sorry folks I've been under the weight of it all. My wedding is in 2 weeks and we are getting all the fine tuning done, the re-submission of my case study for my architects registration due in a week, throw in a honeymoon for a week, then my registration examination. I need a drink just writing it out.
Anyway I'm silently reading and catching up on your lovely, lovely lives and miss chatting with you. SH you are right marshmallows on sweet potatoes are just too much - for any occasion,
Hi Dapper!!! It's been so long. How's life in yout neck of the woods?
David - much love and good vibes coming from me to you and the Missus for your wedding day.
Snook - sounds like you will be having a good time this weekend. Are you in peak color season yet? I believe we are. WIth all the rain we had in the Spring the leaves are gorgeous. I do declare this is by far my favorite time of year.
SH - I agree with jump, you should set try to set things in motion. It sounds like it would be a blast.
Morning all. Back to more building code research. Bleh!!!
Oh my god...David, you get married in TWO WEEKS?!? Where did the time go?!
Hang in there - it's frantic those last couple weeks before a wedding but all will go beautifully, even if it rains, the flowers show up late, the groomsmen get drunk, and the cake falls on the floor: wedding days are lovely and happy celebrations surrounded by the people you love and you will laugh about any snafus for the rest of your lives together.
This past week I have blamed the cat and the dog for peeing on the kitchen floor. They looked at me with a didn't do it face. Well, the refrigerator did it. It's leaking all over. I am having lots of home problems lately.
Hi Melt :). Things are looking up in my neck of the woods. For my 30th birthday I decided to get myself a new job and re-establish my rockstar architect status. I was starting to get a bit moldy. Now I have to break the news to the boss today...and 6 projects have gone from dead to defcon 5 in the last 48 hrs.
no but we are probably going to live in that area. crazy story. there are hot spots all over the city in any case. not sure still if any of them are dangerous or not. the lady who had nuclear paint under her house didn't know it was there and she is in her 90's and not suffering any harmful side effects after decades of exposure. I don't think anyone understands or trusts the numbers that keep popping up as context for these stories....
I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Fall quarter assignment are almost all written/passed out, the AASHE conference is behind me, preview day is over, just started the book chapter (due 12/2), got my winter syllabi started - now I can throttle back for a week or two before the madness starts up again.
David, congrats!!!!!
Nuclear paint???!!! omg - what's next for japan? giant lizards?
hurray for things accomplished and return to reality-based schedule.
barry it's insane here still. i am not sure what the material was but in one article i read someone had stored material under their home that was used to make glow in the dark paint or something like that. and now everyone has a geiger counter in japan this crazy high spike in radiation caused by the material was found out.
we all thought it was blown in from fukushima but turned out to be this crazy stuff some guy brought home from the office or something, ages ago. i find it amazing that people are so aware of radiation now that this kind of thing is now found out, but worried that we need to be measuring cuz the govt is prone to covering up this sort of stuff.
on other hand we learned recently that japan will be aiming for continued power consumption reduction through the fall. 20% lower or so i believe. and to be honest even though the city has met that goal (a city with popn larger than canada) we are not feeling much hardship all in all. energy reduction is almost easy.
morning all and word, jump/Donna. jump any idea what the biggest drivers are? just rolling blackouts which force behavior change or actual process/use changes at consumer level?
there were rolling blackouts at first but that stopped after the first 2 months nam. now its purely a matter of common sense care. fewer elevator trips, fewer lights on in the buildings, etc. all the convenience stores switched to LED's while train stations and so on took out every other lamp in the ceiling. and we barely notice a difference. a lot of people did choose to use a fan instead of an air conditioner and so on too. so basically it's just behavior.
i am curious how long this can go on and what the numbers really are. if it's permanent we may be already making a dent in CO2 output. which would be quite cool. somehow i think it is more complicated than that, but still....it's definitely the largest energy experiment a country has taken on in some time.
