Us: Six Months

If you can believe it (I'm finding it hard to believe) on Tuesday David and I marked six months of being married. Six months already! How did it happen?

It has been, at best, a tumultuous six months. We've had shake ups on the work front, we've been dealing with facing grad school graduation in a terrible economy, we've had family illnesses to deal with. But, for all of the ups and downs, it's been better somehow. Marriage has provided some subtle steadiness, a ballast, a deeper sense of reassurance that we're in this together, and we'll sort it all out.

Part of it is emotional, and some of it is real. We merged our finances after we got married, and that has changed our lives in very tangible everyday ways. In this rough economy, it's fundamentally different knowing that there are two of us to provide financial support, and that if one of us can't work, the other (hopefully) will. Right before the wedding, when I was struggling through the reality of merging our finances, I had a conversation with ESB about it, where she said something along the lines of, "Merging finances is the hardest part of being married, but it's also one of the best parts." Over and over these last six months I've found that to be true. As hard as it was (and for us it was tough) it is deeply rewarding.

As I take stock at the six month mark, I'm finding interesting newness. Getting married and being married has changed me in a million small ways, ways that I'm having to take time to get to know. It's made me more free, it's made me more complex, and it's made me dream bigger. So right now, I find myself in the slow process on measuring and weighing dreams. We talk a lot these days about what we want, and why and how we want it. For example, we talk about owning a house, and how soon we'd like to do that. We weigh the pluses and the minuses, we talk about what sort of house we'd like to own, and what sort of compromises we'd be willing to make to do that. But more than that we talk about *why.* Owning a house because it's The Done Thing To Do after you get married is not enough for me. I need to figure out why it's personally important to us, and what I would hope to get out of it (turns out it has to do with rootedness, decorating, a small garden, a place to throw dinner parties, and room for a baby - one day). We weigh and measure the same sorts of things about children. How would we want to raise them? How would that be different than the way we were raised? How would it be the same? How do we want to live as parents? And simply, why do we want to do it?

It's not to say we didn't talk about these things in the five years we were together before we married, we did. But now, there is a different quality to the discussions, a weightiness, a thoughtfulness.

So if I had to describe what is feels like to be six months into marriage, I would describe it as the quiet weighing and measuring of dreams. It's simple, it's subtle, and it has a certain grounding practicality. It's nothing like planning a wedding, but somehow, the decision-making that comes with wedding planning, and the ways in which it forces you to set boundaries and make decisions for your emerging family - its the best possible preparation for this.

(And with that, we're off... we're celebrating six months in a small cabin in the wilds above San Francisco, giving me time to write without interruption, and time for us to just be. I'll see you here on Tuesday.)

Reclaiming Wife: Comparing Notes

(At a hole-in-the-wall-diner, Thanksgiving weekend)

David: Every time I tell older men I just got married, they shake their head.

Me: Really?

David: Yeah. And then they say, "biggest mistake of your life."

Me: WHAT? Oh my god, no they don't.

David: Yeah. They all do. It's really awkward.

Me: That's crazy.

(pause)

Me: You know, women always tell me, "Oh my god, that's so wonderful, you must be so happy." and then they pause and tell me, "Just wait till you have kids. They'll ruin your life, you'll have no time, you'll be exhausted, you won't really have a relationship with your husband anymore, you'll be totally isolated from the rest of the world." and then Isweartogod, in the next breath they ask me when we're having kids.

David: Then they ask you when we're having kids?

Me: YEAH! At that point I'm so frozen with confusion I have no idea what to say.

David: Weird. No one says that to me.

Me: The strangest part is half the time it's from people who know better. Sometimes I think they are not even aware of what they're saying.

David: I love that no one said anything like this before the wedding.

Me: It's like they are trying to initiate us into a club of depressives.

I've been rolling this conversation around in my head the past few weeks, trying to make a wry, mildly amusing post out of it, and I couldn't get anything to click. Then the other night, when talking to Marie-Eve (more from her to come) I realized why: nothing about this conversation was actually funny. I haven't quite sorted out what is going on, or why, and why different equally disheartening but totally different things are being said to each of us, but I do know that it's not funny. I think a lot about cultural self-fulfilling prophecies these days, and about how if we're told to expect something (over and over and over) it becomes hard not to buy into it, and hard not to live it out in our own lives. So I worry. About what I'm being told, about what David's being told, about the stories that we're telling ourselves and each other*. And I'm thinking a lot.

