if ever i have a child...

what a ridiculous sobbing mess i will be at every tiny little life moment. jesus. 


today on my way to work, winding through cambridge streets and being cut off by various massholes that don't know how to drive (what is it with this place?), i happened upon a man standing on the side of the road with a long piece of cardboard. he had written on it "lost my job. lost my house. i have a fourteen year old girl and my wife left. i'd like to get my daughter something for christmas. please help." now, regardless of his story and his truth this made my eyes well up and a huge lump catch in my throat. it hurt to look. it hurt to look away. and then for the rest of my commute i listed in my head all of the things i am so, so grateful for and arrived at 7:50 still crying and frantically wiping my face and pinching myself in hopes i would quit it. 


then! then, hours later, i'm looking through photos of a college friend who just got married this fall. in almost every single one of the photos from her wedding she is laughing her huge laugh. besides making me miss her/college, it made me so insanely happy for her. heart-achingly happy for her. and i started to cry with this happiness. 


what is wrong with me? 




since when did i turn into my mother? 

and one more, because apparently i'm on a posting bender

Will and I knew we wanted rings like these before we had even got engaged. That idea hasn't changed in over two years. But this weekend we discussed what we each wanted, and lately I've been mad about stacking rings. So for me, I'm fairly certain that's what I'm going to do.

Combined with my engagement ring:

And with a thin fingerprint ring like the one I linked above.

I think I'll keep it at four rings max, maybe five. All of them will be very thin.

All of those photos are rings that are found on Etsy. I don't know how to link photos because I'm almost entirely helpless when it comes to computer stuff.


And now I'll stop posting this crap. Clearly everything I said in the first post from today about how I'm not obsessed with weddings is a complete lie.

i forgot!

cost of stamps for the save the dates: 29 bucks.

the stamps cost more than that total cost of the save the dates. score!

just so you know

I've been talking with my roommate(s) about this whole blog thing and as it sort of bothers me I just thought I'd do an ol' blog post on it. Just so you're aware, dear readerfriend of mine, I'm not a jerk. I'm not writing this blog because I'm obsessed with money and talking about prices,  nor because I'm a brat that is completely in love and enjoys splashing that fact all over the internet in really ridiculous ways (ahem, lastnight'spost). I'm not writing this blog because I'm obsessed with weddings, or because I'm a bridezilla (whatever that means anyway) or because I'm self-absorbed and think you should care about every little detail in my life leading up to marriage. Maybe I care too much about what others think, but I'd just like to make perfectly clear that those above points are not reasons I am writing this blog. The reason as stated before, has to do with being newly engaged and looking online at wedding blogs and finding the most beautiful ideas for insane amounts of money. It felt a bit ridiculous, and I wanted to show that you can do things with a lower budget and still have it be insanely dreamy. I'm not posting prices/discussing prices for any other reason then I want to show you exactly the cost, so if you or someone you know is getting married you can look at it and feel not in the least overwhelmed like I did.


Also I sometimes find myself sounding a bit judgmental. Or at least I worry that I come across like that. I want you to know that in no way whatsoever am I everevereverever a judgmental person. I would hate to come across as that. Really, you should do as you please. A best friend of mine, who isn't even engaged nor has even a boy in her life at the moment, knows that when she gets married she is going to have the poofy white dress and the new last name and the crazy traditional bridesmaids dresses and wedding songs and bouquet toss and the whole dang shebang. I love that! She dreams about it and talks about it and knows that is what she wants without a single doubt. And I love that about her, and I couldn't imagine it any other way. You really should just do what you want. For me and for Will it is going to look a bit different because that's just how we envision it. To each his own. So please please know that when reading this blog. I'm not a jerk. I'm not obsessed with money. I'm not judging your wedding for being traditional, or not traditional, or anything in between. 


The End.