I was reading in the NYT about this evaluation of radioactive counts being taken outside of the structure of the Goverment. I find it of interest, because it says the goverment by avoiding the potential uncoverings is at an extremely large risk of loss of support from the people if the findings can not be cast aside by political side-ways talk. I'm thinking now if something were to happen today in America how it would be handled. Hope your safe and you can keep the lights on!
the government here has always been unresponsive to the people and in many ways unaccountable too. leadership is soggy and the alternative is more of the same so the public tends to think nothing will change regardless and remain non-political. but let's see. this is not a topic a lot of people are going to let slide. interesting times as the saying goes. feels liek the whole world is on the cusp of massive change if we are lucky....
awww thanks for the well wishes folks... I'm touched, especially by your wisdom Donna - the missus and I really found solace. But now back to trying to complete my case study for re-submission.
Yep. After a week of gorgeous clear blue skies in Cooperstown it rained cats and dogs the morning of my wedding. Still a little sprinkly and very grey after as we walked/paraded to the hotel for the reception. But all was good. Then the room we rented, which had been under construction when we saw it 6 months earlier so was all primer, unfinished oak floors, and scaffolding (my favorite decor!), turned out to have been painted a glaring hot maroon-pink with green carpeting as the finish colors. Gaaah! But we had a blast. Enjoy the day! And remember to eat and drink and enjoy yourself!
snook some church around here has been posting billboards and yard signs emblazoned with the phrase "Who Stole Jesus?". My response was duh, Santa.
Our wedding included my mother-in-laws threatening to boycott the ceremony and grandma never showed up for stupid religious reasons (of the Mel Gibson sorts) causing my wife to have several panic attacks, then Fijian drummers on the other side of the sculpture park adding rhythm to our vows (the park board didn't tell us there was going to be a performance at the same time), and oh, a week before at another wedding down in KC, that hotel's pipes backed up and flooded our bathroom at 3am. Those are a few of the reasons why neither me or the missus seem to be smiling in any of the photos. But looking back, I remember being happy - the best part was when my family spontaneously broke into 'hava nigila' and the look on my m-i-l's face when we introduced the woman minister officiating for us.
On my wedding day, it rained all morning, big, windy, storms. Our reception was outside, so I was a little worried, but I was sure it would clear up. I prayed. A lot. By 3pm, the sun came out, and I remember it being in the 80s instead of the typical July 100s. Other people tell me it was hot, though.
The things that went wrong?
I nearly tripped on my dress when stepping onto the platform I had built for the occasion.
The burn-out Husband attempted in out 66 fairlane was a dud.
The caterers started serving people before we arrived, and they brought their own deserts. but forgot the fried okra!
I didn't feel well, so I only ate pickles and beer.
We bought two kegs, and our East Texas family didn't even float one!
Everybody left before 11 pm.
But none of those things mattered in the end. I still go "Grrrr" when I think about the caterers, but the day was perfect in the photos, and really, that was all that mattered. I don't think I look bad in any of them!
I am getting ready for a wedding in Spring/early summer and am really depressed at the moment because I have discovered I can't afford a single outdoor venue within 2 hours drive of my city. Not ONE. The venue fees alone here are all around $2,000. I am desperate to have a relaxed, "back-yard" party - that's all I ever thought about for a wedding, I am not the "wedding" type - and I don't know anyone with a yard big enough for 85 people. It's all the more depressing b/c I'm diy-ing it and on all the diy websites, when there's a thread on "how to have a wedding for less than $5,000" the very first thing they say is "have it in someone's backyard". Unless you live in a big city, I guess! It's really depressing.
Oh man, sorry, that turned into a venting session. I'm sorry.
our wedding was unfortunately problem-free. no stories to tell. we rented rooms in a very nice FLW knockoff in the mountains (next to the olympic skiing jump in nagano) the night before, had the wedding itself in a beautiful chagal museum (we rented the building for a few hours) - happy crazy paintings around us except for a massive wall of glass facing onto a mountain landscape. we said our own vows, which i agonised over and my wife i am certain made up on the spot and all was over.
after the ceremony and the photographs we moved to a rented cabin with about 20 invited friends and had a blast til the sun came up the next day. it was pretty good time i must say. and my brother who came for the wedding from canada is still here 15 years later. crazy how things turn out.
