being overwhelming, and the garden beyond the glass doors of our ceremony area will be in full bloom.  Was this late Spring wedding what I'd ever imagined for myself?  No...but that's okay because in the end it was right for us, and I'm happy with the decision.

Pencil me in: Saturday, June 9th, 2012.

Snowstorms, Venues, and Vomit

Greetings from South Boston, where streets are plowed and neighbors, while territorial about their parking spots, will do nice things like anonymously shovel your walkway when it snows while you're out of town for the holidays (thank you kind stranger, whoever you are!). 

As many of you already know, I spent most of the last week in Brooklyn visiting my family with Dave, who was home from Scotland for just one short week...a week that felt even shorter due to climate-related impediments.  Dave was scheduled to arrive early evening on December 23rd, but because the Brits sit down and flail their arms and cry whenever it snows in the UK, he missed his connecting flight in Heathrow and had to wait an entire extra day to fly into Boston.  So Dave made it into Logan at around 6:30pm on Christmas Eve.  Unfortunately, his bag (with all of the Xmas gifts in it, I might add) did not arrive until around 10pm.  He was fall-down-drunk by the time I picked him up, having exhausted the British Airways club lounge for all his business class ticket was worth, but I'd missed him so much that the slurred speech with intermittent sessions of snoring was more adorable than annoying.  By the time we made it into Brooklyn, it was 2am; dinner and gift opening were already over, and we basically missed out on Christmas Eve festivities.  It could have been worse, though...he could have missed Christmas entirely, so I'm grateful he was able to make it back at all.

The plan was to return to Boston on the 27th to visit with Dave's family and our good friends here in New England before heading back to BK for New Year's Eve.  Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg also apparently sits down and flails his arms and cries whenever it snows (but he masks it in a way that attempts to convince us there's nothing at all amiss and our panic and anger are unfounded), and we were stuck in NY for an extra day waiting for the streets to get plowed adequately enough to get to the highway and drive home.  Granted, it could have been MUCH worse.  If my car had been parked in my parents' driveway instead of on the avenue, then I would have been stuck there for days.  Still though, it threw our entire time table off, and the rest of the week felt extremely rushed.  Dave just flew back out on Sunday night, but I feel like he was here ages ago only because it went by so fast.

In spite of Mother Nature's interference, we were still able to handle two very important wedding planning details while Dave was home: we picked a venue and booked a date!  Before I reveal these most important of details, let me provide you with the background information.

The weekend after Dave left for Scotland, I headed to NY for some venue hopping with my mother and sister.  In fact, within a few days after getting engaged, my sister had emailed me inquiring what venues I was interested in checking out.  Before I knew it, I had two days of back-to-back appointments planned out for me.  Feeling a bit guilty, I pointed out that she should be worrying about her own upcoming nuptials (April 30th...very close!), but Steph impatiently explained that all of her arrangements were already made and she was currently in a state of wedding planning withdrawal.  Apparently planning someone else's wedding is just what she needs to slowly wean herself off of the habit.  Thank goodness for her or I'd still be staring at my ring going, "Wait, I'm engaged?"

Anyway, I drove into New York specifically to look at venues all weekend long.  Some of you may be wondering why I'm getting married in NY if I live in Boston.  For one, I dropped everything to move to New England to be with Dave, so he owed me one.  Two, we did a rough draft of our guest list, and there are about 120 New York guests, and about 30 from Boston.  Three, I knew that I wanted a venue that could alleviate a lot of my stress by handling all of those reception necessities--catering, open bar, linens, chairs, tableware, etc--for me in a packaged deal we could afford, freeing my time and energy to work on some of my quirkier ideas (we'll get to those in a future blog, don’t you worry!), and I knew that every venue I’d ever been to in NY offered those kinds of packages.  Also, food is a key part of any celebration in Italian culture, and I needed a venue that could cater to my family's very large appetite.  And there's no denying that in order to have a big fat Italian wedding, you need to go to where the big fat Italians are, and I'm sorry but we are in greater abundance in New York!

My sister booked me five appointments for that first weekend looking at halls: The Fox Hollow, Crest Hollow, Dyker Beach Golf Course, Westbury Manor, and El Caribe.  The first two were in Long Island, so we had to leave early to drive out and make the first appointment on time.  Unbeknownst to me, however, my sister had gone out and gotten herself obliterated the night before.  When I first saw her in the morning, she was hanging over the toilet, alternating between giggling and spewing (BEHOLD! My classy maid of honor!) while my mother just shook her head and tried hard to look disappointed instead of amused. 

