Tea For Two

APW Meetups and How Do I Recognize People I Only Know On the Internet?

2012-01-27T10:15:00.001-05:00

So I'm going to the APW "DC-ish" book club and I will keep my complaints about it being in Virginia mostly to myself and I'm certain to the first 10 people I meet who I will whine to about traffic. Anyway, I'm there. Unless traffic is really bad. Or it snows.

Robin aptly realized that we might not all be able to recognize each other from the internet. So for your referencing pleasure, in case you are making some kind of photo cheat sheet (and share!), here I am, in my professional getup, which I will be sporting on Monday after work:

Oh, are you also in need of fabulous professional headshots? This one was taken by my good friend Kate who is a photographer in Baltimore. It's the only picture I have of me where I'm smiling without sneering. I think she is between websites at the moment, but you can email her and I'm sure she can help you out.

Who else is coming?

Drive

2012-01-25T08:30:00.001-05:00

I'm an incredibly driven person. I only say this because I got asked about this on a job interview recently, and it's been rolling around in my head. Because here's what I said, when they asked me about my drive.

"I'm driven to work hard for my clients, to help them reach whatever goals they had in mind. I'm driven to help them achieve what they were hoping to achieve when they walked into my office, and if I can't help them achieve that, I'm driven to find them answers and get as far as I can go on a case. I'm not driven to make partner at a big law firm downtown."

Essentially, I think in this profession, drive is a good thing and a bad thing. Drive can push us to work hard for our clients, or it can push us to work hard for ourselves. I want to be in the first category. I'm pretty okay if I'm never a household name as an attorney. I want to be the kind of lawyer my clients trust and other attorneys respect. I'm driven to be that kind of professional. I'm not driven to make partner.

Here's the thing about drive that nobody seems to want to admit though: there are all kinds of ways to be driven. I'm ambitious about taking on projects, but I also genuinely believe the best way to avoid burnout and feed your drive is to spread it across a lot of goals, without making any of them too lofty. My athletic goals of finishing particular types of races will probably never include winning that race. My crafting goals will probably never progress past making things for myself and my friends that we like and find useful. My professional goals? I have no idea what they ultimately are, except to go to work every day and feel like I am doing good things while working with good people. I'm still trying to decide how exactly I want my career to progress and how much work I'm willing or able to do to get there.

I think being driven and pushing yourself is good. I think pushing yourself to success on the backs of your clients, especially if you forget their end goals, isn't so good. I think pushing yourself to success by taking advantage of the kindness of others, isn't so good. I think pushing yourself to achieve goals of other people and calling it drive, isn't so good.

If nothing else, let's all be driven to be happy, okay? Most of us don't even know what that looks like, but we can all at least push ourselves that far, right?

Monday Marriage Matters: Try, try again.

2012-01-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

I've written before about how the husband and I are lousy, lousy workout partners. Nonetheless, when I needed to do a 16 mile run all by my onesies on Saturday, Mark stepped up and offered to pace me for the second half, since he needed to do an 8 mile run anyway. Around 11 miles, I seem to hit some kind of terrible wall which I can only solve by gossipping and babbling to the person next to me on the trail. If you are alone, you risk looking like a crazy person, so we set out.

Okay, so when the trail looks like this, you look like a crazy person anyway. We didn't look as crazy as the guy in shorts.

I was concerned about the slushiness of the snow and the possibility of hypothermia, so we agreed I would cut my run short and Mark would wait for me at the car. 3.5 miles later, I came back to the car and we set out for our 8 miles together. Poor Mark tried to stay with me, and he even waited for me to catch up to him, and he tried finding me a playlist with a faster bpm so I might run at his pace and he even tried adopting a new stride that made him a little slower, and still, within the first mile, he was so far ahead of me that I couldn't see him.

After eight years together, the only thing I find frustrating about this is his insistence that no, he can slow down enough to run with me. It's like after every run, he immediately forgets how slow I am, because the next time we run together, he's next to me going, "can't you pick up the pace ANY?" Which is why I've mostly given up on us running together, and agreed to it this once because I was concerned about safety and also can't really drive myself home after long runs.

The funny thing was, even though he was nowhere near me, he still kept me going. When we got back to the car, he offered to drive four miles down the trail and let me finish my run so I didn't have to cut it quite so short. On the way, he stopped at the grocery store and bought all of their food, and then met me at the bottom of the trail. Knowing that he would be waiting for me and not wanting to keep him kept me moving for the last four miles. So as a pacer, he's pretty much useless, but as crew? Priceless.

Housing and Health

2012-01-20T10:38:00.002-05:00

Last night I attended the Maryland Legislative Agenda for Women briefing, which is a fantastic event that talks about upcoming legislation that matters predominantly affecting women. One bill was the Maryland HOME act, which will prevent housing discrimination based on source of income, which matters for women because poverty is very much a women's issue, and women are more likely than men to be using alimony or child support or a public housing voucher to pay for housing. But one of the most interesting things that was mentioned as part of the importance of the bill was the connection between housing and public health.

Quoting directly from my briefing packet, which is citing a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, "The report concluded that women who were able to move to areas of lower poverty concentration reduced their risk for diabetes and obesity by one-fifth in each category. Studies show that a family's zip code and neighborhood are often greater determinants of health outcomes than more traditional factors such as race and ethnicity..."

I think this argument is interesting, but obviously, you can't just move people from poor areas into wealthy areas, because there are too many people. So while this is interesting, relocating families isn't the solution to our current public health and economic crises. There is also the fact that often situations of poverty are perpetuated by poor health, lack of adequate health care, or lack of health insurance.

I'm not trying to offer a solution here. I'm not even sure what my opinion is, other than that the current economic climate is bad, the health care system is broken, and everything is so connected to everything else that we can't solve any problems in a vacuum. But everyone wanted more feminism and social policy discussion, so let's hear your opinions on the connections between poverty, housing, and public health in the comments!

Being a Good Friend

2012-01-18T08:30:00.000-05:00

I find being a good friend to be a struggle sometimes. It seems like it should be so easy, but all relationships take work. Personally, I am terrible at two things: (a) communicating that I care about the other person and (b) communicating when I am upset about something.

When I say I am bad at communicating that I care about the other person, I mean - I am bad at asking somebody what is new with them. I'm terrible at asking anyone (even my husband) how their day was. I have a tendency to hog conversations. I have a tendency to identify with people by comparing their experiences to my own, which means I come across as a story-topper and seem like I'm making everything about me. Being aware of this tendency and how irritating I find it in other people makes me try to do it less, or just offer that I've had a similar experience and wait for them to ask.

When I say I am bad at communicating when I am upset, I mean, I am a huge avoid-er of confrontation. When I first had to tell opposing counsel that we weren't going to consent to what they wanted and we wanted them to give us money, I felt sick over it for two days and put it off as long as I could. Whenever a friend upsets me, I stew and rant about it, but I don't say to them, "when you did x, you hurt my feelings." Which means that the issue doesn't get resolved, and I'm likely to turn to gossiping behind somebody's back to say that I'm upset. I'm also likely to simply sit there and take it when somebody is lashing out at me, which probably isn't healthy, but I don't know how to diffuse a person and point out logically that they are being irrational (since I hate it when my husband does this to me.)

What's funny is that I have these same problems in my marriage, but once I realized our relationship was strong enough, I began to be able to be angry at my husband and tell him that I am angry at him. I began to realize that my response to him asking how my day was needs to be "eh, okay" or "great" or "terrible" followed by, "how was your day?" Usually, then he will say, "pretty good. What went wrong for you?" Then I get to talk, but I have also made it clear that I care about his day. I try to apply this strategy to friends. When I realize I haven't taken a breath in awhile, I stop pretty randomly and say, "enough about me. How are you?" Then I try not to hijack the conversation. It's not cohesive, but it's not selfish either. I still don't know how to confront my friends when they do things that hurt my feelings or make me angry. I'm not confident enough in my friendships that they will weather any storm, the way I am about my marriage.

What do you find the most challenging about being a good friend? What advice do you have me for confronting somebody when they have hurt my feelings?

Monday Marriage Matters: Earnings

2012-01-16T08:30:00.000-05:00

First of all, blogger now allows stacked comments so you can reply to other people's comments, so let's all just jump for joy on that one and I look forward to adequately replying to your comments.

Secondly, I wanted to talk a little bit about marital earnings. Since I graduated from law school, my husband has outearned me at a rate of at least 2:1. When I was earning nothing, and he was earning everything, that was particularly difficult for me to cope with emotionally. But even now, when I finally make enough to cover my "half" of our rent, and pay for my health insurance, I still feel a little uncomfortable about not earning as much. This is for a few reasons.

1) It makes me feel like I'm not trying very hard. My husband works long hours at a job in a challenging and often difficult environment. I work reasonable hours (10-5) for a boss I really like, who doesn't have outrageous expectations or ever get mad at me when I make a mistake and who is supportive of my job search and where I want my career to go. My job can be really, really, really demanding, but most days it's just sort of hard, and it's not really challenging me the way I want to be challenged. (If you are thinking, "why doesn't she just get a new job?", you clearly don't understand this economy.)

2) It makes me feel like I don't have to take a job just because it pays well. That we earn enough money between us to support both of us and put some in savings means that I can hold out a bit and try to actually build a career in a field that I like. While this is the dream, it is not the reality for many of our friends in this economy and they have taken jobs that they don't enjoy, or they are working crazy hours, and I feel over-privileged that I do not have to make that choice. At the same time, money is a motivating factor to push yourself to find a job that challenges you, and lacking that motivating factor, I'm only applying to jobs that look fun and interesting to me that are geographically well situated for us. (Note: these are jobs like, "Medicaid and Estate Planning" and "Elder Law", not "ice cream taste tester.") This doesn't displease me, but it disquiets me because it's a luxury that not everyone has right now.

3) It makes me feel guilty because I have expensive hobbies. If you are following along, I work less than my spouse, I make less, and I'm the one who is always going to yoga or signing up for a gym or a triathlon or an expensive hockey league. My husband doesn't have pricey hobbies (and the ones he has, he doesn't have time for.) This makes me feel incredibly selfish and I haven't reconciled that feeling yet.

4) I feel like I'm not contributing. You would think that if I wasn't earning as much and had flexible hours, I would do all of the cleaning and the cooking and general housewifery. I don't. I cook dinner most nights because I like to eat before 8pm, and I do almost all of the grocery shopping, but I still don't do the laundry or do the dishes when I make dinner. The bottom line is, I do not think that I am making enough contributions to the marriage to justify that I am making less than half what my spouse makes.

So what do I do about these feelings? The most important thing is to talk about it. I talk about my feelings of inadequacy and discomfort with my husband, and he reassures me that it's fine and he's happy to let me try to build my career and get the experience I need and hold out for a good job. I talk to him before I spend a lot of money on a triathlon or a gym membership, so that he knows I'm not just spending his/our money without thinking it through. I make more of an effort to not make the house messier. I apply to jobs even if I'm not sure that they are the right choice, because I don't want "holding out" to become an excuse for laziness or keep me from getting a job that could be perfect for me, even if it doesn't look that way on paper. I take care of more chore-errands, because I drive to work and get to work later, therefore I can get an oil change before work or stop and pick up some household necessity on the way home. And for the most part, right now we live a lifestyle that I can afford, so I do not feel as if I am living significantly far beyond my means.

Does anybody else have a high income differential in your relationship? Do you struggle with it, or accept it?

Garden Planning

2012-01-11T10:47:00.000-05:00

I put us on the waitlist for a community garden this year instead of doing a CSA share. Hopefully we'll get a plot nearby, but then the question is - what do we plant?

The garden plot is organic, but I'm not sure if that means using organic seeds or just no pesticides or Miracle-gro or things like that. I'll assume organic seeds. I'm also not sure if there is any way of keeping squirrels out of the plots, as we have been having quite a time with that in our apartment, but hypothetically, let's say we can.

So then the question is: what do we grow?

But I know that we want to grow tomatoes, both cherry and roma, and peppers - red and yellow and green bell peppers. I would like to grow cucumbers because they are easy and don't take up a ton of space, and I think something prolific and delicious, like yellow squash or zucchini. Then there are the requisite dark leafy greens like spinach, arugula, and kale. I'm tempted by some kind of green bean or broccoli. But I don't know how anything but tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and zucchini grow. I know zucchini will ruin your life and take over your garden, but it yellow squash as bad? Herbs we will continue to grow in our aerogarden and our window box, since that has worked out pretty well for us (minus the squirrels).

There are some other tricky details about taking part in a community garden - for example, how often do we have to go tend it? Daily? Every other day? This website recommends 3-5 hours a week, which seems pretty manageable. Do we need to bring our own gardening supplies? (Only hoses, wheelbarrows, and wood chips/manure are provided.) Do you have a community or container or square foot garden? Any resources you recommend? Should I attempt to grow squash or not?

Downloading library books to your Kindle.

2012-01-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

Did you get a Kindle for Christmas? It seems like everybody did! It makes my 2nd generation Kindle look pretty sad, what with all these sleek new Kindles. There is also one major disadvantage to having a 2nd generation Kindle - no wireless, therefore borrowing books is a bigger pain than it will be for you, lucky new Kindle owner!

Nonetheless, both you and I are finally able to achieve a feat that has been the hope and dream of every bookworm since they were a small child. We can get library books in our pajamas, at unreasonable hours, without leaving our house. Yes, you say, I know, but how do I actually do it? I have heard tell of this mythical library lending, but so far have just figured out how to download free classic books that I didn't want to read in high school and certainly don't want to read now.

To start getting books for free from your local public library, you may need to go to the library and get a library card. If you have a currently working library card and PIN number, you are good to go! Otherwise, head to the library, bring some (official looking) mail if your driver's license doesn't have your current address, and sign yourself up. Then you head to the OverDrive website or the local library website. Note: In Baltimore, you do not google, "Baltimore City Public Library." You have to google, "Enoch Pratt Public Library" or you can head to the Maryland Overdrive site directly. Once you are at the site, log in using your library card number and pin.

You can search for books in the search form (in MD it's on the left.) The first thing you will notice and find frustrating is that the book you want probably isn't available. It isn't a perfect system, but it is free. There are two different links you can click to "save" the title. There is "my wishlist" or "my holds". If you just want to keep the book in mind, you add it to your wishlist. If you actually want the book, you click "my holds". Then it asks you for an email, and it will email you when it becomes available. You can also go to "my account" and then "my holds" and it'll show you where you sit on the wait list.

Once the book is available, you will get an email, and then go to the Overdrive website within the specified time and put the book in your cart and checkout. Once you checkout, you go to the Amazon page where you get to download the book, and if you are on wireless, you send it to your Kindle! If you have an old fashioned Kindle like mine, you hook up a cord, download it to your computer, and then transfer it manually.

You have your book for two weeks, so happy reading! If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can also borrow books from the Prime Lending Library, but there is a detailed diagram with pictures here, so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel.

Lady Firefighters

2012-01-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

My grandpa used to tell me, "I'm going to lecture the lady firefighters next week" or "I just met a lovely lady firefighter." He was a firefighting instructor and worked with firefighters around the country trying to make sure they didn't get killed by the buildings they were fighting in. I personally prefer to call lady firefighters "firefighters", but he was enchanted by female firefighters and how they took on a somewhat sexist industry and worked hard to save lives. When he died (6 years ago this month), several of the people that spoke at his memorial mentioned his commitment to women firefighters and not discriminating against female firefighters and mentoring female firefighters when he had the opportunity.

So when Lauren shared Beth's guestpost, I was pretty outraged. It is 2012! My grandpa was more evolved than this! I spent my high school years being asked by people why I thought feminism was even necessary since we'd reached equality. To them, I say, because small town fire departments would still rather have incompetent volunteers than women. Eff that noise. I'm not sure yet what we can do to help Beth, but I'm sure if you wanted to leave a supportive comment, she would appreciate it!

Nesting: Crafting Space

2012-01-04T08:30:00.000-05:00

Last year, before the wedding, we decided to move into a place that had, y'know, separate closets. It also came with a "bonus" room, which means that we have enough space for each of us to get our own space. And it means that I get my own crafting room. Technically it is the crafting and guest room, but I'm more than happy with it. For the first year and a half, I made do with a table that came with our apartment as a table for my cutting mat and my serger, and a desk my parents gave us because I'm pretty sure it's bombproof and my sewing machine weighs upwards of 20-30 lbs. The room came with built-in shelving which we were using for storing suitcases, wedding gifts, and other items.

I didn't really take before pictures of our re-design, but I have the pictures from before we moved in:

The table that came with the apartment. It was significantly more bowed by the time I was done with it.

The built in shelving.

Awhile ago, it occurred to me that I needed a good way, a really good way, to store my scissors, thread, buttons, bobbins, ribbon, and everything else. As the husband and I were discussing what might work best, an idea hit me. A pegboard!!!

(source)

Apparently I'm not alone. A quick Pinterest search yielded dozens of craft room pegboard ideas. I was sold. We drove to Lowes, bought a 4x4 pegboard, realized it wouldn't fit in our car, cut it in half, and then drove home where I painted the pegboard using some light blue paint that we had lying around. We also bought a starter kit of pegboard accessories which should get me started.

And started I did:

(first attempt at rearranging)

(still rearranging)

So right now the space looks a little more like this - making better use of the built-in shelving that came with the place, and helping me stay organized.

I decided that I could wait until it looked like a catalog, or I could just be a normal person whose house isn't arranged by professional designers and show you all that even if we aren't perfect, we can still take steps towards a future in which we can find our scissors.

Monday Marriage Matters: New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

I'm surprisingly big on New Year's resolutions for somebody that makes fun of New Year's Resolutions. I don't believe in the big, "this year, I'm going to lose 200 pounds, work less, spend less, and take up curling" resolutions. I don't believe in saying, "I will not eat any sugar in 2012." But four years ago, my New Year's resolution was to start running, and this year, I'm running my first marathon.

I like to start the year by looking at where I am in my life, and where I want my life to be. My resolution for 2011 was to get a job. I looked at where I was, considered what it would take to get a job, and more importantly, the kind of job that I wanted, and I made it happen. Not totally, but enough to the point where I have a job that I like. It may not be the last job I ever have, but

My resolution for 2012 is to be less cluttered and less lazy about housework. While the instinct is to go buy a ton of organizers at Ikea and the Container Store, I think I am better off using the egg timer that my in-laws got me to make sure I'm getting in my 10 minutes a day of cleaning, and to try to actually adhere to doing weekend chores, which are so easy to let go when all I want to do with my weekends is sleep and run and see my family and friends.

I think it's also important for couples to make resolutions together. In the past, we have set a goal to budget our finances better and make sure that we are being smart about money. This year, we are both trying to be better about making sure chores get done, but in terms of making a general resolution, and since the world might end and all that, I suggested we resolve to live 2012 with no regrets.

Not "no regrets" in the "seize the day! fly to Tahiti on a whim!" kind of way. But no regrets in the making-sure-we-get-things-done-and-still-have-fun way. No regrets means not getting to the end of a weekend and saying, "gee, I wish we'd gotten more done" or "gee, I need a weekend to recover from my weekend." No regrets means saying yes when you might have said no. No regrets means taking chances and making smart choices for ourselves and our relationship. It means not acting selfish or taking our partnership for granted. It means making sure that we are balancing work and play in a way that works for both of us. It means making sure that we are saving money, but also spending money in ways that matters to us and is helpful to us. It means trying new things, together or separately.

My latest issue of Self tells me that telling others about your resolution increases accountability. So feel free to share yours!

The New Blog!

2012-01-01T21:04:00.002-05:00

So, in the spirit of 2012 being here, we've rolled out the "new blog". So the blog name and the header has changed, and everything else is the same. I originally wanted to call the blog "Tea for Two" but the URL wasn't available, so Wedding for Two it was. Our wedding planning archives are still here, and the wedding planning tags will stay in the right hand corner.

In taking into account the survey responses, we/I will continue writing about marriage, and begin to write about being an adult and about feminism and social issues, with a little bit here and there on crafting and nesting. I've decided I'm also going to do book reviews, because a number of people have been asking on Twitter recently for book ideas, and I always like it when bloggers share what they are reading. If you don't read, you can skip 'em.

So welcome to 2012! Stick around. It'll be fun.

Cleaning from top to bottom

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

Do you know how to clean a house? I don't.

Don't get me wrong. I know how to clean a kitchen, bathrooms, even the dining room. I know how to put things away in the bedroom and vacuum and sweep. But life gets in the way of daily cleaning, and eventually, our whole house looks like a tornado hit it and my poor husband has given up on me, and eventually it's time to put things to rights. Since we are having my in-laws over after Christmas and we are having our annual New Year's Party, we need to spend the next week seriously cleaning house. Which requires me to admit that well, I don't really know how to clean a house. Obviously, the proper steps are:

1) Get stuff off the floor/counter/couch/bed and put it away
2) Clean/vacuum/sweep/lysol/change tablecloth, etc. until shiny.

However, I don't really know the right order to start tackling things in. Normally I start with the dining room, because the table is kind of a vacuum/dumping ground and is covered in stuff. However, it occurred to me recently that when doing a week-long deep clean, you must instead start with the least frequently used rooms of the house, as they are the least likely to get messed up again. So I have opted instead to start with the guest room and the living room. Next will be the bathrooms, the hallway/steps, the office, and then our bedroom, and lastly, the dining room/kitchen.

In addition to not knowing the right order, I'm never sure where to start. I fixate on little things and abandon the big picture. I focus on dusting the molding, not clearing the stuff from the coffee table. I have helped enough other people clean to know that this failure to look at the big picture is not unique. It ends in throwing all of the things in a box and shoving it in the bathtub/closet/under the table before people come over. This is bad. In the future, I plan to use this "clean from top to bottom, left to right" method to avoid fixating on anything too large or too small and move quickly. I am also in the market for a better method for dusting besides Swiffer dusters, so if you have any suggestions, let me hear them. (I do not actually know how to dust anything. I know how to use pledge, but I don't think I'm supposed to use pledge on the fake plants in our bookshelf. I also don't want to just shake the dust into the air, as I have a severe dust allergy.)

As far as keeping a house in good shape, I really like a lot of the ideas from this Daily Quick Cleaning Checklist. We try to do 10-minute cleaning bursts daily, which helps a lot, but it's easy to fall behind on them. But I'm open to more ideas - how do you keep your house clean? What order do you clean in? How do you dust?

