Culture clash: The planning of a Jewish Wedding in New York. From Texas.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part III

2006-12-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Spa Hell! That's what Friday was, if you can imagine it. I think if I had actually been to a spa, it would have been different. As it was, Friday was hectic. The day started off dropping off gift bags at the various hotels where our guests were staying. This went pretty smoothly, except that the guy at the Hampton Inn JFK looked at me like I had two heads when I brought in the gift bags. It made me worry that maybe not everyone would be getting one, but oh well. There were vending machines in the lobby. After this task, my dad and I drove to JFK Airport to the Avis rental place so that I could be added to the rental car contract. Navigating JFK is just horrible. It is a horrible, horrible way to start off your day, and I wouldn't recommend it.
Then, we drove into Hewlett for my nail appointment. Because I was going to the mikvah later that afternoon, I couldn't have nail polish put on yet, so I just had a regular manicure and pedicure. After that, I drove back to Garden City, dropped my dad off, picked my mom up, and headed to Woodmere for the Mikvah. My mom had no idea what this ritual was all about, so I tried to explain as best I could without overdoing it. See, she had already had quite a bit of culture shock up to this point with the orthodox jewish wedding and all, so I didn't want to push it. The mikvah visit was completed fairly quickly, and we were on to the next appointment, but not before driving back to Garden City to drop my mom off. I then drove back to Hewlett for the polish application at the nail salon, and finally back to Garden City where I collapsed into a coma at 8:30 pm. I had been in the car the entire day on Friday, and it was not a good thing.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part II

2006-12-26T09:32:00.000-08:00

Now we come to my favorite phrase of the whole weekend: "Oh, the sea of Humanity!" I think my dad uttered this phrase at least four times while we were sightseeing in Manhattan. This makes me think we need to avoid Times Square next time and just hit up SoHo and Greenwich Village.

We got to the train station just in time to catch the LIRR into Penn Station. This was kind of fun because my parents got to see a bit of Long Island. Of course, it wasn't as fun as we got closer to Jamaica and saw all of the garbage and nastiness that is also part of Long Island. The magic sort of faded for my parents at that point. When we got to Penn Station, we had to have a family meeting about not getting separated. I can just imagine my mom loose in Manhattan without the rest of us. I think her head would explode. So after telling my mom that she was not to lose us, that her handbag was safe, nobody was going to mug us, and that any public restrooms should be avoided, we set off into the urban jungle of Manhattan.

As we emerged from Penn Station out onto 7th Avenue, the first sea of humanity comment emerged from my dad's lips. He takes a look up 7th ave. at the throngs of business people and holiday shoppers and says, "Oh, the sea of humanity!" My mom and I ignored this comment- honestly, how do you respond to that?- and continued up 7th avenue towards Times Square. As we approached Times Square, there it was- comment number two. Oh, the sea of humanity! Ok, dad, we get it. Lots of people here in Manhattan. Yes, it's a sea of humanity.

I was amazed that we spent almost 8 hours walking around New York, but we didn't actually go into any of the normal sightseeing places like the Empire State Building. We saw the window displays on Fifth Avenue, I took them into Michael C. Fina so they could see this mysterious store in which we were registered, and my mom tried on an $11K necklace in a jewelery store on Fifth. We strolled around in Central Park for a while, ate a burger at an Irish pub nearby, and met up with two of my bridesmaids for drinks. We did manage to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, and of course, stopped into a Starbucks for a cup of coffee. True to form, this Starbucks was only two blocks away from another, cleaner, Starbucks. I believe the next sea of humanity comment came as we walked up 6th or 7th ave. towards Central Park. Oh, the sea of humanity!

In the middle of all of this, we did manage to catch a Broadway show. We decided on Wicked, which proved to be a great choice. It was completely different from the book, but enjoyable nonetheless. After this, exhausted by the sea of humanity that we endured throughout the day, we called it a night and headed back to the LIRR for the journey back to that waspy town known as Garden City. The next day, Friday, proved to be hell on earth for me. Really, I simply had too many spa appointments scheduled, and I had done so very inefficiently. More on that later.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part I

2006-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

So it's finally done. We're married, and I'm having major issues adjusting to the new last name...but that's for another post. Since things got a bit hectic the week before the wedding and I didn't have time to post, I'm going to have to post what I can remember (surprisingly quite a bit) from the past two weeks.

The first big adventure related to the wedding was spending several days before the wedding with my parents in New York. My parents have never been to New York before other than a very brief trip (less than 24 hours) for the engagement party last year. And even then they never made it into NYC. Let me preface this story by telling you my dad's original plan for these 4 pre-wedding days. The trip would begin with their arrival in New York on Wednesday. They would then rent a car, drive 4 hours to upstate New York, to a town with a population of 76. There, after figuring out what to do about the fact that this town didn't actually have any motels, inns, or even stables in which to sleep, he would drag my mom around a 300 year-old cemetery to do some geneology research on our family. Oh what fun! Then, on Friday, they would make the 4 hour return trip back to New York. This left almost no time to get the last minute necessities taken care of, nor did it allow extra time for emergencies. Come on people, I thought we were all OCD here! Where's the built-in panic time?? So my dad laid out this little itinerary to my mom and to Adrienne, at which point it was immediately vetoed.
The new plan consisted of my parents' arrival on Wednesday afternoon, dinner with the Grossman's that night, a day in Manhattan with me, and then wedding frenzy Friday and Saturday. And let me just give you another clue as to how that little driving trip would have gone in terms of my dad's familiarity with the area- I called him as they were renting their car at JFK airport, and my dad says, "I've got to get this GPS system hooked up so I can navigate here in Manhattan." You heard it here first: Long Island is now part of Manhattan.

The few days before the wedding were really somewhat insane. I finally made it out of the office and up to New York on Wednesday night. The next morning, I sat with my parents as we assembled the welcome bags for our out of town guests. These were possibly the most complicated welcome bags I've ever seen. They had candies, wheat thins, pretzels, two different types of cheese, plastic cutlery for the cheese, a welcome note, and explanation of what guests would be seeing at the wedding, and a map of the Long Island Rail Road. This doesn't sound like too much stuff to put together, except when you add the final ingredient: OCD Mom! I love her to death, but my mom has mastered the art of making simple things twice as difficult as they should be. Rather than buy snack packs of wheat thins, we had to put all of the wheat thins in separate plastic baggies, tie each one with a twist tie, and attach the plastic knife to the bag using the twist tie. Suddenly, I was transported back to Stamp Hell, only this time it was more like Snack Hell. Salt and twistie ties were everywhere!

So here's what the welcome bag assembly consisted of: First, we opened each of the outer bags and stuffed them with tissue paper. And yes, there was a particular way in which we had to stuff the bags: take two pieces of tissue paper, one on top of the other, make a fist in the center of the paper and pull the rest around your arm. Then pull the bag over your arm until your fist touches the bottom of the bag. THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE DONE!!! (I keep imagining a deep, demonic voice saying that phrase). Once filled with tissue paper, we dropped a container of laughing cow cheese into the bags. This helped weigh down the tissue paper and make room for the other snacks, of course. Then in went the Bailey's Irish Cream candies. Loose? Oh, heaven forbid no! They were also tied in little baggies with 5 or 6 candies to each baggie. Thankfully my mom did the candy bagging back in Dallas. Then we added the other cheese (smoked cheddar, I believe). Then the pretzels- two bags each. Thankfully we weren't required to put the pretzels in separate baggies, but I have to ask myself why? Why should pretzels get special treatment? Who cares, I should just be happy that was one less thing to bag. Then came the worst part: bagging the wheat thins. My dad and I had an assembly line created on the table in the hotel room. I opened the little bag, he dumped wheat thins, I tied with twist tie and attached the knife. Then into the welcome bag they went. Then we had to drop in the other paper stuff, like the welcome note, the wedding reference materials and the train schedules. The final step was tying with curly ribbon that my mom spent five days curling and assembling into cute little bows. Other than a short lived laughing cow cheese emergency, everything went fairly smoothly. We were finished by noon, at which time we went to catch the LIRR into the City. Sanity still with me? Check!

The Pavlovian response to the UPS truck...and damn the packing peanuts!!

2006-12-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

For any of you out there who are married or about to be married, you're probably familiar with the automatic physical repsonse that is generated by the low, gutteral sound made by a UPS truck cruising up to your house. Kenny and I are visited by the UPS truck about once every two days now, and we've actually gotten to the point where we can hear the truck coming from down the street. Every night, around 7pm, I see the dog perk his ears up, raise his hackles (he doesn't care what Brown can do for him, he hates Brown) and generally go ape-shit at the front door.
Let me digress here, and tell you a bit about Nathan (the dog) and his relationship with all things brown. Nathan, being raised by one of the paler people on the planet (me), is not used to people whose skin is anything darker than slightly tanned. So at his first sight of someone not caucasian, he absolutly flipped out. He's always had this reaction, and as embarrasing as it is for me, I can't seem to break him of it. So imagine when the UPS truck pulls up, and Nathan sees a huge brown truck, out of which comes a guy wearing ALL BROWN carrying a brown package. Into Nathan's territory, no less. Mayhem ensues, as you can imagine.
So we return to the story, with the UPS truck detected in the vicinity. Seconds later, we hear it: the low rumble of an engine, the squeak of stressed shocks. I come running out of the kitchen and announce to Kenny that the UPS truck is on its way. We run to the door, grab the package, and take it to the kitchen table. We've gotten to the point now where we recognize where the gift was purchased based on the address on the shipping box (the stores usually don't put the name of the actual store on the label). If it's Picastaway, New Jersey, it's Tiffany. If it's anywhere else, its Williams-Sonoma. I can't believe we actually know these things. We were teased last week, because a box arrived from Picastaway, New Jersey. Kenny sees the address and exclaims, "It's from Picastaway! It's Tiffany!" We opened it up only to find that it was a gift I had ordered for a member of the wedding party. Oh, the disappointment.
I think that the UPS guy has become so familiar with our house that he's actually having his UPS buddies meet him there to hang out. The other night, I came out from the back of the house to find Nathan going absolutely nuts at the front window. I looked outside to see two UPS trucks backed up against one another, with the drivers switching, literally tossing, packages between the trucks. It was like some sort of bizarre UPS mating dance. I had to go out and ask them to move because they were blocking the driveway. But hey, why shouldn't he block the driveway? He probably feels like the 20-foot area in front of my house is as much his turf as it is mine. We'll certainly have to leave a gift for this guy at the end of all of this. Afterall, he probably fears for his life with each delivery because of my ferocious welsh corgie mutt dog who, let me reiterate, really hates brown.
We've had a blast receiving gifts from the registry. I probably shouldn't make this comparison, but it's like everyday is Christmas for the past month! Or maybe more appropriately, it's like 28 days of Chanukah.
The only down side to all of this is that Kenny is a tree hugger, and I am a converted tree hugger, so neither of us can bring ourselves to throw the packing peanuts away in the garbage. As of today, we have three garbage bags full of packing peanuts sitting in our dining room. Eventually we'll figure out where to take them. Someone made the suggestion of taking them into the Williams Sonoma at the mall, shoving them across the counter, and saying, "Here. Take your freaking peanuts back!" That would be really funny, I think. I'll let you know how that one goes over. If that doesn't work, there's always the burning option. When I described the packing peanut dilemma to Carol, who works with me at Cantey Hanger, she offered to burn the packing peanuts. Carol lives out in what is best described as "the country" and apparently is a pyromaniac. Maybe not a true pyromaniac, but from what I hear, there's lots of burning that goes on out at her property. In fact, that topic has come up at least three times in the past week. Carol did mention one caveat to her peanut burning offer, which was that she couldn't do it on a windy day lest packing peanuts get blown all over the pasture, at which point the cows would eat them. I don't know, that seems like an acceptable packing peanut disposal solution to me. I don't know how Carol's cows would feel about it. Of course, I could also ask Jacque, our receptionist, to let her goats go at the peanuts as well. Writing that last sentence has caused me to ask myself why so many people at my law firm own farm animals? Anyway...burning the packing peanuts or feeding them to farm animals seems to defeat the purpose of an environmentally friendly disposal. Maybe I'll just let that offer sit, and thank Carol for her thoughtfulness and pyromaniac tendencies.
Given the current packing peanut situation, the day I dread is the day Michael C. Fina delivers all of our registry items that are currently on hold, all at once, complete with packing peanuts. Fina has this wonderful registry option that allows you to keep everything on hold at their store so that you can receive it all at once, rather than in pieces. Considering that most of our registry is located at Fina, that's going to be one very big delivery. We'll be breaking down boxes and dealing with packing peanuts for weeks! That might not have been such a good idea, in retrospect. Maybe one day I'll send all of Fina's packing peanuts back to them.