Love the wedding stories. Who's gonna be the next to share.
myriam - I am so sorry you are having a hard time finding a venue. Things will fall into place though, and you will find the perfect outdoor venue that is affordable.
I'll play. I was married in a state park. There was a vagrant trying to sleep under the tree behind the guests' chairs among other mishaps. I hope he enjoyed the music.
Went to a wedding 2 weeks ago where I drove 11 hours overnight to get to it. I arrived a few hours before the wedding, decided to take a nap, and ended up arriving to the wedding just as it ended! Turns out I had crossed time zones and forgot to change my watch!!!! It's tough being blonde.
Best wishes David and wife! Did my invite get lost in the mail?!?! (j/k)
myriam, good heavens, did I know you're getting married?! Congratulations! I'm sorry about the difficulties finding a venue though. What about a campsite? Can you reserve a few adjacent campsites in a state park and do it all outdoors?
jump yours sounds beautiful. Sarah, the dud wedding burnout is the funniest thing I've read today! More stories, anyone?
My highlights: 100 degrees at a vineyard in SW Michigan, instead of lighting a candle, we poured two glasses of wine together... it was white wine, it sat outside for a few hours before the ceremony... not pleasant.
I wrote my vows while putting on my tux, but they were good. (If I say so myself.) Our ceremony maybe lasted 15 minutes.
Then, everyone proceeded to have a good time. No less than 5 people got sick. Sparklers inside the tent were not a good idea, the bride had to put out a fire just before we hopped in a limo that was "decorated" by a best man that couldn't walk. My mom did her first ever shot at the wedding, (tequila no less!). (Also, tip, instruct your bartender to not pour shots, unless that's your thing.) After we got the wedding photos, it was clear that my uncle started the fire.
It was a great time, lots of dancing, lots of fun. The best man was redeemed by his wedding gift waiting for us when we got back to the hotel, Mr. & Mrs. bath robes.
It's been two years, we still have not printed out a wedding photo.
Our wedding was scheduled for almost exactly 1 month after graduating from graduate school. Neither me nor my fiancée/wife lived in the area: I was in Atlanta for school and she was down in St. Petersburg, each about four hours away from our hometown, Jacksonville. Thus, her dad, who was semi-retired at the time, acted as de facto wedding planner. Our ceremony was going to be in the garden of a 'resort hotel' (@ the TPC Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship, if any of you follow golf), with the reception being held in an air-conditioned tent adjacent to the gardens. About 3 or 4 months before the wedding, my father-in-law went for a walk-through at the venue to find an enormous construction site where our reception tent was supposed to be and right next to the garden area where the ceremony was going to be. They apparently didn't feel it necessary to mention that at the time that we booked the space. They also told him that the reception would now be in one of their horribly garish conference rooms, rather than in the sleek, minimal tent that we had been planning for.
So, that night my father-in-law calls me to break the news. We both agree NOT to tell my fiancée/wife, knowing that she would completely flip out and have a breakdown. So together, amidst the crunch time of finishing my thesis, we completely re-planned the wedding. We found a great hotel in downtown Jacksonville with terraces overlooking the river. We got out of the contract with the initial venue and they paid to reprint our invitations. Once everything was worked out for the new venue we all met in Jacksonville for a weekend and I broke the news to my fiancée/wife, saying "Honey, there's a problem with the wedding." She immediately started crying before I could even start explaining, "But, it is OK, we've fixed everything." She was upset and disappointed until we visited the new venue the next day and we both agreed that it was even better than the first.
Then, of course, it rained on our wedding day, so the ceremony was held in a big room overlooking the river, rather than on the terrace. But, it was still great. We had a ton of fun, the most fun that we've had at any wedding. The food was good, the cake was awesome (and a Fallingwater-esque cascade of cantilevers!), we saw friends and family that we hadn't seen in years, and once most of the old people left there was karaoke.
Our grooms cake was supposed to be an old mustang, but ended up looking like a cutlass.