(and to keep you from feeling too glum - before the conversation continues - go read Cate's poetic and moving post about becoming a mother. That girl gets it right, every single time)

*And let me clarify: there is a difference in our lives from the stories that we're being told and the examples being set. Our parents both celebrate wedding anniversaries this month, and lets just say, both sets have been happily married a good long time. But words have power. And the words we're hearing from all sides bother me.

Ambition Squared: New Orleans

As David and I work on our Ambition Squared projects, and discover new ones, I'll be giving you little updates here. Hopefully this will help continue the conversation about how we form the marriages we need to sustain ourselves. So here is what I hope is the first update of many.
A few weeks ago we went to New Orleans as Part II of plan traveltraveltravel (the honeymoon was Part I, maybe I'll tell you a little about that one day). Because, you know, we figure travel is a habit that we should get into before we are hauling wee ones around the world.

We were in New Orleans for a wedding of an old friend and we stayed a few days, just for us. New Orleans was different than any place I'd ever been, joyful and sad all at once. It drew me in, and made me want to come back, to become a regular at a cafe on Magazine Street, get to know the people, acquire a house with a porch. But what knocked me on my heels in New Orleans was the music. Our first full day in the city we were walking down a street in the French Quarter and an jazz band was playing in the middle of the street. They were a bunch of scruffy urbanites about our age, playing brass, dancing, and singing.It seemed like the most normal thing in the world, them making that music in the street, like it was as easy as breathing. I've found that every time I travel somewhere new, there is a moment when suddenly I see something I've never seen before, quite, and my perspective of the world changes a tiny bit. In New Orleans, this was that moment. I grew up around lots of music and dance (I dance, I don't play anything) but I'd never seen music integrated into a city quite like that. I'd never been to a city where music seemed like it's beating heart.

So there I was with my new husband in the French Quarter listening to jazz and suddenly pondering learning the Lindy Hop. There are *many* imperfect parts of my life right now, and many stressful, anxious moments, but there are also moments like that. Moments where you step back and think, I don't know how I got this so right, but here we are.

I wanted to track down that nameless jazz band for you, that jazz band who's CD I did not buy (stupid, stupid, stupid), but I figured it would be impossible. But one google search later, I found it: The Loose Marbles (Or Little Big Horns. We're not quite sure) with Meschiya Lake. The band that put 'learn the Lindy Hop*' on David's and my to do list:

So thank you Meschiya, thank you Loose Marbles, and thank you New Orleans. We'll be back.

I'm aware that they are not doing the Lindy Hop in this video. But I liked it. So there.
Pictures are by me, shot on our new 35mm Holga

Web Round Up: So Much Goodness

I almost never do 'around the web round-ups,' since it's just not my thing, but this week I had to. There were so many things I came across that I kept thinking, "D*mn, I want to tell Team Practical about that." (Is it weird that I think of you as a collective friend? Anyway.)
First, the wedding that I think I would have wanted, if a small wedding had been in the cards for us. The wedding took place at a park a few blocks from the couples home in Redhook, Brooklyn. It featured a mind-blowing floating flower altar made by Saipua, who was also the maid of honor. And then, they all went to a restaurant and celebrated. Sigh. Lovely, simple, just right. These people are clearly my people. See more about this wedding here and here (via Veiled Vows.)Then there is this amazing emotional wedding, shot by Anna Kuberberg, where they gave out beautiful copies of Justice Moreno's dissenting opinion on Prop 8. This was a lesbian wedding, but you can bet your buttons we would have considered doing this for our wedding if we had thought about it.