Tuxedos, bowties, and...Haberdashers!!

2006-11-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

So item number 3 on our Thanksgiving to-do list involved a trip to the shopping mecca that is the north shore of Long Island. No, it wasn't a trip for Adrienne and me. It was time for the boys to get some new threads. Or, in Kenny's circumstance, to get some new threads altered.

After completing the marriage license trip, we all piled into the car for the trip to the north shore. While on our way, Adrienne regaled us with the story of how, many years ago when Lauren and Samara were little, Samara threw a tantrum when she found out Lauren was wearing little high heels to her father's 40th birthday party whereas Samara had to wear ballet flats (for those who don't know, Samara is a childhood friend of Kenny and Lauren's and is now married to Kenny's cousin Michael. Samara's brother, Adam, is one of Kenny's groomsmen). Then, Adrienne told the story again. Then, she notified us when we had entered the 5 mile radius of when Samara threw this tantrum. Finally, Adrienne pointed out the shopping center where Samara thew the tantrum. Samara, I probably know more about this tantrum than you even remember at this point. You'll have to tell me your side of it one day. Preferably over coffee at the Starbucks that is located in the center where said tantrum was thrown. It will feel much more real to me then.

So back to the story. We found ourselves at a place called Victor Talbot's, assisted by a gentleman named Marc. I liked Marc. First off, I love guys who spell Marc with a 'c'. Kenny's middle name is Marc with a 'c', so I'm partial. Secondly, Marc's business card identifies him, not as a sales associate, but as a HABERDASHER!! Wow! That's just so classy. So this place was absolutely nuts- by the way, it's where they filmed part of Meet the Parents!

When we walked in, Marc found us almost immediately and ushered us upstairs where we would outfit Kenny's dad in his new tuxedo accessories. The store itself is manlier than a bratwurst at a polo club. The carpet and walls were done in rich tones, with wood and brass accents and polo accessories all over the place. Adrienne and I made ourselves comfortable on the couch in the dressing area, and settled in with our cups of espresso. Yeah, that's right. We all had a great time choosing among beautiful ties, fantastic shirts and a really badass pair of suspenders. Y'all make sure you check out Steve's suspenders at the wedding. They rock. After about an hour of sifting through some high class threads, we managed to outfit Steve pretty well. I think he's ready to assume his role as father of the groom.

Licensed to Wed

2006-11-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

Item number two on our Thanksgiving agenda was to obtain our marriage license. This was really the original purpose of our trip, since we didn’t want to run the risk of Kenny not making it in time on the Friday before the wedding for us to go get the license then. We drove out to the Hempstead clerk’s office and had an adventure in municipal goings-on. Actually, the whole experience was pretty painless. Kenny, however, managed to play airhead for the day. As we arrived at the building, he suddenly realizes he can’t find his birth certificate. He goes to the car to get it. He then calls me from the car to tell me he left it at home. Adrienne tells him to check his pocket, and sure enough, there it was. Adrienne, the municipal clerk, and I all exchange glances. Apparently once I marry Kenny, the responsibility of keeping his head attached to his shoulders passes from Adrienne to me. Great.
We went upstairs, filled out some paperwork, and waited to have the license issued. As we were waiting, one of the employees at the clerk’s office looks at the three of us and asks who is getting married. She said she was confused because we all look related. Then, she told Adrienne she thought she might be the sister, or one of the bridesmaids. Don’t be surprised if you see this woman at the wedding, sitting at the head table with Adrienne. She absolutely made Adrienne’s day, week, and year. Once Adrienne was finished basking in this glory, we made our way into the cubicle of another employee named Yvonne. Yvonne was really great. She was efficient, nice, fun, and basically everything your normal municipal employee isn’t. Bottom line is, as of 10:40 am on Saturday, November 25, 2006, Kenny and I are officially licensed to wed. Yay! No jail time for Rabbi Hain!

The Affrufrffurfurf…

2006-11-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

Kenny and I just returned from a short trip to New York that boasted a very long agenda. First on the event list was Kenny’s Aufruf. For those of you who are not in the know, the Aufruf is a ceremony in which a groom is called to the Torah during the morning Torah service to say a blessing over the Torah. Torah Torah Torah. Whew. It’s something of a celebration of entry into married life. It is also the end of a man’s free will, where the ownership of his spirit and manhood are transferred from his mother to his wife-to-be, who then must continue to fight his mother for control of these gems for years to come.
The ceremony was really nice, and I have to say, it was very moving to see Kenny up at the bimah, wearing his tallis (a Jewish prayer shawl- usually only worn by married men in the Orthodox community).
So the Aufruf day began as a rainy Thursday morning, with all the ladies dressed in black (again, New York fashion sense got the best of me- I was also in black). We might have been mistaken for funeral party, save for the basket of candy we were toting that we would later peg Kenny in the head with. Adrienne was concerned about only one thing that morning- when the right time was to pelt Kenny with candy. You may be asking yourself, “Why in the world does she keep talking about hitting Kenny in the head with candy?” The explanation goes something like this—when a boy or man celebrates a milestone in his life, he gets pelted by candy. Bar Mitzvahs and weddings seem to be the most popular events at which to do this. If your mother loves you, she’ll choose soft candies, like Sunkist Gems or Gummi Bears. If you were bad, or you pissed your mom off that morning (like, for example, spilling water on the floor, then wiping it up with your sock while your mother is telling you to wipe it with a paper towel) you’ll get Jolly Ranchers jawbreakers. Kenny’s mom obviously loves him very much, and the water incident didn’t occur until the next day, so Kenny got Sunkist Gems.
As the time came for Kenny to be pegged with the candy, a few thoughts were running through my head. First of all, I was wondering when we were really supposed to be unleashing the candy artillery stash on Kenny. Adrienne asked Steve, and Steve says something like “Just go with the flow.” As Adrienne correctly noted, we were the flow. There were only about 12 women, all armed with candy, and none sure of when to throw it. Thankfully the Rabbi’s wife was sitting with us, so she gave us the go-ahead when the time was right. My second hesitation came a bit too late. As I was hurling the candy, I wondered how I could hit Kenny while avoiding the 5 other men standing at the bimah with Kenny. My aim, and probably that of most of the other women, is not very accurate. I’m pretty sure I nailed the cantor in the head. Lauren, being the loving sister that she is, managed to lob a gem right into Kenny’s head. The service ended shortly after that, Mazel Tovs went around, and we broke for a fantastic breakfast spread that Adrienne put together. The Wedding Mafia was in attendance, and as usual, there was an incredible amount of food. And this was about five hours before Thanksgiving dinner. I’m pretty sure my wedding gown no longer fits.

This Entry is Rated 'R'...for Ridiculous

2006-10-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

The battlecry for our wedding should be "If you're not crazy yet, then you're not busy enough!" I was just reflecting the other day on the various quirks of the moms involved in planning this wedding, and realized that weddings tend to magnify the bizarre qualities of everyone involved. Given that everyone involved in this wedding is becoming tediously obsessive compulsive, I'm at least hoping that these qualities already existed and weren't developed exclusively for the wedding. So far, these little OCD things have happened:
1) Kenny's mom requested that we mail all of the invitations that are going to their friends and family to New York so that she can send them from there. Why? Kenny and I are still trying to figure it out. It's likely that scientists will discover the edge of the universe, or perhaps explain how President Bush was re-elected before we figure out why these invitations were sent to New York.
2) My mom has requested that I reorganize our guest list so that guests from various different areas of my life are grouped together on the guest list. I asked her why, and she couldn't really tell me. She did, however, admit that it was an obsessive-compulsive request. Way to admit to the insanity, Mom! So far she's the only one willing to admit that she's acting slightly nuts, while the rest of us are still denying it.
3) Kenny and the stamps. Enough said. He refuses to admit that this was totally OCD.
4) I hunted down a post office that would hand stamp my envelopes. I was prepared to bribe a federal employee to do so. I also was overly excited when I found out that the post office in Dripping Springs, Texas still hand cancels stamps. That was before I found out that my neighborhood post office does as well, but I had no qualms about driving out to Dripping Springs. Yes, Dripping Springs is as country as it sounds. And it is far away.

Who is missing from this list? The dads. Where are the dads and why are they not crazy yet? Actually, I think their crazy will happen when they get the bill for the wedding. By then the rest of us should be feeling the effects of our Xanax, Prozac and other prescriptions and will at least be coherent enough to round up our dads for the looney bin.

Ask yourself, "Do I feel crazy?" If you don't, you're not pulling your weight. Get to it!

