—This is the second volume by Prof about his upcoming nuptials. To catch up on Part I, click here.—
Welcome back, wedding fans- the Big Day fast approaches! The countdown on the white board in my kitchen has officially reached 30 days, placing me exactly ONE MONTH from my biggest life progression and grandest party and the time seems to move faster with each passing day. It was not long ago, it seems, that my fiancée and I were wandering blissfully through our long engagement, envisioning and Pinning ideas and thinking about how it might come to be. Now it is crunch time, with a considerable list of tasks still to be handled. The signs and elements of our big day are scattered across our apartment and even as I write this one of my other tasks for today is to get to work on our Lyric Lantern centerpieces that sit in front of my desk. It’s something we wanted from the beginning, a DIY approach that used as many of the resources already available to us in our social circles as possible, both for the purposes of keeping costs low and to give us the personal, quirky touches that we feel define us. While it’s added considerably to the work to be done, it has made me confident that our day will be just what we envision.
Invitations
We had an idea for quite a while that we wanted our invitations to be styled like a concert ticket. We had first seen the idea on Pinterest in our early stages of wedding planning with some that were full color like a modern festival, some that were more vintage with elegant scrolling. The RSVP portion would be perfect as the tear-away “stub” of the ticket and it was well-suited to our theme of “a Rock ‘n Roll Fairy Tale with Dinner and Dancing”. When it came time to choose and order the invitations, though, we encountered two issues. First, the ones we had Pinned, ornate and interesting, generally cost a good deal more than we wanted to pay. And secondly, we didn’t find any that featured the level of personal modification that we wanted, most of them changing little other than our names and dates. So with our options limited and our timeline for sending the invitations narrowing, we elected to design and print our own:
We’ve gotten a great response so far, our small touches and jokes not lost on our fellow revelers. We did order the envelopes from Zazzle, styling the scrolling to match our design and adding our own quote from ‘Alice in Wonderland’:
“Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventure…”
Though we ended up right at the 6-week mark for getting them sent, I can proudly say that people will officially be coming to our Wedding. Yay guests!
Both this time of year and this period in our lives are filled with marital celebrations, many of our family and friends also beginning their own journeys. We’ve been attending one wedding a month since June and as we do it’s impossible to not compare what those couples have done against what you want for your own day. We recently went to a wedding for a couple of AJ’s high school friends, held at a summer camp in Maine. The sprawling grounds made the perfect setting for their large, boisterous group of friends, with swimming, boating, lawn games, plenty of on-site lodging (rustic, to be sure) and a camp fire that went until 3 am. In line with the summer camp in the woods atmosphere, the groom and his father had fashioned decorations from this beautiful white birch, including candle-holders and plate chargers. As we cleaned up the next day the bride’s mother informed us that the birch would soon become campfire fodder and if we wanted any as decoration for our own celebration to take whatever we wanted. We gladly accepted, taking home a wide variety including several long pieces that my brother and I will be using to build our arbor! There is a poetic element to that for me, the wood living on in different forms, donated by a friend and fashioned by one of my best men to arch over our ceremony.
Will we be able to turn this:
Into this?
Stay tuned!
A Groom’s Perspective
It may seem an odd note to come from a Groom’s Perspective but I am often struck by Brides’ wedding makeup. Though I understand the idea of being courtly and elegant on your Day, I think many women allow their makeup to be overdone to the point of not actually looking like themselves. It’s an odd notion to me that on a day so personal and inter-personal between the two parties that you would decorate yourself to look like someone who is not you. Luckily for me my Bride shares that opinion and in her makeup trial last night negotiated an excellent, low-level balance that lets her natural beauty shine through. All I’m saying, ladies, is that your man is marrying you for you and when I’m standing there on that Sunday afternoon, awaiting my Love’s approach, I am confident that is exactly who I will see.
Our Honeymoon
Once the Big Day has come and gone there’s still one more piece of the marital celebration to be enjoyed: The Honeymoon. We’ve decided to go somewhere we’ve both always wants to visit- we’ll be hitting the Big Easy for Halloween! My beautiful bride-to-be, though, is quite afraid of flying so we’ll be road-tripping our way, stopping in Washington D.C., Asheville, NC, and Memphis, TN before making our way to N’Orleans. My fiancée has agreed to fly back, no modest concession on her part, so we’ll be making a one-way car rental that we’ll drop off in Louisiana. We’ll do breakfast in NYC, lunch in Philly, and dinner in D.C. on Day 1, we’ll drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we’ll dance in the birthplace of Rock ‘n Roll. All that before we even hit our final destination! It should prove quite the adventure and I can think of no more exciting way to begin my married life.
We both love Halloween (or Samhain as it’s originally known), it’s one of our favorite holidays and we take considerable pride in our homemade costumes. For our NOLA trip we’ll be looking to bring two costumes, one we’ve done previously (I’ve been considering words that begin with M…) and one of a more traditional Halloween variety (some badass Pirates are the current front-runner). We’re booked at the Wyndham for the first two days of our trip and the Marriott for the next three, both ideal in location for exploring the French Quarter and catching the trolley to other points around the city. Beignets at Café du Monde, Big Band and Zydeco music blaring out and onto Frenchman Street, a fortune teller visit, a graveyard tour, the food, the drinks… we’ll be taking in all that the Crescent City can throw at us. For any readers that have spent time in New Orleans and have suggestions of places and experiences not to miss, COMMENT here or TWEET ME @DrProfEsq.
With one month left to go there is still a great deal left to do (such as ordering our Rings…) but I am confident our Wedding Day will be every bit the one-of-a-kind celebration we envision. Be sure to check back for the third and final volume of this column in the week just before the Big Day. Will I be nearly as calm with four days to go as I am with one month to go? Will it remain unseasonably warm and pleasant throughout October? Will our heroes stand as a force of good and love in the face of an uncertain world? Tune in as we answer these questions and more in our next episode of ‘Prof is Getting Married: A Groom’s Perspective.’
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