And we still haven't printed our wedding album, and I've had five years to do it. When we met with our photographers, they mentioned a couple that waited 10 years before printing theirs. I distinctly remember scoffing, saying something to the effect of "That's crazy! We'd never wait that long."
These stories ARE awesome! My husband's good friend and caterer from Colorado made our cake - a carrot cake that we had flown in frozen and had frosted locally by the florist. It was delicious, best carrot cake I've ever eaten. The crazy part was Brian had cast (seriously, this is nutso) little white chocolate bull terriers to decorate the cake with - the florist did an amazing job integrating them! We were actually blessed with a wonderful florist, she totally made the flowers as crazy-bright and joyful as I wanted, even moreso!
we haven't printed out pics either and now the photographer's company has gone out of business - all we have are the proofs. Oh, we planned the wedding in about 3 months and in a different city while we were both in grad school. Good thing we rushed, my father-in-law passed away 4 months later.
Myriam, we rented a city park (which happens to have be a sculpture garden) - I'm sure there are public locations that don't have a skateboard park or similar that are picturesque enough to meet an architects exacting standard.
Sara - hava nagila per wikipedia... lots of versions on youtube if you care.
No pics printed here either. And I've never watched the video either. I tried to, but we had an amatuer videographer (an architect, but not a particularly thoughtful one I learned later) and the first 5 minutes is mostly zooming in and out on my cleavage. Not kidding. Full frames of nothing but the bride's cleavage. It's classic.
What else happened? The cake lady found my bouquet before the wedding and somehow thought it was for her to cut up and use to decorate the cake table. Good cake, it was one of the hits of the night and the cake table was gorgeous! And I got lots of compliments on my bouquet, which was a handful of baby's breath, the only thing we could get at the last minute. "So simple, so elegant." So it worked out.
we had an amateur videographer too... she was a friend of my wife who apparently decided that she no longer wanted to be friends and deleted the footage...
luckily we really splurged on the photography... we had a team of two photographers (oddly enough a divorced couple), one of which used color film for traditional posed shots and the other used b/w film for "photojournalism" style shots... we have a big hardbound book that they produced for us with a mix of both styles and also hardcopies of all of the proofs, some of which we've scanned for reprinting...
Barry, was it this version? And once I heard it, I recognized it from movies. So does this mean your family is Jewish? I knew two Jewish people in college, but they didn't like me. I asked too many questions, I think. Can't help it, I'm just naturally curious.
Our photos are all digital, and we have them on a disk, along with the copy-write. We didn't have it filmed, though. And I somehow lost my bouquet. I have the toss-bouquet, though. Since they were fake flowers, I still pull it out every year to decorate our table. In the meantime, it hangs in the laundry room.
" I knew two Jewish people in college, but they didn't like me. "
Gosh darn it. Really??? According to wiki, there are only 130K jews in TX. You should go looking for them on a sunny day. Perchance you can catch and domesticate one. Make sure you de-horn them first.
So our required letters to "Interested Parties" - in other words: the governor, the Department of Natural Resources, the mayor, etc. - were all one day late. We got all the required letters to the adjacent neighbors, - in other words: the only people who give a damn - on time. But the sub-committee is chaired by a nasty power-hungry gay man, and the main committee is chaired by a clutch-at-her-pearls-protocol-must-be-followed old lady, and so we've just been told our hearing will be delayed another month. So our clients are losing another month on their construction schedule, with all associated costs, because the letters to people who throw them away unopened were one day late.
In this specific case, the historic committee is good for one thing only: stopping people who want to do the right from having the stamina to actually do the right thing.
Thread Central
sorry folks I've been under the weight of it all. My wedding is in 2 weeks and we are getting all the fine tuning done, the re-submission of my case study for my architects registration due in a week, throw in a honeymoon for a week, then my registration examination. I need a drink just writing it out.
Anyway I'm silently reading and catching up on your lovely, lovely lives and miss chatting with you. SH you are right marshmallows on sweet potatoes are just too much - for any occasion,
Hi David, Hi Napper! good to see you both. good luck with the wedding David. morning all
Hi Dapper!!! It's been so long. How's life in yout neck of the woods?
