A precious wedding gift

Our friends D and K both work in group homes for physically and developmentally disabled adults.

Ivón's half-sister Betty has multiple disabilities (primarily cerebral palsy and developmental disabilities) and she lives in a group home. I'd really like to invite her and her boyfriend to our wedding, but taking care of them would be difficult for us with everything else going on.

D has just offered not only to go get them and bring them down, but to help provide for their care while they're here (with times off by someone else hired to help out during the wedding and reception in particular, and maybe overnights). We'd probably need to rent a couple of wheelchair accessible rooms in a hotel since our house really isn't wheelchair compatible, but that would be doable.

The thought of both that generous offer and of having Ivón's sister there makes me very very happy.

Discussing the wedding

Well, I managed to get some key wedding conversation started during our drive up to where Ivón's dad lives. It's enough for me to start doing some significant initial planning without having to force V to endure more of my pestering questions for a while... a couple of weeks, at least!! ::grin:: What we discussed:

• It's important to V. that the Jewish rituals that we include have a significance that is important to both of us, and not just significant to someone who is Jewish. Totally related to that, V. wants to make sure that we include an explanation of the significance of the Jewish elements as part of the service. For example, I hadn't realized that V. didn't know that the chuppah represented our home (and I forgot to tell him that to some it also represents the marriage bed!) that is open to the family and friends who are there to support our relationship.
  
• It's important to V. that it not be highly religious, though some prayers are ok. I can understand that: I know that if I were marrying someone Christian, I'd want references to Jesus kept to a bare minimum; no, truthfully, I'd want Jesus kept out of it altogether, or at least any references to Jesus as the son of God, as with regards to things along the lines of "whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." I believe in Jesus and think that his teachings and the example he set overall were wonderful and meaningful and important - in fact I think Christianity would benefit substantially if more Christians acted like he did and didn't condemn folks to hell just because they looked or acted or believed differently. But I just don't personally believe that anyone is responsible for my sins other than me, or that believing in someone means more than how you live your life. But I digress. The point is, if I know in my heart that I'd want to place limits on what was going to be said if the person I was marrying was of a different faith, then I have to respect that my basically agnostic partner should be allowed to place limits on the religious details in our wedding. Fortunately, for a Jewish wedding to be "kosher" there's very little that's required, and most of what we consider part of a Jewish wedding is tradition but not halacha (required by Jewish law). Not that our wedding is exactly kosher in a lot of folks eyes, but again I digress...
• We're probably going to bag the outdoor wedding idea, though we are (ok, who am I kidding, I am) going to look for a venue where we could be outside if the weather is perfect and inside if there's any chance or rain, humidity, or serious hot flash.
  
• We're going to buy him a totally awesome suit and have it tailored to fit perfectly. It will certainly cost many times more than my dress, which is obviously a switch, but that's totally cool with me: I have and will continue to have lots of chances to feel pretty in a dress; V will have very few chances beyond this to wear the perfectly tailored suit of his dreams. Plus there's going to be so much more of what I want and do in this wedding, so it's important to me that the few things that really are important to him are really done up right. He really like the nehru-collar jackets and I think he'd look so fab in one that I'd probably be tempted to jump him right there under the chuppah.
  

This sounds promising

I've had a couple of different people recommend a small caterer who is based right in my little town as someone who does good food for very reasonable prices.

Last night I stopped into a store that specializes in seasonal, locally and naturally grown/raised foods and asked them if they knew of any caterers who work specifically with local/natural foods.

"Well, there's this woman in your little town who is in here a couple of times a week, I think just to shop for her family, but I know that she runs a catering company..."

Bingo. I'm going to see if she's Googleable and try to make some initial contact.

Setting limits.

In order to respect V's limits with regard to discussing wedding details, I'm going to try to limit myself to one basic wedding question a week. That should be more than sufficient, since we're more than 80 weeks away from the wedding.

So, what should my question for this week be? Hmmm...

See, it can't be something too general or "big picture" yet, so "what's your vision for this wedding" is out.

But it also can't be something too specific that could change, like "what types of food would you like to have at the reception?"

I'll have to think about this.

I may open with just confirming some details that I'm 99.9% sure I know the answers to, just to warm-up and allow for a series of quick "Yes" answers before I actually ask something that requires thinking things through.