Monday Marriage Matters: Christmas Shopping

2011-12-19T08:30:00.000-05:00

I've recently noticed something on television that I find a little disturbing. All of the ads about holiday shopping either show:
1) Mom/wife doing all of the shopping for the family.
2) Husband confused and terrible at buying gifts, wrapping gifts, and guessing what people want.

I find this disturbing mostly because it mimics the gender roles in my relationship, and I never thought of our holiday shopping practices as gendered. This is because in the past, I've been a student or I've been unemployed. Therefore I have had the free time to go do all the holiday shopping. In fact, since high school, I've played Santa for my entire family, from my grandmother to my little cousins, and this trend continues. My mom and I usually go Black Friday shopping to buy gifts for people, but this year we missed that and I've done most of the shopping on my own because my mom has been overwhelmed at work (it turns out being a highly successful doctor is demanding.)

So this year, as in years past, we've collected together family wishlists, organized what we are getting, and then I ordered everything on Amazon or picked it up on my way to work. We tackle wrapping together in the evenings leading up to Christmas, and try to make sure we have everything organized and together for multiple Christmases. It works for us, because I don't work long hours and the Amazon prime subscription is on my account. It works for us because I love buying gifts for people. I love the challenge of thinking of what somebody wants or needs that they don't even know they want or need. I love writing down gift ideas I have for people months in advance, and then three months later they are delighted I have remembered something they mentioned in passing. I am, largely, the kind of person who is a little too blunt and a little too awkward and often says the wrong thing, but with gifts, I can say or do the right thing.

It nags at me, though, the gendered-ness of it. That we reinforce the idea that women, as the caretakers and the nurturers, are the ones responsible for the purchasing of holiday gifts. How can I fight the stereotype while not giving up on the thing I love the most about the holidays? What do you and your partner do?

Does getting married mean growing up?

2011-12-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

The thing I find the most challenging about being married is this idea that being married means I'm automatically a grown-up. Have you seen Parks & Recreation? April and Andy, the only married couple on the show, are about as far from being grown-ups as anyone I've ever seen. But I love the episode where they go to Bed Bath & Beyond and Andy finally admits to April that he really wants his own fork.

April doesn't mind sharing a fork because she doesn't want to grow up because grown-ups are boring. I won't spoil the episode if anybody hasn't seen it (and if you haven't, why haven't you seen it? Go watch it. Then we'll talk.) but I will say, these are two people that resist the idea that being married means you need to be a grown-up.

Now, I badly want to be a grown-up and I don't mind being boring. But I do mind this idea that somehow, I'm supposed to have grown up overnight just because I'm married now. I still leave my socks everywhere and my poor tired husband still follows me around trying to get me to put my cereal bowl in the sink (or the dishwasher) after breakfast. I forget what day trash day is and when I don't put a new bag in the recycling bin, I still throw whatever I'm holding into it, figuring I'll put in a new bag later.

One of my friends defined being a grown-up as, "realizing your actions have consequences, and learning from that." For example, when I started working, I realized I could not just throw my suits on the bedroom floor because I did not have time to iron them daily. So I started hanging my suits up. I was continuously late to work because I couldn't find my keys. I'm now much better about hanging my keys on the key hook we keep next to the door. I hope that in a few years, I will be the kind of person that puts all my clothes away or in the hamper, that makes sure both socks make it into and out of the laundry, and never has to soak another cereal bowl.

What does being a grown-up mean to you?

Monday Marriage Matters: Holiday Cards

2011-12-12T11:21:00.001-05:00

I started sending holiday cards after my first year in Law School. I made my own cards, and found post-finals to be a great time to get my craft on and relax with a big pile of red and green paper, rubber stamps, and glue dots. Mark sent his own cards, and occasionally, signed cards to his friends that I wrote out. This continued for three years of thoughtful, heartfelt Christmas cards which went out in a haphazard process of me not having any idea who I actually sent cards to (and later finding a card that did not get mailed to x, y, or z under my craft table.) It was not a good system, but I found that I really liked the tradition of keeping in touch with certain people via holiday card (something my parents value as well, because for people that do not have Facebook, the holiday cards are how you keep in touch with people.) Last year, we made the jump to photo cards which do not require exhausting heartfelt sentiments and instead let you generally wish people the best for the coming year. (And a Merry Christmas if you and they celebrate it.)

I loved last year's cards that I did on Shutterfly (who sponsored them), except they broke my one rule: dont send cards that say Merry Christmas. But the thing was, I really wanted a card that let me tell people that I passed the bar exam, because that was news that I got in November after the wedding and if you weren't on Facebook, you didn't know. So I used one of Shutterfly's "year in review" cards that let us talk about the highlights of the year. You can't see them really well on this card but they are to the right of the photos and we listed exciting things that happened to me, to Mark, and to both of us, followed by "yay!!!" at appropriate intervals.

It was cheesy, but we were told it was just cheesy enough. (I think the key when you don't have kids and send Christmas cards that are a little ironic.) We didn't send it to Jews who are offended by Christmas cards, and we didn't send to our friends because we didn't want to spend the money on extra cards (erm, sorry friends). The year-in-review theme is a good option to consider if you are sick of writing Thank You notes, don't want to write a holiday letter, but have news to share with people.

This year we ordered holiday cards from Vistaprint. I don't expect the quality to be as good as Shutterfly, but we are sending 80+ cards this year and they were less than $40 for 80. I also looked into Mixbook, and both Mixbook and Vistaprint let you customize the text of your card so it says Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings or Happy New Year or Let it Snow. I am anxiously awaiting our holiday cards arrival in the mail, but since we picked the "Slow" shipping, I suspect they will end up arriving the week between Christmas and New Years. That's fine, since really, they are New Year's cards.

This is our refined holiday card strategy (roughly the same as our process for wedding invites, so this might look familiar to you):
1.) Pick a photo, bicker over whether holiday photo is holiday-y enough since you took it over the summer and are wearing t-shirts. If no photo can be agreed on, stage a photo shoot. Ask your parents to take the photo. Argue over photographic style differences and whether a flash is necessary with said parent. Vow to hire a professional next year. Upload photo to card website. Debate card layouts and language. Order cards.
2.) Consolidate and update addresses before cards arrive, perform a mail merge and print labels
3.) Buy stamps (when you have 15 overseas family members needing cards, you spend more on postage than cards).
4.) When cards arrive, label and stamp while watching a favorite holiday film (my preferred favorite is The Santa Clause). Write personal notes on cards if you really want to. Add a "Happy Hanukkah" note on the Jewish cards unless Hanukkah has already ended for the year. Look up spelling of Hanukkah if you are not sure.
5.) Mail cards!

What do you do about holiday cards?

The New Blog

2011-12-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

Our domain name expired recently, and so, instead of renewing it, I think we'll be changing the name/direction of the blog. I'm pretty much done writing about weddings. They still excite and interest me, but I feel that I have very little left to say on the subject that you couldn't find in the archives, which, as part of the redesign and renaming, I will probably get around to organizing better.

I want to keep writing, and as several of you have expressed that you would like it if I kept writing, I would like to know what you want me to keep writing about. If you want Mark to keep writing, I think you'll need to start a change.org petition or something, he's a really terrible blogger. But he does the laundry, so I really can't complain.

I will continue Monday Marriage Matters, and then I would like to write 1-2 more posts during the week about...something. I want to talk about married life, and nesting, and other things, but not in the "home decor and throw pillows" way, more like in the "creating an intentional home that represents who we are and is a pleasant place to spend time". I want to talk about crafting, not necessarily in the making tutorials and sharing all my craft projects, but instead, in the "oh my goodness I'm a busy professional and however will I fit in enough time to do the things I want to do instead of just the things I have to do?" And most importantly, I want to talk about these things with you guys, not at you guys. Which means installing a plug in so we can have conversations, but also, talking about things you want to talk about. So please! Come on over, answer the poll in the left hand corner, or comment, and tell me what you want to talk about. And please suggest a name for the new blog!

Did you buy the book yet?

2011-12-07T07:33:00.001-05:00

Okay, for starters, today is my big sister's birthday. And she's all kinds of awesome. So Happy Birthday, Margaret!

(at the wedding weekend 5k)

During wedding planning, my big sister was my sanity saver, my rock, my reminder that, "none of this really matters" and "it's your wedding, but x is a bad idea". (x being: running the 5k on the actual wedding day; doing my own flowers while also making my own dress; serving non-vegetarians nothing but eggplant or tofu). It was my sister who told me that "your wedding is going to start late, there is nothing you can do about it, stop freaking out." It was my sister who negotiated with all the other brides at Running of the Brides to get me my dress, and my sister who talked me off the ledge when I decided it wasn't the right dress, and convinced me that really, it was the right dress. I freely admit that I totally botched the bridesmaids dress picking (look, it's a disaster no matter what), and she didn't complain about any of it. None of the advice she gave me while planning, or now, while being a wife, has been wrong.

So, it seems really fitting that the APW Book Buy is on her birthday. Because this book is going to be the big sister you don't have, if you don't have one, or yours isn't doing the things big sisters are supposed to do and you need some serious sanity. It will be the calming voice of reason telling you that there is no wrong way to get married. It will be the thing that helps you stay grounded when your mom is going on and on about favors or great Aunt Ida or needing to have a church wedding. And for those of us who are already married? It will give us better ways to give unsolicited wedding advice to others, because we all need to be the big sister to somebody down the line.

So get thee to Amazon or the bookstore and pre-purchase your copy now!

Monday Marriage Matters: It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-12-04T21:17:00.001-05:00

I've become very interested lately in the rituals of different members of couples surrounding the holiday season. My sister-in-law and her husband, for their first Christmas living together, are negotiating whether to decorate the Christmas tree before December 24th, as his family always decorates their tree together on Christmas Eve. For the past couple of years, my sister has gotten a mini tree from Whole Foods and decked it out with Hanukkah lights and ornaments, compromising with her Jewish husband over how much Christmas they should have in their house. One friend admitted that in her family, they got their tree the day after Thanksgiving, but in her spouse's family, they got it much closer to Christmas, and they were trying to negotiate that. Mark and I are lucky, because we have relatively similar feelings about how to handle Christmas, and trees. Mostly learned through a series of trial and error.

My first Christmas in my own apartment, my roommates and I got a tree. We drove to the sketchy discount tree lot on Greenbelt Road in College Park, loaded a big evergreen into the backseat of my Ford Taurus, piled the three of us in the front seat, and then took it back to Courtyards, where we carried it up three flights of steps and managed to somehow get it in a tree stand.

After three weeks of watering the tree and getting pine needles stuck in my hair, and vacuuming needles until sometime after Easter, I started to see the merits of an artificial tree. Mark, probably sensing he would be the one carrying the tree up several flights of steps, agreed. We tried the live potted tree one year and when that didn't work, we broke down, and purchased a six foot, pre-lit, Christmas tree. Now, there are people who are hardcore about wanting live trees. Those people have probably never watched this video. I have nothing against live trees, but cutting a tree down every year just to decorate my house seemed wasteful, although it's not like my artificial tree is significantly more environmentally friendly. (But seriously, I love live trees. I just don't think the "smell" is worth all that work.)

I come from a family that does not decorate. For holidays, or generally. My parents have stark white walls in every room of the house, with a few paintings done by my great-grandfather. They are wonderful people, but they are not skilled at decorating. Christmas decorating for my folks involves my dad throwing lights at the bushes, my mom breaking out the ceramic Christmas tree that my great-grandpa painted for her, and my dad putting those electric candles in the windows. For Mark's family, Christmas decorating involves my mother-in-law hauling out ten bins of Christmas decorating materials, crafting a Christmas village on a special table, rearranging furniture, hanging Christmas paraphernalia everywhere, and stocking candy dishes with holiday m&ms.

When it comes to how much we decorate, the answer has been largely one that appeals to Mark's frugality and my laziness. Mark hangs holiday lights in the windows, we put up the tree, a wreath goes on the door, and we hang stockings. We are slowly but surely amassing a collection of Christmas figurines that decorate the mantel and bookcases, but our decorating remains fairly subtle. Every year, I pick up some stuff at the after-Christmas sales and stick it in the bins for next year, leading to a pleasant surprise the following December.

We are lucky, I think, that we are both able to be flexible enough on our traditions and rituals and are generally in line that: you do not celebrate Christmas before Thanksgiving, that holiday cards should be non-denominational, that Christmas should be spent with family. We are trying to create our own traditions - we take Christmas Eve (or the day before) off from family and spend it just with each other, cooking an elaborate meal that takes an insane amount of time and is fantastically good. Then we open our stockings by the fire.

What do you do to celebrate the holidays? Do you and your partner celebrate the same holidays? How do you make it work if you don't? Are you creating new traditions together or building on ones you already had with your family?

Monday (er, Tuesday) Marriage Matters: Driving

2011-11-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving went well, although, as I suspected, there is no perfect solution to splitting holidays. So we're still working on it.

Thanksgiving also brought up another interesting issue in our marriage - driving. Recently, when discussing our Egyptian friends, Mark turned to me and asked if the mom in the family drove. I looked at him as if he was insane, and said, "of course." (Women in Egypt are allowed to drive.) He shrugged and said he had never seen her drive. I looked at him and said, "I don't drive when we're together." Which is true, except for when we go to some beer related event or festival and I DD.

This weekend, I did more driving on a car trip than I think I've done the entire time we've been together. I don't enjoy driving, and I definitely don't enjoy driving on long car trips. Couple this with the fact that my husband is a major backseat driver (he starts tapping me from like, two miles away to slow down when there is a car ahead with the brake lights on), and that I hate driving stick shift, and yeah, my husband does 90% of the driving when we are together.

I see this dynamic in a lot of couples, and it feels pretty gendered, other than my parents, where my mother drives and my father "navigates" or, sometimes, covers his eyes and cowers in the corner while on mountains and cliffs. I have a number of little old lady clients who do not drive, and have never driven. The reason a lot of people give is that their spouse likes to drive, and they do not. I believe I also used this excuse as to why I do not do the income taxes and got a dirty look from my husband, who also does not like to do the taxes.

I always offer to drive, in the "I'm offering because I know you'll say no" kind of way, but this weekend, I wound up behind the wheel for part of the trip up to New Jersey and the entire trip home, while my husband sat next to me in the car and tried to make pleasant conversation. That lasted for about 20 minutes and then we decided to see if we could download books on tape. We wound up listening to 12 Angry Men for most of the ride, which was a lot of fun, and then the Indigo Girls for the rest of the night, as whoever drives gets to pick the music (I suspect this is a big part of why my husband offers to drive.)

So weigh in - do you drive the most, or does your spouse? Is it always the man who does more driving? In same-sex couples, is it the same way, that one partner prefers to drive? Do you discuss it, or is it just the way it is?

Monday Marriage Matters: The Holidays

2011-11-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

It wouldn't, couldn't, be Thanksgiving week without the "how the eff do you split the holidays between your families" post, now could it?

(yes, it's too early for Christmas, but when a fellow APWer invites you over to make gingerbread houses, you do not say no)

This year, we are doing that thing that last year I said I wouldn't do: we are going to visit Mark's family for Thanksgiving. Which means that not only do I have to go to New Jersey, I'm going to be spending Thanksgiving with my brother-in-law, who normally I like, but he roots for Dallas and apparently the Dallas game is required viewing on Thanksgiving. I'm trying to not be petty about this, but seeing as I've already e-mailed my SIL to see if there is anything else planned during the Dallas game for the rest of us to do, that's clearly out the window.

I find myself feeling incredibly anxious about not spending Thanksgiving with my family. It turns out that also, not hosting Thanksgiving does not stop me from worrying that a) we won't have enough food or b) I'm not making enough food. Which is why I've offered to bring 5 dishes to Thanksgiving dinner.

I would be lying if I did not talk about one of the bigger issues here: I'm spending Thanksgiving with strangers. My sister-in-law has invited both her family and her in-laws, and all are coming (is this what normal people do? My family is hard pressed to do anything normal.) I have met, and like, her husband's family (they are pretty much the nicest, friendliest, most fun-having people I've ever met), but Thanksgiving should be the time of year in which you can wear elastic waist pants and not worry about sticking your elbow in the cranberry sauce, not a time of year to be on your best behavior so you don't humiliate your sister (perhaps by not writing a blog post about how afraid of her in laws you are...). In addition, I don't know how they feel politically, which shouldn't be an issue at Thanksgiving, I'll agree, but I do enough political work that it sometimes comes out, and it's also REALLY hard to stay quiet when somebody else says something I don't agree with. Also, will they follow the seemingly age-old rule that the womenfolk all get up after dinner and do the dishes together while the men sit around the table drinking brandy? Because that rule sucks and I don't want to take part in it, but I don't want to seem unhelpful.

I'm trying to focus on the fact that I get Christmas with my family and that this is what our families asked us to do this year - his sister asked to host Thanksgiving, mine wanted to host Christmas, and his mother kindly requested we come up with a way to stop eating and running at the holidays, which is probably fair but has left me without something to agonize and stress out over and I'm just not sure how to celebrate the holidays without that. (Clearly I'm substituting my stranger-danger anxiety instead.)

How are you managing this issue this year? Does anyone have any advice on how to be nice to the Dallas fans at Thanksgiving? Or to avoid telling somebody that you think that Herman Cain is maybe not such a great choice for President? How do you get the men to get up and help with the dishes as well as the women?

Monday Marriage Matters: Getting In Shape

2011-10-31T09:15:00.002-04:00

In September, I stepped up my half-marathon training and my husband started running again. We both quickly realized that his four or five miles runs were as hard on him as my ten and eleven mile runs. This is a problem because in the past, he's been able to run 4-5 miles with very little training and no problems (yeah, I know, I'm jealous too.) I thought that the fact he rides his bike to work and goes rock-climbing regularly would be enough to keep him in shape - but the reality is that those daily bike rides amount to maybe 3 miles of riding, and with our crazy schedules these days, his rock-climbing went from regular to occasional. We stopped going on long weekend bike rides when we got back from our trip to Wales, for which we had done the long weekend bike rides as training.

So we've started working out together. I use the term pretty loosely. But for the past month or so, we wake up at the same time (which means I'm getting up a half-hour earlier than I used to) and go into the office/gym together, where one of us uses the treadmill and the other person does weights, or we both do a workout video, or I do a workout video and he lifts weights. It's been going pretty well, although we are often considerably tired and hard to get out of bed. Sometimes we oversleep and skip the workout. But overall, it's a better routine for both of us. One thing I have realized is that nobody ever taught Mark the proper form for squats or lunges, so I'm really glad we started working out together and I can make sure he doesn't hurt himself.

We've also started running together. Not actually running together, but when I go for a run, my husband also goes for a run. We had a somewhat successful run in Michigan in which we stayed near each other most of the time, otherwise we just leave the house at the same time and run along the same general path. Since I'm training for my first marathon, my runs are typically longer. As winter sets in, it's too dark in the mornings to run outside, and soon it will be too cold in the morning and too dark in the evening, so we are struggling to come up with creative solutions. I can run later in the morning, once the sun is up, but I think Mark is going to be stuck on the treadmill through the winter.

Our semi-together workouts have got me thinking that it would be nice if we had a way to workout that actually involved us working out together, besides going for walks. I've been thinking of setting up some kind of circuit that involves some kind of partner drills, but the only ones I can think of involve a medicine ball, which we don't have, and pose the possibility of significant risk to the wall. I've considered moving our Wii Fit upstairs to the gym-office so that we can do Wii boxing against each other, but I don't know how well that would work out for us. Are there any other good games we could check out? (We don't have a Wii fit and I don't want one.)

It feels good to be getting back in shape together, and it feels even better to have somebody who motivates me and pushes me to get up and work out. We could look at this as working out together will help us live longer and have a better life together, but I prefer to think of it as a way to spend time together and enjoy each other's company and try new things together.

Really Lazy Bunting

2011-10-26T08:12:00.000-04:00

I went to RenFest last week with my in-laws and my parents, and one of the things I noticed was that they had awesome bunting strung up. Except it wasn't actually bunting. It was lazy-girl bunting. (I'm not assuming that only girls make bunting. I'm using lazy-girl as a generic term here instead of poor man's bunting.)

What does lazy-girl bunting look like?

A single strand does look a little bare, but they had it zig-zagging the whole way through the festival and it looked awesome. I thought it would be a great way for somebody to add a lot of color to their wedding for almost no money - because everyone has extra ribbon lying around (especially anyone that registered at Williams Sonoma) - and ribbon can be bought for pretty cheap at craft stores or online. I love the look of all the multicolored ribbons, but if you wanted to only do your wedding colors, you could still spice it up with different textures and shades. It also takes up less space than regular flag bunting, and would be much more reusable, since you could re-purpose the ribbon to wrap Christmas presents or make crafts.

Any other ideas for lazy-girl bunting?

Monday Marriage Matters: Working Late

2011-10-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

So back in June, I found myself a job - it's not technically full-time, permanent employment, and it's not really lawyer work, but it's a job and I like it and things have been much better with both of us working, for about a million reasons. But there is one thing that is kind of frustrating about working, which is that things happen. They happen at the end of the day when we are desperately trying to get something in the mail, or ready to be filed, or signed, or faxed.

For the past four years, my husband has been working at a job at which things frequently happen that keep him after work. He gets home anytime between 5pm and 2:30am. (That only happened the once though.) I used to get really annoyed when I would have dinner ready at 6pm and he wouldn't get home for another half hour, or when I asked him when he was coming home and he said, "eventually." But, sometime in the past four years, I realized that I really shouldn't give him a hard time about coming home late, because usually he can't help it, and unless we have something we are trying to go to, it doesn't really cause that much disruption in our lives. (I did start a rule that if he wasn't home by 6, I was allowed to eat without him, since I liked to eat and then do homework. Since I'm not in school anymore, I no longer have this rule.)

When I started working, I got the same treatment. Mark is generally understanding that sometimes I get caught at work, with the only exceptions being when we have some place we need to go, like a flight to catch or a dinner party or something, which we have previously discussed and previously agreed to be home by a certain time for. I strive to do the same, although I think we can both admit it's a little frustrating when the inevitable happens and the other person gets stuck at work, even though we discussed this.

This has also fostered a general attitude of "rolling with the punches" when it comes to job stuff. When my husband tells me he has to go out of town, I roll with it, even if it means cancelling plans we already had. When I have a work event or networking function come up at the last minute, he makes dinner and doesn't complain. I feel like this general approach creates a supportive environment for us when it comes to our careers, which is nice, and it fosters a general spirit of reciprocity which we are trying to apply to other aspects of our relationship as well.