David - much love and good vibes coming from me to you and the Missus for your wedding day.
Snook - sounds like you will be having a good time this weekend. Are you in peak color season yet? I believe we are. WIth all the rain we had in the Spring the leaves are gorgeous. I do declare this is by far my favorite time of year.
SH - I agree with jump, you should set try to set things in motion. It sounds like it would be a blast.
Morning all. Back to more building code research. Bleh!!!
Oh my god...David, you get married in TWO WEEKS?!? Where did the time go?!
Hang in there - it's frantic those last couple weeks before a wedding but all will go beautifully, even if it rains, the flowers show up late, the groomsmen get drunk, and the cake falls on the floor: wedding days are lovely and happy celebrations surrounded by the people you love and you will laugh about any snafus for the rest of your lives together.
Congrats David, wishes of happiness to you guys!
This past week I have blamed the cat and the dog for peeing on the kitchen floor. They looked at me with a didn't do it face. Well, the refrigerator did it. It's leaking all over. I am having lots of home problems lately.
Hi Melt :). Things are looking up in my neck of the woods. For my 30th birthday I decided to get myself a new job and re-establish my rockstar architect status. I was starting to get a bit moldy. Now I have to break the news to the boss today...and 6 projects have gone from dead to defcon 5 in the last 48 hrs.
Replacing my furnace today from the summer floods, totally can't afford it. Sucky.
Purpurina, refrigerators are good at stone face.
And I read the entire Game of Thrones series in less than 30 days.
maybe I didn't want to become an architect. maybe I just wanted to be older and more stylish.
Sounds like a new Archinect tshirt, toast!
hey jump - you weren't the one storing radioactive material in bottles under your house, were you?
no but we are probably going to live in that area. crazy story. there are hot spots all over the city in any case. not sure still if any of them are dangerous or not. the lady who had nuclear paint under her house didn't know it was there and she is in her 90's and not suffering any harmful side effects after decades of exposure. I don't think anyone understands or trusts the numbers that keep popping up as context for these stories....
I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Fall quarter assignment are almost all written/passed out, the AASHE conference is behind me, preview day is over, just started the book chapter (due 12/2), got my winter syllabi started - now I can throttle back for a week or two before the madness starts up again.
David, congrats!!!!!
Nuclear paint???!!! omg - what's next for japan? giant lizards?
hurray for things accomplished and return to reality-based schedule.
barry it's insane here still. i am not sure what the material was but in one article i read someone had stored material under their home that was used to make glow in the dark paint or something like that. and now everyone has a geiger counter in japan this crazy high spike in radiation caused by the material was found out.
we all thought it was blown in from fukushima but turned out to be this crazy stuff some guy brought home from the office or something, ages ago. i find it amazing that people are so aware of radiation now that this kind of thing is now found out, but worried that we need to be measuring cuz the govt is prone to covering up this sort of stuff.
on other hand we learned recently that japan will be aiming for continued power consumption reduction through the fall. 20% lower or so i believe. and to be honest even though the city has met that goal (a city with popn larger than canada) we are not feeling much hardship all in all. energy reduction is almost easy.
"energy reduction is almost easy" As the saying goes, from your mouth to god's ear.
morning all and word, jump/Donna. jump any idea what the biggest drivers are? just rolling blackouts which force behavior change or actual process/use changes at consumer level?
there were rolling blackouts at first but that stopped after the first 2 months nam. now its purely a matter of common sense care. fewer elevator trips, fewer lights on in the buildings, etc. all the convenience stores switched to LED's while train stations and so on took out every other lamp in the ceiling. and we barely notice a difference. a lot of people did choose to use a fan instead of an air conditioner and so on too. so basically it's just behavior.
i am curious how long this can go on and what the numbers really are. if it's permanent we may be already making a dent in CO2 output. which would be quite cool. somehow i think it is more complicated than that, but still....it's definitely the largest energy experiment a country has taken on in some time.