Steph was still too drunk to follow the original plan in which SHE drove and I relaxed, but she assured us that she would be fine once we got into Long Island.  My mother took a heavy duty plastic bag with us just in case.  Later, we would come to be very grateful for my mother’s foresight.  It didn’t take too long for the giggles to wear out and Steph’s face to start turning green.  Somewhere around when the banquet manager was going over the menu options during our first appointment, my sister abruptly stood up and demanded to know where the bathroom was.  Her job for the remainder of the day was to inspect the quality of the bathrooms at all the venues since she was capable of doing little else.

It was strange searching for a place without Dave there, but I knew that we both wanted a place that had some character instead of just a run-of-the-mill ballroom setting.  Also, I knew we were both leaning towards having an outdoor ceremony.  We’d both been to the Fox Hollow before, which is actually what inspired all of these interests in the first place.  We knew the food was good, the venue itself had a vintage garden look, and the grounds were gorgeous.  However, when my family and I arrived for our walk-through I was disheartened to learn that my guest list was too small for their big room and too big for their small room.  They were in the middle of building another edition, which was just the right size and was being offered at a preconstruction price, but I would be committing to a room I’d never seen before and wouldn’t be able to see until April.  Furthermore, the option to get married outdoors was only available to clients who’d booked one of the other two rooms.  Bummer.  On the other hand, the new room would be walled in on one side by floor-to-ceiling French doors that looked out onto a pocket garden, so it would feel like being outside.

Crest Hollow came next.  Even in the winter, their grounds were spectacular, and I almost teared up at the thought of getting married surrounded by the brightly colored flowers under a clear blue sky.  The sprawling greenery was also visible from the floor to ceiling windows that completely covered the walls of the reception room I was interested in…and there were A LOT of reception rooms to choose from.  Eventually they started to swim around in my head, and it was hard to concentrate with all the people milling about the place.  The building was only accessible to guests through the main doors, and with multiple receptions going on at once it seemed that there was a constant crowd of people perpetually streaming through the door and loitering in the front lobby.  However, as I pondered all of these factors I was nibbling at some ridiculously delicious desserts drenched in chocolate made in-house.  If there’s anyway to change my mind about a place, it’s through chocolate, but I still wasn't quite ready to give up the intimate affair I'd envisioned.

Dyker Beach Golf Course finished off that first day of looking.  This one was in Brooklyn, so we were able to drop Pukey off at home before going.  I was really excited to see this one, since I’ve heard good things from friends who’ve been there, and the convenience of a country club actually existing in Brooklyn was almost too good to be true…and it was.  First of all, we couldn’t figure out where to park or how to get into the place, and once we were in we were told to wait in a narrow hallway—standing, mind you!—for someone who could come help us.  I was expecting someone named Donna, but the person who showed up was some dude who looked more lost than I did.  “So you must be Margaret!” were his first words to me, and I knew I was in for a disappointing walk-through.  He didn’t say congratulations on my engagement or ask me my future husband’s name or any other little details that I am currently still dying to talk about all the time.  Instead, he grilled me and my mother on how we’d heard about the place and tried to get our input on how they could better advertise.  Turns out that he is not one of the venue’s two banquet managers, but instead the general manager of the golf course; it seems that both of the people I needed to see were currently nowhere to be found.  This man flat-out told me he didn’t feel confident enough to answer any of my questions, but hey let’s get started anyway!  And he was right…the guy was basically useless.  I couldn’t help noticing, however, that the place was indeed beautiful.  When he opened the French doors and we stepped outside onto the enormous stone patio, my heart picked up tempo as I took in the overwhelming beauty of the golf course.  Had I not known otherwise, I NEVER would have suspected that we were actually in the middle of bustling Brooklyn.  We’d gone out here to take a look at what he figured was the cocktail space, but immediately I wanted to know if a ceremony could be done here instead of the gazebo at the front of the building (the one right on the perimeter…by the street…where you can hear all the traffic).  He looked confused and said, “Um…yeah, probably.”  Probably?  I hated this guy.  I hated him more when he handed me a stack of papers containing menu and service information (as well as indecipherable notes presumably scribbled into the margins by the elusive Donna) and informed me that he couldn’t go through it with me since he didn’t know anything anyway.  Once home, my mother and I examined the stack together and nearly joined Stephanie in throwing up when we saw that this disastrous hall cost nearly double what the other two venues we’d looked at were charging!  Scratch that one off.