How do you and your spouse navigate working late? Do you work generally the same hours, or does one of you usually work later than the other? Do you have things where even though they sorta bug you, you just let them go and your spouse does the same?

A good weekend for weddings!

2011-10-21T08:37:00.003-04:00

Two big weddings this weekend! Sarah, who has a love story that makes you want to cry with happiness and a way of writing about the hard things that makes me feel optimistic, and Melissa, who is actually a real-life friend of mine. Well, it's weird. We met on the internet first. But she lives a mile away and we have a very good mutual friend and we're going to take over the world. So we're totally real-life friends. It'll be awesome.

Melissa and I, at the House of Delegates, working to pass same-sex marriage.

Have such great weekends, both of you, and anybody else getting married this weekend!

Monday Marriage Matters: Weddings as investments

2011-10-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

I've talked a little bit about the idea of weddings as investments on here before, and Becca has covered it as well, but I just wanted to say. After being married for more than a year, I unquestionably see our wedding now as an investment.

Our wedding was an investment in ourselves, in our relationship, in our baby family. There have been times in the past year when we've fought and wondered whether we were going to make it as a family. We wondered where the hell the light was at the end of the tunnel. When these things happened, I pictured the people we love the most in the world, sitting on benches, watching us swear vows to each other, and promising to support us.

When we go through difficult things, I focus on the words in our ceremony. I remember how the chocolate tasted and how sweet the wine was afterwards.

Our wedding was more than an investment in ourselves though. It was, as Becca said, an investment in joy. It was an investment in happy memories with the people I love the most in the world. When I think about my family, and the difficult things my cousins, my aunts and uncles, and my parents are facing, I think also about the way it felt to have my cousins lift us during the hora while the rest of our family and friends circled us.

Do I think that how much you spend on a wedding is at all important in determining the outcome of your marriage? No I do not. Do I think any of these things we got out of our wedding are because we spent more money on our wedding? No I do not. But the number one tip I see for cutting the budget of your wedding is to invite fewer people, and that is bullsh*t when it comes to the people you love. No savings is worth cutting important people out of your day, or hurting the feelings of the people you love. But there is more to an investment than money. There is time - there is investing a full day, or a full weekend, into your wedding. Some of us invest energy into crafts, into menu planning, into creating an awesome playlist. Some of us invest time into pre-marital counseling or creating a ceremony that reflects us. This is just to remind you that the work that you are doing now, the stress that you are feeling now, it's worth it, and it pays off.

Do I need to say it?

2011-10-11T18:00:00.003-04:00

Today is National Coming Out Day. You may have missed it, but we here at Wedding for Two are proud allies of LGBT persons and the movement for marriage equality. Here in Maryland, I have recently had the pleasure of getting involved with a fantastic organization, called the Free State Legal Project, which works to provide LGBT persons with legal assistance. You should give them some money, if you are feeling like donating to making the lives of LGBT people who Maryland totally betrayed by not passing same-sex marriage a little bit easier and better until we can actually pass same-sex marriage.

So. To our LGBT readership and all the other allies, I raise a glass to you today, and say, today, we declare ourselves allies, and tomorrow, we fight! For injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and as married people, we owe it to everyone to strengthen the institution of marriage by extending it to all who want to take a part.

Monday Marriage Matters: Anniversary!

2011-10-10T08:30:00.000-04:00

What have I learned in the year we have been married?
1.) Marriage is kind of difficult, but the thing that nobody tells you is that once you get married, people treat you like a grownup. And being a grownup is really effing hard and kinda really sucks. This is compounded by graduating from school in the worst legal job market in many, many years, and having to deal with being a grownup and being unemployed. So marriage is hard, but being a grownup is really hard. I don't know if marriage is easier for people who get married later and were already a grownup first, but I'm curious.

2.) Nothing shuts people who ask, "how's married life?" up faster than saying, "It's really really hard. But I think that's just because I'm unemployed and pretty bummed about the future a lot of the time and I sort of take it out on my husband." If you too find this question annoying, I highly recommend oversharing about all of the ways that being married is really hard. People squirm and get uncomfortable. It's great.

3.) I'm still not sure what to do with my last name.

4.) Even the most supportive, loving, saintly spouse will get frustrated if you continuously lose the mail somewhere between the mailbox and the dining room table.

5.) Marriage is a lot of work. There is something about being married that makes you say, "we have to work on this now, because we're still going to be married in forty years and it will still be a problem, and I would like to not have this same fight for forty years." Marriage involves a lot more compromise than we expected.

6.) Your wedding pictures have the power to constantly make you happy. I now understand what photographers mean when they say, "investment". I always thought it was a snarky way to make sure that you didn't notice them robbing you blind. But our pictures are art, they are powerful, they are memories, they are my pick-me-up on crummy days, and they make my heart sing. Worth. Every. Penny.

7.) You may feel an instinct to be a good wife, and to do things because you are a wife. Fight this. It's a dumb instinct. You will do things that actually make you unhappy and resentful. I didn't realize this until I spoke to a friend about it, and she said she finds it common in friends of hers who have gotten married and then talk about how hard it is. So. Spend the first year of marriage focusing less on how to be a good wife, or the person you think your partner wants to be, and work on growing up your own self into the person you want to be, because you are pretty darn awesome already, and your spouse likes who you are currently, so it's a safe bet that they will also like the person you are becoming.

8.) Being married is really different. I wish I could put it into words, but it turns out to be fairly un-expressable. But I will say, being married is, it turns out, a whole lot more than living together. Because a lot of people have said, when I respond to the "how's married life" question, with "it's different", with "really? but you lived together for like, three years!" Turns out that marriage is not, in fact, figuring out how to navigate the issues of who makes dinner and who leaves their socks on the floor and who looses the mail. Marriage is bigger. Marriage is building a life together. Marriage is every decision, every fight, every compromise paves the way for a future that requires you to continue to wake up every morning, and go to bed every evening, knowing that you made the right choice and that this is who you are spending your life with, even if right now maybe you don't like them so much.

9.) Building a life together is no small thing. There are matters of geography, of priorities, of health insurance and vacation time and how much time is a reasonable amount to spend with the in-laws. There are questions of spaces in your togetherness, and making sure you spend enough time together to make sure the other person still feels like a priority.

10.) It is okay to put your marriage first. Even my parents, who are, and I mean this in the most loving way possible, Dad, the neediest people I know about seeing us, are amazing understanding when I say, "my husband and I need to do x". My work understands when I say that I have to check with my husband to see if it's okay for me to stay late, come in early, or take a road trip to Pennsylvania. I turned down a potential job because the hours it required would have put too much of a strain on my marriage, and even in this economy, this was completely understood by everybody I talked to about it.

All pictures by Prema Photographic

Monday Marriage Matters: Grief

2011-10-03T19:59:00.004-04:00

We cannot be everything to everyone, even to the person that we are married to. For us, there is no better reminder of this than when we are facing grief. Because as much as we want to be there for us, neither of us is particularly good at consoling the other person. As we have just lost a very dear friend, the question of how we as people, and how we as married people, manage grief is weighing on me. Because what does it say about my marriage that my husband and I aren't very good at dealing with each other and raw, inconsolable grief?

Some people are good at managing other people's pain. My sister, for one. She is always funny when you need her to be, reassuring when you need her to be, and she never, ever says the wrong thing. Myself, I am pragmatic, hysterical, and blunt. I usually can be counted on to say the wrong thing. I usually take the approaching of feeding people when they are grieving*, and trying my darndest to make myself useful. I have learned, through much trial and error, that it is much better for me to just hold a person and say nothing than to try to console them, or to pick up the slack in other areas of their life so that they can focus on their own stuff.

My husband is equally bad, if not worse. He is generally happy to hold me when I am sad, but he also falls asleep when I'm sobbing in bed after somebody I love has just died. He listens while I talk about whoever I've lost, but he also doesn't understand when I don't go back to normal right away. When I called him two weeks ago to give him the news, he told me he would leave work if I wanted him to, but otherwise he would stay and meet me in the evening wherever I was with my family. I told him to keep working**, partly because I didn't want him to have to take the day off, but also because I knew he wasn't going to be nearly as helpful at helping me deal with the pain as my sister would be. The next day, after making sure our friends made their flight and picking up the pieces, I called in the reinforcements and my bridesmaid (once a bridesmaid always a bridesmaid) came over for dinner and listened to me and said all the right things while my husband made us dinner.

And while I recognize that we all grieve differently, and handle grief differently, and neither of us is trained as a grief counselor, and I fully recognize that we cannot all be everything to everyone, I feel a bit concerned that neither of us is well equipped to deal with the other person when they are facing grief. I don't really know how to improve this skill, because it's not really something I can, or want, to practice, but when we got married, we promised each other that we would be there for each other in the tough times, and I think we would both like to be there emotionally as well as physically. So how do you and your partner handle grief? Do you do everything together, like go to the hospital and the funeral and the services? Do you have any tips for us when we face this in the future?

*I called my sister on the way to the hospital and said, "should I bring lunch?" and she said, "they aren't us...they don't have inappropriate food-grief relationships."
**In retrospect, this was a mistake, because I could barely drive the car, and we have decided in the future, when something bad happens and I need to get somewhere fast while trying not to sob openly, Mark will drive me.

Monday Marriage Matters: Friends

2011-09-26T08:39:00.000-04:00

Last week, my family lost a very dear friend. His family has been a part of our family for almost 25 years, and in the wake of the sorrow and grief that we are all working through, I've gotten to thinking about couple-friends. Because I know that for a lot of us, it's very hard to make friends. There's the first problem, which is that making friends as an adult is challenging. You are likely to have work friends, or friends from various clubs or activities, but finding true kindred spirits is really challenging. In school, especially college, making friends is easy. You have a dorm environment, it's easy to pick out people with similar interests or ideas, and everybody needs to make friends.

The problem with being a couple is that often for couples, a person dates or marries somebody that doesn't represent all facets of their being. The reason you are friends with somebody isn't necessarily the reason why somebody else is friends with them, therefore it is entirely possible that your best friend could wind up with somebody that you don't really like or "get" at all. Sometimes they wind up with somebody you think is totally awesome, and then it turns out your spouse doesn't really like either of them. Sometimes they wind up with somebody you find extremely annoying, and then you and your spouse are sad because you have to stop hanging out with your friend because his/her annoying significant other always wants to come. Sometimes they are awesome but they live far away and you don't get to see them that often. (This was actually the case for us growing up - our friends lived in Egypt, so we saw them every other year, for about a month at a time.) All of this makes me think that meeting the right other couples to be friends with is largely a matter of luck and being in the right place at the right time, and being committed enough to wanting friends that you pursue a friendship.

There are some other problems with being friends with a couple, and I think it's often hard for both people in the couple to like both members of the other couple equally. This is the thing about my family and our friends that is really striking. My parents both were really good friends with both members of the couple. I should point out that if making friends for most people is challenging, making friends for my parents is Everest. My mother is painfully shy and can be hard to get to know, and my dad is well, my dad. But somehow, they found the two nicest, most warm-hearted people in the entire world who not only were willing to be my parents friends, but counted themselves lucky have my parents as friends! I think another big part of this was they had children the same age, which gave them something in common and meant that nobody got left behind when the other couple decided to have kids.

I don't think there are any real secrets to making friends as couples - I think the answer might just be to keep trying to meet people until you meet the right people? Or to make sure you regularly have dinner dates, etc. with other couples? Does anyone have any suggestions? Have you struggled to make friends with other couples, especially in a new city? Do you think, like I do, that it is largely a matter of luck and meeting the right people, or is there something more that is required?

Monday Marriage Matters: Travel

2011-09-19T08:30:00.000-04:00

My husband travels a lot for work - not a LOT a lot, but enough that I spend a certain number of nights alone. And the thing about being alone is that well, it's kind of annoying. It's super-frustrating to cook for one person, and not have anybody to do the dishes. But it's kind of liberating. Because I can eat junk food, like frozen waffles and boxed mac and cheese, and eat stuff he doesn't like, like broccoli, and watch crummy television and go for long runs after work and sleep late. Sure, nobody does the dishes, but I don't have to do them either. I can leave all the dishes until Friday morning and do a mad fit of dishes before my husband gets home. (Don't worry sweetie, I don't.)

The main reason I don't really like being alone is something I probably should be ashamed to admit as a, y'know, Grownup: I am afraid of the dark. I mean, it's not the dark so much as I'm really creeped out generally when I'm alone. When my husband goes out of town, I paranoidly check all of the closets; I have to have the TV or radio on because otherwise I interpret every creaking of every beam in our 100+ year old apartment as something going on. This also leads to my staying up waaaay past my bedtime watching Daily Show reruns for company.

There are a few other strains that one of us or the other traveling (because in the past it was me) puts on our relationship - when one of us works late, or works nights, like my husband does when he is out of town, it's really hard to touch base. We talk once or twice a day, for about five minutes, pretty much to make sure the other person is alive, the house is still standing, and to finalize any weekend plans, etc. that need to be made. It's just really hard to have a long conversation when there is a manlift backing up in the background of a conversation. It always feels like that episode of the Office where Pam and Jim keep calling each other and can't quite connect.

The other thing that's sometimes a problem is when a last minute trip comes up and we already had weekend plans, which means that he gets home and then we're off camping or to his folk's house for the weekend, or we're throwing some kind of party and the house needs to be sparkling. It's hard to shift gears suddenly from not seeing each other to spending all our time together, and I always come out of it saying something like, "I just need some space right now!" Usually, eventually, we settle down and he does the laundry and I make dinner, and then we eat together and get a chance to actually enjoy each other's company, but sometimes that takes days.

Does anyone else have a traveling spouse? How do you keep in contact and make it work if you can't talk regularly? Any suggestions for good single person meals? Bonus if they involve broccoli. I'm not a big soup person though, so I'm reluctant to make a batch of soup and live off of it all week.

Surprising things from The Knot

2011-09-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and we were talking about The Knot. And I have a lot of issues with the Knot, although they've corrected some of my big graphic design issues with the site (no more pop ups!) But I noticed one thing that was awesome, when I went to help my friend with her venue search. Because the thing that the Knot now allows you to sort by is whether the venue is handicapped accessible.

If you have a handicapped family member, you know how hard it can be to find a handicapped accessible wedding venue. Even family members you don't know are handicapped might show up in a wheelchair - that they didn't mention to you because they didn't want to trouble you.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone else know that, because maybe you're venue hunting and maybe you hate the Knot, and you've promised you would never go on there, but if you're looking for a handicapped accessible venue, it's a darn good place to start. They also now sort by other things, like whether there is outdoor space available, or whether there is a Kosher option available (but seriously, are there venues that can't make a Kosher option happen? That seems to me like the one time that you let the couple bring in outside catering, even if you are proprietary. Weigh in in the comments.)

Also, if you loved your venue, make sure to submit it to the APW Venue directory, because that is going to be amazing.

Monday Marriage Matters: Guest Post

2011-09-12T08:30:00.000-04:00

Remember Mike and Stacy and their fabulous seal-and-send invites? It's okay if you don't. All you need to know about Mike and Stacy is they are poster children for marriage. Mike and Stacy make marriage look fun, and they are always thinking ahead to their next adventure. So when they told us they were going to join LV's Ride and ride their bicycles across the country, nobody thought it was a weird thing for two young married people to do, but recently it occurred to me that riding a bicycle with your spouse, and a group of 10 other riders, staying in churches and camping outside with them, for two months, might take a toll on a marriage. So I asked them to share their story with you, and here it is:

As we flew out to Oregon for our west-to-east cross country cycling trip, days before our first wedding anniversary, we were filled with excitement. In addition to anticipating amazing views of scenery and landscapes and the joys and challenges of cycling for 60 days, we were looking forward to meeting our fellow riders. We said, "Let's not ride together all the time." We wanted to avoid being THE married couple, and make sure we weren't viewed as excluding ourselves from the roving community.

Just a few weeks into the ride, we needed to reevaluate. We didn't like riding miles away from each other, and arriving at our destinations sometimes hours apart. We found ourselves frustrated and less than impressed with our other companions. While it was fun to have different experiences to discuss at the end of the day, we wished we had shared the day's scenery and challenges with each other instead. We decided that since we were, in fact, married, people would understand if we wanted to ride with each other every day.

Being the only married couple in a group of 20- and 30-somethings as we traveled from town to town earned us an interesting label. We were often introduced as a novelty: "And these are our MARRIED riders!" Knowing we were married often caused people to feel they needed to cater differently to us. As strange as it felt, the response had its perks. Sticking together meant that the nursery room at a host church could be reserved for us (while the rest of the team slept sardines-style in the hall). It also gave us permission to sneak away every now and then - getting a hotel on our anniversary night and having our own two-person tent.

However, we quickly learned that traveling with your spouse isn't all honeymoon nights and lovely roadside conversations. Being each other's best friend meant we shared our greatest joys and our biggest trials. It's much easier to vent honestly (and sometimes take out one's frustrations) to the person with whom you're most comfortable. This meant that we could go for miles not talking to each other, or miles shouting at each other. We also discovered more things on which we shared a deep connection. At each day's end, and at the ride's final end, we both agreed that we wouldn't have wanted to share the trip with anyone else. Having dozens of other riders from across the country with whom to compare, we confirmed that we were each other's favorite riding and traveling partner.

At the end of the trip, we were reminded of Rolf Pott's (author of Vagabonding) sage wisdom: Choose your traveling companions wisely. We couldn't agree more!

(source)

New Jersey Wedding: The Party Bus

2011-09-09T09:12:00.000-04:00

If you are looking for a way to make a sister-in-law who is not actually in the wedding, but will inevitably be hanging around, feel included, I would start with extending an invitation to her for her to ride on the Party Bus with you and all of your bridesmaids.

Back in April, L. told me, "you're coming on the party bus with us!" I was super excited, because otherwise, it was just going to be me, on my own, driving to the church and the photo-location and the reception site, since Mark was in the wedding.

The bridal party for the wedding was too big for a standard limo, so they rented a party bus. I had never been on a party bus before, but was not picturing a giant limo. I was picturing something a little fancier than a school bus, kind of like when my family chartered a bus for the Renaissance Festival for my grandpa's 80th birthday. Instead, the party bus pulled up complete with flashing lights and a soundtrack that started off with Going to the Chapel. If you have to travel to your wedding, I highly recommend the party bus.

A quick tip though - make sure you tell your limo driver any shortcuts you usually use. Ours made us about 10 minutes late to the ceremony by taking the major roads instead of the back roads that my in-laws use to get to their church, and since the windows were down, we didn't realize where we were going until it was too late.

New Jersey Wedding: Getting Ready

2011-09-07T05:30:00.000-04:00

It is surely weird to recap another person's wedding, but I'm going to recap my SIL's nonetheless. It was so very different from ours, and what struck me as funny is that a lot of people would look at her wedding and call it very traditional or very WIC - church ceremony, big hotel reception - but at the same time, it was a low-key way to have a wedding. I came away thinking the same thing I've always thought, which is there is no wrong way to have a wedding. And I think that's the heart of the APW philosophy, so I wanted to showcase some of the big differences between a more traditional wedding and what we did.

L. got ready at the house, which was great because everything that we needed was there. I talked about this before, but getting ready at the house definitely has it's advantages. And disadvantages. We'll talk about the cat later.

Things happen when a wedding is approaching. Things rip. They break You need safety pins, hairspray, bobby pins, scissors, a vase for flowers. All these things can be put in your emergency kit, but if you're like me and leave at at the hotel, you're SOL. As long as your house itself doesn't stress you out, getting ready at home is pretty relaxing. It also meant that there was plenty of room to spread out and hang out on the couch while we were waiting - because I will say, the child-size chairs in our getting ready room were a pretty big disadvantage. We also had a pretty sweet food spread going on for constant all-day snacking.

The ladies from the hair salon came to the house, and were still really reasonably priced. When I priced hair-at-home, it was insanely expensive, but these ladies charged pretty standard salon prices ($65-ish for an updo, $20 for a blow-out) compared to what I had found.

I didn't used to be a fan of the wrap-around towel dresses, but L. got them all for us and they were SO cute, and they make fantastic summer bathrobes. I've been wearing mine every day since the wedding. This is something we couldn't have worn at a salon or venue (I had wanted to get my girls matching green zip-up hoodies) if we had gotten ready there, but they were super fun.

Wait, whose that doing L.'s makeup? Oh yeah! It's our photographer, Kiersten Rowland of Prema Photographic. She's one of L.'s very best friends, and it was so nice to get to spend time with her. There is really something amazing about hiring somebody to capture your wedding when they are also a part of your life, so I feel really lucky that we get to see Kiersten so much.

DIY Updos

2011-09-02T08:04:00.006-04:00

My SIL had a UK reception last week after her wedding, and I showed up at Mark's grandparent's house to help her get ready. She and her mom were trying to figure out what to do with her hair, and she'd already put in a cute braid, but her hair is a shade too short to do a properly easy up-do with, so I wound up freehanding it a bit. This is a pretty easy style for somebody with shoulder length hair and a friend.

I wound up gathering L's hair into a half-ponytail, and then wrapping the strands of loose hair around the ponytail holder and securing them in place with bobby pins. From there, it was pretty easy to curl the rest of her hair around and secure it at the base of the ponytail holder. The hair flower helped hide the fact that I had stuck it a little too far to the left, which was handy. If you are going to DIY your hair, a veil is also a helpful way to hide the mess. I then super-hair-sprayed it in place, and since English hairspray is really wet, held it in place with a loose ponytail holder until it had dried.

Anyone have any tips for doing your hair yourself or with a friend? I think it's good for everybody to have a fancy style that they turn to when they need to look a little bit spiffy.

DIY hair fascinator

2011-08-31T08:04:00.000-04:00

So my sister in law got married last week! Yay! Since my in laws are English, they were all discussing their fascinators the day before the wedding and I remembered I'd forgotten to order one for myself. A quick trip to Michaels and ten minutes with a glue gun yielded me this:

It matched my dress perfectly, and I got, as my British in-laws would say, loads of compliments on it.