Do not bribe postal workers

2006-10-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

After Jacque and Carol's hand-canceling strike out at the main post office in downtown Austin, I figured I'd try my luck with something a little more "small town," such as our little neighborhood Hyde Park post office. Before I went, I called Kenny's mom to see if she had any good advice for how to handle the post office. After researching this with her 5 Towns Wedding Mafia crew, she suggested bribing them. It was actually our caterer's suggestion. So I left my office today, invitations in hand, and a $20 in my pocket. I even had it neatly folded up so I could discretely slip it into the federal employee's hand. Yeah, that didn't sound quite right, did it? No. It didn't. As Kenny said, that's probably a federal offense. I got to the post office, and as I was standing in line, I weighed my options. I could just walk away, mail the boxes of envelopes up to New York, and let the Wedding Mafia pros handle this. Or, I could go through with it. Or, I could try a third option, which involved altering my place in line so I could get the male postal worker, batting my eyelashes, and turning up the southern accent just a bit. Worked like a charm. You should all be receiving hand-canceled invitations soon. What's better, I didn't get arrested and charged with a federal crime. I can't believe I was going to commit a federal crime in order to get my stamps hand-canceled. The wedding has obviously sucked out every ounce of sanity I might have had left after choosing wedding music with my mom.

Teamwork

2006-10-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

I just have to give a quick shout-out to the fabulous ladies of Cantey Hanger, Carol and Jacque. Friday, after a trying week at work thanks to yet another time-consuming lecture on the margin tax, complete with technical difficulties (my projector cut out in the middle of my talk) and no ride back to the office (my car battery chose that moment to die), preceded by a not-so-nice encounter with one of the partners in my office, I was about to give up on being able to get anything done outside of work, including getting wedding invitations sealed, stamped and in the mail. Jacque and Carol came to my rescue by sealing the envelopes (all 109 of them) and taking them to the post office for me. Unfortunately for them, the post office is manned by a bunch of...federal employees!! (sorry, Allen). They were told to look elsewhere for hand-cancellation. Either way, they certainly saved me lots of time and a trip to the post office. Thanks, Ladies! I owe you lunch :)

Stuffing Wedding Invitations: Dante's Inferno with 2 extra levels of Hell

2006-10-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think Kenny does stuff just so I'll write about him on this blog. Wednesday night, we decided to tackle stuffing wedding envlopes. This is an AMAZINGLY TEDIOUS PROCESS!!! Considering the insanity of our wedding invitations, I knew this wouldn't be an easy task. We had 7, that's right- 7, components to our invitations: (1) invitation, (2) tissue to go over invitation, (3) reply card, (4) tissue to go over reply card, (5) reply card envelope, (6) direction card, (7) inner envelope for invitation, (8) outer envelope. Ok, that's 8. I tend to lose track after 2 items, which is the normal number of different pieces of paper involved in a typical letter. To add to this 8-fold nightmare, we had to number each RSVP envelope with a number that corresponded to each guest on the guest list in case they forgot to actually write their name on the reply card. (I thought, "Who forgets to write their name on the reply card? Who's such an idiot?" That would be me. Responding to a friend's wedding invite, I wrote this great little "well wish" for them, and am pretty sure I forgot to actually tell them I was coming, much less sign my name. These numbering rules are apparently created for people like me.) So this little numbering scheme adds the 9th component of our wedding invitations. This corresponds nicely with Dante's Nine Levels of Hell.

Kenny and I shared the responsibilites of Levels 1, 2 and 7, which involved folding the invite, laying the tissue paper over it, and stuffing it in the inner envelope. Piece of cake. Then I decided I would tackle assigning numbers to the RSVP cards (Level 9) , assembling Levels 3, 5 and 7 (the reply card and the tissue that goes over it, and the reply envelope), and neatly enclosing the direction card (Level 6 under the flap of the reply card envelope and stuffing these in the inner envelope as well (back to Level 7) then matching the inner envelope with its corresponding outer envelope (Level 8). It was during the process of stuffing the RSVP envelope in the inner envelope that I discovered a 10th level of Hell: trying to match the numbered reply envelope et al. with the right inner and outer envelopes. Remember, these little envelopes are numbered for each guest. Since I descended through the various levels of Hell in an assembly-line fashion, the reply cards and their respective envelopes were in a separate stack, and not exactly in the same order, as the inner and outer invitations. Let me just say that this sucked big time.

Once I finally got through this and matched up all of the invitations with their reply cards, I was introduced to Stamp Hell. Part of Stamp Hell involved my own creation- forgetting to put stamps on the RSVP cards. I would go through a few envelopes, then realize I forgot to stamp one before I stuffed it in the big envelope, and would then have to go back and check the five envelopes before that. This involved lots of unstuffing. Again, not fun.

Kenny created the second part of Stamp Hell. He is the most anal-retentive person when it comes to stamps, apparently. As I finished my trip through Hells 1-10, I looked over to see that Kenny, who did not participate in levels 4-10 or the first part of Stamp Hell, had a huge stack of envelopes before him that did not have stamps. This could only mean one thing: I stuffed, matched, and assembled the invitations faster than he could put stamps on the outer envelopes. I was truly baffled as to how this could be, so I watched him for a moment as he applied stamps to an envelope. He would take a stamp from the right-edge of a page of stamps so that it would have a straight right-side edge to match the straight right-side edge of the envelope. The next stamps were then lined up according to their little scalloped edges. The far-left stamp was taken from the far-left edge of the stamp page so that it would have a straight edge on the left side. Unbelievable. Meanwhile, I was haphazardly choosing stamps from anywhere on the stamp page for the RSVP envelope stamps. Kenny would occasionally yell at me for using one of the stamps from "his row." Again, unbelievable. So this is what took him 50 seconds per envelope. We still have 10 or so envelopes without stamps, but that will be done this weekend hopefully. And then we have the issue of hand cancellation of stamps, which will be a whole other adventure, and possibly an added level of Stamp Hell, or maybe a new level of Hell all on its own. That will be addressed in a later post that will undoubtedly involve one or more disgruntled postal workers and a $20 bill.

Hey, jewelery lady! You're way out of line!

2006-09-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today I finally checked something off of my wedding to-do list that has been on there for at least a month now and has recently been nagging at me. Boy, it felt good to check that item off. It felt good if you don't count the fact that in the 3 minutes that it took me to accomplish this little task, our jeweler managed to insult me twice.

The task at hand was for me to call the jeweler where we purchased our wedding bands and let them know what I wanted inscribed on the inside of Kenny's ring. I was deciding between several inscriptions, one of which was too long, so it got scrapped. The other two were "Cindy to Kenny, 12-17-06" and if that was too long "CCL to KMG 12-17-06". So I got the jeweler on the phone and laid out the first option. She says, after a few seconds of silence, "Really? That's what you want? Don't you think that sounds, I don't know...awkward?" After a couple of seconds of silence on my end, she adds, "No offense." No offense?!?!?! You tell me that the inscription that I want to put inside the wedding band of my husband-to-be sounds "awkward" and you don't expect me to be offended? Wow. My blood pressure instantly rose, and I took a couple of deep breaths. I'm calm now, thinking calm thoughts, trying not to be angry at this chick and the insult she just lobbed my way. She says, "Why don't you just put "Love, Cindy." My blood pressure spikes again. Why not? Maybe because I'd like the inscription to be from me, the bride, and not from you, the jeweler. That's why. Some people just don't have that little mechanism that the rest of us have that lets us know when we've gone too far, said too much. I tell her, again, that this inscription sounds fine to me. Thinking that maybe I was crazy, I ran it by a few other people, including co-workers, my maid of honor, and even Kenny. Everyone else thought it sounded fine. Either that, or they just fear my wrath.

After I recovered from that little insult, she sent another one my way. She is mailing the ring to me so that I won't have to pay NY state sales tax, so we were discussing this. She asks me if I'm coming back to NY before the wedding, and I told her I would be up for Thanksgiving. She pauses, and then suggests that I bring the ring back at Thanksgiving for her to keep until the wedding. I told her that wouldn't be necessary, and that I'd keep the ring and bring it up when I come up for the wedding. Then she says she's worried that I'll forget the ring. Who does this lady think she is? And why does she think I'll forget the ring? I kind of wanted to say something about the fact that I've already got two moms on my case about everything under the sun related to the wedding, and I don't need it coming from other sources as well. I told her that if there was anything I remembered to bring to the wedding, it would be the ring. She kept pushing it, and I finally had to get tough with her, let her know who's boss. I don't think I was rude, but I think I got the message across to her that I wasn't going to listen to her lack of confidence in me. It's none of her business anyway. She's just wrong on so many levels.

I've only met this woman three or four times. She doesn't know me well enough to nag me or to know whether or not I'm a dingbat and would do something like forget a wedding ring at my own wedding. I'm not sure whether I can chalk this up to her being a New Yorker, or just rude. In her defense, it's likely that most brides she deals with are younger than me by about 6 or 8 years, are totally sheltered by their parents, and have never had to do anything for themselves for most of their lives. I'd like to think that fact that I'm older, have been out on my own for some time now, and am a working professional would lend me some credibility in terms of my ability to remember to bring a wedding ring to my wedding. Whatever.