• "Do you still support our having a Jewish wedding? I'd like to start contacting rabbis/rabbinical students." (ok, well, I've already done that but again, I'm going for the easy answer to start.)
• "Do you still want a wedding cake from a Puerto Rican bakery in NYC?" (We'd get someone to pick it up that morning and drive it down, but it's part of our Jewish Wedding/Latin Reception focus.)
• "How many out of town guests do you think we can realistically plan to have stay here in the house?" (with a 6br 3 floor 2400 sq ft space, we can certainly pack them in if we need to, plus we've talked about borrowing some campers to sit in the driveway. Then again, this might be a better "wait until later" question.)
• "Can we still have This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" as our "you may kiss the bride" song?" (yes, cheesy and totally non-traditional but it's totally what I want even though I get some eye rolls when I mention it to Von.)
• "You still ok if I ask M. to sing during the wedding?" (Duh!)

OK, yeah, that's my strategy. That will cover the next month or so, and I'll expand on things from there.

Something Borrowed

I have decided to borrow (ok, outright steal) and then slightly expand on something that I just read on Dora's wedding blog on Wedding Chickie:

The theme for our wedding is friends, family, good food and beautiful flowers.

I don't feel bad about stealing borrowing this from her because she borrowed it from someone else, and besides that, it's totally true. And I added the friends and family part.

It's yet another one of those things that I don't really get, and is quite obviously not really me. Why does a wedding need a "theme?" Several folks who I've told that we might like to get married on the beach immediately presumed that we were going to do a beach-themed wedding, with everything decorated in some ocean-beach-starfish-mermaids-dolphins-seashells theme. Uh... no, we just might enjoy getting married on the beach. In just my few weeks of hanging out on wedding sites, I've seen polka dot themes, Marie Antoinette themes, cowboy themes, 40's themes, art deco themes, punk themes, even a dog theme.

We just want to get married. If I want themes I'll go to DisneyWorld.

$10,000

There's a site I link to called "A $10,000 Wedding." And what gets to me is that to most people, planning a $10k is all about planning something that's on a really tight budget.

I can't conceptualize it.

I can wrap my head around $10k worth of central heat and air. Well, $10k per system x 2 systems is what it really was, but still. A $10k car, absolutely. A $10k complete kitchen renovation... totally on the high end for me though "low budget" from most people's perspectives, but yeah, I can fathom our doing a $10k kitchen.

But $10k (or more, with some weddings much much more, 10k^2 more) for a single day's event? Nope, no can do. I'd have to reach for my inhaler every time I looked at the total of what we'd spent.

So does this make me cheap? The Bridezilla Contingent at The Knot seem to think so -- to sorta quote from one person who was commenting on someone's low budget wedding choice, "If you can't do it up right then you shouldn't have a wedding at all, just head to city hall." Thanks, bitch. But I'm totally not one to be bullied by society's absurd expectations as to what needs to be included in a wedding or reception into thinking that I'm having a sub-standard or cheap wedding. We're going to have the wedding that reflects US, and one thing that reflects us is that large amounts of cash need to go towards floor refinishing or bathroom remodeling or a new roof on the garage or the girls' college funds, NOT towards a party. There are just so many things that aren't us -- formal receiving lines, candy buffets, doing the macarena at the reception, big poofy gowns, expensive wedding favors, showers (though we do promise to both take one the morning of the ceremony, and use deoderant), chicken and green beans that cost $50 a person, open bars with 1/4 of the attendees drunk before we have our first official dance, child-free weddings and receptions.

The list goes on and on.

So I talk a lot about what ISN'T us. But what is?

Family and friends there, including children, and it will only make me laugh and smile if some not-yet-verbal toddler decides to make a loud commentary in the middle of our vows.

Yummy food taking priority over fancy food or expensive food or ostentatiously presented food.
Good music to dance to, though that can happen just as easily through a set of mix CDs as it can through a DJ, and a dance band is out of the question.

Keeping it real for us. Reflecting who we really are. Not having our wedding go against the rest of our priorities in life.

And oh shit - getting to work on time should have been a priority this morning, but it wasn't. Oh well.

The dress

I finally tried the dress on today for Ivón.

He loves it.