Jump,
I was reading in the NYT about this evaluation of radioactive counts being taken outside of the structure of the Goverment. I find it of interest, because it says the goverment by avoiding the potential uncoverings is at an extremely large risk of loss of support from the people if the findings can not be cast aside by political side-ways talk. I'm thinking now if something were to happen today in America how it would be handled. Hope your safe and you can keep the lights on!
the government here has always been unresponsive to the people and in many ways unaccountable too. leadership is soggy and the alternative is more of the same so the public tends to think nothing will change regardless and remain non-political. but let's see. this is not a topic a lot of people are going to let slide. interesting times as the saying goes. feels liek the whole world is on the cusp of massive change if we are lucky....
archinect appears to be under attack...
dia by what or whom? DDOS? morning all.
Spammers - about 10-12 threads started. I think they were directing people to an escort service in San Jose...
Nice. Are you sure it wasn't a jobs ad? I'm sure a lot of out of work architects could use the money, and we're already stylish!
damn, my cover has been blown....."Santa willing to escort any women to Blacks Beach."
awww thanks for the well wishes folks... I'm touched, especially by your wisdom Donna - the missus and I really found solace. But now back to trying to complete my case study for re-submission.
best of wishes david.
Yep. After a week of gorgeous clear blue skies in Cooperstown it rained cats and dogs the morning of my wedding. Still a little sprinkly and very grey after as we walked/paraded to the hotel for the reception. But all was good. Then the room we rented, which had been under construction when we saw it 6 months earlier so was all primer, unfinished oak floors, and scaffolding (my favorite decor!), turned out to have been painted a glaring hot maroon-pink with green carpeting as the finish colors. Gaaah! But we had a blast. Enjoy the day! And remember to eat and drink and enjoy yourself!
snook some church around here has been posting billboards and yard signs emblazoned with the phrase "Who Stole Jesus?". My response was duh, Santa.
good luck david!
donna, that's a good story!
Our wedding included my mother-in-laws threatening to boycott the ceremony and grandma never showed up for stupid religious reasons (of the Mel Gibson sorts) causing my wife to have several panic attacks, then Fijian drummers on the other side of the sculpture park adding rhythm to our vows (the park board didn't tell us there was going to be a performance at the same time), and oh, a week before at another wedding down in KC, that hotel's pipes backed up and flooded our bathroom at 3am. Those are a few of the reasons why neither me or the missus seem to be smiling in any of the photos. But looking back, I remember being happy - the best part was when my family spontaneously broke into 'hava nigila' and the look on my m-i-l's face when we introduced the woman minister officiating for us.
have a ni-what?
On my wedding day, it rained all morning, big, windy, storms. Our reception was outside, so I was a little worried, but I was sure it would clear up. I prayed. A lot. By 3pm, the sun came out, and I remember it being in the 80s instead of the typical July 100s. Other people tell me it was hot, though.
The things that went wrong?
But none of those things mattered in the end. I still go "Grrrr" when I think about the caterers, but the day was perfect in the photos, and really, that was all that mattered. I don't think I look bad in any of them!
And Husband and I love weddings. Free booze and dancing. If I had a bucket list, Crashing a Wedding would be on there.
Congrats, David!
I am getting ready for a wedding in Spring/early summer and am really depressed at the moment because I have discovered I can't afford a single outdoor venue within 2 hours drive of my city. Not ONE. The venue fees alone here are all around $2,000. I am desperate to have a relaxed, "back-yard" party - that's all I ever thought about for a wedding, I am not the "wedding" type - and I don't know anyone with a yard big enough for 85 people. It's all the more depressing b/c I'm diy-ing it and on all the diy websites, when there's a thread on "how to have a wedding for less than $5,000" the very first thing they say is "have it in someone's backyard". Unless you live in a big city, I guess! It's really depressing.