The next day we headed to Westbury Manor, another venue in Long Island.  The venue actually is an old gorgeous mansion, as the name implies, with charm and grace and an old world feel.  I was in love the second we walked in.  I was not, however, in love with the banquet manager, who seemed to over-emphasize how long the staff had been on board (were they hypnotized? Held captive against their will?), and seemed to speak to all of them as one who doesn’t really like children might speak to children when he wants other people to think he’s endearing.  Host aside, the place really was gorgeous, and even amid the gloomy weather of the day, the outside gardens (replete with peacocks, ducks, and birds of paradise) really did make me want to jump up and down with excitement.  That is, until he informed me that I could only have the ceremony on-site if I had a daytime reception.  With so many guests needing time allowed for travel from MA, this just isn’t an option.  Further souring my spirits, the larger ballroom was too big for my guest list and the other room was too small for my guest list.  I wanted to cry.

I decided not to go to the El Caribe appointment since I already had my venue narrowed down to two options (I’m not someone who likes to shop around for a long time, especially since more  choices just makes the decision harder, and it isn’t easy for me to get into NY often to keep looking).  I loved Westbury Manor, but cutting my guest list by 1/5 didn’t seem worth it for a venue that wouldn’t even let me get married on-site.  The Fox Hollow was only slightly less spectacular than the Westbury Manor in its vibe, but the thought of booking a room before it’s built made me extremely nervous.  I talked it over with Dave extensively, emailing him PDF files of all the materials both places had given me.  My family and friends were also very patient with me as I struggled with the decision.  In the end we decided to go with…get ready…THE FOX HOLLOW!  Once the decision was made, I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.  I’m confident we made the right decision and that further searching would have only muddled the process. 

When Dave came in from Scotland, we traveled back to Long Island (the morning of the snowstorm) with my father also in tow this time, and after both of them gave their in-person approval we signed the papers. 

Okay, I know that I promised you a date as well, but alas! this blog has dragged on for far too long, and choosing the perfect date was another big decision, so that ordeal will have to wait until my next entry.  Thanks for sticking with me and reading this whole thing through; I know it’s become obnoxiously long. 

Until next time!

Oh, and for anyone who's interested, here are the links to all the venues I visited:

The Fox Hollow:  http://www.thefoxhollow.com/weddings/

Crest Hollow:  http://www.cresthollow.com/

Dyker Beach Golf Course:  http://nycevents.americangolf.com/dykerbeach/index.cfm

The Westbury Manor:  http://www.westburymanor.com/

The Second Wave

I just found out today that one of my best friends from college is also engaged, which of course took me to her Facebook page, which led me to another old friend's Facebook page where I learned that she too is engaged.  Ah...there must be some wonderful magic in the air!  I wonder who else from my past out there is either recently married or engaged that I don't know about?

People are always saying that you hear about death in three's...well why not something a little less depressing?  Why not engagements? 

One summer about three years ago (there's that magic number again), I had SEVEN friends who got married all within three (hehehe) months of eachother.  SEVEN!  And yet, I had been in a relationship longer than all of them.  Right around that time of this first marriage wave I began feeling a tad "behind schedule"; but aside from the fact that I wasn't married, my relationship was perfectly healthy.  So why then did I suddenly start panicking and pointing my finger at Dave? (Can you guess which finger?)  I wasn't ready for kids yet, but maybe I was ready to start thinking about when I would eventually be ready to have kids...I began "making plans to make plans", if you know what I mean.  After all, other people were done making plans to make plans...they were in the execution of aforementioned plans!  And to compound the whole situation, whenever Dave and I would introduce eachother and people would inevitably bat their eyes and ask how long we've been together ("five years"..."six years"..."I-lost-track years"...), there was always the quiet, embarrassed "Oh" response. 

Oh.  Like I don't know what "oh" means.  Oh means I should be worried, right?  Oh means I should start freaking out and accusing my boyfriend of being an asshole even though he supported me when I couldn't find a job, even though he goes out of his way every single day to make me happy and encourage me in everything I want to do, even though he knows me better than most other people have ever known me. 