I looked for a hair fascinator tutorial, but only found a lot of wedding fascinator tutorials, and I wanted something less ostentatious and without a giant flower. So for this you need:
-1 hair comb (it happens that I used to wear them, so I still had a bunch lying around, you can get a pack for like $2.99 at CVS)
-1 bag guinea feathers (I was looking for peacock feathers, but I found a big bag of multi-colored guinea feathers and picked those up instead.) It was about $3 at Michaels.
-hot glue gun

Quick tip: turn the ceiling fan off for this. Husband came in to find me covered in glue and feathers at one point because they were blowing everywhere.

1.) Lay out your guinea feathers in the order you want them. I decided I wanted them alternating colors, from largest to smallest, and I needed them to all face the left. Feathers that curved to the right were discarded.
2.) Heat up your hot glue gun. If yours has settings, use the "low" setting. If it does not have settings, be very careful not to burn your fingers.
3.) Add one drop of glue at a time, then add a feather. I know it sounds dumb to point this out, but hot glue dries really quickly and if you spread glue all the way along the comb, it will be dry before the end. So glue as you go. Be sure to add enough glue towards the end, even if you are afraid it is becoming a big sticky mess.
4.) Allow to dry before sticking in your hair. If any of the feathers are falling out of place, add a bit of hairspray.

And a couple shots of it (and me) in action.

You can't really see the fascinator, but I wanted to make it clear how well it matched my dress. Yes, I took the lens cap off before I started filming.

More to come from a fantastically fun wedding. Big thanks to Mark's cousin Tom for playing paparazzi on this one.

Monday Marriage Matters: Teamwork

2011-08-28T20:27:00.001-04:00

Love is: agreeing when your crazy partner suggests a 70+ mile bike ride through Wales.

Marriage is: telling your partner, during the middle of a thunderstorm on a mountain in God-knows-where, Wales, that, "we will be okay."

What Exactly Do You Use A Stand Mixer For, Anyway?*

2011-08-23T08:30:00.005-04:00

I was telling a friend over the weekend that we got our Kitchenaid as an off-registry gift, but that I really do love it and have been surprised. I think a lot of people register for Kitchenaids because somebody talks them into it or, "I want to learn to cook" or "I want to learn to make holiday cookies". (Don't get me started on the people that get the really expensive huge one because they think they will make holiday cookies but have never baked anything in their lives. If you are one of those people, feel free to justify yourself in the comments.) I used to have a Sunbeam stand mixer, which I liked because I could scrape the bowl as I used it. But it wasn't as powerful as the Kitchenaid, and the bowl has to turn, which means that if there is something particularly thick or cold in the bowl, the mixer gets stuck and needs some hand assistance. I have a hand mixer, and was planning to continue just using a hand mixer until we had a house, but you don't look a gift-mixer in the bowl, after all. So we kept Darth Mixer, and he has proved very useful to us. I thought I'd share some of my favorite recipes.

Anyway, last week, for the first time, we used a stand mixer to make ice cream. It was a friend's stand mixer, and it made amazing salted caramel ice cream. We are now discussing whether we would actually use the ice cream maker attachment, or, if since we would have to go to the store to get the stuff to buy ice cream anyway, we wouldn't rather just go out and get ice cream. Because it was good, and fun, but it wasn't that good, and it was a lot of work. (So really and truly think about whether you want the ice cream maker attachment, because nobody I know that has one actually uses it on a regular basis. Feel free to disagree in the comments!)

I also recently made my first cake from scratch, which was incredibly delicious and easy. I won't be buying cake mix anymore (unless it's funfetti). I also tried out a pumpkin cheesecake. Creaming three sticks of cream cheese is not something I could have done with a hand mixer, and I don't even think the sunbeam would have held up very well. I have been having some trouble with cookies, to be honest, but our chef friend told me over the weekend that I need to be using the paddle attachment to be creaming butter and sugar, not the whisk attachment.

My favorite thing to do with the mixer is make bread. The food processor also works pretty well for making bread though, so never fear if you don't have a KitchenAid. I have found great recipes in The New Best Recipe Cookbook and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but frankly, the white bread recipe that comes with the KitchenAid is a pretty good starter.

What do you use a stand mixer for? And do you share my belief that everybody needs a hand mixer, a stand mixer is optional, but if you have a stand mixer, you should also have a hand mixer?

*Another post inspired by the fabulously funny Robin Hitchdied.

Monday Marriage Matters: Beyond flowers: easy ways to say “I’m sorry I was such a jerk last night”

2011-08-22T08:30:00.022-04:00

My husband has never brought me flowers because we had a fight. I have never brought him flowers. The thing we do for each other when we have a fight (or simply, one of us acts like a jerk) is pretty simple. For starters, we say, "I'm sorry I was such a jerk last night." Nothing helps like apologizing. Flowers say, "I'm sorry you got upset." Actually apologizing says, "I was a jerk, I know it, and I feel badly about the way in which I acted or the things I said."

If I really want to show that I'm sorry, I try a little bit harder to alleviate the tension that caused the fight. If we have a fight about general cleanliness, the day after a fight, I'll often find myself picking up around the house. I look for organization solutions that are creative, inexpensive, and help stave off future arguments. I speak up before a situation gets out of control and leads to a fight, so we can talk through the issue before talking turns into shouting. Last Wednesday, we left for my sister-in-law's wedding, which was a stressful departure. Once we had calmed down, we talked through coming up with a strategy for leaving tomorrow for our trip to England so that we don't have a stressful departure. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell.

How do you say/show you are sorry? Do you get your significant other flowers?

Travel Recommendations

2011-08-17T14:19:00.001-04:00

It just now occurred to me to ask for help with our upcoming trip to Wales and England! You all were so helpful with our honeymoon (and every reader recommended place was delicious!) that I'm hoping some folks might have good recommendations for places to eat or fun things to do. We are going to Cardiff, cycling the Taff trail up to Talybont Reservoir, and then cycling the canal towpath over to Abergvenny and taking a train back to Cardiff, so any dining/sightseeing recommendations for Cardiff or Abergvenny would be super helpful.

After Cardiff, we head over to Leeds, where Mark's grandparents live. We probably won't get out much, but I would love to see more of Leeds and maybe do something fun with some of his family, so recommendations for good places to walk, eat, drink, or do other things would be great!

Monday Marriage Matters: Who should move for whose career: The Armageddon of Newlywed Fights

2011-08-15T08:30:00.006-04:00

Another title brought to you by the fabulously funny Robin. We actually haven't had this fight, because rather than committing to jobs, we've committed to a place to live. Or more specifically, I've committed.

Currently, I'm the one applying for jobs. This has been the case for the last year. And lawyers are a little bit lucky, in that we are limited to a particular state, so I know I'm not going to find my dream job in Oregon and pack up and move. However, I've applied to jobs that would be an hour, or more, commute. And I have applied to those jobs with the full knowledge that we will not move for my job.

This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that we really really like living in Baltimore. It's a great city, we have a fabulous apartment in a great location, and we are finding and building a community for ourselves. And in the past couple of years, I've seen several friends make the decision to take great jobs in places that they don't like to live, and I think that geographic unhappiness can be almost as bad as career unhappiness. This might seem silly, but plenty of people make the decision to move to a city like New York or LA to try to make their careers happen, so it seems to me like my family should be able to make the same choice. So I committed to only applying to jobs that are commutable.

The second reason is that my husband has a job already. And if I were going to be getting a job that made more than twice what he does, we might consider moving wherever I have a job. But it seems really unfair to make my husband leave the job where he has built up seniority and a reputation for himself, all because I found myself a job that pays the same and would require that both of us start over.

The third reason is that well, it's my turn. When I started law school, even though I desperately wanted to live in the city, we moved in together at the halfway point (he had a 45 minute commute, mine was 30), and when my husband got laid off, two weeks after we signed our lease, I refused to even entertain the idea that he would take a job that wasn't as close to Baltimore as he could get. I was kind of a jerk about it. But he found a job that was outside of the city, and we moved into the city as soon as our lease was up, even though his commute actually got a little bit longer (his office was supposed to move into the city when we did, but they took another year.)

The fourth reason is that we only have one car. So any job that I get would have to pay enough for us to buy a second car, if we were both going to have driving commutes. The money we save by not needing another car almost makes up for the fact that I have yet to find full time, permanent employment.

But sometimes, it seems like all of these reasons aren't enough. It seems like considering that I worked really hard for my degree, I shouldn't be holding myself back based on geography. It seems like if we would be making similar money, it maybe makes sense for his career to take a backseat to mine for a little while. It seems like if I want to really consider myself a feminist and a strong independent woman, I shouldn't be taking my husband's needs and wants and his desire to keep riding his bicycle to work into account quite so much. But I think that if my husband is willing to get up and go to work every day and support me and generally keep quiet about how many pairs of shoes I buy and not pressure me to get a high-paying job, or take any job I'm offered, then I'm very very lucky and all I can offer him back is not asking him to quit his job and move somewhere else.

If we were both on the market right now though, man, this would be a constant fight. I think if I really did want to take a job that wasn't commutable, we would end up with a commuter marriage (living in two separate places), which doesn't seem terribly cost efficient unless new job pays a lot more.

Have you had this fight? How did you resolve it?

Hand exercises to alleviate Thank You Note cramps.

2011-08-12T08:30:00.001-04:00

Robin had a great post yesterday, and in classic How I Met Your Mother style, I took it as a challenge, which I accepted. So welcome to the first of 10 posts about being a newlywed. Some of these will be part of Monday Marriage Matters posts, some will not. So here's today's - Hand Exercises to Alleviate Thank You Note Cramps. Also applicable for writing addresses on invites or escort cards (but only if you are really stubborn. Please just type those.)

The biggest recommendation I can make for avoiding cramps is to choose your tools carefully - you want a gelly pen, or a fountain pen - something that writes easily and smoothly. You also want to set yourself up at a desk or table, and don't slouch. You must also take frequent breaks, and not try to write all of your thank-you notes at once.

Write your thank-yous with your spouse, and take breaks to massage each others hands. Hand massage is much more effective when done by another person. You want to take your thumbs and trace along the tendons from the knuckles towards the wrist. Rub each finger individually and tug on it a little - you don't have to crack the knuckle, but do give it some relief.

Other exercises that work pretty well are just pressing the fingers against the other hand, and shaking them out. If you would like, you can get a stressball, or make a loaf of bread - kneading helps relieve some of the cramps.

Monday Marriage Matters: Health Insurance

2011-08-08T08:30:00.000-04:00

I was complaining over the weekend about jobs that don't offer benefits, and my friend said, "but doesn't Mark's job just cover you?" He, being unmarried, with mostly unmarried friends, stated that he thought that covering a spouse for free was standard for a company. I believe I laughed in his face.

When we got married, I had GradMed coverage in case I got hit by a car. Immediately after we got back from our honeymoon, we filled out the paperwork to be put on Mark's insurance. I knew the insurance wasn't great, but I was glad to have it, even though it meant we were paying more than $200 a month. Until I went to get a prescription filled and the co-pay made my jaw drop. But the real jaw-dropping moment happened a couple months later, when the company changed insurance, and the amount we were paying for me was going to go up to more like $350. I was still unemployed at this time.

So I started shopping for an individual plan. I turned to eHealthInsurance.com, which could cover me right away (they are not paying me to write this) and I had to pick between several plans. But as we tried to navigate the question of how high a deductible we wanted and what kind of benefits I needed (I get injured a lot), it was pretty difficult. Eventually I settled on a plan that seemed to get me the most for my money, and I went with it. I actually haven't used it yet, other than logging into the website, but I feel good to have it. We got lucky on one thing - I could stay on Mark's dental and optical insurance, without paying for the rest of it, so I don't have to pay out of pocket on that.

I know talking to a lot of other married couples that they face similar issues. Their spouse's insurance doesn't cover them, it's lousy, it's non-existent. There's also the issue that Lauren is facing, which is that she hasn't gotten on her husband's insurance yet, but she's been sick since their honeymoon. Fewer and fewer jobs are offering health insurance benefits now, and more and more people are in one or more of these situations.

We never for a second considered that I could go without insurance. Firstly, I'm accident prone, and I'm downright unlucky. Secondly, I go to the doctor pretty regularly, or if something is wrong. Thirdly, hospital bills are one of the leading causes of financial troubles and bankruptcy, and I didn't want a stupid risk we took early on in our marriage to destroy our life savings. Illness or bankruptcy could still destroy us, but with insurance, I feel a little bit better.

Has anyone else been surprised to find that getting health insurance by getting married isn't as easy as we were led to believe? Did anyone get married specifically to get health insurance coverage?

Door Hangers

2011-08-04T08:43:00.000-04:00

Last weekend was a crafting extravaganza with my SIL and my MIL for my SIL's upcoming wedding. We made favor tags, table numbers, and escort cards, but I threw in a last minute project that my SIL loved.

(from Etsy seller ThoughtfullyDesigned)

I was perusing a craft site the week before I went up and saw these door hangers. I realized they were absolutely perfect for my SIL's late-night-dance-party wedding, and decided, WIC style, that she HAD to have them. Also, since we're all at one hotel, they will help everybody know who else is with the wedding, which I always think is fun. So I sent her an email, she concurred, and after twenty minutes of Microsoft Word and a printer, we had door hangers.

The part that made ours really really easy was that we didn't do them double sided. We did single sided hangers that said "Please do not disturb" on one side, and then just did a stamped pattern on the other side. To make your own single-sided door hangers, just open MS word, make the paper landscape, add a text box, format your text, and then copy-paste two more times so that you have three doorhangers on the page. Print them, cut them out, and then cut a circle using either a circle cutter, a 2-inch-punch, or scissors and a steady hand.

You can find plenty of tutorials or templates for double sided doorhangers over at Weddingbee in the DIY section, and it was a really easy and fun project that I think people will enjoy.

Joy

2011-08-04T08:30:00.003-04:00

I read the article from Salon about engagement pictures this week. And it was funny, at least the parts I agree with, about how sometimes, props are a bit silly. But what really stuck out to me was this quote:
"Planning a wedding is a void of joy for the couple. It involves awful conversations in which you must select who not to invite to your wedding and decide what important thing not to spend money on and compromise between people you love. "

It's true, in a lot of ways. The guest list conversations are awful, the what-song-shall-we-dance-to hunt seemed like an endless chore. The "you spend too much time thinking/blogging about the wedding" talking-tos I got were annoying. The planning-the-crafts and the adding-to-the-to-do list was awful. But there was a lot more fun than the writer of the article alludes to. Our engagement pictures were fun. Our food tastings were fun. Going to the organic grocery store to buy the same amazing cheese and crackers we had at our food tasting was fun. Going to practice our first dance was fun.

When I look back on wedding planning though, the things that really stand out as fun are all of those things we talked about and dreamed and didn't happen. The travel themed wedding we planned while we hiked through Castleton in England. The card box made to look like a map container at a national park. The tree planting ceremony. All these ideas got scrapped, but the conversations in which we dreamed big and saw where our future could take us have set the stage for the conversations we have now about homes, families, and adventure.

So as much as wedding planning was sometimes a chore, I don't think it was "devoid of joy" any more than marriage is devoid of joy because on the weekends, we do laundry and clean the kitchen and run errands.

Monday Marriage Matters: Lucky

2011-08-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

This spring, my husband's job changed a little bit, in that he now travels a lot more than he used to. Which gives me a little bit of freedom, and a whole lot of lessons in how lousy I am being a grown-up. When I am on my own, I eat popcorn for dinner, don't take out the garbage, and leave dishes in the sink for days on end. I remember this kind of behavior from college, when I had roommates who would make a giant pile of my dirty dishes and put a note on it reminding me that I was not raised in a barn.

I came home from a long weekend at a bachelorette party to find the kitchen clean, the fridge cleared out of gross leftovers, and the laundry done. My husband is an extremely patient man, and I'm very, very lucky.

Anyone else a disaster when it comes to being a grownup?

In the News

2011-08-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

At my in-laws house, we caught a bit on the news about a bridal shop that closed it's doors and left the brides and bridesmaids without their dresses. We've discussed before that if a wedding vendor goes out of business, it's unlikely you'll get your deposit back (even if you have a legal right to it) and they may leave you high and dry before the wedding.

I don't have much advice on this subject except that the whole "having to order a dress" thing was one of the things I disliked the most about the bridal industry, and a big part of why I bought my dress at Running of the Brides. There was something comforting about walking out of the store with my dress that day, and knowing it was in the closet at home, and nobody was going to run off with my deposit.

One thing that the news did point out was that if you buy your dress on a credit card, the credit card company may insure the purchase and give you back your money, but if you pay cash or by check, that is less likely. So that is at least something to consider when you put down your deposit. Also I was surprised that the store required payment in full for bridesmaids dresses - and I'm not sure if this is standard. Did anyone else find this to be required?

The Shot List

2011-07-28T08:30:00.016-04:00

I've tackled the shot list before, and now that our wedding is long over, I have some other ideas on the shot list. For those who think that of course the photographer will take a picture of the bride with the bouquet, etc., I will remind you that we forgot/ran out of time to do any real "portraits" before the wedding and forgot during the actual picture time as well.

One of the comments I got on this post was to make sure I got a shot with my readers, since my friend Amanda didn't. I read that and thought, "we don't have a reader," so I didn't think any more about it. We didn't have a reader, but we did have two ceremony musicians who I forgot to get a shot with until the very end of the night. We also had a few people who I would have loved to get pictures with, like my cousin's wife who helped us get ready and was so busy running around and throwing us a wedding that we didn't get a chance to get a picture.

These things you may not be able to get in a shot list; but day-of, don't assume you'll get a shot with the person you are talking to later - grab your photographer (or somebody else with a camera - there will be about 100 of them) then and there and ask them to take a picture. Make a list of the most important shots, that you'll be sad if you don't have - details, family photo lineups, and the more stylistic things, like getting shots of people dancing, etc., or to take pictures of the guests and not only of you and your new spouse. Also, it is very very important to realize that your photographer is only one or two people, they will not capture absolutely everything, and if you want a casual, photojournalist style, you won't necessarily get pictures of everything. (But oh man, the pictures you get will be amazing and they will make your heart sing and all you have to do on a crummy day is just look at them and feel better.)

How to Email Vendors

2011-07-21T08:30:00.001-04:00

Wedding vendors can be annoying. They are cagey, they don't put their pricing on the website, and when you e-mail them, they try to suck you into a meeting so that you'll like them and book them no matter how outrageous they are.

My friend K. is getting married next year and as I like to pounce on the newly engaged, I asked her how it was going and she mentioned how frustrating it is to contact vendors, not hear back from them, and when she does hear back, can't figure out how much things cost. Yes, I know how that is. We certainly went through that, with all of the caterers, most of the DJs, and a couple florists. In fairness, some of them can't know exactly how much it costs until they actually price it out, but there is no reason they can't ballpark it.

So finally I got the hang of emailing vendors to actually get a straight answer out of them. It was easiest to start by telling them what we needed, and then see if they could give it to us. So here is my email template:

Dear Vendor:
My fiance and I are getting married on 10-10-10, and we are currently looking for VENDOR. We are thinking to have [personal flowers using seasonal wildflowers/a DJ for the cocktail hour and reception/food that doesn't suck]. Our budget for this is about $500/1000/10,000. Do you think that this would be possible, and if so, can you give us more information on your services and pricing?
Thank you,
Ellie and Mark

I found that this worked pretty well. Some vendors got back to me and said, "that price is way too low and you are only going to find crummy quality at that price" (which turned out to be true for food; not that we went with the caterer that said that), but most got back to me and said, "that budget is definitely workable, this is what you can have for that price, if you can go up at all we can do this."

Stamps

2011-07-20T08:30:00.007-04:00

I don't think I've kept this a secret, but I LOVE stamps. So I was really psyched when I had to wait in line at the post office the other day and I got to check out the awesome stamps for 2011. Firstly, did you know that all commemorative stamps issued in 2011 are Forever stamps? So even if you are getting married "someday", you can stock up on them now. Also, you can buy extra stamps for thank-you notes and other things, and not worry about them going "bad" (we used this method and I love always having stamps in the house. When we only have like, two sheets left, I go buy more Forever stamps.).

My favorites, hands down, are the "LOVE" stamps. Usually the Love stamp is cheesy, but this one...well, I kinda think it's badass.

(I also think that my black hockey sweatshirt makes me badass, so it's possible my definition is off.)

But really, they are so cool. I think they are the perfect wedding stamp for a slightly offbeat or outdoorsy wedding, and would have loved to use them.

Some others?

If you are having a shipboard/waterfront/marina wedding, either of these are a nice choice.

If you are awesome.

For the really traditional.

Perfect for RSVP envelopes, especially if they are colorful.

For those holiday cards which make good use of your engagement or wedding pictures.

Anyone else share my glee for stamps? What stamps are you using for your wedding?

Monday Marriage Matters: Celebrations

2011-07-18T08:23:00.001-04:00

Those red candles are part of a bridal shower gift that my sister in law got me. The red ones are for celebrating promotions, and they've been taunting me since September.

We burned the white candles, then the green ones, the pink ones, and these red ones were just waiting. Waiting for me to find a job. When I got a job, finally, I didn't burn the candles, because I thought my part-time job that paid less than a cashier at a grocery store wasn't worthy of burning the red candles. Then I lost my funding, and started looking for another job. Nothing came, and the red candles just stared at me from the pile. So finally, when I found a new job, again, a part-time position that pays well enough, but not great, I decided we would burn the candles this time. Because all progress is a step forward and should be celebrated. Because anything that I can contribute to our family feels good. Because we both breathe a little easier when we're not living on one income.

So not only did we make a fancy dinner and burn the candles, Mark brought me flowers. He's brought me flowers something like four other times in our relationship, and I really like being surprised with flowers, so it meant a lot that he made the effort to get me them. Once I get a "real" job, we'll probably go out for a fancy dinner someplace to celebrate for-reals, but for now, the small celebrations of the small victories work pretty well.

Do you try to celebrate early and often, or are you celebration stingy?

Cylburn Arboretum

2011-07-14T08:30:00.000-04:00

So I went out to Cylburn Arboretum yesterday to meet with their venue coordinator. My friend Jen is most likely getting married there next June, and she couldn't meet with the venue coordinator because she's off being a fancypants optometrist in San Francisco. Since I'm bona fide wedding obsessed, I'm helping her out, and so I met with the lady from Cylburn.

(source)

Cylburn has recently built a new visitor center (above) with a fantastic wedding reception space that fits 200 people and a dance floor and has a huge floor to ceiling window on the back wall and will be an awesome blank canvas for decor (without *needing* to be decorated the way some blank canvas venues do). The wedding ceremony can be held on the East Lawn, the Formal Gardens, the Lawn with the Gazebo, or the Flat Plain (the title for that one needs some work).