And, my beloved New York Times Magazine keeps knocking it out of the park. Last week they did a piece about the origins of the honorific Ms. Turns out that Ms. started as a, achem, practical solution, not as a political one. It's been interesting seeing my own ownership of this honorific after the wedding (though I clearly used it before as well). When David and I pulled up the hotel just 15 minutes after our wedding, the valet stepped out to open my door and said, "Congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs.!" and in one voice, David and I said, "MS." And so it's gone ever since. When I'm on the phone with customer service and they realize I'm married and start referring to me as Mrs., I tend to correct them so emphatically they apologize. It's interesting, seeing how strongly both David and I are willing to defend my right to choose my own title.And finally, if you haven't read the cover story in this weekends New York Times Magazine about the Obama's marriage, you must (warning, it's epic, so if you don't have the hard copy you might want to print it out). I've mentioned before how the Obama's give me a model of a marriage I'd like to aspire to, in the midst of endless media models of marriages I'm sure I never want. And this story is excellent. I'll leave you with this quote from Michelle:

“This was sort of the eye-opener to me, that marriage is hard,” the first lady said with a little laugh. “But going into it, no one ever tells you that. They just tell you, ‘Do you love him?’ ‘What’s the dress look like?’"

Photos: #1 Robert Sukrachand, #2 Anna Kuperberg, #3 The New York Times

Thoughts After Attending The First Wedding After Our Own

It hasn't been quite four months yet since we got married, but somehow I'd forgotten how huge it was already. As I sat in a 100 year old chapel in New Orleans this weekend, watching our friend (the friend we were closest to we got together, no less) say his vows, the enormity crashed over me again.

A few weeks before we got married we were sitting in our Rabbi's office, talking about marriage, and I said something like, "I know, I know, marriage doesn't change anything. Not really." And she looked at me and said, "Well. It does. But that's another story." And as I listened to our friends say the bit about 'for better and for worse, forsaking all others, as long as we both shall live,' one grinning and one teary, I wondered how I'd ever thought that this moment wasn't a game changer.

But if I learned one thing this weekend, it was that I think every wedding (and possibly every funeral) should end with a New Orleans jazz band playing As The Saints Go Marching In. Because standing on that sidewalk outside an old southern mansion, the whole crowd waving white napkins over our heads like flags, stomping our feet, singing that familiar spiritual at the top of our lungs, our voices rubbed raw from joy, throwing handfuls of lavender at the newlyweds as they rushed to the car? That was it. That's why we go to weddings, I think, and that's why we love weddings. Weddings help us to brush up against hope, and to remember how to believe. That, and they are a damn fine time. Congratulations you two. And many many happy years.

Oh! And I met a reader for the very first time. You should have seen my face when the woman in front of me in the drink line whipped around and said, "Um. Are you Meg from A Practical Wedding? Because you're kind of totally famous." (What?) And thank god she said hi, since she and her husband and *another* reader drank with us the rest of the night. Thanks guys!

Mini-Moon #1

And now I'm off. As part of our promise to each other to travel (even though it very much pains one of us to spend any kind of money ever. Hint: me.) we are winging our way to New Orleans for the very first time and staying for fourish days. Also, we're going to our very first wedding since we got married, and I'm curious to see what they look like from this end of the telescope. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a fancy-pants weddings, and I adore fancy-pants weddings.*

It's our first of many mini-honeymoons, and boy do I need it right now. There may be bits here while I'm gone, but there probably won't be much. I'll see you on the other side, hopefully rejuvenated. New Orleans seems like a good place for soul restoring.

*You can adore both sanity and black tie and the same time. Not that this will be black tie, but it will involve a vintage-y dress. And my wedding shoes.
Photo from an amazing NOLA film set on flicker by focusc

G'mar Chatimah Tova

I will be taking Monday off to observe Yom Kippur. After such a momentous year, it is wonderful to get to slow down and reflect on the many blessings we received, and what I'm ready to leave behind as I dive into the new.

To all of my Jewish and Interfaith ladies (and a few gents) I wish you thoughtful reflection, moments of peace, and an easy fast. I'll see you on the other side.

On Marriage: Rooting & Reaching

Have I mentioned we're now on our 'married budget'? We are. Thusly:

David: Maybe we can get a new vacuum cleaner.
Me: (without looking up from my reading) Do you want to get a vacuum cleaner or do you want to go to India?
(Pause)
David: Maybe we can get a *used* vacuum cleaner.