Go oh yourselves, I should have said.  I wish I had it to do over again, that me-now could go back and tell me-then to relax and stop and look around (yes, I'm aware that was a gratuitous plug for my own blog's URL) and just enjoy what was going on in my life.  And what was I doing while everyone else was getting married?  I was getting a Master's degree; I was changing cities; I was test-running living with my future husband; I was going on vacations; I was focusing on a new job; I was paying off my debt; I was buying a condo; I was going out and partying in an exciting new city and meeting new people and making good friends; I was climbing mountains; I was falling more in love with a guy who was changing just as much as I was.

And what was Dave doing?  Dave was getting promotion after promotion after promotion; he was spending his money on stuff that made us happy the way stuff can only make people who are young and free of serious responsibilities happy; he was holding my hand, enjoying each day, and telling me he loves me every chance he got. 

We were deciding what kind of people we wanted to be before deciding what kind of husband and wife we wanted to be.  And then, without really trying, we turned into those people without even noticing.

I'm not saying any of this to criticize my friends who married early; I love you all, and wish you nothing but all the happiness in the world.  And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault but my own for feeling like there was something missing in my life when there wasn't.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that life works out differently for all of us, and the only chance anybody ever has of being genuinely happy is to stop trying to fit some predetermined mold and just do what feels right to you.  I remember when my sister got engaged last year, I was really nervous about going to a family party because I knew that in spite of the fact that we should all be focusing on being absolutely estactic for Stephanie, who was going to marry the man of her dreams which is definitely cause for nothing but celebration, there would be some small-minded talk (whether it reached my ears or not) about how I should have never moved in with Dave without getting married first.  I expressed this anxiety to my father over the phone, and he said something along the lines of this: "Niela, you've never done anything the way other people do it...and you've always turned out fine.  Don't worry about what other people say."

So, to all the girls in the second wave, whether I know you or not, to those who didn't worry about what other people had to say or what other people were doing, who were busy making themselves happy in different ways while they waited for life to throw their loves across their way...here's to you, here's to us. 

Enjoy your moment, now that you're ready for it.

I know, I know...the 15 minutes are over

When you tell people that you're recently engaged, the first thing they ask after saying congratulations is, "Let's see the ring!" Okay, so it's not so much of a question as it is a mandate, but you get the idea. The day I got engaged I obviously did not realize I'd be sporting a glamorous rock by the end of the day, a rock that every person I'd encounter over the next three weeks would grab my hand and demand to see. That hand, at the time, was covered in unpolished, chipped nails, scabby cuticles, and cat scratches. This is nothing unusual...suffice it to say that hand-modeling has never been a career option for me. My father told me once that my grandmother used to wake up with inexplicable scratches on her hands, which she would justify by saying, "The witches got to me in the night." My grandmother's witches have been working their mischief on my hands for as long as I can remember, and they apparently were also unaware or simply did not care that my fingers would be under scrutiny for the next few weeks. And man, did they look miserable next to the splendor and beauty that is a brand-spanking-new diamond.

I know, I know...the fact that my hands were a mess should not matter given the joyous occasion, but please don't judge me for immediately heading to the nail salon the next morning for a celebrity upgrade. I didn't see anyone other than the family I was spending Thanksgiving with that first night I was engaged, but the experience was enough to tell me what I was in for. Literally one minute after I said "Yes," my sister was already asking me what color the bridesmaids would be wearing (to which I responded "coral pantsuits"...she dropped it after that). Pictures were being taken, I kept spontaneously getting hugged, my mother kept holding my hand, and everyone had wedding questions. Granted, I've been envisioning my wedding for years, but now that I could actually start verbalizing those ideas out loud without feeling pathetic, I was coming up blank. "I don't know what month I want to get married in; I don't know what kind of centerpieces; I don't know how I'm going to wear my hair; I don't know which hall." I suddenly realized that I'd pictured it happening so many times over so many years in so many different ways that now I had accumulated too many choices and couldn't make a decision, or even an opinion, about anything!

Now I know you must be rolling your eyes, fully aware that Dave and I just got engaged and there's no reason to be stressing about this stuff yet, which is exactly what I said to everyone who asked me these questions. The problem is that once my thoughts start in one direction, it's hard to reel them back in. The rest of the weekend was lost in celebrations. I flashed my newly polished hand, held tight to Dave, and laughed and smiled and laughed and smiled and...it was a great weekend. Everything else about my reality seemed make-believe. What job? What mortgage? Is someone leaving for Scotland? Nah! Let's all watch how my ring sparkles when the light hits it!