But I just can't get at all excited about it since I'm so worried about my mom. There was some not-great news today: Potential for several months of quarantine, potential for up to two years of treatment, potential for the treatment to be as debilitating as chemo, starting her right onto the drug combo for the multiple-drug resistant TB. I know I need to stick to realities, keep chanting it's TREATABLE it's TREATABLE it's TREATABLE, but it sounds like the treatment has the chance of being total hell for her.

I'm just so so sad, and scared, and sad.

I told my mom and brother

Well in the midst of all of the chaos of the weekend, I did tell my mom about our getting married. I asked her about making us a quilt to use as our chuppah (which would then also be their wedding present to us) and she really liked that idea, as I hoped she would.

I want to talk to Ivón about it, but I'm thinking that I'd like her to do something that is based on a traditional double-wedding ring pattern but with non-traditional darker jewel-tone colors, perhaps batik fabrics, and perhaps with some personalized elements such as some blocks that have the... can't remember the name, a special quilt technique ("folded paper" comes to mind. edited to add: paper piecing is what it's called) that allows you to piece different figures that almost look like appliqués but are in fact pieced. I'm thinking perhaps four corner blocks - one with a house, one with two little girls (our grandchildren), one with our pugs, and one with our initials.

I also told my brother when we were conversing via IM, who in typical fashion was just "Oh, cool!" and that was pretty much it. But he's a good guy and totally supportive and I know he'll be there if he possibly can.

I'm losing it.

I know I'm losing it when I spend several minutes trying to figure out what happened to the post I wrote last night about food and cooking, and get myself all worked up when I couldn't find it.

Ba-DOY, it was in my OTHER blog, my house blog. That's what I get for doing multiple blogs.

The World Wide Prayer-chain

My mom's been not well for over a year, and after countless tests that ruled out everything they were at various points certain that it was - heart disease, COPD, severe asthma, etc. - she finally had a bronchoscopy on Thursday.

Friday night at 8pm an official from the public health department showed up at my parents house and put the house on quarantine. They're not officially confirming it until after some more tests on Monday plus further growth of the culture, but they are 99% certain that she has active TB.

They'll have more answers by the end of the week. We're relieved that there is at least a probable answer, that it's not something like cancer or COPD which would be worse in the long run, but right now we're just praying with everything in us that it's not one of the drug-resistant types and that the damage that's obviously already occurred in her lungs can be reversed and that she can go back to being her very active self again soon.

So your prayers/vibes/thoughts are all very much appreciated. FYI I'm Jewish but I'm a firm believer that no matter how you envision and reach out to a higher power, it's all the same in the end. So whether you pray to God or Jesus or saints or trees, if you light candles at an alter, chant, ring bells, meditate, or even just put positive vibes out into the universe, in in the end it's all the same. Whatever you do, if you have a moment, please do that for my mom.

Now here's a Republican I can truly love.

The Republican mayor of San Diego CA did a last-minute turnaround in his original decision to veto instead of sign a bill in support of allowing gay couples to marry. The depth of his emotion brought me to tears. And when he said what I've always said with regard to civil unions, that "seperate but equal" isn't good enough, I started bawling.

http://cbs5.com/video/?id=26888@kpix.dayport.com

Make sure you have a box of tissues nearby before you click.

Here it is in news story format instead of video:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-20-san-diego-mayor_N.htm

The perfect Chuppah

I've just come across something that would mean the world to me at our wedding, something I never even imagined before now: A chuppa that is quilt-pieced by my mom, and later turned into our wedding quilt.

I happened upon a thread on one of the wedding boards where someone was showing off their traditional-patterned quilt that she was making to use first as her chuppah. My heart actually started racing and my eyes filled with tears.

It's the perfect way to combine my Appalachian heritage and culture, of which I am very proud, with my Jewish religion, which is my spiritual choice.

It's the perfect way to ask my mom to participate in our wedding a very special way, since she is a quilter of such incredible talent that a quilt she designed and made is the feature quilt on the cover of a Very Popular National Quilting Magazine.

I'm very happy about this idea.

What's your idea of a "rustic wedding"?

If someone said to you, "we're having a rustic wedding," what would you imagine that would mean?

To me, it might mean

• On horseback while wearing flannel shirts, jeans, and boots.
• Or on a remote beach, accessible only after a long hike, with a bonfire reception.
• Perhaps at a campground among the trees, wearing matching hiking khaki shorts.
• Or maybe at the top of a ski mountain, then the two of you ski down after your first married kiss.