Its Been A Month! Howcrazyisthat?

Exactly a month ago, at about this time of day,* I was drinking mojitos on a balcony, reading a Bust Magazine interview with Diablo Cody** while my brand-brand-new husband read the New York Times, and we watched the sun set. Luckily for me, some of my favorite moments of our wedding day are moments we can re-live whenever we want.

So in that spirit, we're celebrating tonight by eating some recently defrosted left over wedding cake, drinking some champagne, eating Round Table (what we did on the day after, thankyouverymuch) and watching a British political drama. Oh, and David wore his wedding tie to an interview, so I might lie around the house in my wedding shoes and hair flower.

It's been a long delicious month. Here is to many more.

*Morning weddings rule ** Girls (you know who you are) I love you all

On Adventuring

Thursday, in London:

David: We should make a goal that we will go to a different pub, everyday that we are on our honeymoon.
Me: And *that* is why I married you.

What The EFF Happened/ What Fresh H*ll is This??

Oh my god. Oh my god you guys. I want to kiss the laptop screen right now, I want to give you all a hug. But let me calm down, step back and explain. On Friday night I was working on our wedding playlist (god is that a fun wedding chore, I don't know why we left it for last) and I clicked over to blogger to write a quick missive about how we were in an amazingly zen happy place about the wedding. Annnnnddddddd..... instead of my blog, I found a screen saying that my blog no longer existed.

What? Yes.

So, it turns out Blogger has a robot that scans the web looking for spam blogs and shutting them down. And sometimes, just sometimes, it picks real blogs and shuts them down. When this happens sometimes you get your blog back, and sometimes you don't. So we spent the weekend feeling super zen about the wedding, and then I'd remember, and actually start crying because I'd lost all my writing, all your stories, and all your wonderful comments. It was the comments that I was most distraught about.

But, we're back, and we're live. And I want to hug each of you individually. And I will OBVIOUSLY be moving my blog off blogger after the wedding.

I See, I See

I think I have discovered the why and wherefore of the atrocious bridal to-do list. Five weeks out, my hands are largely free of tasks, as we have all but finished our list (Type-A alert). I've noticed that my newly free hands tend to start wringing themselves.

It's not that I'm nervous about the wedding, per say, or about our marriage. Its that now I have time to think about the vast unknown (what does a wedding feel like when you’re a bride?) and the way our lives will never be the same after we marry (together five years or no). I have time to think about my emotions.

I think this is why favors were created, actually, as a monumental distraction from the truth.

Fred and Hannah's Wedding: 1974

If all weddings are a product of their era, my parents' wedding was certainly a product of theirs. We tend to think that Alternative Weddings are new to our generation, but of course they really began with the counter-culture movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's - and my parents lived in Berkeley, the epicenter of it all. My parents' wedding is for anyone that is worried that a practical wedding has to be small, or a alternative wedding has to have a certain style.

Now I will let my Dad (who is a huge fan of all of you guys and reads all of your comments) take it away. Oh, and one last thing: my parents were so excited to write about their wedding that they told me they stayed up past their bedtime doing it, because they were just having so much fun:
Hannah and I got married at the high altar in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco with five Episcopal priests celebrating the Eucharist (i.e. Communion) early in the Winter on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. (Our entire family loves irony.)

Elaborate, yes. Expensive, not really. The five priests were close personal friends, most about our age. We asked them to wear their fanciest, most colorful vestments. A friend printed copies of the liturgy so everybody knew what to say. I asked my brother to be Head Usher; the other ushers and our attendants were close friends. We chose the hymns, and even included a Christmas carol. Other friends baked the bread for Communion. We chose the wine (a nice Zinfandel,* as I recall), and asked the priests to give big sips to the recipients. The wedding ceremony itself takes no more than 20 minutes, so we chose to have Communion. It is optional, but provides emphasis for the idea that a wedding incorporates a married couple into the Community. We are big on that kind of thing.The Christmas decorations were still up in the Cathedral; the only flowers we needed were corsages for our mothers and bouquets for Hannah and her attendants. We did not belong to the Cathedral congregation, so the use of the building cost a couple of hundred dollars, but a Verger (a custodian, wearing vestments) came with it. We decided to hire one of the Cathedral organists for another hundred or two. This did not seem like very much, and he could play anything we wanted, including, for the Recessional, some heavy-duty Bach that matched one of the hymn tunes. (We like Johann Sebastian.) We had the Receiving Line at the back of the church so that we could greet our friends, and so they could start partying as soon as they got to the Reception. The organist rang change for half an hour. The photographer had shot my sister's wedding two years earlier (the reception had been in my parents back yard), and charged us the same price even though he was from out of town and had to travel. (His wife wanted an excuse for a trip to San Francisco.)