Oh man, sorry, that turned into a venting session. I'm sorry.
our wedding was unfortunately problem-free. no stories to tell. we rented rooms in a very nice FLW knockoff in the mountains (next to the olympic skiing jump in nagano) the night before, had the wedding itself in a beautiful chagal museum (we rented the building for a few hours) - happy crazy paintings around us except for a massive wall of glass facing onto a mountain landscape. we said our own vows, which i agonised over and my wife i am certain made up on the spot and all was over.
after the ceremony and the photographs we moved to a rented cabin with about 20 invited friends and had a blast til the sun came up the next day. it was pretty good time i must say. and my brother who came for the wedding from canada is still here 15 years later. crazy how things turn out.
Love the wedding stories. Who's gonna be the next to share.
myriam - I am so sorry you are having a hard time finding a venue. Things will fall into place though, and you will find the perfect outdoor venue that is affordable.
I'll play. I was married in a state park. There was a vagrant trying to sleep under the tree behind the guests' chairs among other mishaps. I hope he enjoyed the music.
Went to a wedding 2 weeks ago where I drove 11 hours overnight to get to it. I arrived a few hours before the wedding, decided to take a nap, and ended up arriving to the wedding just as it ended! Turns out I had crossed time zones and forgot to change my watch!!!! It's tough being blonde.
Best wishes David and wife! Did my invite get lost in the mail?!?! (j/k)
myriam, good heavens, did I know you're getting married?! Congratulations! I'm sorry about the difficulties finding a venue though. What about a campsite? Can you reserve a few adjacent campsites in a state park and do it all outdoors?
jump yours sounds beautiful. Sarah, the dud wedding burnout is the funniest thing I've read today! More stories, anyone?
Weddings, fun.
My highlights: 100 degrees at a vineyard in SW Michigan, instead of lighting a candle, we poured two glasses of wine together... it was white wine, it sat outside for a few hours before the ceremony... not pleasant.
I wrote my vows while putting on my tux, but they were good. (If I say so myself.) Our ceremony maybe lasted 15 minutes.
Then, everyone proceeded to have a good time. No less than 5 people got sick. Sparklers inside the tent were not a good idea, the bride had to put out a fire just before we hopped in a limo that was "decorated" by a best man that couldn't walk. My mom did her first ever shot at the wedding, (tequila no less!). (Also, tip, instruct your bartender to not pour shots, unless that's your thing.) After we got the wedding photos, it was clear that my uncle started the fire.
It was a great time, lots of dancing, lots of fun. The best man was redeemed by his wedding gift waiting for us when we got back to the hotel, Mr. & Mrs. bath robes.
It's been two years, we still have not printed out a wedding photo.
I'll share...
Our wedding was scheduled for almost exactly 1 month after graduating from graduate school. Neither me nor my fiancée/wife lived in the area: I was in Atlanta for school and she was down in St. Petersburg, each about four hours away from our hometown, Jacksonville. Thus, her dad, who was semi-retired at the time, acted as de facto wedding planner. Our ceremony was going to be in the garden of a 'resort hotel' (@ the TPC Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship, if any of you follow golf), with the reception being held in an air-conditioned tent adjacent to the gardens. About 3 or 4 months before the wedding, my father-in-law went for a walk-through at the venue to find an enormous construction site where our reception tent was supposed to be and right next to the garden area where the ceremony was going to be. They apparently didn't feel it necessary to mention that at the time that we booked the space. They also told him that the reception would now be in one of their horribly garish conference rooms, rather than in the sleek, minimal tent that we had been planning for.
So, that night my father-in-law calls me to break the news. We both agree NOT to tell my fiancée/wife, knowing that she would completely flip out and have a breakdown. So together, amidst the crunch time of finishing my thesis, we completely re-planned the wedding. We found a great hotel in downtown Jacksonville with terraces overlooking the river. We got out of the contract with the initial venue and they paid to reprint our invitations. Once everything was worked out for the new venue we all met in Jacksonville for a weekend and I broke the news to my fiancée/wife, saying "Honey, there's a problem with the wedding." She immediately started crying before I could even start explaining, "But, it is OK, we've fixed everything." She was upset and disappointed until we visited the new venue the next day and we both agreed that it was even better than the first.