weekend bits o' loooove

It's been awhile, so hello to you. 
I'm sitting here with a most delicious beer and a veggie stir-fry settled in my belly in a most comfortable way. It was leftovers from last night's dinner with Will, and it makes me happy to eat it because it reminds me that he was just here, having dinner with me. This weekend was pure bliss. Will came down to spend his birthday weekend with me in Boston, and he surprised me and stayed a few extra days. He got here on Friday night, straight off a bus at South Station and into the cold and blustery December night air. Lights twinkled and horns honked and people rushed on by and then there he was, my smiling man picking me up and hugging me tight. (And yes, in my head anyway, it was just that ridiculously romantic. Ha! No but really.) There is something to this distance thing that makes seeing each other a little more special each time. I've always been excited and nervous to see him when the day is over--I remember thinking that it was crazy to feel that way after the first year, and then second, and third...but here we are at eight and it's freaking insane how happy I am when I see him. Then you add in weeks in between and it's just happiness on a whole new level. I know this is just ridiculous to read. Sorry, or actually...I take that back. I'm really not. I just feel so intensely happy lately all the dang time. It makes me feel so incredibly excited to marry this man. There are things about him that only I know. Me. The one person in this world that really truly knows him and I feel like that's the biggest honor. Love is a ridiculously wonderful thing, and I'm so so so lucky. 
So yeah. 
OH! I think I've found a dress. I've said this for no less than four thousand dresses, so of course this could change. But it's exciting to me that I've found one that has consistently made me feel super dreamy. I haven't made the big purchase yet though because I'm still holding out for a better deal. You see, I've made the genius discovery that you can buy a dress online, brand new and totally fantastic, for dollars. DOLLARS. As in I found one for 2 dollars 14 cents (but it's basically a down comforter, so I'm all set thankyouverymuch). The nature of this blog is disclosing cost of things in order to show that you can indeed have a most beautiful wedding at a most normal cost, so I'm going to tell you that the one I want is 165 dollars even though I'm starting to feel like disclosing cost of things is maybe a bit tacky (?). Ahh welll. It was originally 575, so yeah. Holy crap. That's awesome, right? I have found the headpiece that I want to wear and it's a little less than the cost of the dress--after Christmas, that baby is mine. 
I think that's about all. Will and I are still waiting on some addresses, but other than that our Save the Dates are ready to send. Fiiiinally. We did some wedding dreaming over the weekend and he has this idea for what he wants to wear and holy balls I can't wait to see the outcome. Other than that, that's about all. I kind of can't wait until the holiday craziness is over and we can get to work on it all. Heck yes.

ALSO:

wouldn't it be so amazing to have a prom-themed wedding? like with king/queen crownings, corny dances/decorations/the whole nine yards? and prom dresses and god-awful tuxes too! and photographs of everyone taken prom style, with totally horrible and generic poses and fake smiles and awkward arm placements. seriously!! how cool would that be? if will and i were doing a theme that's what we'd do. prom 2012: wonderful tonight. oh man the save the dates and invites would be outta this world. 


someone should really do that. 

it's like college again

the last time i lived with girls was in 2007 when i lived in france. oh holy crap! it's been FOUR years that i've lived with a boy?! and it's been four years since the most magical time of my life? but here we are again...living apart and even though i lovelovelove these two gals i'm missing my guy a whole bunch. there's this statistic that if you live with your boyfriend you have a higher chance of breaking up or not getting married or something dumb like that. call me crazy but i like to test drive the car before you buy it. lemme tell you, living with will was really awesome and i miss it/him a whole bunch.

this post has absolutely nothing to do with anything wedding related. i should probably make note of that right now juuuust incase you are wondering if you should keep reading.

i had the most wonderful conversation with my beloved justine the other night. you know those kind of people that exist that just make you feel so dang good about life and there's nothing more happy than hanging out with/talking with/laughing with/crying with/being with that friend? that's her. she's just so awesome. hi, justine! hi. can you tell i miss you?

oh hey that reminds me of wedding party stuff. so i guess that paragraph above the paragraph above this one is now a total lie. will and i go back and forth between wanting a 'wedding party' and not wanting one. he's already decided he is just going to have cameron (his baby brother) stand up there with him. then he's going to have his closest people sort of sit to the side, and that includes his sister which shooot that's just so cute it makes me love him even more. i haven't decided what i'm doing. i think i'm just going to have my most beloved people sit to the side as well, so it'll kind of be like a wedding party but kind of not. regardless, these people will not be required to wear any dreaded bridesmaids dresses/tuxes. i just want them to wear something they already have or something they love or something they want or WHATEVER! go naked. just do what you want and look gorgeous while you're at it, right? so that's what we've talked about. who knows. we change our mind all of the time.

there isn't really THAT much time to keep on changing minds here...i'd just like to point that out. also, this post is kind of dumb and pointless and rambling and so i think i'm going to stop. really i'm just writing because i'm staring at the clock waiting for my guy to get his bum out of the shower and call me.

Plates!

This weekend was cwaaaazy. Will and I are going to be living separate for the next few months...he's moving back to Vermont, and I'm staying down here and living with a couple of awesome gals from college. So we've been packing and running and checking things off of lists and packing and running some more. I hate moving. We've moved at least once a year for the past eight years and I'm really getting tired of it. I'm so ready to just put my feet down somewhere for a little bit. I've always been somewhat transient, often coming up with new places and things that I want to do and experience. And while that's served me quite well thus far, I've been feeling lately that I'm ready for something different...like I just want to dig in a little bit. I don't know, it's hard to explain. Will and I talk about it a lot, and I'm really glad that he's feelin' it too. My mother says that it has to do with turning twenty-eight, and how in Anthroposophy that specific age is one in which you start to yearn for something a little deeper, a little more permanent. Regardless, it's where we're both at in our life and the moving this weekend...yet again...really felt sad and tired and over-done. 