Apparently I'm wrong. A couple wanting a rustic wedding doesn't have to give up all the things that are really important, like dinners that require six pieces of silver and three different glasses per person, long billowy trains on their dresses, and bridesmaids in matching strappy spiked heels that you bridezilla'd them into wearing. All that's required for you to have a rustic wedding is to have it held in some old rough-stoned old barn [that's been converted to an upscale restaurant], or at a [millionaire's price-range] weekend-getaway timberframe mansion cabin deep in the woods, or to decorate with apples and carry sunflowers.

These wedding sites are like a bad accident: I'm horrified by what I see, but I can't look away!

And I was taken aback by wedding favors.

I just read this on a wedding website's "beach weddings" site.

Be sure to place an amenities basket at the entrance to your spot on the beach that is full of essentials for the day outdoors (suntan lotion, bug spray, etc.) and goodies that will remind them of the setting -- embroidered beach blankets with your names and wedding date, shawls for the ladies, or pretty parasols in your wedding colors, for example.

So apparently, not only am I supposed to spend a few bucks per guest for "wedding favors," I'm suppose to spend - how much? $25-30 per person for personalized wedding blankets? And parasols?!? I just can't quite imagine handing any of the women who would be there a "pretty parasol." Or rather, I can imagine it but it always ends with their either doing a spontaneous intervention to try and what I'm shooting that would cause such an intense psychotic episode, or an exorcism to cast out whatever strange creature had stolen my body. "It wasn't Chaya. It was just a weird acting bride in a Chaya suit." A Stepford bride.

This is not my universe. I am surely a stranger in a strange land.

Happy day!!

The dress I ordered arrived today and I think I really like it! I'm not making a commitment to it until I find out from a tailor if it can be made to fit right for less than twice what it cost me, but I think it might be a winner - and in case I find something I like better, hey, it was all of $56 and I can probably sell it for something close to that amount on ebay if I keep the tags on it.

Also, I've now heard from TWO different rabbinical students who both sound as if they'd be delightful to have as the officiant for our services. Clearly they don't have time to talk to me much about it until after the high holidays (this weekend) but if one of them can do it based on their schedules, it will be something that will make me seriously happy: I'll get the Jewish wedding I wanted, officiated by someone who really finds great Joy in their Judaism and yet is more than willing to work with us as both a gay and interfaith couple, which so many rabbis/rabbinical students will not do. Actually most Reconstructionist rabbis will officiate over the weddings of queerfolk, but from what I'm told, probably half will not consider officiating at an interfaith service. It probably helps both that this really isn't as much of an "interfaith" service -- it's really better described as a Jewish wedding ceremony but one person isn't Jewish. It also probably helps that we're too old to have kids, so there's no concerns about how the kids will be raised which I'm told is one of the biggest issues with marrying interfaith couples.

In any case, it's a happy day for me. If I decide to keep the dress, I'll pin it where it needs taken in and have a friend take a pic for me to post for y'all to ooooh and ahhh over.

I don't want to let myself get TOO excited, but...

I may have found someone to officiate at our wedding who sounds like she would be absolutely wonderful!! There's only an initial set of emails between us so I don't want to jinx things by going too overboard about it, plus I'm not sure yet if our timing would work for her or if Von not being Jewish would be ok with her. But if those things worked out... wow. Just seeing her pic and reading her bio makes me feel that THIS is the person I want to officiate.

I'm beginning to be glad that I'm starting this wedding planning process so soon, because I can already see how there might be time conflicts that will need to be worked out even with this much lead time.

Waiting for a much loved friend and her family to arrive after a very very long drive from Boston. I can't wait to see them!!

Getting my tits in a twist over SMIs

I try really hard, REALLY hard, not to be critical of folks who spend an entire college education fund or mortgage down-payment or twice a working-poor family's income on a wedding and reception. I can't fathom it, it goes against so many of my personal values, but it's their money (or, more often, at least the money of someone who chose to pay for it presumably of their own free will) and it's their values and their wedding, so it's their choice.

So I find myself having to really hold myself back from coming out [verbally] swinging when a group of small-minded idiots (hereafter known as SMI's) start taking potshots at low-budget wedding choices. One of the nicest wedding's I've ever been to had a pot-luck reception since that's all they could afford to do in order to share a celebratory meal with the people at their wedding. It was delicious, well planned, down to earth, and fun.

