ducksandbooks

But I’m starting to burn out on wedding crap already! Poop.

I started looking at wedding crap about a year after we officially moved in together, in May 2008. Now, after about 6 weeks of being officially engaged, I’m burning out. Thankfully we’ve got the part that we really care about set, our rabbi. He was happy to have free plane tickets (my parents have a gajillion frequent flyer miles) and 2 nights of lodging. We’ll let him pick the dates/airports for his flights and then he can vacation in the DC area too.

Potential venues need to be contacted. I need to go visit them with my mom and the dude while I’m home for a week around the first night of Passover (first full week of March). So far we’ve got 4 major contenders, the DC JCC, Airlie Center (one of the secure locations outside of DC, in Virginia), Algonkian Regional Park, and The Atrium at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.

Meadowlark Gardens - The Atrium

Algonkian Regional Park - Meeting and Events Center

To keep me going for the next month, I asked my dad to buy and send me copies of some local wedding magazines so that I can look at the advertisements from home instead of the ones for where I live (Colorado), which aren’t very helpful in planning from a distance. He’s in advertising, so he thought it was GREAT that I wanted him to buy me some trashy reading just to read the ads. Maybe he’ll have a look in the magazines too.

My dad also told me that my mom was a very “whatever” kind of bride. Ben and I have decided that we’re not having any attendants and that we don’t want to write our own vows. We’re just fine with picking out a bad-ass ketubah and having that read out loud. I kind of want my dad to read Oh, The Places You’ll Go and have someone (Ben’s sister, who gave me the book) read a passage from Tuesdays With Morrie and an excerpt from the Mass. Supreme Ct. decision upholding same sex marriages ’cause I think that rocks.

We’ve been engaged for less than a month, we’re planning a wedding that won’t be for at least a year and a half, and people are already asking where we’re registered!?

Does anyone have any opinions about registering on Amazon in addition to brick and mortar stores? Where else can I add a Wii, a Flip (sorry about the sound on the link) video camera and my dream rice cooker? Though we’re totally excited to the Crate and Barrel registry party, especially since I found out their carrying the new GreenPan Frying Pans we’ve been waiting for! (oh, and the registry party gift is cute too).

Does Ikea have a registry? Would that be weird? Would anyone actually buy us furniture or should we just register for more high-end stuff at C&B?

Oh, and next weekend we’re going with some close friends (who are getting married on the 4th of July) to a FREE LUNCH and wedding-venue-visit thing at the Hotel Boulderado, here in Boulder. It should be fun, but the dude was disappointed to point out when it is because he REALLY wanted to go to synagogue and this thing is at 1 PM on a Saturday. He doesn’t like doing stuff most Saturdays, whereas I usually don’t mind so much. Oops….. I probably should have waited for his email response instead of just hearing back from our friends (immediately) and then RSVPing for the 4 of us. Doh. We’d get free food at shul too, and it would be nice to go since I didn’t make it by myself this past Saturday (because I was up reading until 4 AM).

Should I cancel our RSVP and just let our friends pig out on free gourmet buffet alone? It’s not like either of us is actually interested in the venue, we’re just milking the wedding industry for all it’s worth!

So yeah, so far we’re thinking C&B, Amazon and Macy’s (even if we’d rather register at Bloomies for the same prices and better customer service, there are sadly none in Colorado).

APRIL UPDATE:

Grama bought us the rice cooker! WOOHOO! I’d never even heard of engagement presents before, now we have a rice cooker, a blender, a gorgeous salad bowl and a lovely address/birthday book.

I took that one after Ben gave the ring to me and before he proposed. Yes, he gave me the ring, we were both full from dinner, took a potty break, and then went across the street to the plaza in front of the Boulder County Court House to properly ask me to be his wife.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the ring. It was still to big/chunky then, it’s little sleeker now, I should take new photos.

That’s the best picture I got that shows the sides and stuff of the ring.

Needless to say: I love purple almost as much as I love my future Mister!

The Ben is going away for just over a week. I’ve never been home by myself before since we moved into our own apartment together. It’ll be weird.

I think I’m going to be spending a LOT of time on the phone with my dad, my grandmother and my aunt talking about wedding crap. I live in Boulder, CO and we’re getting married in the DC area, where I grew up. Plus, my mom travels for 10 months of the year for work and we haven’t really been especially close since I moved out 10 years ago. So yeah, lots of phone time, internet time and hopefully gym time.

-insert complete change of subject-

Has anyone ever gone contra dancing? The Ben’s little sister is really into and I’d like to go, but he’s such a dance-phobe! Would contra/line dancing a “My Big Fat Jewish Wedding” be -too- weird? I’m afraid that might be the only way I can get the dude to do a first dance with me…. or maybe any dance. He won’t even hug-and-waddle like a middle schooler, just skulk around and avoid dancing.