The outside area of the reception space (where the cocktail hour would be) looks like this:

(by me)

The inside venue has the same tall windows and views of the trees and light-colored wood accents and gray floor.

But here's the problem - I'm having trouble finding pictures of the space itself. Even I don't have any from when we went to look at it, and yesterday, they were having a conference in there. So is anybody else who reads this blog getting married/gotten married at Cylburn and have pictures of their ceremony site or reception space? I even tried my usual trick of stalking photographer's blogs and can't even find anything there! So if you can help us out, please post some links or send me an email.

Food for thought

2011-07-13T08:00:00.011-04:00

A couple people I know have linked to this post on Jezebel about a couple's "Colonial Africa" themed wedding. I think there are a lot of things worth talking about surrounding this issue, including - many people have said that the couple put their wedding out there, therefore it's fine for everybody to trash them, call them out for being racist, and generally make nasty comments about their insensitive wedding choices - but a lot of the comments don't seem to realize that the blog that Jezebel linked to is their photographer's blog, and not a larger style blog like Style Me Pretty. Also, a discussion that is probably worth having is did the couple realize the waitstaff would be all-Black, because we certainly didn't know what anybody on our waitstaff looked like, and thinking back on it now, I have no idea what any of our waitstaff looked like. Because I think we can all agree that while having a "Colonial Africa" theme is not a good idea, because the couple clearly romanticized colonialism and did not understand it, having a "Colonial Africa" theme and ordering or hand-picking an all-Black waitstaff to accompany it is a worse idea.

Then there is the discussion this led to in the comments of whether or not we should have weddings on plantations. And at what point do we ignore our history in favor of having a really nice venue? And I grappled with this issue a little bit for our wedding. Because two of the venues we looked at both had ties to slavery - the Elkridge Furnace Inn has a slave hut that you can pose for pictures in front of, and the Historic Waverly Mansion has a building that was used as a slave jail for escaped slaves from the underground railroad. We would have had our ceremony right in front of it. And we very seriously considered it, and the reason we didn't go with it wasn't because of the slave jail (although I think I would have moved the ceremony).

So yeah, for those of us who want to have a wedding in a lovely historic mansion somewhere, how do we acknowledge the gruesome history that sometimes comes with it, without celebrating or ignoring it? I know being in Maryland, which I sometimes refer to as the Almost-South, a lot of historic places come with a gritty history when it comes to slavery - but that we often have to pick between that and a hotel ballroom that doesn't feel like it has any history, and as a person who believes in preserving history, I would rather my money went to people who preserve history, gritty or otherwise, because it can't help any of us to ignore it. So how do we do it without being insensitive?

2011-07-12T08:30:00.002-04:00

My friend K. just got engaged and I'm totally psyched for her. So one of the first things I did was invite her to Pinterest. Pinterest is a great way to catalog your wedding inspiration and details - the only annoyance is that it's invite-only. But it's a really fun way to pull together ideas, and share ideas with other people. For example, I created a board for my friend Jen, who is planning a black-and-white-and-red wedding for next June. I also really like being able to make comments, which you can't do on a regular inspiration board. Also, you can continually add things, which you can't do on an inspiration board, but everything is all in one place. It also saves the links, which you can't do when you just right-click and save-as, so you aren't looking back through a mess of bookmarks and google images later to find those great invites.

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of Pinterest, but every once in awhile I see somebody saying, "what is Pinterest?" so I thought I would clear it up. Pinterest is also great for assembling boards for home/personal style/books you want to read.

Do you use Pinterest? Do you use it for wedding planning or inspiration or "real life"?

Monday Marriage Matters: Talking about your marriage

2011-07-11T08:30:00.007-04:00

For some reason, when it comes to talking about my marriage, my instinct is to downplay how good it is. I talk about how hard it is, how often we fight, how often my partner is annoyed at things that I do, or how often my partner is annoying. I'm not sure why this is - whether it is too many years of bad TV shows with idiot husbands and their wives making fun of them; too many people in my life who talk smack about their own marriages; or maybe I'm just a negative person. Because I know that it isn't because I have a bad marriage, because I don't. But it has not escaped me that when I talk to other people, I sometimes put the emphasis on the bad parts.

With some people, it's a way of commiserating. I know their relationships are difficult, and I don't want to rub in how good mine is. With some people, particularly people who are older, divorced, or getting divorced, it's a way of trying to show that I'm not young, stupid, or delusional about my marriage. With some people, it's a way of letting them know that I am secure in my relationship - that we fight, but it's our way of asking for what we need from each other. But with some people, it's just me whining or trying to be funny, because through years of social conditioning, I've learned that it's funny to complain about your partner's flaws.

I know two things though: my partner doesn't talk about me or our marriage like I do, and I need to be more positive. So how do I approach being more positive, without making myself seems silly? How do I turn off complaining about my partner when sometimes I need to vent? How do I talk about the difficult parts of my relationship without airing our dirty laundry all over town?

What do you do when you talk about your partner? Are you able to stop yourself from complaining or being negative? Do you have one or two specific people you do all your complaining to?

Monday Marriage Matters: Happy 4th

2011-07-04T19:08:00.000-04:00

We are home from the beach, where we did this.

See, last week, I took this idea and made this list:

Because we missed so much last summer (bar exam, campaign, wedding), we were determined to make up for it. So one of the items was to ride a tandem. Which was so awesome we are thinking about buying one, if we can figure out where to put it.

So here's hoping you all had happy fourths, and if you are in the throes of wedding planning, don't forget to make time to have some fun!

So exciting!

2011-07-01T08:00:00.003-04:00

This weekend is a big weekend for weddings, including our (because she is "ours", no matter that this community doesn't have a name other than the #TBCB hashtag on twitter, which I don't know what it means...) very own Bunny.

(source)

Bunny has been so totally there for me throughout the past...I think it's two years now...as we've gone through this whole planning thing together. Also, in the morning when I get up and try to put together some kind of stylish-yet-professional outfit, and I can't decide if it goes, I totally post it on twitter and once she tells me she likes it, I know I'm good to go. Bunny has most certainly had more than her fair share of troubles throughout the planning process and in the past year, but here's hoping their fabulous Chicago wedding is a whole lot of fun for her and Mr. Beagle.

Fair Share?

2011-06-29T08:30:00.003-04:00

It seems to me that recently everybody's weddings have been falling apart a bit on them, from people not showing up to items being lost or destroyed for the wedding. I read their posts and tweets and think, "but it will be okay. It was okay for us, and we had our fair share of problems."

Then I rethink that statement. Because you know what? At the end of the day, we didn't have our fair share of problems. We had something like three guests back out at the last minute, one because she had massive health problems and one because of childcare issues. My grandmother couldn't make it, but when she moved to Colorado, I knew she wasn't coming to the wedding. I lost my makeup three weeks before the wedding, but fortunately, I had been keeping my expensive "wedding makeup" separate and supplemented the rest with Target makeup. (Sure, I had a total nervous breakdown at Target trying to figure out what kind of blush to buy, but that's neither here nor there.)

Sure, I spent three weeks before the wedding up to my elbows in crafts, wondering how it would get done. But I'm lucky - firstly, I wasn't working at all, secondly, I'm crafty, and thirdly, I used to throw events for work. So I knew what had to get done, how to prioritize, how to make sure it all happened, how to wrangle people, what to give up. Sure, our printer Refused To Work several times right before the wedding, and that was a problem. But if we hadn't had programs, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. They were wrong anyway. And it wasn't the end of the world.

But these are all small-time problems. Blips on the radar of the larger problems surrounding weddings. Compared to the massive family drama, the religion discussions, the dealing-with-divorced/dead/spiteful parents that some people are doing, we just didn't have it. Plain and simple, we were lucky. Lucky that our families got along, that our parents like each other, that our sisters worked well together, that bridesmaid sniping was kept to a minimum, that all my bridesmaids knew better than to tell me if anything was wrong. Lucky that the morning of the wedding dawned with the perfect sunshine that my grandmother promised, lucky that my Dad was able to get sewing kits from the hotel and find my makeup in my sister's car. We were lucky that we had an army of people who came out and set up and cleaned up.

So while I can't tell you all that everything will be alright with respect to your weddings, I will tell you that yes, some of you have more than your fair share of problems. And it sucks, big time. All I can tell you is, it's been more than six months since we got married, and when I wrote this post, I really had to wrack my brain to think about all the things that went wrong. So yes, eventually this will all, good and bad, be behind you. Just breathe and get through it. Solve one crises at a time, then move quickly to the next. But put everything down the day before the wedding and have a good time with the people that love you, and just try to keep the rest as far away from you as you can.

Function over Perfection

2011-06-28T08:30:00.002-04:00

Or How I Made A Veil In 10 Minutes.

See this veil?

That is not my wedding veil. My wedding veil is in NJ, with my sister in law. This veil was made from the yard and a half I had leftover. As I quickly cobbled my hair together, I realized that my original plan of it not mattering how bad my hair looked in my bun under my veil wouldn't work if I didn't have a veil. So I grabbed a hair comb and my hot glue gun and headed down to the sewing room.

I hastily trimmed the tulle I had into a "U" shape, and then I did a rush cut job on the edges of the veil, hoping they would look as clean as possible, and then sewed a quick stitch across the top, gathered it, and then glued the whole thing on with a hot glue gun. Then I ironed it, because the fabric has been sitting in a heap on the table for a few months.

The resulting veil was much longer than my original, and actually a bit narrower, which worked well for this shoot. It didn't have any beading, so it blew around in the wind, which would have been annoying on our wedding day, but was a lot of fun for the shoot.

So yeah, if anybody is telling you that you "need" to pay $300 for a veil, don't listen.

Monday Marriage Matters: Giant Metal Chickens

2011-06-27T12:00:00.003-04:00

My cousin shared this story on Facebook over the weekend and I thought it was pretty funny, at least too funny to not share. Go read.

My first reaction, was of course, to wonder what it must be like to have enough money that you can waste $100 on a practical joke. My second was, oh man, I've had that fight over towels/something else I thought needed replacing and my frugal husband didn't. I don't think even if we had the money, I would get a giant metal chicken, but I might get something else and say, "at least it isn't towels."

But anyway, my cousin shared this on Facebook and her wall erupted with comments over whether the husband is abusive and threatening, whether the couple has a good relationship or not, on where one can get a giant chicken, and I thought I would share here, because I can't help but wonder how much of this argument is accurately retold and how much is sensationalized for the internet. Either way, I'm not so sure it's such a good idea - but maybe I'm wrong. Other thoughts?

Rock the Dress: Part 3

2011-06-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

We got out of the street car and took a couple shots with the super cool graffiti, and then headed over to the side of the warehouse/dumpster on the edge of Falls Road.

Then we decided to take advantage of the fact that we were right next to the falls, and we walked about a half-mile up the street to the platform where the falls are. It involved a bit of unsteady stepping to get down to the platform, but once we were there, it was pretty awesome.

Once we were done, we decided to head out. On the way back, we walked under an overpass and Vanessa had me pose with some graffiti there. The resulting shot is definitely one of my favorites.

Rock The Dress: Part 2

2011-06-23T08:30:00.007-04:00

After we were done playing with the clean cars, we walked up the tracks to the real subject of our shoot - the rust laden, decrepit, run down streetcar that was about 100 yards down the track.

Those two girls in the background are also on a photoshoot.

I love love love the juxtaposition between my dress and the streetcar graffiti in these shots. I also love how the lighting coming in from the windows looks.

Rock the Dress: Part 1

2011-06-22T08:30:00.001-04:00

So we started out at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The Museum is technically closed on Fridays, so I knew that 1) we wouldn't be able to play in the cars and 2) I was going to have to change in the street. Now, I have not shown you the pictures of me getting into my dress, but there is a whole lot of grabbing myself going on in them. So I knew I needed a modest way to get into my dress while standing on the side of Falls Road. (Not a really busy road, but at least 5 cars went by while I was changing.) So my solution was to do it ROTB style - I put on some compression shorts/black spanx,and a zip-up hoodie. Once we got there, I pulled the dress up to my waist, then slipped it under the hoodie, zipped myself into the dress as much as possible, then pulled off the hoodie, had Vanessa zip me the rest of the way in. I am a pretty modest person, but I felt very comfortable changing this way.

Once I was in the dress, we headed over to the museum. There is a gate there, so you don't have to actually get a ticket just to come in and sit on the benches and play with the trains.

There is also a series of murals of painted trains on part of the building, and they actually created a really nice backdrop.

Rocking the Dress

2011-06-21T12:17:00.000-04:00

Remember how I mentioned that the Baltimore APW group is awesome? Well, we are. Amongst the awesome women of the group is Vanessa Bovee, who is a photographer considering launching her own business. We were talking about helping her build a portfolio, and I asked if maybe we could do a Trash-The-Dress shoot. Since I've been dying to do one anyway, and also since we didn't do bridal portraits on the day of the wedding, I thought this would be kinda fun. Nothing actually got trashed, so this is more of a "Rock the Dress" shoot.

I was wrong. It wasn't "kind of" fun. It was so totally ridiculously awesome that I would heartily recommend it to anyone.

Recently Becca talked about whether you can capture all the wedding joy in a post-wedding bridal shoot. No, of course you can't. But you can still look pretty.

And you get to wear the dress again! This part was really a lot of fun. Because I just got to run around and play. Because on your wedding day, even though everything is wonderful and joyful and glow-y, you're also really stressed out, and you've been smiling a lot, and that shows too. It shows in tired eyes and half-smile half-sneer expressions. I had a fair share of those.

Also, I got to adopt a more sullen, pout-y look for a lot of the shots, so instead of having to look happy, I could instead look soulful. Or angry.

More to come this week, and details on how to make a veil in 10 minutes and how to do your hair all fancy-like yourself. And possibly, "how to hike in a wedding dress."

Monday Marriage Matters: Travel

2011-06-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

I feel, somehow, like the blogging community is full of people who like to travel. People with life lists that include trekking through Thailand or scaling mountains in Switzerland or skiing in Utah. We talk about having dreams, and not putting them on hold, and making them happen. But in my day-to-day life, I know as many people who want to go everywhere and see everything as I do people who are perfectly happy to spend a week at the beach every summer or spend every vacation visiting the same Sandals resort in which they get served delicious drinks and have a great time. And there is nothing wrong with any of it.

We each came into our marriage with a life history of traveling. My family traveled a lot, and my parents still travel a lot (they are out west right now...I know, they were just in London. My Dad came home for a week, then they packed up and headed back out). Since Mark is from the UK and has family all over the world, he spent quite a bit of time in Europe and Canada growing up. So the pressure isn't on to Go Everywhere and See Everything the way it is for other people.

Nonetheless, we are trying to navigate how we will travel as a couple. For example, do we want to take one big, fancy, expensive trip a year or a lot of smaller, cheaper trips? Do we want to re-visit places we have already been? What about visiting family? What about traveling with family? How much do we want to spend on trips a year? When we travel, should we stay in hostels or hotels? What do we consider "fun" when we go someplace? What are good places to travel now, before we have children, and what are okay places to take children? (Since I have had a passport since I was about a week old, I can assure you that traveling with small children is possible, but there are certain places that work better than others.)

For the most part, for right now, the rule is that we don't revisit most places we've been together; instead, we go someplace new. We take one big semi-fancy trip, and a lot of smaller really cheap trips, like camping trips, or driving trips where we stay with friends. We'd rather go more places than stay in luxurious digs and eat fancy meals. We've done a few trips with our parents and/or siblings, and it's usually a pretty good time, but sometimes we like to be on our own. I think it's also important to recognize that our travel style will evolve with our marriage, and we should avoid being particularly tied to a method of traveling, and more importantly, be open to trying something new. Our honeymoon was the first trip where we stayed in hotels and ate out all the time, which had it's advantages and disadvantages, but was fun to get to try. Our England trip this summer will be a combination of hostels and staying with family, which is our usual style (and our third UK trip in this style). We have several friends that travel a lot more than we do, and probably feel sorry for us that we only get to take one real trip a year, but I know there are a lot of people that don't even get to do that much, so instead, I choose to be grateful to get what we can.

And for what it's worth, I think a lot of us act like we should all be working towards traveling more, or going on fantastic vacations, and sometimes, a quiet weekend at home with my husband is as relaxing as any week in the Caribbean. So if you don't want to travel at all, and you spend your vacation days on long weekends with your spouse, or an occasional break from work to take care of errands or , there's nothing wrong with that either. It's only a regret to not travel more if you actually regret it. Nobody ever gets anywhere regretting not doing things they didn't want, if that makes sense.

What is your travel style? How much do you travel? Where are you going this year, and what do you take into account when you plan trips?

Monday Marriage Matters: 10 Things I Love About Being Married

2011-06-13T08:30:00.009-04:00

I was thinking that I tend to talk a lot, openly, about the really difficult parts of being married. And marriage is hard, but it's also awesome. So I thought I'd talk today about the top 10 Things I Love About Being Married. These are all subtle changes I've noticed over the past eight months, small shifts in our relationship dynamic as we transition into being Married, rather than just living together. When people ask me if I feel different, I tell them yes, and they're always surprised (so why ask the question?). So yes, being married is different. And awesome. So:

10 Things I Love About Being Married

1.) I am always happy to see my husband when he gets home. Unless I've just spilled something/made a giant mess, and then he walks in on the kitchen and I'm standing on the floor in the middle of a pile of spilled peas. Which he takes much better than he used to, and he just asks if I would like some help. By which he means he will go get the broom. (Marriage is awesome, not perfect.)

2.) We have fun. We've been dating each other a little more lately, as cheaply as possible. We've been to two movies lately, since we had Fandango coupons from Living Social, and we went to the beach, and we've been going on long bike rides to train for our upcoming UK trip. We didn't spend this much time together when we were in college or I was in law school, at least not without schoolwork hanging over our heads.

3.) When I dress up, my husband notices. This either is new-ish, or I spend so little time dressed up these days that I'm making it easy for him. Either way, I like it.

4.) I get to use the term "my husband", which I'm a big fan of. You may have noticed I throw it around a lot. When I need to get out of something, I can usually just say, "I'm sorry, I have to check with my husband," or, "You'll have to ask my husband about that."

5.) We are a team. We have combined finances, so we have a joint ownership feeling over our money and how we spend it. We ask each other before making financial decisions. When I had my last job interview, we stayed up for an extra hour talking about what questions I might get asked and how I should answer them. We undertake projects together and feel proud of ourselves when we are successful.

6.) We are there for each other. When something happens that totally sucks, like, say, getting laid off, my husband was completely there for me. In a "we're going to be okay" way that he couldn't have been before we were married. Everything feels just a little bit more secure than it did before we were married.

7.) We are constantly learning. We are learning things we like to do together, we are learning more about each other, we are learning more about ourselves. We are learning to be patient and accepting and caring.

8.) We try to be better for each other. I try not to leave my cereal bowls lying around the house, he tries not to complain when I inevitably forget. We make an effort because I know that not making an effort leads to a lifetime of resentment.

9.) His parents let us sleep in the same room when we go to their house. When we visit his grandparents, we've already been invited to stay with his aunt and uncle. Who will let us sleep in the same room. No more twin beds for us! (Except...uh...we're staying in hostels for the rest of the trip. That's so not the point.) But the point is, our families see us as our own family, and they respect us. It's cool.

10.) We don't have to plan a wedding anymore. Sure, I miss planning sometimes, but I don't miss us planning. I don't miss spending all of our weekends and free time talking about weddings. I don't miss driving to the vendors and the meetings and the feeling awkward and the thousand tiny decisions to make.

What are your favorite things about being married or what do you look forward to the most?

Surprise Shower!

2011-06-08T08:30:00.059-04:00

We threw my SIL a surprise shower over the weekend - which was tricky, since we had to go to NJ and stay with the in-laws. So we found a wine festival to go to for mother's day/father's day to try to throw her off, and then we threw an extra wrench in the plans and pretended to leave early to get home for a last minute trip Mark had scheduled for work that left on Sunday. That was ultimately what really threw her off (especially when I called my mom and told her that Mark wouldn't be able to come to the birthday dinner we had planned, since he had a last minute work trip), and Sunday morning, she showed up to this:

How 65 people managed to keep this thing a secret, I don't know, but when the bride shows up at the shower wearing a bathing suit and basketball shorts, you know it was a surprise.

I'll talk more about the shower shortly, including some of the really fun games, but a few tips on having a surprise shower for somebody:

1) Have clothes for them to change into and if they have unruly hair, bring a brush, bobby pins, and a straightener. Don't forget to bring a bra/undergarments that will go with the clothes/dress though, in case the bride shows up in a swimsuit.

2) If anyone is coming in from out of town, don't tell the bride/guest of honor - it will tip them off immediately. L. was pretty sure that the shower would be last weekend until we left on Saturday. Thankfully, we thought of that plan and it was enough to throw her off.

3) Have the shower early - the wedding is still more than two months away, but if it was later, she would have been expecting it every weekend, since she knew it was a surprise.

4) Put Surprise in big letters on the invitation and make sure everybody knows it was a surprise.

5) Have the excuse that gets the guest of honor there be a spontaneous one - L. had plans with her roommate to spend the whole day with her (to make sure she had no other plans) but then at the last minute her roommate got "run off the road" conveniently at the Elks Lodge where the party was.

6) Have a plan in place of things for people to do while they wait for the bride/guest of honor to get presentable - everyone filled out their bingo cards for the gift-opening bingo, and the bridesmaids all started in on the wine, since they were finally able to relax.

I will admit, I was dubious and very stressed out about the surprise shower. I was nervous all morning and all of the bridesmaids were extremely tense to make sure that everything went off without a hitch, but everything worked perfectly and L. was either really surprised, or did an excellent job of faking it.

Albums, Part 2

2011-06-08T08:30:00.058-04:00

Once you decide to get an album, you have to decide what pictures go in it. Um. Our wedding pictures are phenomenal. How could we possibly choose?

Since I'm unemployed, I took on the difficult task of narrowing down pictures. I managed to get it down to 150, and then from there, to 114. I was aiming to get under 100, because the design fees from A La Carte are charged by number of images. My parent's wedding album is something like 6 pictures, by the way, so I think I should be able to tell the story of our day in 100 images or less.