Hannah did all of the heavy lifting in putting the wedding together. In the late spring she had agreed to marry me, so she had about six months. I had just finished my degree, and my first full time job was on the East Coast. It started in late August, so I was not around to help her. Both of her parents worked full time, so, while they paid for the wedding and set some limits, the wedding belonged to Hannah. However, I was around when she got her wedding dress in the early summer. It was a winter dress with long sleeves, and was marked down 50% to $150 at one of the high-end department stores. This was good; her mother could not have afforded a $300 dress. The dress was actually a little short and could not be lengthened, so Hannah wore perfectly flat ballet-style satin bedroom slippers to disguise the shortness.Hannah's parents arranged for the reception; the ceremony was ours. The reception cost more than a thousand dollars, a lot of money in those days, but it covered the venue, the food, and the setup and service. We served hors d'oeuvres and wedding cake and champagne punch. Hannah's mother gave us the choice of limiting the guest list or eliminating champagne service. We gave up the champagne. We bought the cake at a local coffee house, now defunct, where one of the bakers had trained at the fanciest bakery in San Francisco. It cost $100, a good price for a good cake. Different layers were different flavors, an innovation back then. They baked a sample cake for free; Hannah had them write "Happy Birthday, Mom," and used it for her mother's birthday.

The reception was held at the Marines Memorial Club. My father had been a career officer in the Marine Corps and a charter member of the Club; Meg is using his dress saber to cut her cake, just as Hannah used her grandfather’s sword to cut hers. Hannah’s parents also were members of the Club; her father had been an Army officer.My sister’s wedding cost a thousand dollars. Ours cost two thousand, and we did not feel that it was outrageous. Meg calculated that $2000 would be about $8,500 now, due to inflation. On the other hand, she priced out duplicating our wedding and came up with a cost of more than $40,000.**

This was an era when Alternative could mean many things. We took the standard service and pushed the envelope as far as we could; our parents were distinctly dubious about its showiness. And that did not even include the Episcopal Chaplain to U.C. Berkeley carrying the Bible into the midst of the congregation so the Gospel could be read by the Pastor of the Berkeley Free Church, one of the most radical priests of the sixties. Alternative is as alternative does. We got the wedding we wanted for $2000. We like to dress up, put on a big show, and have a party. And even the Wedding Elves: the Baker, the Verger, the Organist, the Marine’s Memorial staff , seemed to have a good time.

So cheers to my parents. 35 years later, they want you to know that they still remember every minute of their wedding, and if you want to, you will too.

* Editors note: the entire family loves a good Zin.
**That, in itself, should tell you everything you need to know about a wedding industry gone haywire.

Sneak Peek: My Parents' Wedding

Coming Monday: my parent's wedding, as written about by my parents.
From this picture you might be thinking that my parents had a very traditional wedding, but no, of course not. After all, they did meet in Berkeley in the-part-of-the-70's-that-was-really-still-the-60's.

HappyHappyHappy!

First off, I want to thank you all for being nice to my sick, slower posting self this week. Next week I'll be back with thinky-ness and real weddings and magic. Also, less of a cough.

Second of all, I just have to say, I'm running off tomorrow to celebrate my biiiirrrrrthhhhddddaaayyyy!* I'm turning almost-30 this year, but I have zero anxiety, because I know by the time I turn 30 I'll be married. Which is accomplishment enough, especially if you happen to know just who I'm lucky enough to be getting married TO. Yep, I defiantly am getting the better end of *that* deal.