But according to the SMI's of the world, not only is a potluck wedding totally tacky and tasteless regardless of the couple's circumstances and culture, but pretty much anyone who can't afford a big expensive party should either take out a big expensive loan or just elope. Seriously, they're saying that. According to SMI-think, big expensive receptions are the couple's obligation for the guest's having had to give up their time to come there, get all dressed up, and bring a gift. Because apparently in the land of SMI, that's the only reason why folks come to a wedding is to party. It wouldn't be couldn't be because the folks actually CARED for the couple who is getting married and wanted to celebrate with them, no siree.

What a sad life most of these SMI's must lead. Seriously.

And just to make myself very clear, someone can have a huge lavish wedding and still not at all be a SMI. This isn't about taking potshots at folks who have big lavish weddings and receptions. It really takes a really special kind of judgmental bitch to be an SMI, so your expensive wedding will not automatically qualify you for that title, but your bad attitude most certainly will.

As I said in the wedding-board thread where this was brought up, anyone who thinks that my low-budget low-key wedding and reception isn't good enough for them, or anyone who wouldn't have been willing to contribute to a pot-luck IF that's all we could afford, please stay home, OK? Be here for me, not just with an expectation of an open bar and $5 worth of mass-produced mediocre food that cost us $50 or more.

I need to breath and get over this. Oh, and leave work now.

And I need to stop. reading. that. thread. No drama, no drama, no drama. Yikes.

Whoopsie!

I thought that I had it set so that anyone can post, but instead it was set that only registered users can post. Really, I love comments from everyone.

Well, except of course I'm not keen on comments from folks trying to get me to enlarge my penis (which, if it was something I really wanted to do, I'd do it through Good Vibrations or some place like that which could give me something that I could sterilize in the dishwasher, if I had a dishwasher that is) or help them recover their Nigerian diamond fortune, or look at Lindsay Lohan's tits. Those comments will be deleted post haste.

Of course now I also need to get a site monitor up and running on this site so that I can see how many hits I get based on someone Googling about Lindsay Lohan's tits or enlarging their penis... Gotta love site monitors!

Now: How long will it be before "Googling" will be recognized as a valid word by most spell checkers?

This is something I can't conceptualize

OK, so I can deal with feeling like I'm surrounded by aliens (or more realistically that I'm the alien) when it comes to the whole wedding frou-frou stuff, but that's ok -- other folks are planning what THEY want and I'm planning what I want so that puts us on the same page even if you're spending $100k and have a zillion tiny details that are important to you and a paid staff to handle most of them, and I'm trying to epitomize keeping it simple and low key. Oh, and cheap.

But what I can't fathom is this: One girl actually had the cojones (huevos?) to post the question (on a wedding board which I will knot name) of how to approach her parents for money towards her second wedding, when her first was just 5 years ago and cost THEM $30k, and this girl just got a $170k (yes, one hundred seventy thousand) inheritance from an aunt or someone. This after Daddy has already told her that he wasn't going to pay for another wedding, and after her fiance's parents had said that they'd help. But she just didn't want to have to spend that much of her own money on their planned $12k wedding.

I can't even comprehend it. Seriously - that's like really bad science fiction to me. People, especially those who are attempting to masquerade as adults, would really DO that?!?

I was at least glad to see that there were lots and lots of immediate responses, worded with various shades of politeness, of "no you should NOT ask him for money" so clearly that's at least not a commonly accepted practice.

The strange things you see when you travel to a foreign land...

To-do reminder

Get a clear idea of what produce is in season in late May/early June and what fish are typically caught locally.

Find out if there are any cheesemakers within 100 miles.

Go to a wedding expo. Oh god, I can't believe I just wrote that. I'm going to need to bring both D., for the queer femme perspective, and M.A., for the sweet fun straight girl perspective. I can imagine myself alternating between a jaw dropped in disbelief and a face stiffened to suppress a gaggy laugh. Oh, yes, this will be a Girl's Day Out Adventure as nobody has ever seen. My brain pictures it as a dark surreal movie, with occasional scenes where you can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

A late night not quite sober ramble

I'd like to put together a multi-disciplinary team of experience researchers, both scientists and academics, to study the emotional and social rollercoaster of wedding planning: I want to look at Nature vs Nurture vs Marketing budgets - do thousands of women find things appealing because their general personalities draw them to those things, do they want them because it is a beloved tradition in her culture or a fun/romantic thing that a friend did first, or are they pushed towards wanting things by the katrillion dollar wedding industry fueled even further by what's on the internet.