As we were going to bed that Sunday, I suddenly realized how unproductive I'd been. There was a huge stack of papers I was supposed to have graded, especially since grades were due that week. There were parent meetings to prepare for, a lesson observation quickly approaching, and I had absolutely nothing planned for class the next day. Sure, I have free periods and I could always go in early, but all I wanted to talk about was getting engaged. With a sinking heart, I realized I would have to decide between going around all day telling people I was engaged and jumping up and down and squealing OR lesson planning, grading, etcetera. Can you guess which option won out?

I didn't really have a choice in the matter; news spread quickly and I was only too happy to talk about it. In fact, I became nervous that I was talking too much about it. Perhaps immediately after getting engaged it's acceptable to want to talk about the experience and your plans, and people genuinely seem curious and interested. However, now that it's been a few weeks, I still find myself wanting to bring it up in lieu of talking about other, less self-centered topics. I never thought I'd say this, but the constant thinking about the wedding is starting to alter how I spend the majority of my time. My books have been replaced with internet searches for save-the-dates and halls, my stack of papers to grade have been pushed aside for wedding magazine perusal, and I'm now a danger on the roads because the sparkle of my ring keeps distracting me.

I've been making a big effort not to let the engagement go to my head, and to remind myself that other people do not want to talk about weddings all the time. So I keep the magazines at home for nighttime reading, and I try to only discuss planning issues with my mom and bridesmaids. And, of course, there's this blog where I can now write about weddings till my fingers break off , but friends and family can read only if they're actually interested and want to.

If, however, I should forget and begin to bore you in person with wedding talk, remind me that I've already made a vow in the wedding process:

"Do you, Daniela, promise not to obsessively talk about weddings and become a bridezilla?"

"I do."

A Modest Proposal

Once upon a time, a college boy with round-rimmed glasses fixed the computer of his next door septum ring-ed neighbor. Thrilled that her beloved MP3's, stolen through Napster, were safely returned to her, the pair struck up a conversation while beers and buffalo chicken fingers were passed around them. Discovering they both shared a love of gory horror films, they stayed up watching Candyman while those on less destined paths went to sleep. Sometime around when the main character is dying a horrible death by fire, they shared their first kiss.

I would love to tell you this romantic moment had nothing to do with alcohol, but instead was love at first sight. But this ain't no fairy tale, folks. Dave and I spent a good deal of time taking turns avoiding and hating eachother just as much as we spent loving eachother during our courtship. Yet somehow, even with four American states of distance lying between us, we just couldn't seem to get rid of eachother. Time and time again we found ourselves facing eachother with shrugging shoulders, daring the other one not to give in and change just enough so that the other would stay. Little by little, we met somewhere in the middle, each of us emerging a new person everytime we decided to stick with it and try again.


So no, it's not a fairy tale, but damned if that's not what REAL LOVE STORIES are made of. After all, isn't it the stories of people willing to sacrifice and to fight and to hold on no matter what that ultimately end in some kind of happily ever after? Just because I'm a realist doesn't mean there isn't romance to be found in reality.


I digress. Thank you for sticking with me this far. Yes, this is actually a blog meant to chronicle the one and only time I will ever get married. Let's begin with the proposal.


Three weeks ago on Thanksgiving, Dave and I were sitting around my aunt's dinner table with the rest of my family. We have been spending our Thanksgivings this way for the past nine years, ever since the first weekend I brought him to meet my family my sophomore year of college. I was feeling miserable, having eaten to the point of making myself sick. Adding to my general feeling of yuckiness, my father couldn't seem to get the video camera out of my face. (Later, of course, I would learn that he was in on the surprise.) Just as I was erupting into a tirade of irritation, Dave pushed back from the table, stood up, and said, "Okay, I'm tired of waiting." At this point he turned to me and said, "Niela, I love you so much." As the realization of what was happening sunk in, my breath slowed although my heartrate picked up. Noting my silence, Dave felt the need to ask, "I think you love me, right?"



My memory is fuzzy, but I believe I managed to stutter out something along the lines of, "Duuuuuh, yeah..."


Here is where he pulled out the ring, got down on one knee, and in front of my whole family on a Thanksgiving I will never forget, he asked me to be his wife.


And I said yes.