Then, of course, it rained on our wedding day, so the ceremony was held in a big room overlooking the river, rather than on the terrace. But, it was still great. We had a ton of fun, the most fun that we've had at any wedding. The food was good, the cake was awesome (and a Fallingwater-esque cascade of cantilevers!), we saw friends and family that we hadn't seen in years, and once most of the old people left there was karaoke.
Our grooms cake was supposed to be an old mustang, but ended up looking like a cutlass.
And we still haven't printed our wedding album, and I've had five years to do it. When we met with our photographers, they mentioned a couple that waited 10 years before printing theirs. I distinctly remember scoffing, saying something to the effect of "That's crazy! We'd never wait that long."
These stories are pretty awesome, though.
These stories ARE awesome! My husband's good friend and caterer from Colorado made our cake - a carrot cake that we had flown in frozen and had frosted locally by the florist. It was delicious, best carrot cake I've ever eaten. The crazy part was Brian had cast (seriously, this is nutso) little white chocolate bull terriers to decorate the cake with - the florist did an amazing job integrating them! We were actually blessed with a wonderful florist, she totally made the flowers as crazy-bright and joyful as I wanted, even moreso!
David, feel the love to you and your sweetie emanating from TC!!!
we haven't printed out pics either and now the photographer's company has gone out of business - all we have are the proofs. Oh, we planned the wedding in about 3 months and in a different city while we were both in grad school. Good thing we rushed, my father-in-law passed away 4 months later.
Myriam, we rented a city park (which happens to have be a sculpture garden) - I'm sure there are public locations that don't have a skateboard park or similar that are picturesque enough to meet an architects exacting standard.
Sara - hava nagila per wikipedia... lots of versions on youtube if you care.
No pics printed here either. And I've never watched the video either. I tried to, but we had an amatuer videographer (an architect, but not a particularly thoughtful one I learned later) and the first 5 minutes is mostly zooming in and out on my cleavage. Not kidding. Full frames of nothing but the bride's cleavage. It's classic.
What else happened? The cake lady found my bouquet before the wedding and somehow thought it was for her to cut up and use to decorate the cake table. Good cake, it was one of the hits of the night and the cake table was gorgeous! And I got lots of compliments on my bouquet, which was a handful of baby's breath, the only thing we could get at the last minute. "So simple, so elegant." So it worked out.
we had an amateur videographer too... she was a friend of my wife who apparently decided that she no longer wanted to be friends and deleted the footage...
luckily we really splurged on the photography... we had a team of two photographers (oddly enough a divorced couple), one of which used color film for traditional posed shots and the other used b/w film for "photojournalism" style shots... we have a big hardbound book that they produced for us with a mix of both styles and also hardcopies of all of the proofs, some of which we've scanned for reprinting...
Barry, was it this version? And once I heard it, I recognized it from movies. So does this mean your family is Jewish? I knew two Jewish people in college, but they didn't like me. I asked too many questions, I think. Can't help it, I'm just naturally curious.
Our photos are all digital, and we have them on a disk, along with the copy-write. We didn't have it filmed, though. And I somehow lost my bouquet. I have the toss-bouquet, though. Since they were fake flowers, I still pull it out every year to decorate our table. In the meantime, it hangs in the laundry room.
" I knew two Jewish people in college, but they didn't like me. "
Gosh darn it. Really??? According to wiki, there are only 130K jews in TX. You should go looking for them on a sunny day. Perchance you can catch and domesticate one. Make sure you de-horn them first.
So our required letters to "Interested Parties" - in other words: the governor, the Department of Natural Resources, the mayor, etc. - were all one day late. We got all the required letters to the adjacent neighbors, - in other words: the only people who give a damn - on time. But the sub-committee is chaired by a nasty power-hungry gay man, and the main committee is chaired by a clutch-at-her-pearls-protocol-must-be-followed old lady, and so we've just been told our hearing will be delayed another month. So our clients are losing another month on their construction schedule, with all associated costs, because the letters to people who throw them away unopened were one day late.
In this specific case, the historic committee is good for one thing only: stopping people who want to do the right from having the stamina to actually do the right thing.
I used to work in an office where Jewish persons were the majority. We had an Egyptian client. They worked together very well. I love America.
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