The biggest question I had about cutting pictures was this: do I want this album to be for us, or for our children/grandchildren? If it's for us, then I cram it full of pictures of our friends and pictures that are slightly fuzzy around the edges but show how much fun we had. I include all the pictures of me cracking up. So that someday, when life is difficult and the children are screaming about how we won't let them have a car and our parents are in and out of hospitals, we can look through the album and think, "All those things we hoped and promised and dreamed? I meant it all, every word."

I don't think I'll ever be able to look at this picture without thinking, "how lucky am I?"

If I want the album for posterity, for our children to look through and laugh at the funny fashions and marvel at how young we looked, how much Mark looks like our own son, how my hair used to be any color but gray, how much the world has changed since we got married. How the more things change, the more things stay the same. There are your grandmothers, doing the same reading from Ruth, that your grandparents did at their wedding. My parents have a tiny wedding album, my mom lost her mother before I was born, and whenever I look at their wedding pictures, I want more pictures of them, of their parents, of my aunts and uncles. I couldn't care less what their cake or tables looked like.

For the family, fewer kissing shots, more pictures of people that we know will still be in our lives in 50 years.

There is, of course, a balance here. I cut a few of the shots of me cracking up, there are fewer pictures of friends playing with the photobooth props than I might have picked anyway, and the album focuses a lot more on Mark and I than I would have originally have decided. But I didn't pick a lot of our posed portraits from the woods - instead, I went for the reception pictures.

Did anybody else face these issues when they sat down to pick their album pictures? What did you end up deciding?

Wedding Inspiration Help: Beth and Joe's Wedding

2011-06-07T12:50:00.000-04:00

Last week our friend Beth came to me with a request for help in transitioning her sister's barn for their upcoming wedding. The barn has unfinished frame walls (not rustic unfinished wood plank barn walls). And it's a daytime/lunch wedding so they need ideas for how to hide the unfinished wall-ness without draping it in a ton of tulle, or covering it with twinkly lights, since it's a daytime wedding. So far, we've brainstormed fabric, quilts on the walls or hay bales stacked high (but there are concerns this will make the room feel claustrophobic). What other ideas haven't we thought of?

I love the look of this colorful draped fabric, which might pull attention away from the walls and make the barn feel taller.

(source)

Which brings us to issue 2 - the lighting. The lighting in the barn is florescent, which is a little harsh for Beth's taste - so what else can they use to light a daytime event? The only lighting terms I know are "uplights" "spotlights" and "gels" (I did lighting for our talent show in high school). Is this much twinklyness too much for a daytime wedding?

(by One Love Photo source)

I am loving these wrought-iron chandeliers as a source of lighting - they fit with the barn and since the family owns the barn, they will probably let her hang them. They could be hung pretty close to the tables.

(source)

Issue # 3 is the theme, which we'll be talking a lot more about in the coming weeks - but I'm only bringing it up today because Mouse is doing an awesome giveaway today for Dandy You events. I mention this because Beth is talking about having a rustic-festive county fair theme! What is more perfect for a county fair theme than striped straws and fancy text banners that say things like "Just Married" over the front door of the barn where the newleyweds will enter? So if you, like Beth and Joe, might be interested in fabulous party trappings for an adorably festive event, go over to Souris Mariage today and enter!

Do you have ideas for Beth and Joe? Any wall covering or lighting ideas? Any sources for wrought iron chandeliers?

Monday Marriage Matters: Age Matters

2011-06-06T08:30:00.167-04:00

Today is my birthday. I tell you this not because I want you all to wish me a happy birthday, but because I was thinking a lot about how I was eighteen when I met Mark, and seven birthdays later, here we are, still together.

Seven birthdays is a lot when you are only 26. Seven birthdays means that I was a teenager when I met my husband. Seven birthdays means that somewhere, along the way, I went from being a confused and lonely college kid still trying to figure out her life to a lawyer. I mean, seriously. When I met Mark, I had a lot of growing up left to do. I suspect he did as well, he just did a better job of covering it. At least these days, he's off to work in pants that don't have holes in them and a shirt that fits him.

I think having an older boyfriend in college helped me grow up a little bit faster - Mark was already extremely responsible, and so I started to be more responsible, because I wanted to impress him (and also make sure he didn't think it was a mistake to date somebody who was quite a bit younger than him.) We also struggled a lot with the fact that we wanted to have a mature and adult relationship, but we weren't really adults yet. So we started to mimic adult behaviors. Adults did things like went on vacations together. So we tried to go on vacations together. Some of them were successes, some of them were failures, but all of them were learning experiences. Adults went grocery shopping and cooked dinner together. So we did that. Adults went to bed at a reasonable time, and then got up in the morning at a reasonable time. So we did that. Adults had arguments. So we did that. Adults did the laundry and cleaned the kitchen. So we did that. Adults went to dinner with their parents, whether they wanted to or not. So we did that. I think by going through the motions like that, we managed to grow up a lot and also set the stage for the life we live now.

The other thing about meeting young and dating for a long time and growing up together means that we dated for a lot longer than other people that get married. If you think about it, most people who meet in high school or college date for at least six years before they get married. So when I tell people that Mark and I were together for seven years before getting married, they are surprised. Then I remind them that I was 25 when we got married, and getting married at 21 wasn't really in the cards for us. But our friends meet now and date for a year or two, then get engaged and get married. I think it's because when you are already grown-ups when you meet, and you don't have so much growing up left to do, and you also know whether you will be compatible with a person much faster (especially if you've already dated people.) If anyone we knew in college had dated for a year and then announced they were getting married, we would have called them crazy. But in the Real World of Being Grownups, my friends who date for a year get engaged and I say, "yay!" or if it's two years, I say, "finally!"

Did you meet young and date for a long time? Did you grow up together? Did one of you help the other one grow up? Or have you met recently as full-fledged adults who already know who you are?

Albums, Part I

2011-06-02T08:30:00.000-04:00

We haven't gotten a "real" album yet. Why not? Simply put, they are expensive; we were tired. We have the money left from our budget to afford a nice album, so the question is: how much do we want to spend, and what company do we want to use?

See above, exhausted. I don't want to do more research. I don't want to design the album myself. If I'm going to spend $400 on a flush mount album, but have to design it myself, I will agonize over it obsessively. So, we're going pro. I found www.alacartealbums.com through A Practical Wedding, and I fell in love with their selection. Nothing that I had seen on Picaboo or any of the other companies that do flush mount albums had featured as many options for flush mount albums. Nobody had the amazing brocade covers - and I love love love pretty fabric. (See: wedding dress.)

I've narrowed our options down to two choices - the Flush Mount, or the Bordered Magazine Style. Mark wants an album that feels substantial and impressive. He really likes the look of the flush mount, but we both have trouble with the idea of spending that much money on an album. Yes, our photographer was a steal. We get it. We should be willing to spend the $1000 on an album. But seriously, raise your hand if you think spending more than a month's rent is a wise thing for an unemployed person to do.

There are a lot of people who say that you should get an album so that your kids/grandkids can look through them, because they won't want to look at DVDs. I get that. But assembling an album for our children and grandchildren to look through is as easy as buying an archival quality album, getting good prints done, and putting pictures in an album. I'm sorry, but it really doesn't have to be the flush mount goodness that we all swoon over. And they say that the flush mount albums will last forever, but I have seen no proof of this and neither have the people that design them.

We could get a photobook done and call that our album, but I'm unwilling to do that. If it's going to be our album, it's going to be an album. It's going to have heavy pages and a weighty feel to it, the way a photo album does when it's weighted down with pictures. So the question is, do we go with the bordered magazine style, do we do the flush mount, or do we scrap it all and get prints done and put them in a fancy photo-album, the way my parents did and their parents did before that?

Monday Marriage Matters: Car Sharing

2011-05-30T08:30:00.007-04:00

So this post by Mouse reminded me recently that I hadn't given a review of how car sharing has gone for us since we went down to just one car around this time last year. Let me give you a preview of how the very idea of car-sharing went for awhile:

When we lived in the city, I was in school, but Mark worked 20-30 minutes outside of the city:
Him: You should get rid of your car and just ride public transport everywhere.
Me: But I run all of our errands during the day and go to class. How can I do that without a car?
Him: You could just ride your bike and take public transit. [self-righteously] You should do that anyway.
Me: Hell no. Get away from my car.

[I feel the need to explain that I've spent more than an hour on a streetcorner in 90degree heat waiting for the bus to come. Baltimore City is not famous for it's reliable public transit.]

Conversations with my family went like this:
My sister: What are you going to do about your POS car? [cue pointed look at my father who thought the mechanical problems with the car were all in my head]
My father: It's a perfectly good car.
Me: Mark thinks we can share a car.
Family: [uproarious laughter] Has he met you? You don't share. Or drive very well. You're going to hit things in his car.

Eventually, his job moved to the city. Our two cars sat unused for most of the day. My car stopped starting reliably, and began to consistently shake and rattle when I drove it at speeds above 50mph. My car also got about 14mpg. Eventually, I returned "my" car to my parents and my dad found a buyer for the car and cleaned it out for me while I stressed over final exams. My friend Erin taught me to drive stick. Mark started letting me drive his car. We signed up for ZipCar when it came to the city. In June, the Charm City Circulator started running from our apartment in Federal Hill to my school.

And so, a year has passed. A year in which we have not yet fought over who gets the car. A year in which we have made compromises, sacrifices, and a general nuisance of ourselves to our neighbors. A year in which I have learned to drive a stick shift, ride my bike in the city, and have done an awful lot of bus-chasing. A year in which my husband has bought fenders and snow tires for his bicycle, and rain pants and ankle cuffs for himself. A year in which I have been living at home with my parents, where I could use their car, and then unemployed, then employed with a walking commute, making the choice not to buy a car much easier.

We make a lot of compromises. A lot of, "you need the car tonight, so I'll climb tomorrow night"; a lot of, "can you come pick me up after class because I took the bus?"; a lot of, "I'll drop you off at X, because I need the car for Y, but you'll have to wait until I'm done for me to pick you up." I try to keep the car generally clean, Mark tries to keep from constantly complaining that my idea of "generally clean" is his idea of "horrifyingly messy". I bring my hockey gear in, but leave my stick in the car. I track the gas mileage by carefully writing the stats on the receipt from the gas station and then reset the trip; Mark doesn't complain that my gas mileage is lousy. I would honestly recommend that every couple share a car, for at least a limited period of time, because it's a lot of valuable lessons in choosing your battles and respecting your partner.

We've settled into a system. The biggest piece of this is the general rule that whoever is at home all day has the car. We try to avoid taking the car and leaving the other person stranded at home for more than a few hours at a time. This mostly applies to weekend days; and it takes some work to make it work - sometimes Mark drives me up to a half-an-hour to get me to a friend's house to carpool, sometimes it means a long and unnecessarily difficult trip on public transit, sometimes it means walking or riding a bike instead of driving, even though driving would be much easier.

We carpool a lot. We try to make it work so we aren't freeloaders, but we drive whenever it's convenient for us and get a ride whenever it isn't. My sister bought a house recently, and will no longer live across the street, and so the carpooling will be harder. My running buddy lives on our street as well, and I really hope she never plans to move.

Since I was the most resistant to sharing a car, Mark has put a lot more work into making this work. He has been the one to change his plans more than me, and use public transit even when it's decidedly inconvenient. If there is a person who wants to car-share more than the other, they need to be the one making the sacrifice and they need to be the one figuring out how it's going to work. Our car currently needs servicing and has a recall and I've put Mark in charge of figuring out how to get it to the dealership and deal with that, because, "this was your idea." Eventually we came up with a plan that involves me spending two hours at the coffeshop next to the dealership when I'm off work, but we don't have a weekend day to devote to this and I have flexible hours. Mark is a firm believer that we'll still be able to share a car when we have children, I am equally certain that we will not, or if we are, it will not be a stick-shift Corolla.

My always-depressing-and-fluid employment situation shifted again recently, and I'm on the hunt for a new job. I'm applying all over the place, and we've talked about whether this means we will have to get a second car (or a Vespa!) if it's somewhere far away. The plan is to stick with one car for as long as is reasonable, and then make a change if we need to.

Do you share a car? Could you? Do you and your spouse even have a car? What would need to happen for you to be able to?

Anniversaries

2011-05-26T08:30:00.004-04:00

My sister's wedding anniversary is May 25th, and my parent's is May 26th. So it's cool that their anniversaries are around the same time, and I kind of wish we were around the same time, but that would have been a disaster, or meant we we were getting married this weekend.

Anyway, the thirty-sixth anniversary is apparently the Bone China Anniversary, although that is listed as the "modern" gift, so I think my Dad made it up because he has a thing for Bone China coffee cups. Although I'm pretty sure that my parents have decided that every year is the "travel" anniversary. They're in London right now.

For my sister, this is the third anniversary. The third anniversary is....wait for it....leather.
Cue inappropriate jokes. We've certainly made enough of them.

My sister and her husband have decided to get some kind of album to commemorate their 11 years together. (Yeah, 11 - high school sweethearts!) I think this is a really cute idea, and a creative twist on the leather anniversary. As we are going into our album design ourselves (more on this in the coming weeks), I suspect our album will be our first anniversary gift to ourselves, which is, I think, becoming a pretty traditional first anniversary gift.

Can I just say that the 4th anniversary gift is either "fruit or flowers"? The 6th is "candy or iron". I mean, I'm pretty sure by those anniversaries, we will get each other what we usually get for our anniversaries, which is...nothing. Usually we forget our anniversary until two weeks later. Sometimes we use it as an excuse to buy something fun (like our Wii). Sometimes we use it as an excuse to buy something sensible (like the rack for the back of the bike so I can haul stuff from the farmer's market.) Once, Mark bought me these fantastic earrings for our anniversary and we went to the movies and had a nice dinner (by which I mean Chinese takeout...we don't get out much.)

I would love to celebrate our first anniversary by eating the top tier of our wedding cake, but due to a mix-up the morning after the wedding, we brought the top tier to the brunch for people to eat some of (since it was a huge top tier), and my Dad gave away the leftover pieces and didn't save us any (it was always the plan to give a bunch away, and it was never actually the plan to save it for a year - but it was the plan to have some to come home to after the honeymoon!). So I think we'll be buying or making an anniversary cake. Which sounds like a pretty good tradition to start.

How are you celebrating your anniversaries? Are you following the traditional guidelines or scrapping them? And most importantly, did your dad give away your cake as if was leftover turkey on Thanksgiving? (Love you Daddy.)

Recycled Centerpieces

2011-05-24T08:30:00.001-04:00

I know that most of us probably use CFLs, but chances are, there is something or someone in your life that uses regular incandescants still. And if you're looking to recycle, and create totally AWESOME centerpieces, why not give the Light Bulb Terrarium a try?

(source)

Every once in awhile, I feel a slight pang of regret for not having our awesome moss centerpieces that I had really wanted. It's a very small pang. I don't care that much. But if you want some more really neat ideas for terrariums, check out this post for suggestions.

Free Stuff!

2011-05-23T16:30:00.000-04:00

So today you should go over to Mouse's blog and check out her giveaway of canvas favor bags. I would have LOVED these to stuff with Jordan Almonds for our guests to take at the end of the night - and sure the giveaway is "only" for 50, but:

1.) YOU DON'T NEED AS MANY FAVORS AS YOU DO PEOPLE. Here's the secret the favor companies don't want you to know - many of your guests who are couples will take one favor between them. Many will forget to take their favors. Many will not want a favor, and will just walk past the favor table. So have a table with favors, have only half as many as you do guests, and then bam, no leftover favors. If you run out, instead of blaming you for not having enough favors, your guests will blame your other guests who clearly took too many favors. But seriously, we had like, 75ish favors for 155 people and had plenty of leftover Jordan Almonds. (The Lindor Truffles were a higher-ticket item, and people did take multiples of those, but they only take one bag of stuff. Also I ate a bunch as we were prepping for the wedding. Wedding prep tip: buy snack food!)

2.) You can totally use these to hold cute deliciousness for your OOT bags, since you probably don't need to make more than 50.

3.) You get a 20% discount on any more bags, so you can score twice as many favor bags for cheep! I seriously wish we had had these instead of those lame ones you buy at Michaels.

I think that I would fill these with pretzel M&M's, as they are delicious, and the favor bag masks the fact that OMGTHEYAREN'TINOURWEDDINGCOLORS.

So GO! Enter! Win!

Monday Marriage Matters: Rules

2011-05-23T08:30:00.001-04:00

My APW group has been getting together monthly-or-more to discuss writing and marriage and a bunch of other stuff. So we were sitting around at the bar last Wednesday and I mentioned that Mark and I have a rule where we get out of bed at the same time in the morning. Then I mentioned that we had attempted to develop a rule where one of us did not use more than 5 utensils when she made dinner because the other of us was sick of cleaning an excessive number of dishes.

At which point, Jessica looks at me and says, "you guys have a lot of rules." I got, naturally, immediately defensive, but then she said, "it's funny." In a non-judgmental way. Because she's a member of Team Practical.

So I thought about it, and we do have a lot of rules. For starters, we have a bedtime, and as a general rule (with a few exceptions, and several arguments) we go to bed at the same time. Then there is the aforementioned getting-up-at-the-same-time rule. Most of our friends don't have that rule - and they find it weird. I could leave for work an hour later than my husband, giving me an hour (or more) more sleep in the morning, if I wanted it. But at different points in our relationships, both of us have been the one running out the door to earn money while the other person hit the snooze button or grumbled at them for waking them up. It makes both of us resentful, and so, we get up at the same time.

We have the standard, "you cook, I'll do the dishes" rule. This rule seemed very fair to me until my husband pointed out that I was constantly cooking to get out of doing the dishes and that wasn't fair. So I had to start backing off, or doing some more dishes. I've done a little of both.

We have some rules that don't take, or that we would like to impose as individuals. Mark has attempted to make rules about not leaving my shoes everywhere, but as I sit here typing, there are four pairs in a four foot radius of me, and I'm at the dining room table. I tried to make a rule about not snacking on anything but salad before dinner. That lasted about as long as the first bag of salad I bought. It's not surprising that a rule won't stick unless we both believe in it.

I think that rules are good for relationships, as long as you don't have too many of them. They are a good way to state your values and make sure that you are both getting what you need from your spouse. I have a friend whose partner likes to work late in the evenings and sleep late in the morning - the consequence being that they don't spend much time together, which can make a person feel undervalued, like they aren't as important as your sleep. I have another friend who has a rule with her husband about what financial spending they can and can't get angry about - he doesn't get angry about how much clothing she buys, she doesn't get angry about how often he goes out for lunch. I firmly believe that it's this kind of agreed-upon give-and-take of creating rules that helps couples get what they need from each other.

I think that rules can also be tricky, because at the end of the day, you have to remember that you are married to your spouse, not to the rule, and fights can get ugly when you are yelling, "it's your turn!" or "that's the deal!" or "but the rule is X!"

I'm very curious as to what other people's rules might be, and also how you work your bedtime/getting out of bed issues in your relationship.

Any Other Photo

2011-05-20T06:40:00.000-04:00

Have you all been over to Any Other Wedding yet? I first started reading it on International Women's Day, and have generally kept up with it. They are asking for submissions for their Any Other Photo series, which features a single photo from your wedding that evokes something, or everything, for you. I sat down to send one in and when I looked through all our wedding pictures, I didn't end up picking any of the ones that I thought I would. So go check it out!

Also, submit one of your own! It's so much easier than submitting a guest post, you don't have to pick one that shows your faces if you're shy, and I know that I for one would love to see some of your weddings!

Wrong.

2011-05-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

The other day, for some reason, my boss and I were talking about engagement rings. I said I would never be "upgrading" my ring (he was saying they had just upgraded his wife's; he wasn't implying that I should upgrade mine), and pulled it off to show him. When I put it back on, he asked why I wear my wedding band on the outside.

I really miss that manicure. Even if it did take an hour to soak off.

I wear my ring on the outside for three reasons. The first is that my engagement ring is too big. My engagement ring is a 5, and my wedding band is a 4.5. The wedding band keeps the engagement ring from falling off (and my ring-tightener already came off, unfortunately, although the rings are much more flush without it.)

The second is that my engagement ring is really wide. Here is it without the wedding band:

By Prema Photographic.

If I have the wedding band behind my engagement ring, it pushes my engagement ring uncomfortably close to my knuckle.

The third is that wearing the wedding band on the outside has always felt right to me. I don't know why. Maybe it's because you get the engagement ring first, then the wedding band, maybe it's because my mom wears her engagement ring on the outside, maybe it's because my engagement ring cost 9x what my wedding band did and if anything gets lost, it had better be the wedding band. I know technically you are "supposed" to wear it on the inside, but I definitely see other unconventional women rocking their bands on the outside. I have concluded there is no "wrong" way to sport your wedding jewelery, including not wearing it at all (which I am not, right now. I forget mine frequently. Since it's too big, I don't wear it when I work out, so I forget it after the gym.)

How do you wear your rings? Do you have multiple rings? Do you wear just a band or just an engagement ring? Or are you rockin' the Wills and not wearing a ring at all?

Monday Marriage Matters: The In Laws

2011-05-16T08:30:00.025-04:00

Today is my mom's birthday. Let's all take a moment and wish her a happy birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom!

So in case you were doing the math, my Mom's birthday is about a week after Mother's day. So we spent both last Sunday and this Sunday giving my mom what she always says she wants the most: time with us. Which is great. Except it means that my poor husband has to do a lot of that dreaded task that husbands everywhere have to do: spend time with the in-laws.

This task is made even more dreaded by the fact that we're in the middle of a big spring-cleaning project at our house, and the sons-in-law get caught up in it. They've mounted my parent's TV, built furniture, changed the lightbulbs, fixed computer problems, and done all sorts of other handy things in the last two weekends. It is important to note that only half of the work they were asked to do was requested by my parents. My sister and I have buckled down to throw away things from our childhood we no longer need, and organize the rest of it all. My parents are getting rid of the things that they don't want or need any more,

My parents are great, to be sure (also, my Dad reads the blog), but I feel like asking a spouse to spend two full Sundays in a row with their in-laws is asking a lot. Especially when it involves something as daunting as spring cleaning. I should point out that my parents did not ask us to come over and spring-clean; that was our gift to our Mom, and the person who asked my husband to come over and put himself to work was me. And my Dad will surely take this the wrong way and write a long-winded comment about how when he asks my husband to change the lightbulbs, it's a compliment because my husband is much more graceful than my Dad, but the fact of the matter is, my parents like that I married a tall handy man almost as much as they like the fact that my sister married a computer scientist. Who are both neat-freaks. Between the two of them, our houses are all much better organized and we are making steps towards not being the type of family that shows up on one of those hoarders TV shows. But the fact remains: when we come to my parents house, there is always some task that has been waiting for a strapping young man to show up to do it. Not because my parents couldn't do it, but it's so much easier for a son-in-law to do it.