The Marriage License: Overrated and Inconvenient

2006-09-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Marriage licenses...Pffft! Who needs 'em? Just when I was starting to feel like this last three month stretch before the wedding would be easy, the point was made that perhaps Kenny and I shouldn't wait until the last week-day before the wedding to go get our marriage license. Apparently, there are many, many things that could happen in the 24-hour window of time between our flight from Austin to NY on the Thursday before the wedding, and 5pm on Friday when the town clerk's office closes, that would prohibit us from getting the marriage license in time for the ceremony Sunday. For example, we could have a freak blizzard in Austin that shuts down the airport and prevents us from getting on the plane Thursday night. This freak blizzard could extend into Friday morning and prevent us from getting on that flight as well, thus missing the clerk's office by 20 minutes (assuming the blizzard cleared in time for us to catch the 11:40am flight). Those damn Texas blizzards! Or, a flock of angry seagulls could descend upon all of the New York City airports in a display of revenge for the one Kenny tried to blow up with Alkaseltzer when he was in the 6th grade. This would in turn prevent all inbound air traffic from landing, thus preventing us from getting our marriage license. Or, Nathan could suddenly develop the capacity for speech, and hypnotize Kenny and I using his newly found skills. This would also cause us to miss our plane, because Nathan would probably spend all of Thursday night and most of Friday commanding us to cook steaks for him. Or, more likely than any of these scenarios, my head could explode.
So we've now decided to forgo Thanksgiving with my parents in Dallas (short drive North at a reasonable hour of the day) in exchange for Thanksgiving in New York with Kenny's family (long flight north arriving at an ungodly hour of the night) and a shot at getting our marriage license in a timely fashion. Of course, it just would have been too easy for the New York lawmakers to allow us to get it when we were up just three weeks ago. You see, you only have a certain window of time in which you can obtain a marriage license- sometime between the 60th day before the ceremony up until 24 hours before. But you also have to go to the town clerk's office bearing a gift: a Shrubbery! A nice one, but not too nice. NI! And let's not even get into the difficulty in determining which clerk's office to go to. The municipal organization of the townships, cities, villages, tribal clusters and whatever of Long Island make the reorganization of former Soviet Bloc nations look like a first grade geography lesson.
Anyway, now that we changed our Thanksgiving plans to get this silly piece of paper, it got me wondering why we need it anyway. What's the point? There's nothing to stop us from getting married some other way. We were going to get married before the end of 2006 if it killed me because there's something psychological about waiting until 2007 when you got engaged in 2005. Also, Kenny has these great educational tax credits that will just go to waste on him if he files his taxes as a single person. I was determined that we would file jointly so I could get my hands on his tax deductions! Just kidding. Or am I? If the process did kill me, I think there's a tax deduction in there somewhere as well. Ok, so point being, license or no license, we would get married at the wedding.
The question that remained was whether Rabbi Hain would be thrown in jail for performing a marriage without a license? Jail seems extreme, but you never know with those crazy New York laws. I never got the answer to this question. I left a message for Rabbi Hain with a "question about the wedding." But he never called me back. I would have asked him, "Rabbi, will you remember to pack your toothbrush on Sunday, December 17th? Because Kenny and I might not have our marriage license." Don't worry, I'd have posted bail.

Wedding Program: Clarification

2006-09-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

It's 7pm and I'm standing in the office of one of the partners I work for when my phone rings. I see it's Kati, my maid of honor, calling me. I let it go to voicemail, and decide to listen to the message on my way home from the office. I nearly had a wreck. The message went something like this: "Hi Cindy? I just read your blog. Umm...are you pregnant?!? If you are, congratulations! If you're not, give me a call anyway." Whaaaat? It took me a few seconds to figure out exactly what had given her this impression, and then I remembered the first sentence of Kenny's post below regarding his fake version of our wedding program. Something about us dispensing with the pleasantries after we get married and get straight to making babies. Let's get something straight here- there are no potential babies now, and we will not be dispensing with any pleasantries anytime soon.

The program was a joke!!!! Just a joke!!! Kenny is fired from posting to this blog from today on.

Wedding Program: First Draft

2006-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

It's been a wild ride, but now it's time to settle down and have some babies. Many people wait a few years to have kids once their married, but this February will mark 10 years since we started dating, so we'll dispense with the pleasantries. We encourage y'all to practice the same, so we'll be providing an open bar all night following the ceremony.

At this point it's customary to say something nice about all the people who have helped make us who we are. Since we've already thanked those of you reading this, we're now talking about people who aren't here. We like to thank absolutely everyone, and we want you to know it.

To end, we thank our parents who have provided us with the cliched 'unconditional love and support'. They have, so let's not make too much fun - though we can certainly share with all those who have been married how our mothers were OCD in their own ways. So let's thank the Dads for really being the foundations of sanity during this past year.

And now, we invite you to watch as nearly every person we've ever known walks down the aisle, and we finally wed. Don't forget to marvel at our 120 piece orchestra, or to dance when they play the handpicked playlist provided by ballroom dance champion mother of the bride. And most importantly, don't forget to enjoy the sparkles on the fur!

Love, Cindy and Kenny

My Second (and third) Wedding Anxiety Dreams!!

2006-09-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Wow, these were doozies. Unfortunately I can only remember one right now, so I'll tell you that one. So here's the back story: I am basically at the mercy of my law firm in terms of my professional life. Don't get me wrong, they're a great bunch of folks, but when they say "Jump!" I have to jump. So we had this new tax law passed a few months ago..yeah, yeah, I can already see your eyes glazing over. I was told to go figure out what this law said, and determine exactly how badly our clients would be taking it up the you-know-what from the Texas taxing authority. So I learned about this tax. Now I have become the firm's bitch when it comes to helping with our marketing efforts in regard to showing the world exactly how expert we are when it comes to Texas taxes. And let me tell you, we are experts! So the basic rundown is this: a member of some group of business owners calls our offices and asks if we have anyone who can come speak to their members about the new tax. The person taking the call says, "Sure! We have an associate here who would be happy to speak to your group." Then someone comes and unlocks my cage, leads me out, takes the ball-gag out of my mouth and sends me on my way with my laptop and PowerPoint slides. No, I'm not to the dream part yet.
So you can imagine that I'm kind of sick of this tax law by now. Here's the dream part:
It's December 17, and I'm getting ready for the wedding. My hair is done and my makeup is finished. It's 7pm. Considering our wedding is set to begin at 4:30, I appear to be late as it is. Am I sitting in the bridal room at Temple Beth-El? No. I'm in a conference room at a hotel in Austin, waiting to take the stage to speak to a large group of people, not sure who they were or what group they were with, but the group did include about 20 Jai Alai players. I don't even know that Jai Alai is, but they were there with giant exercise balls and lacrosse nets. This guy at the podium is droning on and on about Texas history, and I have to wait for him to finish before I can start my talk. I'm really worried now that I'm going to miss the wedding. Finally, I decide that I can run and get married, then come back and give my talk. Afterall, this guy is only up to Santa Ana's invasion of Texas, so he's got a ways to go. If he's a real Texan, it'll take him another day or so. So I get married, only I didn't actually dream about the wedding. The next thing I know, I'm walking up to the podium in my wedding gown, with my PowerPoint in hand. The last thing I remember thinking before I woke up was, "Man, I bet I look like an ass."
So there you have it. I'd like to think that at least while I sleep I can get a break from the margin tax and from the constant voice in my head nagging me that there's something I need to be doing for the wedding RIGHT NOW!! Apparently I would be wrong. And I think that voice might not be in my head--I think it might be my mom.

My first wedding anxiety dream!

2006-06-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

So we're a bit less than six months away from the wedding, which means it's time for my wedding anxiety dreams to begin. Some of you know that I'm a vivid dreamer for the most part. Whatever is going on in my daily life will inevitably wind up in my dreams. For example, I played a fairly active role in analyzing a new state tax bill for my law firm in preparation for a seminar we presented on this new tax law, and had a series of extremely exciting dreams about apportionment of gross receipts and combined reporting groups. Wow, tell me THAT's not exciting.
Anyway, last night I had my first wedding anxiety dream. This one was straight out of my first gown fitting that occurred last weekend, which I'll write about in another post if I have time. During that fitting, I ordered my veil, picked my headpiece, and got to see my shoes with my gown for the first time (and was relieved to find that they matched). So last night, I had this dream that suddenly the wedding was upon me, and I was totally unprepared. I had on some hideous lace dress that didn't even come all the way to the floor (I'm not a fan of lace), these lacy white shoes (my gown is ivory), my hair was a mess, and I was without my veil and headpiece because, strangely, this dream was in real-time, and I had just ordered them a week earlier and they weren't in yet. I was running around, hysterical because I didn't have a veil, and even more so because I love the veil I actually bought and was upset that I was going to have to wear a veil from the discount bridal store located on the first floor of the Marriott Marquis where we were getting married. I have Kenny to thank for the Marriott Marquis element of that dream, because he related a story to me about getting drinks there this past week.
I spent most of the dream trying to locate my shoes, and just generally trying to figure out how it was suddenly December 17th. I woke up this morning very relieved that I still have a few months to go. Kenny thinks my anxiety dreams reveal some deep-seeded discomfort with the wedding, but those of you who are OCD or just generally type-A know that's not the reason. It's just our mind's way of says, "Hey, You! You only have 176 days left! Get to it!"

Our invitations will provide some much-needed class to your fridge and trashcan

2006-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

There are an unbelievable amount of decisions that must be made in the area of wedding invitations. Should the paper be ivory, ecru, off-white, or eggshell? Should the dimensions be 5x7, 5.01x7.01, 4.99x6.99? And don't even get me started on fonts! Good lord.
Kenny and I recently met with our invitation-expert extrordinaire, Randi. Before I launch into the big-picture ridiculousness of choosing invitations, let me just say that Randi is amazing and made the process relatively painless. I'm just amazed at the process itself. When we walked in to Randi's office, she started us out by looking at paper color. This wasn't just a question of whether we wanted white or off-white. Different manufacturers have different undertones in their papers, which are all immediately obvious if you run the paper through a gas chromatograph.
After selecting the company that provided paper with warmer, orange-based undertones, we moved on to paper thickness and size. This wasn't so tough, since we just decided to copy what everyone else was using. I couldn't tell you what size that is if my life depended on it. I know the thickness is somewhere between notebook paper and cardboard.
Then, there was packaging. Did we want an outer envelope and inner envelope? Or perhaps a box. Yes, that's right folks, we had the option of a BOX! You would unwrap the ribbon, pull off the lid, unfold the layers of tissue paper and eventually find our invitation and assorted response cards, etc. Since we felt our entire wedding budget should not go towards postage, we opted for the simple inner envelope and outer envelope, with (GASP!) no lining. I think we're going to figure out some sort of monogram to emboss on the inner envelope. I'm not even sure if embossing is the right term. I learned about 20 new stationary-related vocabulary words that day, but have already forgotten all of them.
Then came the font. Good lord, the font. We had to decide the thickness of the letters, the color of the font (black of course. Honey, this is New York.), which letters should have the larger script and which should have smaller. You'd think that last decision would be guided by which letters are capitalized. You would be wrong. It is apparently much more complicated than that.
In addition, Jewish weddings spell double trouble when it comes to selecting fonts. Just as I thought we were done, Randi breaks out the Hebrew font page. We had the option of using any fonts on that page, including the Israeli Defense Forces font for those weddings that want to get the message across to the guests that they're serious. Better not buy a gift from outside of the registry if you get one of those. We also had the option of having the Hebrew script hand done by an elderly Hassid sitting in seclusion on top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem, using ink he made by hand and a quill pen made from the tailfeather of some exotic bird. We decided to use the pre-printed font. There were other decisons to be made involving the Hebrew text related to circles and arcs. I won't even pretend to understand what that's about. You'll see what I'm talking about when you read the invitation.
Then came engraving vs. lithograph vs. printing vs. inking in blood. Blood wasn't really the statement we wanted to make, so it was between lithograph and engraving. I was all for the lithograph, but lost that battle. We opted for engraving, which will be just as nice for twice the price.
So all of the above related to choosing the invitations. Then we had to pick envelopes, return envlopes, RSVP cards, direction cards, program format. It just went on forever, but thankfully it's all done. Kenny and Randi worked out the actual wording of the invitations this morning, so now all that's left is to get the Hebrew transaltion done for the 10 people who will actually look at that part of it.
Now we have to stick to our very regimented schedule of ordering, proofing, receiving the invitations, sending them off to the calligrapher (yes, another battle I lost. What's wrong with the old dot-matrix printer, I say?) Good times. Oh, and we're using British English on the invitation because we're all suddenly very proper and British now. That's honour, with a "U"!
So after all of this trouble, I know that these invitations will sit on your fridge for a few weeks. For some of you, they might make it into a scrapbook. For others, a shoebox (too bad for you that we didn't opt for that box packaging option). For the majority of you, at least most of the components other than the actual invitation (and for some, the actual invitation) will eventually end up in your trash can. Please enjoy the added class these little pieces of paper will provide to your fridge, and ultimately, your trash.

