i might still have a few more wedding blogs posts in store

i can't help it!  man, you work so hard at throwing a massive, hopefully kick-ass party, and then you have things to say about it afterward.  i know i set up a whole different blog for this sort of thing, but OH WELL you are just going to have to deal.

things about my wedding that i still think were awesome ideas:

1. the blue shoes.  seriously.  it was kind of a lark; i spent most of my time looking at red ones, or glittery ones, but then the girlchild picked out her dress and it all fell into place.  
2. wearing my dad's turquoise bracelet.  for me it was a nice way to be close to him on such an important day.  that it matched the dress the girlchild picked out, and D's tie, was kind of a happy coincidence.  or sign from god.  or kismet.  pick one and run with it!
3. hiring the awesome genevieve to do the photos.  seriously.  we got a CD of images last night, and i spent most of today looking at them with D and being amazed.  she did such a great job of catching all sorts of little moments, and all of the photos just look so happy.  i mean, i know we were having an awesome time, but i wasn't sure that would be apparent in photos.  she let us be relaxed and have fun, and while she did give us some direction, she also went with the flow.  i've never had so much fun having my picture taken!
4. near the end of our wedding planning (the last month before the wedding) i had to really come to terms with how i wanted things to look.  i had been getting a lot of advice from family members, and while all of it was genuine and well-meaning, some of it missed the point.  at one point i said to D, "this is just isn't how i wanted it to look," and he listened to me and said, "yeah, so let's do it your way."  it was hard to say, "no, we've got it covered!" but i'm glad we did.  our wedding wasn't a white trash celebration, but it also wasn't overly fussy.  i think the end result was personal, pretty, and relaxed, and made people feel at home.  i might be wrong (i wasn't a real guest, you know), but it seemed like people were having fun and that made me feel good.  

the only thing i would do differently would be to get my flowers two days before the wedding.  i bought mine wholesale from costco, and while they were both lovely and cost-effective, the day after the wedding they really opened up and looked amazing.  which isn't to say they looked like poop at the service, but man! the day after they were open and gorgeous.  i might also spend more time breaking in my shoes.  i don't wear heels enough to have left that for the last minute!  other than that, i wouldn't change a thing, and really?  those things did not detract from my day.  we had a good time, we saw the people we love, we ate crazy amounts of pie, and got to go home together.  sweet.  

(also! i updated the flickr set of our wedding photos with a ton more stuff.  if you are into that sort of thing, go check them out!)

walking down the aisle music

D and i walked down the aisle to a mark mothersbaugh song from the royal tenenbaums. we used the song that etheline was supposed to use when she first tried to marry henry sherman, called mothersbaugh canon.  seriously.  i liked that it was pretty without being overly flowerly, how it was kind of like pachabel's canon, and how it came from one of my very favorite movies.  plus, the guy from DEVO wrote it, and you can't buy that kind of indie cred.

mr. mothersbaugh, we salute you! 



after the ceremony, we used mutato musizka's (mothersbaugh!) version of hey jude, along with other instrumental mothersbaugh pieces.  it was awesome.  of course, i'm biased, so you may take that with a grain of salt.   

dear anne,

today i promise to move some boxes into the new house.  my plan is to move all my big knitting boxes (yarn aweigh!), all my sewing and fabric boxes, and whatever else i have that is conveniently in storage boxes.  honest. 

xoxo amanda

new hair!

not the greatest photo, but you can see i took a whole four to five inches off.  you should have seen the pile of hair!  it looked like a small dog.  the cool thing about it is i can straighten it (like it is in this photo) and it looks great, but if i leave it alone, it gets wavy and also looks good.  it feels a million pounds lighter and that will be useful if we ever get sun again.   

one week!

i've been married now for seven whole days.  i got asked a lot this week, "so do you feel different?"  the answer is, "yes."  it's hard to explain, but i don't feel like everything is just the same old, same old.  part of it is afterglow from all the lovey-dovey days leading up to and including the wedding, part of it is a generalized feeling of "wow."  i keep thinking to myself, "i got married!"  in getting married, that means everyone knows how much i love him, how much he loves me, and our intentions to be together for a long ass time. so it's not like i love him more, but more a sense that our families and friends are on board.  in a very general, overwhelming way, it feels really good to be married.  it's a subtle difference, but different anyway.  it's awesome.  i always felt like we were a good team before, but now i'm ready to buy us uniforms with our names embroidered on them.    

people were surprised to see me back at work this week, everyone thought i'd take some time off for moving but guess what?  i'm retarded and want to save that vacation time for the summer.  i have three day weekends and strong kids, so no taking time off for moving!  plus, i think next week i'll just rent a truck for a day and we can do it all at once.  whatever it costs will be worth it to not have to make a million trips.

i also cut off all my hair this week, downloaded and printed the million and two forms it takes to change your name, and sent out a billion thank you cards (i still have some left to do, of course).  overall, i think my first week of wedded bliss went well.  it's too early to tell, but i think i might be a kick-ass wife.  