Nonetheless, when we visit my in-laws house, the most work I ever have to do is doing the washing up or occasionally helping in the garden. Mark sometimes gets asked to sort through his closet or the garage, and sometimes his Dad will give him strange power tools that he is getting rid of. I do not get asked to change light bulbs or clear out the shed. (In all fairness, I asked Mark to clear out the shed.) I'm not sure whether this is because I am a less useful person to have married or if Mark's parents are simply more polite than mine. (My father is going to comment and say he does not think that asking sons-in-law to do manual labor is impolite. He thinks of them as part of the family and is extremely appreciative of the help. Plus, this is totally how things worked with his parents - my mother regularly helped my grandparents with their computers and medical issues, so this is pretty much how people in my family recognize members of the family. Also, we get paid in very nice lunches and all the spare change we can find.)

Does your spouse get put to work? Do you? Is it wrong that I sometimes get a little prickly when my mom or dad calls and says, "X is wrong at our house. When are you and Mark coming over?" More importantly, if your spouse is asked to help your parents out with a task, does he/she ever feel like they can say no? Because while I might snottily tell my Dad that I do not want to help him out, my husband is significantly more polite than I am, which I worry will lead to his being taken advantage of.

I've reread and rewritten this post several times to try to avoid offending my Dad, but I don't see a way around it. So I feel the need to add the disclaimer that I frequently ask my husband to help my parents out; that my husband is always "free to say no"; and that my parents never ever would mean to upset or offend my husband. Nonetheless, this makes the point even more clear: navigating relationships with family and in-laws is tricky in a marriage.

Domestic Honeymoons

2011-05-12T08:30:00.001-04:00

Where did your parents go on their honeymoon? Mine went to the southwest, where they went camping and stayed in $3 hotels. Truthfully, whenever my dad tells the stories, they're pretty funny and I liked hearing them growing up, especially because we often vacationed in the Southwest when we were kids.

I wanted that for my own family. I wanted to be able to take my children wherever we went, and say, "we went here on our honeymoon" or "we stayed at that hotel, and look, it's still there!" So that was a factor in our decision to take a domestic honeymoon.

I think there were some people who were surprised that world-travelers such as ourselves would choose such a simple honeymoon to places where people regularly get sent for conferences, but we didn't want the long flight and the big time change to go to Europe or South America or Australia or Asia. We were short on vacation time and I didn't have a job lined up, so we weren't looking to spend a lot of money, especially not on airfare. It was hurricane season in the Caribbean, and we go on dive trips with our friends or family to the Caribbean, so we weren't anxious to go back.

The biggest advantages for us for a domestic honeymoon were that we didn't have to worry about exchange rates or changing money, which I generally feel is a headache, and our cell phones worked. So Mark could run to the drugstore the morning on our honeymoon when I woke up with a sore throat and cough and call me to ask what kind of Tylenol to buy. On our first day, I had to call the attorney doing my character review to make sure my last reference for the Bar had been submitted. We didn't have to worry about not speaking the language or not drinking the water (which isn't that hard, but it isn't that easy).

We were able to do San Francisco and San Diego right because we didn't spend much on airfare, and we also got to go places we had never been and that excited us greatly, so we are very happy with our choice of honeymoon destination. If you are also considering a domestic honeymoon, definitely don't write it off just because it sounds boring or you feel silly or you feel like you have to do anything. Your honeymoon is the one thing about your wedding where you really shouldn't feel like you have to do something.

Honeymoons: Does it matter where you go?

2011-05-11T08:30:00.003-04:00

I wonder sometimes, whether it really matters where we went on our honeymoon. We loved San Francisco and San Diego, and we'd been trying to plan a trip there for years, but I wonder if we would have had a better trip if we had gone to South Carolina or Spain or Ireland or Hawaii or anywhere else we had talked about. I wondered if our cross-country train trip would have felt as awesome. And I think the answer is yes, because really, I don't think it matters that much where you go.

It matters where you go, because a honeymoon really is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. I really didn't think it was, but it isn't just another trip. But at the same time, it doesn't matter where you go, because it's your honeymoon. Like your wedding dress, which isn't special because of what it looks like, but because you wore it to marry your partner; your honeymoon is special because it's where you went when you went on your honeymoon. So whether you go to the Caribbean or a hotel in town, it's special.

So I stand by my general feeling that a honeymoon should be someplace that is easy to get to, that is convenient, that is fun. Don't get too caught up in where to go or what you will do once you get there. You can be just as relaxed walking around a new town and sitting on a park bench as you can be lying on a beach in the Caribbean. That's not to say you shouldn't have fun, but if your list of places that you want to go is really long, don't pick the most difficult one just because it's your honeymoon.

Honeymoons, and why you can't have another.

2011-05-10T08:30:00.000-04:00

We're going to England this summer for my SIL's UK reception. I'm ridiculously excited about this trip, but when I called it a second honeymoon, Mark said it couldn't be, because we haven't even been married a year. But the real reason it can't be a second honeymoon, and the reason I think everybody should take at least a few days off after their wedding instead of going back to work on Monday, is because on your honeymoon, you will probably be the nicest to your partner you will ever be in your life.

On our honeymoon, I learned the meaning of the phrase, "honeymoon phase". Because my husband didn't mind if I was walking slowly; he waited patiently for me to rummage through my purse, he humored me by letting me take 300+ pictures at the zoo.

And THEN, then, I dropped my lens cap in the koala pen at the zoo. And what did he do? Took pictures of koalas for me while I found a zookeeper to get my lens cap. We had a lot more patience for each other. I ate things I wouldn't usually and agreed to go on a 25 mile bike ride. He wandered with me into weird kitchen stores where I didn't plan to buy things. We spent money in ways we would normally argue over, or at least discuss at length. We were impulsive. We got lost and didn't fight about it. Our flight was delayed and neither of us was grumpy.

Am I saying this will happen to you? No. You might very well spend every day in your lives cutting each other all kinds of slack and being patient with each other. Maybe one of you is always game to try clam chowder. Maybe you regularly go shopping together. Hats off to you, but we're not one of those couples. You might also fight a lot on your honeymoon, I don't know if this is normal or was just us.

Usually on trips, we need space. We build it in. It turns out, we didn't really want space. We wanted to cuddle together and hold hands and kiss in public and repeat, over and over, "you are my husband" "you are my wife."

This summer, as we get on a plane at BWI, a bus at Heathrow, and attempt the 55-mile Taff Trail together through Wales, get on a train to Manchester, and finally catch a train to Leeds, there will be, I'm sure, some arguing. There will be some blaming, there will be some petty bickering, and there will definitely be some "I was right, you were wrong" and "that restaurant was awful!" But that's okay, because we're still going to have fun. But it's not going to be a second honeymoon; we're just going to have to settle for it being yet another married adventure.

Our Honeymoon

2011-05-09T08:30:00.000-04:00

Did I ever properly talk about our honeymoon? Probably not, because I find honeymoon posts to be a bit tedious sometimes, unless I'm interested in going to the place. So this week, I'm going to talk about it a bit. Today, some highlights. Later, reasons why you should take a honeymoon. Later than that, a few travel tips.

So we went to San Francisco and San Diego. We stayed in Fisherman's Wharf. I don't recommend staying there. None of the restaurants opened early enough for breakfast for jetlagged travelers; and nothing stayed late enough open for people that wanted to find food at 9pm. Other than that, it's a nice area.

They have boats.

And piers. (Get a mini tri pod.)

And hills.

And sourdough bread. (We did happy hour at Boudin. It was excellent. And their museum is great.)

We rode bikes (and had so much fun we are currently planning a bike trip in Wales for this summer.)

We saw redwoods, so I was happy. They are TALL.

We went to Golden Gate Park.

Then we went to San Diego. We had great weather in SF and crummy weather in San Diego. Usually it's the other way around, but we got to go to the zoo, so it's all good. Our hotel in San Diego was reader-recommended and in the Little Italy area. The hotel was fantastic, so thank you; with a daily proper breakfast; and a shuttle to the zoo.

The zoo was awesome.

It turns out that I'm sort of a two year old.

Not even really sort of.

I just like this picture.

We took the ferry to Coronado.

It was cold, windy, and drizzling. We hung out on the beach for about an hour, then headed back to the hotel.

I took way more pictures than this (800+ in fact), and we had a great time. I wish we had more time, but a week was at least enough to relax after the wedding and really enjoy ourselves.

Monday Marriage Matters: Money

2011-05-02T08:30:00.056-04:00

Since we've gotten married, we have been much more transparent about money. We merged our "marital earnings" but not our savings (because that is what happens when you marry a lawyer), so everything that is marital earnings goes into the same pot and we try to keep our spending approximately equal, and low. A few changes that we have made include:

1) We switched from Mint to Quicken. Quicken has slightly better tools than Mint, and Mint kept having problems with some of the banks we use. We keep it on our joint computer (that was a really big step, btw, and the subject of a future Marriage Matters post.)

2) We opened, and use a joint checking account. When I started my job, I set up direct deposit. Eventually both of us will direct deposit into a joint checking account, and pay bills out of it. Since all of our earnings since we got married are considered marital earnings, it makes sense to keep them jointly. This will both protect our individual assets if we get divorced, and make our marital earnings easier to value and divide.

3) We talk about saving for retirement. We're only starting this conversation, but for us, retirement is something we don't know much about, but that we know we should be saving for. I truly think that anybody our age needs to not take social security for granted, and probably not even expect it, so retirement savings it is.

4) We talk about how much we spend on items, how much is reasonable to spend, and how to prioritize our spending. Spending for things that affect us jointly comes first - rent, utilities, and food. Then it's important but not totally necessary stuff - gym memberships, new contacts and glasses, etc. Then is fun stuff for one of us that the other person doesn't think is necessary or enjoys - like new clothing for me; fun electronic toys for Mark. These conversations are really hard to have without one or both of us feeling guilty or defensive, but I'm hoping we'll get better at them over time. (Also when we have more money.)

5) We keep each other in check. When one of us suddenly gets the idea to do something fun and expensive, the other of us is there to ask whether we can afford it. And I think that little voice in the back of my head thinking, "what will my husband say?" is one of the biggest advantages of being married, when it comes to finances. I don't spend money stupidly anymore, and we discuss bigger purchases together before one of us makes them. This is also important with sites like Groupon - it's really easy to buy deals and feel like they are deals, but often one of us thinks it's a great idea and the other person reminds them that the restaurant the groupon is for is far away, or the activity that it involves is free at another place, or that we don't actually kiteboard or want to. This way, we don't throw away money on things we won't use.

Does anyone have any other tips for finances? How are you managing money now that you are married?

Wedding Hats

2011-04-29T08:41:00.000-04:00

If there is one thing that Americans love more than the Royal Wedding, it's the Royal Wedding Hats.

(source)

Because frankly, many Americans are not that into the idea of Royalty. We just...meh. Some people love the royal wedding, some people hate it, but I suspect that most were more like myself in which we watched with a faint curiosity because we wanted to know what Kate would wear, and quite possibly hoped there would be a parade of Corgis. That one was just me? Okay.

Let me be clear: the King's Speech was an excellent movie. And the corgis are still the best part.

But many of us are fascinated by the British and their hats. I mean, we don't really get royalty, but we do get hats. And some of them are fantastic and some of them are just nutty. But as an American who married a British man, I was sorely disappointed in the lack of hats at our own wedding. I know, it is unreasonable to expect people to transport hats across the pond just to wear to our wedding, but didn't they know how excited I was to see behatted wedding guests?

The closest anyone came was our good friend Sue, who sported a feather fascinator:

(Obviously, by Prema Photographic.)

And my own grandmother, who does not leave the house without a hat, regardless of the occasion, so long as she will be going outside. If we're together, I also get handed a hat.

Fortunately, we were prepared for the possibility that our guests might not all choose to wear their own hats, and provided them.

So the moral of this story is that if you get married in England, and are royalty, many fabulous people will wear hats to your wedding. And if you are a commoner marrying another commoner in the United States, no matter how many British people come, they may very well leave their hats at home. But, if you provide hats, people will wear them around your wedding.

Weddings and Relationships

2011-04-28T08:30:00.003-04:00

Since I'm the youngest of 14 cousins, I've watched weddings change, or ruin, relationships over the years. And while it seems horrible to say "his wedding ruined our relationship," it's rarely actually the case. And even when it is the case, it's because the wedding brought out harsh truths about your relationships that you didn't want to admit.

I have a friend whose friendship was ruined over him being a groomsman in his friend's wedding and there being a lack of communication over the groomsman's obligations and about other things, but was ultimately an argument over what each friend expected from each other socially, emotionally, and their relationships with each other's significant others. I'm not sure whose "fault" it was that what happened, happened. But I do know it's super awkward to still be friends with both of them.

The reality of weddings is that they are complicated and for some reason, they bring out the worst parts of the people we love the most. Whether it's a pissing contest between the parents over who has more money/friends/status or it's a brou-ha-ha about how much rap music you want to play at the reception, they can really bring out the terrible parts of people.

My point here is simply that if your wedding is a catalyst for a changed relationship between two people, it is not your fault for having a wedding. There is nothing you did that could cause that - all it caused was these two people to realize something about themselves that makes their relationship different. You will also find out things about yourself that you might not have known before your wedding.* These things might change the dynamic of your relationships with others. But if it is time to end a friendship, it's time. If'it's family, you'll still have to see the person, but you don't have to like them. Don't avoid the inevitable because you blame it on your wedding - that's not fair to your wedding, and it will mar your wedding in your rearview mirror.

How have weddings changed relationships in your life?

* I found I'm not afraid to be selfish or bossy and I'm not ashamed of myself for either of those things. I'm a little ashamed that I'm not ashamed.

Monday Marriage Matters: Church

2011-04-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

I was talking to a friend last week about going to church, and he was saying that his wife is interested in finding another church than the faith she was raised. He was saying he doesn't particularly care to go to church at all, and I suggested he just stay home like thousands of men across America do, and let his wife do the churching for the both of them.

I say this, in all seriousness, because it is how we do things in our household. Mark comes to church with me sometimes, but often, I go alone. Frankly, I prefer to go alone. It's me-time. I've been going to church alone since high school, when my parents told me I could stop and I said, "no thanks, I'll keep going." I've always assumed that, like my family, I will take our children to Sunday school and Mark will stay at home and do the laundry (much like now) or do the dishes. (I don't go to church just to get out of doing housework, but it's a bonus.) Growing up, I went to church or Sunday school with my mom and my sister and my Dad stayed home and made lunch for us and my grandparents, who often came over after church for lunch.

Anyway, my friend said that his wife gets annoyed by the women-at-church family dynamic, and she doesn't want to be one of those women who goes to church alone or with the kids. I can understand this perspective, I suppose, but it seems to me that if only one person in a relationship enjoys an activity, and the other does it, only the person who enjoys it should do it. However, there are people who view church not as enjoyable, but as an obligation. This makes church much more like dinner with the in-laws, and therefore it seems more fair that both partners should have to suffer through. Let's review that I'm a Unitarian, and our sermons are fun, do not make you feel guilty, and there is no communion or anything else to make a person who doesn't "belong" feel awkward. So if you feel differently about church, please share in the comments! I'm very curious about the churchgoing activities and desires of others.

As we've been married, I don't go to church as often as I would like, but this is mostly because in the winter months, my churchgoing gets replaced by the Church of Hockey. I have women's leagues games on Sunday, often around the same time as the only service at my church here in Baltimore. I also still don't really feel at home here in Baltimore. The church is just different. My lack of churchgoing has nothing to do with my husband not supporting my churchgoing, or anything but my own busyness or laziness. All of that will be changing pretty soon though, because my sister bought a house.

My sister bought a house that is about a mile from my home church. My home church, where I still feel like I belong. My home church, which has 9am and 10:45am services. My home church, which is about 3 miles from my parents house. My home church, that my grandmother goes to. My home church, where I know the ministers and the Sunday School teachers and the kids I grew up with. So what better excuse could there be for returning to my home church than to get to go to church (hopefully with my Mom) and then having lunch with (or watch Redskins games with) my big sister and my Mom? I'm obviously really excited about this plan, and I don't mind telling you: it never even occurred to me that Mark might want to come with me. I assume he'll either come down and hang out with my BIL, or stay home and do the laundry. (Last Friday, I overloaded the washer and also melted the detergent cup. Then the dryer didn't dry everything properly and it got left for the weekend because I didn't notice. I am not going to be encouraged to do the laundry ever again.)

I feel like it would be easy to look at this dynamic and say that church is for women, and women go to church and get mad at their husbands for not going; but I think for a lot of women, church creates an opportunity to build communities with other women. I think that some women, like me, relish the space that church creates for them; but other women, like my friend, worry about being forced into a gender role or gender-based dynamic that they aren't comfortable with. But the question remains: how do we fight stereotypes when one of us really doesn't want to do something? Do you suck it up and spend an hour a week at church because it matters to your partner? Do you use church as a negotiating tactic or bargaining chip? Or do you just go it alone, or with other members of your own family/faith community, like I do?

Mythbusters: Affordable Alterations

2011-04-20T07:31:00.000-04:00

At my in laws recently, my SIL tried on her wedding dress so we could play with accessories and veils. We had talked earlier about what she would do about alterations, and I was passing on everything I had learned in my alterations ordeal, as well as that of my sister's - it's going to be expensive, it will be worth it, but go to somebody you trust and like.

I think the most important thing to know is: you do not have to use the seamstress at the bridal shop you get your dress from. The second most important thing to know is: you do not have to use the first seamstress you go to. Especially if you are up front about "finding out what the alterations will cost" or "coming in for a consultation."

As she was trying on her dress, which is a sample dress that she got at the end of the summer, there were a few bits where the beading is coming lose as well. My MIL was saying that she could take care of x or y on the dress, and I was shaking my head. I realized later that I acted exactly the way that other people acted when I talked about hemming my dress myself or taking care of the broken buttons on the back myself. I also recognize now that I'm on the other side that there is a reason for that.

I think there is a lot to be said for consistency, and a lot to be said for hiring a professional for certain things. I'm a darn good seamstress when it comes to the usher's ties or baby bibs or halloween costumes. And while I could have attempted to alter my wedding dress myself, I know now that I would never ever in a million years done the job my seamstress did on it.

Alterations are expensive, no doubt about it. I paid $50 just to get a regular dress hemmed recently, and I could not have imagined that it would cost that much. The advice I can give you to lower the cost of your alterations is this: buy a cheaper dress.

That's it. I'm sorry. Even my sister, whose wedding dress fit her almost perfectly, wound up paying over $300 for the hem and a few alterations to the strap/bust of the dress. (If you are in that position though, look for a seamstress who caps the cost of their alterations. Usually around $250 or $300.) I paid more than the cost of my dress to get it to fit perfectly.

I knew I would be paying a lot in alterations, so I looked for a dress without beading, because beading is one of the things that can make alterations more expensive and more complicated. Another trick is to find a used dress that has already been altered to something near your height, so you can just wear taller or shorter shoes. You can also sometimes order a dress in a particular length, so that you don't have to get it altered (but might find that after ordering the dress in that length, it's still too long and you have to get it hemmed anyway.) If you are buying a dress off-the-rack as a sample, etc. in the store, talk to the seamstress there and demand a price quote from her. If you are thinking about buying the dress that day, there is NO reason why the seamstress cannot actually tell you what she would charge for the alterations - it's not a matter of waiting until the dress comes in, etc. That is your dress.

Also, don't immediately write off the cost of getting a dress custom made. This is actually something I wish I had explored more - if I'd gotten a dress custom made, it probably would have cost close to what mine did in original costs + alterations.

Anyone have tips on what to look for in a dress that would cut down the cost of alterations? Any ideas for ways to save money when getting the dress altered?

Why are all bridesmaids gifts monogrammed?

2011-04-19T08:30:00.000-04:00

Seriously. You go to The Knot or Weddingbee's "bridesmaid shop" and everything is monogrammed. For that one day that your bridesmaids are all in the same room and might ::gasp:: mix up their tote bags. And if I was going to get my bridesmaids a monogrammed tote bag, it would be something sturdy from LL Bean.

I often see people bemoaning "why are bridesmaids gifts are so hard?" Uh, because they are your best friends, they have done a lot for you, and no freakin' tote bag can ever possibly thank them for everything they did. Even if it is monogrammed. So let go of the idea that your bridesmaid gift will be "enough", and settle for the idea of "nice".

What might make for good bridesmaid gifts? I know at least one of my bridesmaids uses the clutch I got her, so I'm calling the Coach Wristlet a win. The other thing I thought about getting all of my girls was diamond stud earrings - they are infinitely practical and not terribly expensive. For our wedding, I wore the small diamond studs that my husband got me for Valentine's Day my first year of law school, which according to him were, "surprisingly not that expensive."

But what if you didn't budget very much for bridesmaid gifts? (Which was probably a mistake, btw. I would recommend budgeting something around $100 for bridesmaid gifts. You can knock it down later, if you really need to make room.) A lot of people recommend things like flip-flops or pashminas so they can be comfortable at your wedding. If you go for flip flops, get a good brand, like Reefs, in a color specific to each girl so they can wear them again and again.

One idea I wanted to do, but didn't have a chance to get my act together for (also, ran out of $) was to put a gift card into each wristlet. This is also an idea you can achieve for less - for example, I might get one of these fun Fossil coin purses, which are around $14-20 and nice. I started carrying a coin purse again recently and it's fantastic for carrying around cash, or a more streamlined version of my wallet:

You can fill the coin purse with gift cards that are specific to each bridesmaid, and this is also an easy way to give a slightly nicer gift to your maid-of-honor, or to a bridesmaid who has really gone above and beyond, without everybody else knowing.

What did you get your maids?

Monday Marriage Matters: Space in our Togetherness

2011-04-18T08:30:00.029-04:00

"Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you."

We picked this reading by Khalil Gibran for our ceremony for a few reasons, one being that it fit with giving our wedding party each a line of it, but the other being that we agreed with it. We believe very strongly in having space to ourselves, in not doing everything together, in honoring each others interests without needing to be a part of them.