Time flies...

2006-03-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

It seems like just yesterday that I was lamenting that the wedding was over a year away, and here we are less than nine months out. Everytime I blink, another month passes by. March is drawing to a close now, and I'm realizing we actually have to start getting details in line. Most of the planning has gone very smoothly, but now I am starting to enter freak-out mode in getting my bridesmaids ready, because that's the only part of this shindig that I've made very complicated. I'm realizing several things. First, letting all of my bridesmaids choose their own fabric and design their own gowns is going to be difficult. I'm realizing that as I go through the wedding planning process, I have very little time outside of my job and my conversion studies to get anything done. Well, most of my other bridesmaids are either lawyers or doctors, and even if they arent, they're still very busy with their jobs. For example, Amanda and I have been playing phone tag for over a month now. So I don't know what made me think they'd have time to go running around finding fabric and dress designers. I have a feeling though that if I can just make some progress with their dresses this month I'll feel much better. Their dresses will look amazing.
The other thing is coordinating the actual day. I still need to find hair and make-up people for the bridesmaids, and realize that I need to get on this! People are starting to get booked. Aagh.
I have also been endlessly harrassing Kenny about the save-the-date cards to the point where he's probably re-thinking this whole "marrying Cindy" thing. He volunteered to self-address them so that we wouldn't have to employ a calligrapher, but I was really nervous about this. Mostly I was nervous that people would receive our save-the-dates sometime in December. Those of you who know Kenny well know what I'm talking about (sorry, Kenny). In the end, however, Kenny addressed and mailed the cards only one week past our target date. Amazing. Truly amazing.
So I guess what I'm realizing is that the closer the wedding gets, the more OCD I get about the planning process. In coming to grips with my type-A wedding-planning personality, I am incredibly thankful that we have a florist, photographer/videographer and caterers that we trust to the point where we are leaving most of the decision-making in those realms completely up to them. Thanks Chris, Hy, Gayle & Bob! You guys are amazing!

Shoes! Glorious Shoes!

2006-03-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge fan of shopping. As my friend Gina will attest, I am a "mission shopper." I almost never shop "just to shop"--I always have a specific goal. I've actually amazed the ladies at Nordstrom with how quickly I can get in and out and find what I'm looking for. This tactic obviously didn't apply when I was looking for a wedding dress, as those of you who read that rather lengthy post already know. I was afraid I would have a similar, very drawn out experience when it came to shopping for shoes for my gown. But oh! Not so!
There I was, out at the mall to do some mission shopping for an iPod (I have convinced myself that I haven't been meeting my goals of going to the gym regularly because I don't have an iPod to workout with). I always park at Nordstrom because, although I will never admit to browsing, I do like to glance at the shoes as I walk to my car. So I was passing through Nordstrom on the way to the car, iPod in hand, pumped that I would now be going to the gym everyday, and there they were--the most beautiful shoes I have ever seen. The rest of the shoe department disappeared in that moment. Gone were the Kate Spade espadrilles I had been eyeing. The Carmen Marc Valvo pumps that normally would have made me swoon were suddenly taking second chair. The freakish salesman with the inappropriate blue hair and goth lipstick (I know! At Nordstrom?!) could no longer pull my gaze. Perched high atop a Stuart Weitzman display were the most beautiful set of slingbacks I have ever set eyes on. It was like they were made for my gown, with their ivory mesh, silver embroidery and hand-sewn beads. I think I could hear angels singing as I approached them. (Turns out I was hearing the excited utterances of the saleslady who was about to get a commission off of these shoes.) I tried them on, and they were so amazingly comfortable- great for a long night of dancing the Hora. Usually I let my purchases linger in my head a while before I buy, but I knew I had to have these shoes so I bought them right there. Because of my haste, I'm now recognized as an easy target in the Nordstrom shoe department. I collected two business cards from sales associates, not including the one who actually sold me the shoes. That one is now "on watch" for me for "other styles I might like." Read: "This chica drops cash faster than Dick Cheney at a gunshow, and I'll give her a reason to spend."
And no, the iPod had no apparent effect on my gym habits.

"The sparkles are on the fur!! The sparkles are on the fur!!"

2006-01-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

This is the story of the hunt for my wedding gown. And it was a hunt, truly. We even wound up with a fox in the end (explanation to come later...keep reading).
The Austin Experience: I started looking for my gown this summer, when Gina and Jenny (two of my closest girlfriends), took me on a day-long gown-shopping adventure. We went to several places here in Austin, the first of which was a salon that carried only Vera Wang and Reem Acra gowns. Needless to say, if you're looking to stay on a budget, that was a bad place to start. We found that I have a taste for Reem Acra. In fact, after trying on several Reem gowns and falling in love with this designer, the other salons we visited took all of 45 mintues because they didn't carry Reem Acra or anything similar (like Kenneth Pool or Amsale). My new battle cry was "No Reem? No way!" The amazing part of this little trip is that Jenny was actually there with us for part of the day. Jenny had, not two days earlier, finished the Texas bar exam (which, I might add, she passed!), and was eloping with her husband-to-be the following week. I was amazed that she would take the time to come with me to look for gowns when she had her own wedding coming up! It's hard to find friends like that! I'm very lucky. But on with the story...
The New York City Experience: Later in the summer, about a week later in fact, I went up to New York with Kenny to serve as Jenny's witness for her wedding to Ryan (an adventure in itself- be sure to ask them about it at the wedding!). Since I had a day or two to kill before the ceremony, Kenny's mom, Adrienne, being the fashion guru that she is, scheduled appointments for me at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, the Vera Wang flagship salon, and...the Reem Acra salon!!!!! I was in heaven, but again, these places are very, very bad for someone trying to keep within a budget. For every expensive gown I tried on, I figured that was one less course our guests would eat at dinner. I later decided that I would pay for the gown myself so that the wedding guests would not go home hungry. One side note on this excursion: Jenny, being the ever-amazing friend that she is, came with Adrienne and me (remember, this is less than 24 hours before her wedding)! That's dedication.
So there we were at the Reem Acra salon- my goddess of wedding gowns. I must have tried on half the store- well, not really, but if you've ever tried on wedding gowns you know it takes more than just slipping into the dress. There are hooks everywhere, multiple zippers, buttons, and the ever-lovely big orange clips that they use to make the dress fit those who are smaller than the sample size. I'm sure it makes for a fun time for the groom, trying to get his bride out of her gown on their wedding night...Kenny should count his blessings that my gown only has two zippers. (Too much information? Nah, we're all adults here, right?) I think they like to hook the bride in good and tight so if she becomes Bridezilla at any moment, its just one more hook here and a zip there, and the gown becomes a very lovely straightjacket. Hopefully I won't need that.
So at the Reem Acra Salon I found a wonderful gown called Affectionate (Reem names all of her gowns) that I really loved, and Adrienne loved as well. It was very frou-frou, with lace and beading on the train, lace insets on the bodice, and dual tones in the bodice and on the train in "champagne and ivory." Nothing in the bridal world is ever "pink" or "off-white". Our sales lady, Holly, said it was "faaaaaabulous". Holly really topped off the whole New York experience- she wore all black, had jet black hair with a trendy haircut, and had dark rimmed glasses that were very hip. I couldn't have asked for more that day- it was a blast. I did, however, leave the salon with sticker shock, wondering how I would ever pay for this gown. I figured once I did buy one, I would have to sign the contract in blood and hand over my first born son when the time came. I'd later visit the salon to find my son in tight hipster pants telling women they looked faaaabulous in their gowns. And the circle of life goes on...
The San Antonio Experience: This is where my friend Kati, my maid of honor, came in to the picture. She came down for a visit in August, and because we only had a weekend together, we had a packed schedule. We made an appointment at Julian Gold, a salon in San Antonio. They carry....Reem Acra!! But I swore to myself I'd try on other designers. Kati and I had also planned an afternoon of tubing down the Guadalupe river, which involves floating lazily down the river with an innertube- one for me, one for Kati, and one for our cooler of beer. Needless to say it was a weird combination of plans- trying on couture gowns followed shortly by floating in a river drinking beer. So we were dressed for tubing when we arrived at Julian Gold- flip flops, little skirts over our bathing suits, sunglasses, etc. We were not the epitome of fashion. Nevertheless the women there were very nice and did not judge us by our unpolished appearance. They just didn't know what they were talking about with their gowns. They told me that one of the Reem Acra dresses that I had tried on not one month earlier was discontinued. No...I had just tried it on and was told they still make it. She also didn't know what collection it was from. I realized at that moment I knew WAY too much about Reem Acra.
Funny story- I tried on a really nice Monique Lhullier gown. Good thing I didn't choose that one because it turns out Adrienne is eyeing it for Lauren, Kenny's sister, as a bridesmaid dress (copied and made in the cranberry red they will be wearing).
This is yet another interesting difference between North and South- first of all, the sister of the bride or groom stands apart from the bridesmaids as someone different, and is allowed to wear something that makes her stand out. We don't do that down here- if you're a bridesmaid, you're a bridesmaid. Even if you're someone's sister. And I think all Southern brides formally ask their sisters or sisters-in-law-to-be to be a bridesmaid- it isn't something assumed. I guess this is to allow for the potential of some Gone With The Wind-style drama that might come between sisters. Who knows. Anyway, I remember asking Lauren to be a bridesmaid, and now I wonder if she thought that was strange. However, I think the Northern tradition of setting apart the sister of the bride/groom is nice, so I'll follow it. But I was not aware of it until a few weeks ago. You learn something new everyday, right?
The other big difference is how New Yorkers go all out on bridesmaid's dresses. This is the first time I've heard of someone copying a wedding dress to make it into a bridesmaid dress. Of course, it isn't made as fancy as the wedding dress because, let's face it, there should only be one person up there wearing a wedding gown, but it's definately a step up from what us Southerners are used to. The idea in the South it to make your bridesmaids look as crappy as possible so that you look great as the bride. I have two problems with this: first, it's not nice and I would never want my friends to look crappy for feel anything less than gorgeous. Secondly, all of my bridesmaids are gorgeous, so I would have a very hard time making them look crappy. It would just take way too much effort.
Anyway, Kati and I left that salon not so impressed. We continued on up to the river, floated in our tubes, and got drunk. It was great.
The Dallas Experience: Now, you may be asking, "Where is the most important lady of all in this picture- the Mother of the Bride?" I am saving the best for last. Not totally settled with what I found in Austin, San Antonio, or New York, and very much wanting to include my own mom in on this high priced adventure, I scheduled an appointment at the bridal salon at Neiman Marcus in Dallas this past October. This was the best trip yet. They had the dress I had tried on in New York, and I really thought I was going to buy it. In fact, while we waited to be escorted to the dressing suite, I stood by the rack and guarded this dress with all my might from other brides-to-be. I wore a look on my face that said, "Do not threaten my chances of trying this dress on. Do not buy this dress. I will kick your ass if you come any closer." It was like a mother protecting her young- this dress was my baby, and nobody was going to take it. Well, I quickly abandoned my "baby" when I saw another dress hanging in the dressing room. It had been left there by the previous bride. How could she leave it like that? It was beautiful! And, of course, it was a Reem Acra. At this point I had already given up liking any other designer.
My accomplices in this adventure were my mom, of course, and my best friend Gina. After loitering around looking at gowns for a few mintues, we were introduced to Judy. Judy is the BEST bridal sales specialist! She reminded me of my Granny (my dad's mom)- very nurturing, sweet, and just willing to spoil every bride that came across her path. So I tried on a couple of dresses, including the one I found in New York, and nothing really hit me. We saved the best for last- the dress that had been hanging in the dressing room. I put it on, and it was beautiful. Gina and my mom both loved it. Then Judy brought out a veil- long, simple, with Swarovski crystals arranged in a sunburst pattern on the veil- and put it on me, along with a tiara. Wow. It was the complete look. Then, she looked at us with a gleam in her eyes and says, "I have just the accessory for this gown." She returned a few minutes later with a white fox capelet. I put it on, and Gina and my mom immediately started screaming. I'm pretty sure people in the other parts of the store could hear us. We probably looked really silly- my mom was giggling uncontrollably, Gina was screaming, "The sparkles are on the fur! The sparkles are on the fur!" referring to how the white fur beneath the veil really made the crystals on the veil stand out, and I was just standing there giggling with them. Judy took a picture with a polaroid she had on hand, and gave it to me. It was great. For the next two months, the fox capelet was simply called "The Fox". But, it later became the source of much controversy. Keep reading...
I was pretty sure when I left that day that this was the gown I would later buy. I returned two months later, again with Gina and my mom, and this time accompanied by my mom's best friend Janice. Judy greeted us with open arms and that wonderful grandmotherly affection that she has. The four of us had a great time trying on the gown. The Fox, sadly, had been purchased. However, Judy later informed us that the buyer had decided to return it, and it was on its way back that day! It was fate telling me that The Fox must be mine.
Let me digress for a moment and tell you all about The Fox. Judy, my mom, and Gina were all for me wearing The Fox during the ceremony as a cover for my shoulders. I have to admit, it did look great- very dramatic. Very Hollywood. I felt like a movie star when I wore it. There were a few problems with wearing it during the ceremony, however. First, it was really freaking hot. I would definately be sweating up there, and that's not pretty. Secondly, it would cover up the back of my gown, which has very intricate beading and a very nice sweetheart back to it. Finally, when I told Adrienne about it, there was nothing but silence on her end of the phone, indicating she was less than pleased about the idea of me wearing it indoors. This is a perfect example of the little differences in culture between our two families- we just have different approaches to certain things. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes for interesting situations sometimes.
Having no need for fur in Texas, I was unaware of the ettiquette of wearing fur indoors. So, being the lawyerly type that I am, I researched this thrououghly. I called Holly at the Reem Acra salon: "Oh, Daaaahling, it would be faaaaahbulous! A winter wedding in New York with a white fox capelet- how romaaaaantic!" Holly was good to go. I called the fur department at Neiman Marcus and spoke to Peter- the man who would later sell me The Fox: "Oh Honey, it would be perfect. It's all the rage now to wear fur with your wedding gown." I'd have to agree with Peter- I've seen it everywhere in the fashion magazines. I spoke to someone in the fur department of a designer boutique here in Austin, who also said it is fine, and more than fine, en vogue. That was enough for me. I was convinced. However, Adrienne still was not. Who knows, maybe it's just a Long Island thing- no fur in the wedding ceremony. I decided this was not a fight worth fighting, especially since I did have hang-ups about how comfortable I would be in it and how it covered up the beading on my dress. I decided not to wear it in the ceremony.
The difficult part of this was that when Judy told us that The Fox was coming back, and even better, it was 60% off the original price, there was no way I could get around not buying it. My mom was pleading for it. Gina was begging me to buy it. So I caved. Maybe I won't wear it walking down the aisle, but what better accessory could a bride have as she's leaving the reception with her groom into a December New York night? It'll be faaaaahbulous. My mom is the one who actually bought it, so I guess I still have to pay her back.
Right now I'm still working on paying off the dress- don't worry, you'll all get to eat at the reception.