also, here is the song we picked for our first dance. okay, our only dance. it's hard to dance when everyone wants to talk to you!

now it's house time!

we got the keys to our new house yesterday, and i was so tired that i didn't even go over there.  can you believe that?  i can, because i honestly felt like someone had beat me with a sock full of oranges.  tonight i'm actually starting to feel human again, so i headed over this evening with D and the kids to drop off a bunch of wedding presents.  we figured they were still all nicely packed, they should go over first!  walking in was awesome.  it's completely empty, a blank slate for us to play and goof off in.  we were fortunate enough to receive some lovely gifts, and while opening them the other night one of the things they girlchild said was, "man, our new house is going to look so cool."  she's right, it is.  going from the wedding to the house is a lot of work, i won't lie, but i think it's more than worth it.  we get to start our new life together in a new place, and that is pretty damn cool.  i see all sorts of fun projects in our future!  my first was to knit my new house key a cozy little sweater, because i am a dork.  i saw a few patterns for key cozies online, then watched some law & order while i winged it.  it wasn't terribly hard to make, and now i kind of want to build a bunch of cozies for everything.  keys, ipods, kindles, lamps, vacuums....okay, maybe not the vacuum.  maybe a nice mug cozy, though.

also, since we had a good friend officiate our wedding (and didn't want to make him have to get ordained as something), we needed to make our marriage legal so we hit the courthouse today and once again said "i do."  it was a super low-key affair, and we have decided that from now on we'll just have a three day wedding anniversary.  going to the courthouse didn't make me feel any more married (i truly feel that i married D on saturday!), but it does make our union kosher, and now i can start with all the name-changing shenanigans.  that sounds decidedly less fun that knitting key cozies, but it will be fun to have a new name.  now i just need to get used to signing it...

sneak peak

our amazing photographer sent over a few shots to tide us over, and here are two! in this one, i'm dipping D because my hoop skirts made it hard for him to try to dip me. :-)  ha!  i kind of look like i'm going to eat him, which is honestly kind of how i felt at that moment.

and here you can see my blue shoes, my curled hair, and D wondering what to do with his hands.  isn't he handsome?  can't you see why i want to eat him alive?

i am now a mrs.

whew.  weddings are exhausting.  i thought i was tired the other night, but i had no idea.  the day went great! there were a few hiccups early on, and i had an honest-to-goodness annoyed bride moment (although i don't think i was too much of a jackass), and then i thought i was going to have a panic attack when i got my wedding dress on, but suddenly we were all walking upstairs and then boom! married.  it does all go by quickly, and afterward it seems like a happy blur, but here are a few things i remember clearly.

• telling the boychik to walk slowly, i wasn't too good with heels.
• our friend and officiant got one of those books that seems to spontaneously burst into flames when you open it, which is how he started the wedding.  we're not sure everyone got the rapture joke, but we thought it was funny.
• both D and i winged our part of the vows, and i was struck by how beautiful D's were.  really.  i'm not just saying that because he's my husband.
• we were late getting upstairs because i run on indian time, the end.  it's the only native thing i do, and i can't help it, i just get there when i do.  
• we lucked out and hired an amazing photographer, who took care of us all day long.  honestly, i only met her that day, and she was crazy helpful and wonderful and took a million and two photos.  all of which i can't wait to see!
• we had a whole lot of guests!  that was a little overwhelming for me.  looking out at all those happy faces made me feel so fortunate.  
• all of the pies my friends and family made were amaze-balls.  OMG so much pie!  at one point, i just wandered down the table with a fork, taking bites.  you know, because i could.
• i met a lot of D's friends that were delightful.
• my friend Anne really went above and beyond in both the days leading up to the wedding and on the wedding day.  she let me vent and never told me to "breathe," she just listened and said, "yeah, that sucks."  she gave a touching toast (it was one of the times i teared up) and i don't think i could have made it through the day with any shred of sanity if she hadn't been there.  yay! 

today i feel like i got hit by a truck.  i am just finally waking up, getting ready for a shower, and then taking the girlchild out for coffee and a nibble.  she's my girl now!  almost 24 hours into being married and i can tell you, it's pretty fucking awesome.