The past few weeks, we've been doing our own thing. Mark's been traveling, I've been trying to get more involved in both the legal and crafting community, which means that we have been passing a bit like ships in the night. It's nice, to have these spaces, to be able to pursue our own interests, and to have the support of each other, but we also miss each other.

So we've found ways to honor the spaces and also come together. We've planned date nights and gotten home early, given each other rides just to talk to each other, scheduled time to call each other, and done all the other little things we've gotten used to over the last seven years to keep our relationship strong during rough patches. Over the seven years we've been together, we've had a long distance relationship three separate times, so we've gotten the hang of spaces in our togetherness. (I imagine that true LDR couples have also got this down.)

I imagine that over the years, there will be times when we see far too much of each other, and times when, like now, we don't see nearly enough of each other. The trick is going to be to keep being able to navigate th spaces in our togetherness, and to ensure that we continue to have spaces. I have seen what happens to marriages when either two people have too much space, or too little, and both are extremely hard to recover from, and not let fester and rot your relationship.

How do you honor spaces in your togetherness, and how do you make sure to come together when the distance feels very far apart?

Papa don't preach

2011-04-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

But I'm keeping my name. Both of them.

For now.

It started when I went to fill out my "new" name on my driver's license form. I wrote it, and it bugged me, and so I put the paperwork away. Then the badging form I had to fill out to be allowed into the courthouse needed a last name. So I put mine on it. Then it was all the forms and paperwork I filled out to start my job. Then the application to be a notary. Then the form to renew my passport.

On all of these things, I put my "maiden" name. Which I keep getting asked if it's my "married" name. To which I would like to say, "eff you, it's my name and why should it matter?" I kept meaning to change it, and not doing it. When I sat down to change it, I didn't want to. And I started thinking about all of the advantages of having a crazy long name. Like that people remember me as that girl with a crazy last name. And I'm the only one of me. And I share this name with my sister, and we're in this together. And I was never really going to share my name with my husband, so why not just stay...me?

The name change decision is a process, and there is no right solution, and it evolves over time. My current plan is to hold off on picking a last name until we have kids. Yes, it will be annoying and a ton of paperwork. But I'm not ready to give up such a big part of who I am. Ultimately, I can't give you any advice on how you'll feel - but I can assure you - having different last names doesn't make us feel less married. Or like less of a family.

My only real concern about my last name is that we've had more than a few clients come through our office who aren't mentally stable. I'm nervous about these people going home and looking me up on the internet. This was never really a concern of mine before, but it is now, and I'm not sure how to protect my privacy. Suddenly there is more and more merit to the idea of going socially by my husband's last name - changing my name on Facebook, giving that name to races that we run, etc. Except that I don't want to go by his last name, never have, and it is unlikely I ever will. So although using his name socially would be a solution, I'm not totally comfortable with it. Any suggestions?

Creativity Funneled

2011-04-13T08:30:00.000-04:00

The great thing about being married is you have time to do other stuff. But if you have creative energies you directed towards the wedding and now you're going...."but what do I dooooo?" the good news is your friends will probably start having babies soon. We recently threw a circus themed baby shower for our friends, which was great. Because I had an excuse to take on projects I didn't do for the wedding.

Like making bunting. Which, in case you're thinking, "maybe I should do that?!?", is annoying to make and takes a lot of time. Don't do it. At least not for your wedding, if you are doing any other DIY projects. But for a circus themed baby shower, it's fun, livens up a room, and is pretty cheap. (I paid about $10-12 for this, because in the end I bought bias tape instead of making my own. I was tired.) I made one long strand, and then smaller strands for the doorways, the dining room, and the photobooth, so I definitely got good value out of it.

You can also make super fun other things, like cupcake tags. My friend who bakes delicious cupcakes found these on Etsy, but I think they are a cricut or other type of die on toothpicks. This is one of those projects that, for a wedding, would be a huge pain, but for something on a smaller scale, they are adorable, fun, and not terribly time-intensive. And if you're buying them, they are much more affordable if you only need 24 and not 175.

You can go crazy and theme the food too - we served corn dogs, funnel cake, punch & animal crackers, and pop rocks (leftover from another baby shower).

We also got to use our photobooth again. Which yes, we keep set-up in the living room. We're that cool.

So look, your wedding isn't the only party you'll ever get to throw, and the little details get just as appreciated (maybe more) at other parties, they'll be less time-intensive, and you'll actually get to enjoy them. At a wedding, sometimes these projects get swallowed. But our friends walked into the living room and said, "oooh flags!"

If anybody wants a tutorial on how to make bunting, I'll write one up, but there's a lot of them out there. I did use my serger for it, which made it a little faster and the edges were easier to iron.

Monday Marriage Matters: Taxes

2011-04-11T08:35:00.000-04:00

It's income tax season alright. Mark started working on our taxes back in January, and finished his. Then there were mine. And my taxes are a treat, let me tell you. For a number of reasons, including school errors, spotty work history, and the way my bank accounts are set up (read: I stopped managing money entirely while I was unemployed, and as a result forgot my login for my savings account), my taxes were complicated.

The great thing about doing our taxes, nightmare that it has been, has been that it has gotten us talking more about money, about retirement, about saving and spending and how to do things. It's gotten us to install Quicken because we weren't satisfied with the tools in Mint, and start talking more about how we want/need to be budgeting for the future.

The thing that I'm uncomfortable about when it comes to our taxes is that Mark did them. I took Fed Income Tax, but none of it stuck with me, and I have absolutely no understanding of any tax forms whatsoever. I think there is a class that I can take at the local community college, or maybe one of the senior centers I go to for work, which I will do at some point, but I haven't yet. And my mom has done my taxes up until now (I'm really embarrassed to admit this, you guys, but everybody has some gaps in their knowledge, right?)

Mark, on the other hand, has filed his taxes since college. So he did our taxes. Which concerns me, because I think in relationships, women should play a significant role in the financial conversation, in the earning of money and the deciding how it should be used, and in the paying of taxes. Because good lord, if we got divorced, I would have to hire an accountant since I'm such a clueless disaster. Yes, the solution would have, should have been, sit down next to him and watch him do my taxes, but sitting on the couch and blogging was so much more fun. (Also sometimes I made dinner while he did the taxes, which seems very 1950s of us.) My contributions to the taxes were trying to fix the mistakes my school made in sending me the wrong forms, generating the tax statements from my bank account, and not losing my W2. (Challenging.)

I know I'm not the only woman out there who doesn't touch the taxes, as evidenced by the fact that when I tweeted, "am making my husband do the taxes and feeling unfeminist", several fellow bloggers responded with, "if he likes it/wants to do them, let him! everybody wins!" Which is true, although a small part of me thinks that when we hand over the tricky, challenging parts of being a grownup to our partner instead of learning how to do them, we all lose a little bit.

Who does the taxes in your house? Do you feel like money management is a "man" thing to do? (My mom does my parent's taxes, so I'm not sure why I think it's a man thing. I think all my guy friends do the taxes in their relationships.)

Where to get ready

2011-04-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

I think a common debate for people is where to get ready before their weddings. A lot of people get ready at either the venue or the hotel, and would really like to get ready at the venue or the hotel close to the venue, and I think we see less and less of people getting ready at home.

We debated getting ready at home - on the one hand, it appealed to me, since I would have all my stuff here (and since I managed to forget my emergency kit and my makeup, that would have been good.) The lighting also would have been much better for photographs. Our apartment has a lot of character, so some pictures would have been fun here. On the other hand, I'm very messy, and while our apartment managed to not be a total disaster zone right before the wedding, it still would have stressed me out a lot to feel like I couldn't leave stuff lying around in piles.

Ultimately, our apartment was too far away from the venue and my hair salon to get ready in it, but I do think that if you are getting married near your house, don't overlook the sake of getting ready at home - especially not because you are worried about the pictures - I think it results in some really charming, personal pictures. My SIL is getting ready at their parents house before her wedding in August and I'm pretty psyched because I think it'll result in some really fantastic pictures.

Monday Marriage Matters: DINKs

2011-04-04T08:32:00.001-04:00

With a month down at my job, I feel comfortable thinking of ourselves as DINKs (Dual-Income-No-Kids). Truthfully, we aren't even close to DINKs. My job is part-time and hourly, so I don't make much more than enterprising high school students who score summer jobs. Nonetheless: it is an income, of a sort, and most importantly, it frees us up a little bit to actually, y'know, enjoy ourselves. So what does that mean for us these days?

I always thought when we had two incomes, we would get Nice Things. We would own a flat screen TV and furniture that didn't come free from the apartment or my grandparent's living room. I could have a membership to a fancy gym and we could get some new toys, like a new laptop and smartphones. I could buy expensive shoes!

One thing I learned from being unemployed though, is that half the things you think you want or need, you really don't. As soon as you're looking at paying for X versus paying for Y, things like a flat-screen TV and a new lens for my camera just don't seem necessary. So after being forced to reevaluate priorities in this way, we spend our money differently than I thought we would. We're committed to making a shift towards owning less stuff (anyone who knows me is on the floor right now, laughing), which means not just buying things that we want when we want them. We've so far instead opted to spend our new earnings on things like going out to dinner or having lunch together (since now we both work near each other). What I noticed when I was unemployed was that I didn't really miss buying stuff (although I did miss shopping), but that I did miss doing things like going to happy hour.

There is one small issue that we face with this lifestyle. Since we are friends with a large number of DINKs, and they have been DINKs for a lot longer than we have, a lot of them have much nicer stuff than we do. So we frequently invite ourselves over to their houses to watch the Superbowl or March Madness. We borrow their Smartphones when we are out with them and need to look something up. We find ourselves needing to bum rides from people more now that we share a single car. So it's a valid concern that somewhere in our mission to become more environmentally savvy and less consumer-y that we have instead simply become mooches. We try to reign it in, to offer to drive as much as possible, to chip in for gas, to offer to host parties for occasions that don't involve around having a nice TV/cable, to always bring something to the table when we go to somebody's house.

Another issue with our friends is that somewhere along the way, they grew up and started acting like adults, and I've been in school for twenty years, so I still act like a student. So while apparently in the real world, it's normal to just split the check six ways (which I don't mind as long as my meal wasn't $15 less than others, which has happened), and people don't really chip in for gas the way they did in college, and you cover another person's morning Starbucks order and don't think anything of it, I still don't think like that. So along with a shift in thinking about income, I'm starting to shift how I think about my relationships with others, and more importantly, our relationships with other couples. Not surprisingly, the relationships that are easiest to maintain are the ones that we have with my fellow students or the people I graduated from college with, who are a few years behind or are single; or surprisingly enough, our relationships with couples who are having children. I'm not sure why this is, but it's been surprising to me how much we as a couple need to work on our relationships with other couples.

How have you navigated the murkey waters of becoming adults? Do you share our struggle to reconcile liking Nice Things with wanting to spend money in ways you are comfortable with?

Thank You Notes

2011-04-01T07:57:00.022-04:00

We've finally got out pretty much the last of the thank-you notes, for a few late(r) gifts. We wrote most of them immediately after the wedding, when we got home from the honeymoon. We just started writing, and we finished about a week later. We took the usual division of I write the ones to my guests and he writes the ones to his guests. Here are a few tips so that you can be sure to get your thank-you notes out on time, in a classy way:

1.) Buy (or, better yet, have printed on notecards that match your invitations), pre-made thank-you notes.

(source)

2.) If you think the pre-made thank-you notes are tacky, feel free to just use them as a form. Your guests don't actually want a heart-felt sentiment, they just want to know that you received their gift.

3.) The exception to this rule is gifts valued at less than $50 for a couple or $25 for a single person (or people who gave you a check for that amount.) You don't have to write them a note. They clearly didn't worry much about you.

4.) If there are still people who didn't get you a gift, go ahead and write them a note saying, "we must have missed your gift in the pile, but I'm sure it's lovely, and thank you." Or just write a note saying, "we loved seeing you at the wedding and our registry at Bed Bath & Beyond will expire soon." You can also be extra-sneaky, and send them a thank-you note for a gift they didn't give you, because then you will get a gift so that you can correct your error. Nobody is going to call you and say, "we didn't get you anything."

5.) If you exchanged their gift, be sure to explain what you exchanged it for. Everyone likes to know if what they got you is useful, so go ahead and tell them that it wasn't, but you got something that was.

6.) If they got you something that isn't your style, or doesn't suit your house, and can't be returned, feel free to give it away or goodwill it and then tell them that it went to a good home, and you appreciate the thought but in the future they should stick to the registry. This will keep you from getting weird stuff for your baby.
7.) Feel free to have a few glasses of wine while you write the notes, and if you spill or make a mistake, just cross it out and write around the spill.
8.) If the person got really drunk at your wedding or behaved inappropriately, it's okay to scold them in the note and then mention at the end, "the KitchenAid almost makes up for your rotten behavior, so thanks, I guess."
9.) For late gifts, feel free to add a snide comment like, "I have heard that you get a year to give a gift, but I didn't think anyone actually followed that."
10.) For monetary gifts that are above the no-thank-you limit but still not enough to buy anything useful with, you should say in the note what the money is going towards, like "thanks for the check, we'll be putting it towards some new bath towels", so that you get your point across.

Does anybody else have some tips for thank-you notes? Feel free to share!

Weighty Issues

2011-03-31T09:46:00.001-04:00

I've started to write about my weight several times, and I've alluded to it in the past. I actually wrote this post over a year ago, but never actually posted it.

I have shied away from writing about my own weight loss so far because, well, it's a touchy subject. I do believe in the HAES movement, and I support people who choose to live their life at a weight that works for them. I believe that we are not all meant to be stick-thin; and I believe you can be overweight and healthy. I also believe that even if you are overweight and unhealthy, I should still treat you like a human being. I believe that dieting, losing weight, and being thin takes a lot of work for some people, and I acknowledge that it is simply not worth it for a lot of people. I understand that I am fortunate to have the money and time to commit to my diet and exercise habits.

A long story short, I gained slowly but steadily in high school through a lifestyle of hating gym class and exercise, and enjoying food. I was a vegetarian with no concept of protein or portion sizes. Then I went to college, where I started to go to the gym every day, but I also had to live with the food in the dining hall - where my dinner choices were salad, grilled cheese sandwiches, and regular cheese sandwiches. (Or overcooked veggie burgers.) Then I finally got my own place and tried to strike a balance between eating healthy and eating all-nighter-snack food or baking entire batches of cupcakes and cookies. Then my grandfather died and I coped poorly, by consuming too much food and alcohol. So long story short, by the end of my junior year in college I looked like this:

For reference, this is me at our wedding:

Eventually I started to work towards figuring out a healthier diet and I managed to lose 8 pounds. Yay. Then my other grandfather died and I gained it right back. Then my sister announced she was getting married. I stood next to her size 0 bridesmaids at her engagement party and felt terrible about myself. I decided I had two options. I could accept myself at the size I was, or I could make a good faith attempt at losing weight. I don't believe in dieting or deprivation, and I don't think that re-naming a diet a "lifestyle" change helps. I simply started to do what I should have been doing all along. I started writing down everything I ate to see if I was getting the right ratio of protein::fat::carbs. I attempted to get a handle on my snacking (which I couldn't, so I started snacking on healthier foods). I began to add lean protein sources into my diet. And I started exercising for a minimum of 45 minutes a day.

For me, it was a lot of work but it wasn't torture. I didn't go out to eat, or eat particularly unhealthy meals to begin with. I changed what I was eating to consist of less pasta and more beans and fresh fruits and vegetables. I started to make sure I was getting balanced meals with enough proteins and fats in them. Around this time, Mark and I moved in together - and that actually helped a lot because Mark is better about making sure we get enough protein than I am. I also didn't have time to bake anymore. Then I took up long distance running, which made exercising a lot more fun and less work. We had a trail that left straight from our backyard and it was an amazing escape from the hell that was my first year.

I managed to lose about 30lbs by the end of my first year of law school. A lot of people, particularly my heavy friends, asked me how I lost the weight, expecting an answer about a magic diet or some kind of secret. Their faces usually fell when I talked about how much work it was, how much I went to the gym, how I packed my lunch every day and stopped baking.

The reality is that I believe in weight loss. I'm really really happy that I lost the weight that I lost. It was amazing to get to be in my sister's wedding and not try to suck in my stomach or worry about how heavy I would look in all of the pictures. It was great to flip through picture after picture and love how I looked, rather than feel insecure and immediately fixate on how fat I thought I was. It was great to walk into a store, go to the racks, pick up a dress that was a size 8, and try it on knowing that it would fit and I would love the way I looked in it. It was also really nice to get engaged and know that I had already lost the weight I wanted to lose before our wedding. It was fantastic to walk into the bridal salon and fit into the sample sized dresses and know that's the size I would order them in. (I'm not saying everyone should be a size 8, but there were some advantages to being a sample size.) The bottom line is that weight loss really did solve a lot of my problems, because I was letting my weight play such a huge role in my life.

This is part of why the Newleywed 10 is so frustrating for me. It's also frustrating because it requires me to acknowledge that I have to be a certain weight to be happy, because I need to be a certain weight to feel good. And that feels very anti-feminist of me.

I don't mean to come across as judgmental, self-righteous, or as any kind of authority on weightloss. I'm simply a girl who has been through what a lot of women have been through. I know a lot of people struggle with this, so feel free to share your own story in the comments.

Sense of Self

2011-03-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

My father started posting pictures of me from my childhood on facebook before the wedding. While I'm ordinarily not wild about this practice, some of them are cute.

And it makes me think of the montage scene in Father of the Bride as he thinks about his daughter. And when I looked in the mirror heading up to the wedding, I found a stranger staring back at me. Where did the long hair come from? The lines? The circles under the eyes?

Something about being in your twenties, your face starts to change a lot. I feel like whenever I look at pictures of myself from six months or a year ago, I look so different. I'm not sure why this is. But be prepared that on your wedding day, you may feel the least like yourself that you ever have.

You don't necessarily look like yourself, and when you look at pictures, you might not smile like yourself. Because your face will be tired from all the posed smiling and your eyes will be grumpy. Also, I've had friends say that they felt nothing like themselves on their wedding days, thanks to pro makeup and hair, months of pre-wedding dieting, and other craziness. I've seen people I know get married and I felt like I didn't recognize them.

I'm not really sure how to correct these things, other than hire a hair/makeup artist you trust. Does anyone have tips on how to perfect the art of smiling so you aren't sneering in the wedding photo your inlaws frame and hang above the couch?

Monday Marriage Matters: Home

2011-03-28T08:30:00.059-04:00

There's a lot of pressure on newlyweds to buy a house. I don't really know where it comes from, except that once society is done telling you that you must have floral centerpieces, they are telling you that you must have a house. Like weddings, home-buying is a touchy subject. Once this post goes up, a number of people will comment with, "we bought a house but it made sense for us because of XYZ." Ff you bought a house, I really hope it made sense for you! You do not need to validate yourself to me, even to my judgmental badger face. Like weddings, there's a lot of people out there who tell you what to do, because that's the choice they made and they're defensive.

House envy hit us hard when all of Mark's friends bought houses while I was in law school. Occasionally he would come home and say, "man, I'm the only one who doesn't have a house." I would remind him that he was the only one who had a landlord that shoveled his sidewalk (although we don't have that anymore) or how nice it was to have somebody to call us a plumber or stop by to fix the dishwasher (or oven, as ours broke last night). Nonetheless, house envy can be an ugly thing. It can make you feel inadequate for not being at a place in your life where you can afford a house, or it can make your future wife feel like a drain on the family for going to law school. Not to mention that people who buy houses often go around putting down people who weren't "smart enough" to buy right now and acting defensive because well, spending $200-500,000 on a big risk can make you feel kind of vulnerable.

We looked at houses briefly last year, especially with the tax credit, but we like city life and the schools aren't great, but the property taxes are insane. We also talked about it and decided that since we'd quickly pay back in property taxes what the tax credit saved us, it didn't make a lot of sense, and the tax cost of homeownership annually would only be a little more than we spend renting now. The market also makes me very nervous, as does the idea of having a mortgage when I didn't know if I would have a job. So instead we found a truly awesome apartment, with a whole lotta space, that we plan on staying in until our family outgrows it. We're not even aggressively saving "for a house" right now the way many of our peers are. Once I get a (permanent, long-term, salaried) job and our incomes are more even, we will save money, but I don't really want a house yet. I want to go to Australia and South America and go on fantastic dive vacations and run for public office. Being not stupid, we're not going to spend our money on trips at the expense of our savings, but if living the way we want to now means we have to wait a little longer for a house, that's a decision I think I'm okay with. (I know a lot of people who are taking the same approach to having kids, so I don't really see how it's that different.)

I've also watched a lot of people get screwed over by mortgages, even from reputable companies, and the idea of taking on that.much.debt scares the living daylights out of me. I mean, we're talking about something where you put down a 10-20% down payment, and then spend forever paying it off. That scares me. I kind of approve of Jenna and her husband, who are waiting to pay for a house in cash. I'm sure that there are a million reasons why wanting to buy a house outright is a dumb policy, but for now, while we still have a lease and a lot of good reasons for renting, I'm not interested in them. They are something I will learn more about when we are actually thinking about buying a house. We're also not in a high enough income position to need a house and mortgage for a tax break, like some people I know, so we don't have to worry about that (or learn how it works).

Another thing about city living and home ownership is this: Houses in the city are often small, especially ones in our price range that don't need a lot of work. They are narrow and they often only have one bathroom and no closet space or parking or real backyard. We could get a much nicer place by renting, a place we actually like to live in and want to come home to, and not spend all our spare time on home improvement, than we could have if we bought a place in the city. I also don't want a starter house, because the people I know who have had to sell houses after a few years get put through the wringer over it. Oh yeah, and our marriage could fail, so I'd rather wait it out a couple of years and not set ourselves up for a miserable property settlement. So I didn't want to buy a house with the assumption that we'll be selling it in 3 years or 5 years or when my shoes overtake the closet (6 months). A lot of city homes need a lot of updating as well, and we are simply not at a place in our lives where we want to devote every.single.weekend to home improvement projects and installing a new dishwasher/water heater/backsplash. I like projects and home improvement, but see above - I want to travel and generally enjoy being married. (If home improvement is part of you enjoying being married, then go forth and enjoy it!)

So there you have it. For now, we rent, and we live vicariously through our sisters, who are both in the process now of homebuying. Are you renting? Did you buy?