We have solved the problem of famine in the Third World

2005-11-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

...Adrienne and Steve need to re-create our engagement party for any region of the world that is afflicted by famine. Seriously, I've neve seen so much food in my entire life! Of course I didn't actually eat any of it.
So to catch everyone up, two weeks ago Kenny and I went up to New York for an engagement party thrown in our honor by Adrienne and Steve and the 5 Towns wedding mafia. It was awesome! The weekend was totally nuts though. We arrived in New York on Friday, and spent Saturday with Kenny's family getting ready for the party. Saturday night we met up with all of our bridesmaids and groomsmen and their significant others who had come in from out of town. That was also extremely cool! We were looking at photos of that night, and it was so exciting to see pictures showing friends from college sitting together with friends from grad school. My cousin Kris and friend Erma also came by, which was fun. Kris got hit on at the bar, and while she complained and feigned shock, I know she liked it :)
Sunday morning was totally nuts. I woke up at 7:45 so I'd be ready for Audrey and Tara, the make-up and hair girls, at 8:15. Kenny brought my parents to the house so my mom could have her hair and make-up done. Lauren and Adrienne also came down for the same routine, and Steve joined my dad in making fun of all of us for the trouble we put into looking pretty for everyone. So we had six women, hyped up on coffee, and three men, confused and milling about, not quite sure what to do with themselves. My dad tried to convince Audrey to give him a makeover, but thankfully she put him in his place (which happened to be in the other room).
Then we showed up at Beth-El for photos at 11. That went on for about an hour, but was fun. Hy, the photographer and a close family friend (one of those wedding vendor mafia types), is a great photographer and makes the whole experience worth it. After all of the getting ready and the photos, I began to wonder if I had accidentally just forgotten to wear my wedding gown.
When we walked in, I was blown away at the scale of it all. We were greeted with cocktails (yes, it was still before noon. Rock on!) right when we walked in, there were beautiful flowers everywhere, and a spread of food you just wouldn't believe! I'm convinced it could have fed a small nation. Or one Jewish family.
It's difficult to give details of the actual party since it went by like a whirlwind. I think I got a preview of what it will be like at the wedding, and let me say, I'm glad Jewish weddings have yichud! For those who don't know, yichud is the period of time just after the ceremony when the bride and groom go off into a room by themselves. Kenny has a dirty idea of what goes on in that room, but I'm planning to eat dinner.
I spent most of the party talking to guests and meeting family members and friends of the Grossmans, so I didn't really get to eat much, but what I did eat was fantastic. Gayle and Bob, the caterers, were absolutely amazing. I've never seen such an incredible spread in my life! Everyone else seemed to rave about the food, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of it at the wedding. I'm sure the quantity will be even more obscene since the guest list for the wedding will be about twice a big as it was for the engagement party- I can't wait. They were also very liberal with the alcohol, as we can see from this photo of my dad. Turns out they carry his favorite Scotch.
All in all, it was a fantastic party, and I can't till next December!

I want to be a part of it...Long Island, Long Island!

2005-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

So we last left off with He Who Shall Not Be Named and She Who Is Without Brain getting fired. That was pretty fun. What was not fun was breaking it to my parents that Austin just was not accomodating for a Jewish wedding and that we would have to do it in New York. I think they were skeptical at first- the stunned silence really spoke volumes. This was especially difficult since my mom has never been to New York, and my dad has only been there for a total of 48 hours, only 2 of which were spent outside of his hotel since he was there for a conference.
The tough person to convince was my mom, mostly because her vision of Long Island is straight out of Goodfellas. Back when I first met Kenny (I had never been to New York at that point either), I had planned a trip up there to visit over the summer after our freshman year at Emory. Kenny had just told me that Goodfellas was filmed in his town on Long Island, so naturally I rented it and watched it with my mom- 2 days before my trip. Bad move. After the movie, my mom turns to me, eyes wide, and says in her charming southern accent, "They don't still have gangsters in Kenny's town, do they?!?" On her first visit to New York last week, we made sure to point out the mob "graveyard" (aka "dumpsite") that was recently found 5 minutes from Kenny's town. This only reaffirmed her suspicions as to how Kenny got me such a pretty engagement ring and why the wedding was so easily planned without a single problem on Long Island. That's right- the Grossmans are members of the 5 Towns Mafia. Wedding vendors don't dare cross Adrienne!
So anyway, after some discussion everyone seemed ok with New York. Of course, I think Kenny's parents felt like they had just won the lottery when we broke the news to them. When I told Adrienne, she didn't cheer or scream or anything, she just said "I think it will be much easier from now on". I'm pretty sure that as soon as she hung up that phone balloons fell from the ceiling of the Grossman's kitchen, a disco ball dropped down from above the stove, and Steve appeared in the dining room doorway covered in glitter.
After all Kenny and I had been through trying to do this wedding in Texas, I was really happy to move it to New York just to get rid of the splitting headache that came on anytime anyone mentioned the word "caterer". Not to mention the fact that I had already been to the venue in New York and thought it was beautiful.
So here's the amazing part: We planned the wedding in 2 weeks. No kidding- two weeks. Of course, the mob connections really helped move that along. But really, as soon as we made the decision to do it in Cedarhurst, we had the venue, the caterers, the baker, the photographer, the band, the hair stylist, and make-up artist, and the hotel! Truly amazing. And what's even better, because of Steve and Adrienne's connections in the community, all of these vendors are friends or friends of friends. Maybe the Grossmans aren't part of the real Mafia, but I'm pretty sure they're made members of some sort of wedding vendor mafia. I'm fine with that.