I AM GETTING MARRIED LATER TODAY.

i am exhausted, excited, kind of grubby and will likely lie in bed tossing for a bit before finally conking out.  i hurt my back, started my period, and also figured out an awesome way to curl my hair.  i was both astonished by the kindness of my people and annoyed with them at different times of the day.  i can see now why people throw weddings: you cram a lot of problem solving, interpersonal relationship stuff, stress and emotions all in a short period of time and it's like a crash course in "are you ready to spend forever with this person?"  it's awesome and overwhelming and has made me weepy more times than i care to admit.  i'm thrilled to finally be here, at the day all this work was for, and kind of sad that soon it will be over.

in the end, i get to go home with the man i love, and so no matter what happens later today, it will be worth it.  schmoop.  

beeramid

if you aren't coming to my wedding, this is what you're missing.  a mighty stash of beer!

i need to clean the house today, because we are having guests.  D needs to cut his hair, i need to figure out how to curl a metric ton of my own hair (i'm thinking overnight soft rollers and hair wax? ideas?).  most everything else is done and accounted for, and if it isn't at this point, then i don't care. 

no one else will either, once we start cracking open cases of beer and bottles of wine! 

diet shakes

and salads, with a side of sugar free red bull, are a girl's best friend this week.  i wouldn't really be a bride if i didn't crash diet, would i?  god, the feminist part of me is irritated, the other part of me just wants it to look like i only have one chin in my wedding photos.

we also had our first wedding kerfuffle today.  discovered the PA system we rented wasn't a PA "system" so much as it was a podium with a built in speaker.  boo!  that means it won't work with our iPod dj.  after a quick internet search, i discovered a place that will rent us the equipment for not much more, they'll come out and set it up, and then we'll take it down and bring it back.  hooray!  the kid that just called me from there was amazing; just really on top of things and relaxed and helpful.  i didn't really even have time to get my panties in a bunch, i just made some phone calls and voila! everything was fine.

i am awesome at being a bride.  true story.

the countdown

begins NOW.  well, it officially begins now.  i've been counting down for a while now, as anyone i work with can attest to. 

7 days!  on the list today,

• go through our cd's and find those with songs we want to use at the reception.
• hit up Dick's, and get serving utensils.
• either price or buy booze outright.
• work on super-secret-reception craft.  wait, telling you about it takes away some of the secret, but it's still pretty mysterious.

my shoes showed up yesterday, and i wore them around the house.  i remembered why i don't normally wear high heels: i walk like a person who just discovered her feet in them.  it's not pretty.  needless to say, i need some practice.  i also started breaking in my corset, which wasn't as terrible as it sounds.  although i can see why fainting couches were so popular back in the day.  

ten days left!

then i am marrying this man, even though he wears those sunglasses on a regular basis.  i can forgive him of that because OMG do you see my chins?  shit man, i've been trying to diet in order to look crazy hot in my wedding photos, but i'll be honest: stress makes me want to eat or drink beers, and both of those things involve calories i probably don't need.  i have a corset for my midsection (hell yeah!) but unfortunately, you can't get corsets for your face.  what the fuck?  oh well, this guy still thinks i'm foxy, and since he's the guy i make out with, that's good enough for me. 

we got our marriage license today, which made me all kinds of giddy and schmoopy.  (hence the photo.)  it didn't help that every lady we saw today was all "oooh, so cute! congratulations!"  while i'm anxious and busy and feel like i have a million things to do in the next ten days (um, because i DO), i can honestly say i'm happy to be going through this with D.  we also picked up all the paper and utensils and stuff for the reception, i made some more goddamn pom poms (i hate those fuckers now) and this weekend i wrote our vows and ceremony.  okay, to be honest, i only wrote the beginning part of the ceremony from scratch, the rest of it was stuff i found out there on the internet and altered.  still, i think writing the first part is commendable.  i think the fact that i'm getting so much done means that a) i'm on a roll and b) i need those beers that are making my chins looks ridiculous.   

this means i'm going to have to finish wedding decorations

my giant, procrastination aiding project, the missoni style afghan, is done!  well, the ends still need to be woven in, and i think it might benefit from blocking, but the knitting is DONE.  this took five months to complete, two or three of those months spent just looking at it and dreading the miles of stockinette stitch that were to come.  taking a break from it was the right thing to do; i think i made some more courageous color choices near the end because i'd had some time to think.  i really didn't want it to follow a pattern or the colors to be too "matchy."  in the end, this was totally worth the time, effort and cost.  (although i used knit picks wool of the andes that i bought during a sale; making all the yarn for this cost about $50!)  the blog post that started this whole thing can be found here, and my photos over on flickr can be found here.  

showered

i had a bridal shower this weekend!  admittedly, i was kind of nervous beforehand.  wearing one of those girdle-type undershirts didn't help, either, but i haven't been to a party thrown for me in oh, about ten years.  i'm always nervous that it will be a weird, awkward event where no one talks and we all sit around making terrible small talk.  in fact, it's safe to say that i worry about that 75% of the time in general.  in any case, i shouldn't have spazzed out, it was awesome.  i was (am) overwhelmed with the kindness of my friends and family.  i didn't just get a lot of awesome presents (although I DID), i had a great day with people i love, and ate too much cake.  can a girl ask for more?  i think not. 

also, i'd like for everyone to know that my favorite sandwich EVER is as follows: ham, brie and fig jam on baguette.  it's been my favorite sandwich for years now, but i want you to know about it because it's the greatest thing on earth.  sweet and salty and creamy, crammed between two slices of chewy bread.  delightful!