Anyyyway.


We just got back from the Goodwill store a few hours ago. Aside from a kick-ass green coat, some really sweet shoes and a pair of bright red corduroys, we picked out quite a few plates. They are mostly all different, some are old and some are new, some are ugly and most are not. Ha! We still have to get a couple more plates, some silverware, cups, and other items that have to do with food. This is a huge start though, and seeing everything together makes me even more excited. We decided to buy used items at second-hand stores to reuse what was already out there, to cut cost where we could, and to pick out mis-matched items just because. 


Check it:

Ignore all the price stickers if you please.

ohhh love. Also that blue thing on the right side of this photo is an old glass bottle. We're going to use different bottles, mason jars, and old vases to put wildflowers and flowers from my mother's garden on all of the tables.

Uh, this is upside-down. It's all in French though, and that made me happy.

These two plates are the only two plates that were "state plates" in the entire store. They happened to be a Vermont plate and a California plate...which is pretty perfect as Will is from Vermont and I'm from California. These guys will be reserved for us. 

And this has nothing to do with the wedding, but for my friends that also love to thrift I thought I'd post these. I am in love with the shoes.

mmmmmm love love love 'em.

The idea behind our wedding decor is that we we want to reuse or recycle what we get. The plates can be sorted through and kept or donated, and the linens in the last post will also be kept. Pretty much all of the decorations we're going to have will also be able to be used in our house. Not only is it a way to keep from being wasteful, but it'll be a constant reminder of that magical day. Win-win. 

Total cost today: 75 dollars. 

treasure huntin'

One way we are using less and saving more is by scouring various vintage shops for treasures to use in fun ways for our wedding. Not only is this a great way to use what's already out there, but it's (mostly) cheap and definitely an excellent way to spend an afternoon. So far we have a stack of old linens, ties and a really amazing pair of suspenders. The linens we're planning on using for the tables of food we're going to have set up around the orchard, the ties (well, one tie) and suspenders are for my bearded guy to wear. I don't really know how much we spent on just the wedding--but the linens were mostly 50 cents, the ties and suspenders a bit more. I also found myself some pretty jewelry and some Christmas presents for my pops so I don't really know how much was actually spent on the wedding. The best part, all of what was purchased can be reused long after the celebration is over. Needless to say, we will continue shopping around for treasures in all of the little vintage shops we happen upon.


Below are some snazzy photos. My favorite item of course, is the suspenders. Suspenders are  just so fantastic, right? Will is going to look ahhhmazing.

a long post on why i'm anti-marriage but happily getting married

When Will asked me to please marry him, it was answered with a very assured "yeah". However, it took me a long long time to get there. Although I always knew I wanted to spend my life with this guy (and indeed I do mean always, as I was enamored with him beginning at age twelve and it never really went away), I was not so sure if I wanted to marry him. I did not feel comfortable saying that out loud to anyone however, as it's not something that a girl madly in love is supposed to say. If you want to spend your life with someone, you get married. It's just the way it goes.

I don't have a commitment issue, I really don't. That's pretty clear. It's a marriage issue. It took me a long time to realize where it all came from and how to work through it. Will has made it clear he wanted to marry me---the idea never ever scared him, not even once.

And you know what? A lot of that has to do with the fact that he is a male and I am a female. I remember from a very young age feeling absolute outrage over anything I deemed to be unfair. As I grew older, that sense of needing things to be fair and right and equal manifested itself into me being a quiet but clear feminist. I remember conversations between the women in my family regarding Isabelle Allende, listening to Shawn Colvin on my tape deck incessantly, and ohhh man those arguments with my parents over not being allowed to go to parties when my brother was allowed to simply for the reason because "he was a boy and I was a girl and things happened to girls at parties". As I got older and started learning about and being interested in the women's rights movement, and of course with this the role of a female in a marriage, well I naturally became completely disgusted with the idea of changing my name and becoming one person with my husband. And males don't really have to think about those things. They are the head of the house, they don't have to change their name, they are the better, smarter sex. Right? And jesus! The rituals of weddings all only prove that fact to be true, no? Males are placed on the right side of the ceremony signifying the right hand of God. Women are given away from one male to the next. A dowry, modern day in that the bride's parents typically foot the enormous bill. Seriously. It's sick, and there's more. My best friend Justine wrote an article recently on this, if you're interested to hear more. Read here and here.