So have a wonderful wonderful weekend all! (Especially happy wishes Chelsey, the Team Practical member getting married on my birthday. Yes. I remember these kinds of things.)

*You are so not surprised that I'm an Aries.

Photo by the exquisite Aubrey Trinnaman

The Most Important Thing Is Not To Fear

This is my last post of the week, and we are off to celebrate Passover and Easter with our respective families in LA (and do other really really cool stuff that I can tell you more about later).

But before I go, I wanted to wish all of my Jewish readers a happy Passover. Passover is the celebration of the liberation of the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, and the time of year when we take time to personally reflect on ways that we feel in bondage in our own lives, and ways that we want to find and celebrate personal freedom. Thinking about all this has hit me really hard this year, as I face a myriad of Big Life Transitions in the next few months. How do I want to free myself from parts of my life that feel like bondage? How do I want to feel like my deepest, truest self heading into this new chapter of my life?

In a way, this meditation is the essence of what this site is about, because it's only nominally about weddings, really. I write APW because this community inspires me to live in a deeper, truer, and braver way - to live more deeply and richly. Weddings are a small microcosm of the way we live our lives: How do we express our values? How do we express our personal style? How to we balance embracing traditions that have value to us and rejecting cultural expectations that limit our growth? That is what this site is to me. Weddings are just the tip of the iceberg.

So for you, my dear Team Practical, I leave you with a Hebrew prayer that spoke to me this week as I thought about breaking free of bondage, and living more truthfully:

All the world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to fear at all.
Kol ha'olam kulo gesher tzar me'od, v'ha'ikar lo lefahed klal.


Chag Pesach Sameach, dear readers! Think of freedom, taste it. I'll see you next week.

Needing Inspiration...

I've been feeling burned out and having a hard time writing lately, and today I got a wonderful email from a reader, it said:

Dear Meg,

I've never written a "Thank you!" email to a blog I love before, but...THANK YOU! I am getting married next September, and I am just so grateful for your inspiring posts in a land of Monique Lhullier-obsession!

You don't have to reply. I just wanted to say, Keep 'em coming. You have no idea how much fist-pumping your posts are being met with.
Laura

It made my day. Fist pumping, that's something I can get on board with.

Sometimes, I think, the best way to combat burn out is by being grateful. So, I wanted to say thank you to each one of you readers. Thanks for your wise comments, your kind emails, for sharing your amazing weddings with me, and for your general support. I read every single thing you send me, even though I've run out of time to respond to each one. Thanks for making me feel ok that the wedding industry en masse sometimes makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. Thanks for helping me trust my gut, even when it seems weird or different. Thanks for sticking with this little blog.

And, if you're feeling particularly generous today, I'd love it if you'd leave me something inspiring - a cool link, or something that's giving you a spring in your step. It doesn't have to be wedding related! Because I could use the inspiration.

Shower Me With Love

When we first got engaged my father gave me Miss Manners: On Weddings (a book I’ve previously recommended as being indispensable). While the book is not, by and large, written for the bride, it does open with a list called “Things A Bride Need Not Trouble Her Pretty Head About.” Trust me, this list gets more hilarious and informative the farther into the planning process I get. The very first item on this list is this:

“Do not worry about who is going to give you a shower. The shower is a lighthearted nonessential element of and engagement (as opposed to, say, the fiancé, who is essential and whose heart should be fixed at this point). In any case, it is voluntary on the part of the bride’s friends. They either throw one or they don’t, but she can’t demand one.”

As soon as I read this, I thought to myself, “Oh, well, that’s some advice I can get on board with.” As far as I was concerned, the last thing I needed was other parties to stress about. So, I promptly forgot all about bridal showers. I’d never been to one anyway (have I mentioned that our rather avant-garde, overly-educated friends are not currently the marring types?) So, I had nothing much to obsess about.