It's a combination of genuine intellectual curiosity with wishing I knew what the fuck I was getting myself into with planning this wedding. I mean, LOOK at me: Less than a week after a proposal and I've written a good half-dozen blog entries, joined three online communities, looked at hundreds of dresses, and ordered one that was cheap and cute and could work. Maybe I should include medical researchers in on this study. Could this be the sign of a bridezilla parasite eating my brain?

Maybe we should just go to Canada and skip the local shindig: Just the two of us and a handful of strangers in a quick civil ceremony. Yeah, that will work.

Now I'm going to eat pie.

I guess I'm not "offbeat" enough

Well, since it's 11:30pm and the winner was supposed to be notified today, I guess I didn't win Offbeat Bride's "Win Something Blue" contest, with a prize of two blue iPod Nanos. I just wish that I'd made a copy of what I wrote as my contest entry, which asked for three "wedding planning" songs to load onto the iPod, and why. I know I chose "This Will Be (an Everlasting Love)" and "Why Walk When You Can Fly" but I'm totally blanking on the third song I chose, dammit. And my reasons for each song were good - or so I thought anyway. Hee. Oh well.

I'm certainly feeling like an offbeat bride, though. It's not just that I'm a queer Jew by choice marrying a transgendered Latin butch, that we'll be having a Jewish wedding when there will only be maybe 4 Jews there, that we'll both be over 50, that our granddaughters will be our only bridal party, or anything like that. What's making me feel most offbeat is how we just want something small, low-key and low-budget, and how much that's turning out to be totally not the norm. I'm sure that it's not really true, but it appears from the folks I'm reading about on various wedding sites that to most people, "small" means either 100 or a destination wedding on some island with 20 people, "low key" means a two-hour open bar and a string quartet instead of a five hour open bar and a dance band, and "low-budget" focuses on comparing tips on how to get maximum frou-frou that LOOKS expensive but isn't, thanks to the dollar store and a team of dedicated glue gunners. I'm feeling quite out of place. Of course it might also be that folks planning weddings like mine just don't hang around and post on those wedding sites, but it would be nice (for me) if they did. And of course I'm exaggerating because I have already run into women who are planning truly small, personal, low-key and low-budget women, but we're so outnumbered it's scary.

Don't misread me: There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with folks who really want every little detail to be just-so, but that's just so not me -- or at least I hope it never becomes me. I'm begging you now, someone please do a serious intervention if I start fussing over not being able to find just the right shade of chiffon to use to drape the edges of the tables, or if I can't find a "save the date" card design to fit my theme and color scheme ("blush" and "bashful", of course). Those can be important to other people, but they're just so not important to me, or to us, or to our feeling that this ceremony and celebration were absolutely perfect.

I'm sure there will be things that I'll end up going bridezilla over - flies in the back yard despite our every effort to rid it of every last trace of dogshit, my inability to read Von's mind as required, pretty shoes not being available in 7.5 wide flat duck, hot flashes and hormone swings, where everyone from out of town will stay since few can afford multiple hotel room nights, etc. Just please, please don't let me go bridezilla over table decorations being an inch too tall or the flowers being the wrong shade of lilac or stuff like that. Help me keep my focus on WHY we're doing this - Our vows, the support of our family and friends, a really enjoyable low-key down-to-earth party with good food and good dancing, and everything being set up to reflect the type of people we really are.

Oh and one last thing for the record. Again, if it's your wedding and not mine, then it's totally up to you if you choose to not allow children to attend, since I know that they can disrupt services and spoil some adults' fun. But for me, I'd love BabyGrand to decide to introduce herself to everyone as she comes forward as our flower girl and show off her new panties to a select few, I'd love someone's baby to start chattering away in the middle of my vows, I'll be thrilled when the kids (littles and teens) hit the dance floor, and the dance I'm most looking forward to will be with Ivón, TweenGrand and BabyGrand dancing together to "We Are Family." That's just me - marriage is about creating family (biological, extended and chosen), and families are perpetuated through our children.