Will you just pick a freaking venue already???

2005-11-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

In the words of the Jewish sages whose works I have been reading over the past months- "Oy vey!" Wow, who'd have thought having a traditional Jewish wedding in Texas would be this difficult? Difficult is the wrong word...Impossible is more like it! In the past six months, we have moved the wedding from Dallas to Austin, and finally, to New York. In doing so, we have managed to piss off just about every member of both of our families- what fun! Let me tell you of the story of the Spring and Summer of '05...
It was a lovely day in Dallas. Birds were chirping, the sky was blue, and Harry Hines Boulevard was lacking the usual crowd of prostitutes looking for a John. That's right- we almost had our wedding in the midst of Hooker Central at the Wyndham Anatole. It's a great hotel, but not such a nice part of town. I'm glad we didn't do it there, even if the hotel did boast the largest piece of Wedgewood in the world. Really, who cares? Oooh, its a big freaking piece of china. Well, the ballroom was pretty at least. The hotel was much too convention center-esque for my taste. This would be great for our guests who wanted to drop by the Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Conditions only Lauren and Dwight Can Pronounce on their way to the wedding, and I imagine we might actually have lost Lauren and my dad to one of those, but not so nice, so the Wyndham was nixed.
Then came the Fairmont. Ah, the Fairmont. Yeah, we didn't even make it to the property before they told us they don't like our kind (that is, our last name was not Bush or Perot). So much for that one.
We also looked at the Adolphus. This one would have been great, except that it was where I had my high school prom. While I probably could have gotten past this, we just ended up dropping it because around this time, Kenny and I had an idea that almost caused Armaggedon (Armaggedon being Kenny and I eloping, but in our parents' eyes, the END OF THE WORLD!!!!). We decided to do the wedding in Austin. Oh yeah. Bring it on.
So we found a great place in Austin called Laguna Gloria. It was, and still is, the most beautiful outdoor space I have ever seen. I will have a party there one day. I will. And it will be fabulous.
Anyway, along the way of our Metroplex hotel hunt, we found this Kosher caterer in Dallas who was going to do the catereing at whatever hotel we found up there. He will be referred to as "He Who Shall Not Be Named." He Who Shall Not Be Named told us he'd come to Austin and do our wedding here, so no need to find another caterer. Yay! Or so we thought...
As with other evil characters throughout history, He Who Shall Not Be Named dangled a tempting offer before us: "I will cater your wedding, providing a cocktail hour with appetizers and a three course seated dinner." So we hunted around town for a hotel that would allow an outside caterer to come in. This was not an easy task, as most hotels have their own in house people and therefore won't let someone else in. Or perhaps they could sense the evil of He Who Shall Not Be Named...If I had only had a disfiguring scar that would have alerted me to his true nature, things might have been different.
Before we knew of He Who Shall Not Be Named's bad inclinations, we were told by the Four Seasons here in Austin that they could provide a Kosher wedding for us. Wow! But oh no! He Who Shall Not Be Named had already sunk his claws into us and had begun to feed on our souls... Anyway, we felt we had made a commitment to He Who Shall Not Be Named, so we told the FS 'no,' much to our dismay.
Then came a wonderful, but at the time aggravating, moment. He Who Shall Not Be Named sent us the contract. It was one page, and did not contain a price. As a lawyer, let me just say "wow." I've kept it on hand just in case I ever want a really quick 'out' of my job- I'll just hand that sucker over to our client and pass it off as my work product. I'd get fired pretty quick, and thus would end my legal career in Texas.
So Kenny and I tried and tried, for months on end, to get a better contract from He Who Shall Not Be Named. Or at least something that was two pages. The closest we got was an actual price per head, but it was so low we figured there were lots of add-ons that he wasn't including, and still no real terms in the contract. We felt it was time to defeat and crush He Who Shall Not Be Named with the purity and goodness that was the Four Seasons. And we did. Until the Four Seasons told us they looked into it and decided they couldn't do a kosher wedding either. Too difficult, too involved. AGGGHHHH!
A fun thing that occurred sometime after we decided to go with the Four Seasons but before they told us they couldn't do it was that we fired He Who Shall Not Be Named. We spoke with his assistant, who should be called She Who Is Without Brain, and she was really shocked that we were cancelling. Really, when someone doesn't call us back for three months and won't send a real contract, what should she expect? A freaking party in her honor? Jeez.
...To Be Continued

so how did you propose, anyway? part 3.

2005-04-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

now, at this point it is crucial to explain the actual plan i had devised for this proposal. i had spent several days prior to leaving Austin creating a book of memories. i scanned a whole bunch of photos from our roughly 8 years of dating, and sorted them chronologically by season. there were cute comments, and the thing was designed rather nicely. a deep red cover and thick wood back cover, in which sat a special cut out for the pillow and the ring. i was going to propose down by the seine after a romantic dinner on ile st. louis on the 2nd or 3rd day in paris. you know, have some time to settle in, relax, get used to everything. of course that's not what actually happened...

so when i left you last, dear reader, cindy and i were ready to embark on an evening of exploration and discovery - no this isn't a coming of age film about adolescent lovers, so shut up. we didn't know where anything was, we just decided to walk until we found a cute place that we wanted to eat at. it turned out the we walked just about all the way to the Pompidou Center, but that would really only be of interest to my architecture friends anyway (the pompidou looks way cooler in person than it does in pictures). we found a great little bistro and had our first glass of kir there. kir, my friends is the most wonderful trick ever devised. it's kind of like an alcoholic fruit drink. a little bit of a concentrated alcoholic raspberry syrup plus some chardonney and voila! it's a beautiful cranberry color, and deliciously sweet and refreshing. we had a few. we ate, we drank, we successfully discovered that we were only the second tourist couple in the place, which was reassuring. god forbid we actually look like tourists (and there's really no helping that).

i think we managed to stop by another bar on the way home, where we had some local brew, and gaped in astonishment at the 7 euro price on Budweiser, The Piss of Beers. it was the most expensive one in the place. i know that anything imported goes up in price, but to the point that it was the most expensive!? in the words of my favorite Sicilian, "INCONCEIVABLE!"

but finally, we started making our way back to the hotel. we decided to have one last drink at the bar/cafe across the street - Cafe Marco Polo. we weren't drunk by any means, just enjoying the night. that kir was so good that we wanted one more before bed. so we go in, sit, order, and talk. paris is so great! i related that i didn't expect to like it nearly as much as i already did. i loved that everything was so walkable. yada yada. we move on to the topic of gifts. what gifts are we going to get for our parents? for my sister? for our friends?
"cindy, we're in paris - i need to get you a special gift, too! what should i get for you?"
and in the most off-handed way, she replied "you don't need to get me anything. the best gift you could ever give me would be a ring on my finger."

HOLD THE PHONE! she did not just say that! holy crap! she doesn't realize what she just did! i've got the damn ring in my pocket! this is such a good set up! but, no - it's a bar! it's not romantic! it's the first night! i was going to wait a few more days! i have it all planned! it'll be romantic, and timed! but it'll also be obvious, and this is spontaneous! she'll never expect it now! but what kind of a proposal story would this make?! he proposed in a bar?! that can't be right! but then again, he totally knocked me off my feet, i had no idea it was going to happen! and he had it all planned out for another night, this way was totally spontaneous! SHIT!

i look down at my feet. i look back into her eyes. my heart is pounding. i stand up, turn away a little and dig into the secret pouch. my knees are wobbly. i fumble the ring out of its special pouch, turn around, and say, "Cindy, will you be my wife?"

i don't think we saw each others faces for a solid 10 seconds, b/c between the shock of the question, the answer (which of course was yes - otherwise why would you be here at this site), amd placing the ring on her finger, there was no time left to look at each other and smile. it was the most dumbfounding thing. but when i did see her eyes again, they were crying happily, and we kissed and hugged. i turned around, paid the tab, and we ran across the street to the hotel.

so how did you propose, anyway? part 2.

2005-04-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

well, the weeks went by quickly and before you know it we're on our way to paris (drive to Dallas, lunch w/ her parents, fly to JFK, stay the night w/ my parents, fly to paris). there's a whole story about finding a place to live together that fits in at this point, but that is another post entirely (although our new place is friggin amazing - i dare you to tell me your place is better).

so during the previous few months, i had been searching for a ring. it took right up till the week before we left for paris to get the ring, but the wait was worth it and the stone was gorgeous. now, i had never actually seen the ring at all until moments before we left for the airport - my parents had been given the task of finding the specific stone and ring, b/c they gots da connections up deah in NY. i had been agonizing over whether or not the ring would set off the metal detector in the airport, and whether or not my elaborately planned proposal would be ruined, and i would have to propose right there in the airport. of course, that would probably make for a pretty good proposal story, but then we'd have to sit through a 6 hour flight, which is not the most romantic follow up. but luckily the ring, snugly hidden in a secret pouch beneath my clothing, set off no alarms, and we proceeded to the gate.

we were both really excited to be going on this trip, everything was great. i figured getting bumped up to first class would make it even better. cindy did not yet have unflinching faith in my powers to talk it up and get upgrades or better options. sure, i got us the presidential suite for $54 at davi's wedding the summer before. sure, i'd gotten other upgrades as well - but this was a first class 6 hr trans-atlantic flight. it just wasn't going to happen. about 30 minutes later, cindy's faith in my powers was signed, sealed, delivered, as i told her that it was time for us to board.
"but it's not our turn - they're boarding first class now."
"i know, let's go." i said as i handed her a first class boarding ticket while grinning broadly.
"holy shit - you really got it!"

the rest of the flight was fantastic - personal dvd players, reclining chair/beds, champagne, 4 course meals, etc. first class really is the way to go.

we arrived at about 7:30a paris time, and expected to get our bags, take the metro to our hotel, shower, change, and make it to saturday morning services by about 10:30a. riiiiggghhhtt. we got off at the wrong stop and had to wait 40 minutes for the next train going in the opposite direction. when we finally did show up to the hotel, they told us that it wasn't check in time, and that our room would be ready in a little while. uggh. we knew it wasn't check in time yet, but we were hoping they'd still let us in. ok, no problem. we decided to walk around for a bit.

our hotel was near the opera. it's a really nice area to walk around, but we were exhausted. we definitely weren't making it to services. we found a place to eat - of all things - pizza. we didn't care - it was across the street and reasonably priced. i was getting clumsy by this point - i spilled my water and broke a glass of wine. we really needed to get up to the room and take a nap. we went back to the hotel, but they still wouldn't let us in. finally at 3p, the official check-in time, they told us we could finally take our room. for making us wait so long, they upgraded us to the deluxe room. and while the room was nice, it certainly wasn't deluxe. it was fairly small, but we were so tired that we didn't care. we just got into bed and took a nap.

a few hours later, awakened and refreshed, we decided it was time to hit the town in search of dinner...

so how did you propose, anyway? part 1.