So there's all of that.

In addition to that load of a reason, there's also the 'it's-the-next-step' fact that annoyed me into not wanting to get married.

At about two years into our relationship, regardless of being super young and still in college, people started asking us when we were going to get engaged. The longer we stayed together, the more questions we got. It was OBNOXIOUS. First, how is that your business? But second...why? Why does that matter so much to people? Just because you are with someone for a long time does not mean you need to get married, ever! What does marriage even mean? You don't just get married because that's what comes next. Graduate high school. Go to college. Graduate college. Get married. Have babies. It's the rule. You must follow the rule. But why?

So why am I getting married, after all of that? What made me okay with this? A lot of reflection, sure. But it's more.

The thing is, I was with someone that was (is!) incredible. He gets it. He is a feminist himself, or rather I think even moreso a humanist, but you get the point. Our getting married wouldn't ever change that. There is a freedom that comes with being with someone that wants fairness in the roles of gender within a relationship (slash the world) just as much as you do. What's so scary about getting married then? And so when he asked me to please, please just marry him, I just knew. I wanted to marry him. And so I said yeah and we were just like that, getting married.

So I suppose it's not really that I'm anti-marriage. It's more that I'm anti-traditional-marriage-just-because-thats-what-you're-supposed-to-do. If you're 23 and graduated college and with a longterm partner, don't get married just because you're supposed to. Think about it. If you want to do it, do it. But just think about it. I feel the same about a traditional wedding ceremony. If you are choosing to get married in a traditional ceremony, then really choose it. Think about it. Question it. If it's what you want, do it. Want to change your name? That's wonderful! But don't just do it because you're supposed to. I'm not here to judge that, and I don't. It's just that with my own battle with being anti-marriage for so long but now wanting to get married, I learned that marriage isn't so scary when you are able to come to the realization that a marriage is yours, and it's what you make it. It seems like the most obvious of realizations, but it took me awhile to get there.

blog schmog

I have always said I would never have a blog. There's something about writing an online journal of yourself and your daily experiences (and then posting photos of these daily experiences) that strike me as being self-absorbed and really fucking weird (sorry to all my friends that have blogs...I'm not counting you loves in this silly judging of mine). I still think that, but alas, I'm now one of them. Judge away. I sure do. Ha!

The reason I wanted to do this is because I'm tired of hearing about the exorbitant cost of weddings, and also because I'm pretty anti-wedding and I'm tired of looking online and seeing all of the "you've got to have thisthisthis and this". I am getting married this coming July, and we're having a pretty big wedding...but it's going to be what we want, and it's certainly not going to cost a lot of money. I wanted to write about the experiences of creating this wedding on a budget. I want to show all projects we do and the actual cost of them, and of course...the final day and how it all came together (which, good god, it better look amazing otherwise the wedding industry wins).

I also want to make this wedding "green". I know, I rolled my eyes at that one too. But for real. I grew up in a family that really loves this earth, and I'm grateful every day for that. I love this place. I don't want to get partnered up at Earth's expense. So I'm going to also document the ways in which we've kept that in mind. It's something that really, really matters to me. Although it's now a trend to be green (a good trend, at that...although of course the downside in this case is that trends come and go) I'm not doing this to be a part of that trend. I'm doing this because I grew up with parents that taught me the importance of leaving a teeny tiny footprint behind us, and weddings contribute a HUGE amount of waste to this already waste-filled earth. I did not want to be a part of that. I've lived with the mentality of Environment First my entire life, and the celebration of this awesome moment in my life will be no different. I really want to show how that can be done, so I'm going to document that as well.

So far, we've spent a total of 13.50. We debated doing Save The Dates for awhile, but ultimately decided to go for it as we are two people that forget shit all.the.time. We aren't planners, and we are constantly annoying friends for making plans and skipping out on them because we just plain forgot. The Save The Dates we got from all of the weddings we've attended have actually been pretty helpful for us, so we decided that for that reason alone we'd make them too. They certainly are not necessary, but it's a nice little reminder for people like us. So that 13.50 is the cost of the Save The Dates. We bought recycled paper at a local paper store and designed them up ourselves. The guest list remains a pain in the ass, but after a couple of Saturday nights and an equal amount of red wine bottles, we've got our little reminders done, guest list be damned.

We wanted them to be postcards so we could save on paper. Here they are:

So there you have it. The reason for the blog. The total cost so far. And the outcome. Hopefully this isn't self-absorbed and really fucking weird.