Backyard wedding flowers

Several things are important to me if I'm going to have a wedding ceremony and party:

• Keep it low-budget
• Keep it low-key/totally not ostentatious
• Keep it real to who we really are
• Keep it as local as we can with regard to foods and flowers

Now, it's not likely that I'm going to attempt to self-cater this shindig so I'm going to look for someone who will work with local foods as much as possible (though I'm not going to be a maniac about it either...). But I'm really liking the idea of planning and growing my own wedding garden. At the very, very least I'd like to carry flowers from my own garden, and it would be ideal to have the entire thing decorated with (among other things) flowers from my own garden.

To this end, I just posted on gardenweb.com looking for ideas and instructions for what I could plant that might be blooming and cuttable right around that time. Of course, if we end up doing this in our own back yard we'll want to have things blooming and otherwise looking good right in place. I realize that this is one of the things that it really is good to start planning this far in advance, since there might be things I'd want to plant this fall or spring in order for them to be established by the next year -- or that I might want to plant this fall or spring just to get a good idea of when they bloom.

Ideas appreciated.

A dress under serious consideration

Well, this isn't the dress that would have had me going "Zowie, that's IT!!" had I seen it among hundreds of other dresses, but I think it's very cute, Von thinks it' cute and might look really good on me, so I'm going to order it and see how it looks.

There are four really good things about this dress:

1. Despite the skinny-ass model, it's a plus size dress.
   
2. It's a style overall that has been known to be flattering on me.
3. Despite the flowers in her hand and white lace material, it's not being sold as a wedding or bridesmaid dress which means that it's RETURNABLE (what a concept!).
4. It's a $188 dress (which would have been a relatively good price for a wedding dress anyway) on sale for $56.
   

So I'm going to try it. And I figure if I like it and keep it and then find something later that I like MUCH better, I could probably sell this on ebay for $40-50 if I keep the tags on it.

But wouldn't that be cool if the task that I thought would be the hardest to complete was done, spit-spot, just a week after I started even thinking about this whole shindig?

OH, here's the dress:



And here's a link if the dress for those reading this through a feed: http://content.nordstrom.com/ImageGallery/store/product/Gigantic/14/_5385354.jpg

OH, and a big whompin' smooch and THANK YOU to Dara for sending me the link!!

Assumptions confirmed.

Well, while I'm waiting to see if this stupid LJ feed is fixed, I'll post a quick update.

Ivón and I ended up having an unexpected but really quite delightful dinner date tonight to a delicious but generally too expensive restaurant that happens to have buy-one-get-one-free entrees on Thursday nights. Oh the food was heaven. And I did ask Von about a few things I had been assuming.

May/June 2009: Yes, best time to consider.

Outside wedding on the beach: Yes, if at all possible but with an inside backup in case the weather sucks (which includes it it's just way too humid)

And definitely yes to "please just do a mind meld to find out what I want then tell me where to go and when to be there." Oy. Followed by cloying compliments about what a great job I did putting everything together for our first private commitment ceremony. Double-oy. Why does Von have to be so much more of a "guy" than even a lot of the guys I know?!?

Oh, but it was also followed by Ivón saying "but you're not going around talking all about this wedding to everyone already, are you?!?" Um... I haven't told Ivón about this blog yet. Must have slipped my mind. Oops. ::grin:: But my response to that was that (a) I'm a grownup and don't need anyone's permission to talk about my own wedding, (b) I'm the bride and thereby legally required to get all bridal and start planning within five minutes of the proposal, (c) I'm excited and I'm not going to be quiet about it, and (d) I'm going to end up doing most of the work so he can just shut the hell up about whatever I want to do and however much I want to talk about it to other people. I smiled sweetly as I said all of this, of course.