2005-04-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

that's always the first question after people find out i'm engaged, and it doesn't always sound so good when i say i proposed in a bar. but it was a good proposal - the way it happened was spontaneous and completely unexpected, though the proposal itself was some time in the making.

cindy graduated law school in december and spent several grueling months studying for the bar. we decided to take a really nice trip over spring break to celebrate her taking the bar and being done w/ everything. we talked about going to a lot of places - malta, prague, poland, hungary, mexico. obviously the hell out of dodge. paris was brought up once or twice, but i never really had any affinity for france or french, even though cindy loves both. she studied french for a long time, lived in france for a while, she was really into it. but around mid-january or so, i started veering our plans back toward france. this in itself was somewhat odd, but obviously not so odd that it was perceived by cindy as a noticeably strategic move towards engagement. all of us, though, know that my intentions were to propose in paris.

about 3 weeks before we were set to leave, a bunch of us went out for drinks to celebrate cindy's completion of the bar that afternoon. there were drinks to be had at crown&anchor, el arroyo, and trudy's. not a bad selection when your agenda is to get wasted on good drinks, good atmosphere, good food, or any combination thereof. as we finished the night at trudy's, and started walking to the parking lot, our friend shana walked up front w/ me and let me know that she knew that i was going to propose to cindy in paris.
"oh really?" i asked. "what makes you think i plan on doing that?"
"come on! it's paris for cryin out loud! of course you're going to propose." shana said.
"wow. i really hope she hasn't been expecting this, b/c i'm not planning on proposing yet." i countered. i said it really convincingly, too. shana totally bought my story.

a few days later, cindy was visiting her parents in dallas, and i brought up my little conversation w/ shana when we were talking on the phone.
"you know, shana told me that she knows i'm going to propose in paris. have you guys been talking about this?" i asked her.
"no - i haven't brought this up to anybody, i swear. i mean, of course people bring it up, but it's not like i start it." she replied. now, cindy was not really entirely sure where i stood, as our relationship went through a rocky time in the recent past, and i had been occupying that typically male area of commitment-phobia.
"well, i don't want you to have any dashed hopes, or be disappointed if you're expecting something to happen and it doesn't. of course i'm going to propose, but it's not going to be then." there's no better way to throw someone off the track than to be so brutally forthcoming about your plans that they end up on the verge of tears and very clearly upset. being suave has not always been my strong suit, even though i tried quite hard to put this both firmly and delicately. of course, to anyone on the outside of this situation, you'd immediately peg that dismissal of a paris proposal as a sure bet that it would happen in paris. but you are on the outside, and didn't have your dreams dashed violently against the rocks like a problem child beating a baby seal. i also had always made a big deal about the engagement being spontaneous and romantic - nothing so obvious as a proposal in paris. i mean, come on - who wouldn't see that coming a mile away?

suffice to say, cindy didn't really talk to me too much for a few days after that.

dancing, blisters, & love

2005-04-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

last night, cindy & i volunteered to check members into an event for the Austin Symphony BATS (Be At The Symphony - bats are also Austin's adopted nocturnal critters). after spending 30 minutes checking off names and creating name stickers (hi! my name is billy bob!) we were allowed to join the throngs of yuppies (literally - everyone was young, urban, and professional - sometimes that's just the way it is) in drinking wine and shiners while watching belly-dancers rithe on the dance floor. we met a bunch of cool people while waiting in line for the fortune teller, who averaged 30 minutes per fortune - such a long wait that we were not fortunate enough to receive a fortune.

after waiting and drinking for a while, i was convinced by my partner in crime to hit the dance floor - there was a mean rumba that was calling for dancers. and we danced - oh, yes, we danced. we were the only ones doing some serious dancing, though the definition of serious depends on the person. while i thought i was doing some serious dancing, i'm sure everyone else thought i was in serious pain. or seriously causing cindy pain. or seriously in need of dance lessons. either way, i danced till my heel developed a serious blister. i'd say that was, oh, about 10 minutes. the i really was in serious pain. but i sucked it up to go out dancing at another bar afterwards. i didn't complain - no, i was gonna be tough. i was gonna take my baby out dancing b/c she loves to dance. but when we found out there was cover and they didn't accept credit cards, the machisimo ended. i then became a wounded puppy ready to go home.

fiancee w/ two e's

2005-03-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

emily post, you've missed the mark again! why haven't you told me that when referring to the female part of the engagement duo (if hetero is your bag) it's fiancee, not fiance? i just looked like an utter fool writing to the caterer. this knowledge should be immediately ingrained in the minds of those newly engaged.

and fiancees are NOT allowed to censor the posts of their fiances!

top hats or cowboy boots?

2005-03-29T00:29:00.000-08:00

so it seems to be tradition in my family for the groom and groomsmen to wear top hats and tails at the wedding. the first time i saw this was at my cousin gary's wedding. aside from learning to roll my hat down my arm and onto my head, i was most definitely not into it. but then a few years later, my cousin michael got married, and i had the chance to renew my acquaintance w/ my old friend the top hat. a little bit of age and developing personal taste began to inform me that perhaps top hats were not quite so bad after all. now that its time to start planning my own wedding, i embraced the top hat full force. its just so friggin cool! i was going to have all my groomsmen walk the aisle w/ white gloves and canes, although cindy didn't seem too keen on that. at the very least, they were to be called up for a toast at the reception to the tune of 'putting on the ritz'.

but then i started thinking - wait, i'm getting married in texas. shouldn't i be wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat? again, cindy was not too keen - at least on the hat part. i began weighing my options - classic top hat? or more appropriate cowboy boots? then we started talking about getting married on a ranch, maybe even southfork, and it all came together. leave the top hat in ny - cowboy boots are the way to go. groomsmen: prepare yourselves.

Supplement to "+ Guest Etiquette"...or, Emily Post's Guide to the Polite Tackle

2005-03-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

In reference to his posting below, my fiance obviously hasn't read my book "Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette", recently acquired by who else but my Mother. It was part of the wedding reference library that was shoved on me as I walked in the door from Paris, ring on finger. No Belle should be without it. Of course, I had no idea who Emily Post is, and when I shared this information with my mother I really thought she was going to faint. Either faint, or smack me. But Emily Post probably looks down on smacking brides-to-be...it could create an undesireable skin discoloration that will totally ruin all subsequent photos and thus the entire wedding and probably my marriage. Fainting is definately the better option. It's much more becoming of a Southern woman.
I had no clue as to the depth of my ignorance regarding Emily Post until I had the following encounter in a bar in Austin last night:
I was celebrating with friends whom I had not yet seen since the trip to Paris, when I started chatting with the couple next to me at the bar. The girlfriend was all excited over my ring, while the boyfriend was rolling is eyes. They asked me how I was holding up, and I regaled them with my Emily Post story to illustrate the insanity that is my mother. The boyfriend is a really BIG African-American gentleman who looks like he could whup up on Cowboy's defensive line anytime. He looks at me like I have three heads, and says, "Girl, you don't know who Emily Post is?!"
I have truly discraced my Southern heritage. Me, who did Cotillian, where I had to wear white gloves, and attended Hockaday, an all girls school in Dallas that is so preppy it was featured as one of five "must attend" schools in a book I read that spoofed the prep lifestyle. I have made an effort never to live above the Mason Dixon, and I've always thought I was ahead of the game because I knew the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork. I was upstaged by a man who is probably familiar with Emily Post's Football Etiquette, which explains that it is not polite to snap bare ass with a wet gym towel. I am evidently not the epitome of etiquette that I thought I was.

So I refer my fiance to page 95 of Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette: Awkward Questions Concerning Invitations.

As for me, I think I'll pop open a Bud and watch some NASCAR.

P.S. My mother said I should never tell anyone that I didn't know who Emily Post was, so ya'll don't say anything, ok?

Is that a mezuzah in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

2005-03-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

When Kenny and I returned from Paris (where he proposed- a story to be told in a later posting), we stopped through Dallas to visit my parents before returning to Austin. We had a nice evening with them, which mostly consisted of my mother (Linda) asking us a never-ending series of detailed wedding-planning related questions. Being a Southener, I evidently was supposed have spent the last 27 years (and possibly even my 9 months in the womb) planning my fairytale wedding, so that when the big day arrived (the engagement, that is) I would be able to whip out a detailed PowerPoint presentation complete with fabric sample handouts, cake and caterer tastings, and all relevant guest lists, and present this to my mother along with tea and finger sandwiches served on little doilies. Since I've been planning a career instead of planning a wedding, I did not have the details my mother so desparately needed, because let's face it, 18 months just isn't long enough to plan when the bride has so disgracefully neglected her preengagement planning duties as I have.

But I digress...

So after dinner, we are standing in the driveway of my parents' house talking to their neighbors the Levis (names have been changed to protect the innocent), who I've known since I was 12. The Levis are probably the only Jewish family my parents know in Dallas, so when we announced the engagement to them, so ceremoniously there in the alley, my Mom informed Ron and Robin they were going to be her source for all things Jewish. I wouldn't be surprised if next time I return there's a For Sale sign in their yard.
Let me preface this story by saying that my parents recently purchased a very large plasma TV, and my dad had evidently asked Ron for help hanging it. He found someone else, so Ron was off the hook, but Ron didn't know this at the time of the meeting in the alley. Back to the story. After the hugs and Mazel Tovs, Ron says to my dad, "Dwight, did you ever find someone to help you hang that thing?", referring to the TV. Ron's teenage son Aaron looks at everyone, slightly confused as to what "thing" his dad was talking about, and says, "Oh, the mezuzah?" Everyone just died, and poor Aaron turned beet red. So much is lost in the retelling, but it was a fantastic moment. What makes it even funnier is that Kenny's sister later told me that my parents actually didn't understand what it was that Aaron said- the closest word they could conjure up was "mistletoe". We have some learning to do...

So for all the Jews out there, take the Lord's commandments and bind them as a sign upon your arm and let them be tefillin between your eyes. However, be sure you hang some mistletoe on the doorposts of your home.

+ guest etiquette

2005-03-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

so do you allow all your single friends to invite guests, or is that reserved for friends that you know have significant others? and does this apply to engagement parties, or just the actual wedding? it's already so complicated...

2005-03-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

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