It’s funny how the moment you (finally) totally let go of all our preconceptions in the wedding planning process* things just fall into place. So, as soon as I’d completely forgotten about bridal showers, I of course promptly had two. The first shower was this weekend, and it was thrown for a few of my east coast friends by a dear friend from college in New York City. When she decided to throw the party, she asked me what I wanted my “theme” to be for the gifts. My eyes went wide with panic. I’m not so good with registries, so the idea for picking a theme for gifts felt totally beyond me. My friend helped me sort through the options: Did I want gift cards? (No, I did not. It felt like asking for cash, and many of our friends are poor/in grad school) Did I want things from my registry? (No, I did not. We don’t really have a registry yet.) Did I want gifts themed by hours of the day? (No! Did I mention our friends are avant-garde artists?) So after much thought, we decided that what I did want was books – lots and lots of books. Books were perfect for me because 1) I can’t own enough of them 2) They come at lots of different price points and 3) My friend throwing the shower happens to be a super-talented book editor.

So. There we were. A book shower. I was pleased, but I still didn’t have much in the way of expectations. I bought plane tickets and a new shirt. The day of the shower I tried to get my hair to lie down nice and flat. Then, David and I rushed out of the party-throwers way, and ran off to a huge demonstration for gay marriage rights**.
By the time we got back to the apartment, I was shocked: a giant cheese-ball had been made from scratch, Deviled Eggs had taken over the counter space, a pink cake had been procured from Magnolia bakery, rose petals and tiny silver wedding bells had be-strewn every surface of the house, champagne was being handed out, and there were piles of craftily wrapped presents.

The shower itself was an absolute delight. Friends from every part of my New York life all showed up at one apartment. Almost no one knew each other, but everyone seemed delighted to be there. We all drank, we told stories, we admired the enormous cheese ball. Three or four people said they’d never been to a wedding shower before. We all pondered if we should do something silly or embarrassing. Should I sit on a big chair? Should we make something out of toilet paper? We decided no, maybe we should just have another drink and talk some more. Then we got to the presents. I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun opening presents. Even though almost no one properly recorded their purchases in the registry, I didn’t get a single double book. Everyone bought something that reminded me particularly of them. Cookbooks, political science books, novels, coffee table books, all there. Then we had cake, and more champagne. And is if all that wasn’t enough, my dear friend passed on special candy bars to everyone with our initials, our engagement date, and our wedding date. And then we all trooped out into the fall night to meet all of David’s friends at a dive bar.

What’s the lesson of all this, other then showers can be loads of fun? Well for me it was, when you relax, and stop caring about what your style is, or what your wedding philosophy is, and just let people do what they want to do, they will help you celebrate your wedding in ways you never would have imagined. So just let it all go a little bit. Trust your friends and family, get rid of your expectations, and enjoy the ride. People love you more than you know.

*Desaray wrote an excellent post about just letting go in ceremony planning over at Dingmoonment.

**hint: start your wedding parties by doing something good for the world. It will make you feel grateful and happy.

Photos: The invite!, crafty present by my crafty friend Lauren who also took the photo, some of the books I received

We're In This Together

They are up, they are up! Peony has put up the first of many pictures of her stunningly beautiful wedding. You all must go look, right away. There are so many nice things you could say about this wedding, about how it was stylish, super-budget and chic, but really, no one should talk about anything but the radiant joy on their faces. Cara said, "The small details that we spend so long thinking about really faded into nothingness on the day. " Amen. May it be so.

As for me, I am winging my way down to Los Angeles for a very informal little engagement party in my parents delightful backyard, and then some time by the pool. Thank you for all your support this week, in comments and emails. Rebecca gave such excellent perspective on weddings and life when she said, "we all have to nurse some grief about losing our concept of how we hoped things would be and making the most of how things will have to be."

You are a fantastic bunch. Much more to come next week.

Just Back...

I'm just back from our vacation at Bodega Bay. The nights were full of stars and s'mores, and it was good to get away. If you live in Northern California, and haven't waded in the Russian River, you must go right away!

I haven't had time to pull my thoughts together, but until then, I'll leave you with this treat. I posted on wedding music hoping that someone would send me a Klezmer wedding march, and, Internet, you didn't fail me. Here it is, thanks to a lovely reader: the wedding march by Klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals, more perfect for me then you could ever imagine.

Now, if anyone knows a cool affordable Klezmer fiddler in Northern California, please let me know.

Photo of our campsite at night by the excellent Kory Mosteller of Black Bag Photography