We did talk (and I got teary) about how much I wish that the two people who really *should* be the happiest and most excited for us - the ones whose full acceptance and true happiness for us would mean the most to us - will actually be the ones doing the best "gee aren't we happy for you" performances while in reality not being able to be fully emotionally present and supportive: Ivón's daughter, who has big issues with me personally and huge issues about Ivón'sbeing gay and over-the-top issues with V. being butch, and past "butch" she doesn't even know about, and my mom, whose last significant comment on my relationship status was to tell me about how a friend of hers lesbian daughter split up with her partner of 18 years but "oh it was ok because she's just like you, she is the type to all her life just go from one relationship to another without staying with anyone for very long." Same mom who informed me that I'm definitely not a Jew because a friend told her that I can't be a Jew unless my mom's a Jew, and there is going to be very much about this wedding that is Jewish - as much as possible for a queer butch/femme interfaith wedding that is. So that makes me sad. I'd give anything in this world to feel that Von's daughter could just be happy for her mom's happiness, but I need to accept that it's just not going to happen. I'd give even more to feel that my mom was truly happy for me, in a "mom getting all choked up with seeing that her daughter really had found true and lasting love" kind of way, but I need to also accept that that's not going to happen either. It will hurt - it will hurt seeing their put-on smiles and receiving their hugs of congratulations, knowing what they really feel. I will give them credit for at least putting on that show for our sakes. So many others' families wouldn't even go that far - I just read about someone who had many family members who RSVP'd "no" to their ceremony and enclosed scripture to "explain" their absence. At least we don't have to deal with that.

It's all about the bride, baby.

Or at least this blog is being written by the bride and is all about the planning process that must go into and the frustration that will result from this future bride's efforts to work with the Latin butch of my dreams to plan our wedding, since we all know who will be doing most of the work that goes into it (said butch being of the type who would dearly love for me to just do a ten-second mind-meld to find out whatever specific desires are there, and then just say "be here at this time on this date, honey, and don't be late").

What we have so far?

A proposal.

That's all that's set in stone so far. We're going to do this.

No date, though I'm guessing we're talking late May or early June 2009. Why then? Well, first of all, my summer break is the only time that this can realistically happen. And once it hits July, the humidity around here will kill you, or at least it will make ME very cranky and unhappy. That leaves late May/early June. And even though this will be a small, low-budget and really fairly low-key affair, the chances of our realistically being able to plan this for just 8 months from now are fairly slim (especially considering that we'll have to PAY for it as well), and the idea of trying to pull this off in that short of time makes me want to... we just won't go there. So unless we win the lottery and I can get a totally custom dress and hire a wedding planner to handle all the details, late spring 2009 is when I'm presuming we'll pull off this shindig.

No location, though we've talked very briefly about just having it right here in our own back yard. Unless we somehow dramatically increase our social circle in the next year, we'll be hard pressed to come up with even 50 guests, so having it here isn't unrealistic, and we could then justify taking what we'd pay to have it elsewhere and putting it into fixups that would make the house look nicer for a wedding. I'd still love to get married on the beach, so we still might do that and then come back here for a reception but at the same time I want a good bad-weather backup plan in place just in case.

No real plan, though when we first talked about having a wedding years ago (before our relationship took a steep nosedive into the gutter and seemed for a while to be irreparable) we pretty much agreed on a sorta-Jewish wedding and a Latin-themed reception.

And I don't have a fucking clue as to what I'm going to do about a dress. I'll be fifty years old (FIFTY?!?), I'll still be short, I'll still be "nicely rounded", and they just don't make wedding dresses for folks like me who don't want to look like the matronly mother of the bride. I want to be sexy without looking slutty or stupid or like I'm trying to relive my teenage years (oh god I shudder at the thought!!), I want something flattering, non-traditional without being way out there and yet still somewhat bride-ish, I want something that won't make me sweat like an ice-filled glass on a hot humid afternoon (or that will help mask the sweat if I do - I am a girl who sweats, that's all there is to it).

One condition I placed on saying yes is that we head north to Canada to get legally married for our "honeymoon." I stopped wanting a formal ceremony a few years ago when all the right-wing shit hit the fan and state after state went on record to declare that our relationship was somehow dangerous and demented and certainly illegal. The hell if I wanted to get married in only a "pretend" wedding that had no legal gravity to it. And while I clearly know that Canada's recognition of our being legally married won't mean anything in the U.S., it will at least help me to know that there are civilized, rational governments out there who don't give a rats ass who we love as long as we pay our taxes and keep our lawns mowed and help in whatever ways we can to raise responsible future taxpayers and voters. I was originally thinking Montreal or Toronto, but perhaps well go to Seattle and Vancouver instead. We'll see.

OK, end of babbling for now. A lot of what you'll see her will be things I list for my own benefit (like random ideas I want to remember or to-do lists) and various rants or rambles, but I invite and appreciate your comments on anything at all.