Wedding!

In the wake of my last post regarding my wedding to Brett, I'd like to offer another view. This is the way I really remember the day, the view I want to bind to my heart and carry with me to my office, to the grocery store, through every moment of my day. This view of my wedding lifts me up and fills me with bliss and hope and boundless love for my husband and all the wonderful people who were able to come and support our union.

To begin with, the time I got to spend with my favorite ladies before the big day was really great. Since we all live pretty darn far away from each other, hanging out isn't really an option. To have a whole weekend to do all my favorite things? What could be better?
We spent Friday afternoon at the spa getting our nails done.

I'd been saving up tip money at the bakery to afford this treat so I didn't feel even a tiny pang of guilt for indulging. What a great feeling to be surrounded by happy best friends and family, relaxing and feeling pampered! I warned Brett that now that I've gotten a taste for it, we might have to put a line in the budget for monthly pedicures.

One of the great things about the wedding was treating myself to looking and feeling good without indulging guilty feelings about it being a poor use of my time. I took long showers, wore fake eyelashes, got lots of labor intensive curls in my hair, pretty toes and fingers, and soft skin. It was like I didn't work at on a farm! I don't usually take that much care of myself and it was a fun change of pace.

The morning of the wedding Kate, Chelsea and I woke up just after dawn to meet Katie and head to the Des Moines farmer's market. Katie is a market pro and she knew just when and where to go to get the most beautiful flowers. She even brought a basket for us to use!

We got bouquets and perfect little zinnias for boutonnieres at the first stand. Would you like to guess what we paid the wonderful creative florists who hand selected flowers with shapes and colors we liked? If you guessed six dollars you would be guessing too high. For three bouquets and flowers for three bouts, we paid twenty dollars! The magazines and even online sources were preparing me to spend about two hundred dollars per bouquet, so I was ready to have the best day of my life at that point.

We went to a couple other flower stalls to buy other flowers for decorating the church and the reception. As we four girls walked around downtown Des Moines in the beautiful morning light with buckets of the most gorgeous flowers I could imagine I kept thinking how lucky I am and how excited I was for the day ahead.

Wedding Thoughts

In the last 21 days, lot of people who know me by varying degrees have asked how the wedding was. Lots of my friends who are roughly my age have asked how married life is.

I find my feelings about the later question are much simpler than the first one. Married life is great. It's not that much different than before, honestly, but now I know I've got a partner and that makes everything else feel more important, and more exciting. While we might not have a "honeymoon" period, so to speak, I'm still getting used to the idea of Brett not just being my best friend and companion for the day, or the week, but for the rest of our lives. Everything we do together now is an investment in that future. We still go to work, watch TV, and take the dog out, but right now, those little things feel nicer because they're really the building blocks of the rest of our lives. Going for a bike ride to the farmer's market down the road with my husband feels completely different than going with my fiance.

On a different note, the wedding was a strange day. I know I was supposed to feel blissful and peaceful and that all the stress was supposed to just melt away when I saw Brett at the end of the aisle. I know that people who didn't know the things I had planned didn't know if they went smoothly or not and didn't care one way or another. I also know that it was really really hard for me to let go of the stress and let go of the desire to have everything go smoothly. I keep telling people who ask that it was a great day. It really was, but I wish I had been able to be more present in the moment, instead of worrying about the next part of the day and whether it was going to be right when I got to it. And I feel guilty that that's how I remember it.

It was a little bit like going on vacation to a completely amazing place so wonderful you feel like you have to do as much as is humanly possible to take full advantage of it. But then you wind up feeling like you didn't get everything done and that you didn't get the full value of what you actually did do because you were so busy planning how to get to the Parthenon you forgot to enjoy the resturant you were eating at.

I will say that the best parts of the day were the less crazy parts where I wasn't thinking about the next part. Getting up early to buy flowers at the farmer's market with my friends was great, and having that project to work on with Karen and Chels helped keep me calm. I really enjoyed the quiet moment with my brand new husband in the buggy at the top of the hill, and holding on to him as we walked to the reception site, Joe and Libby our amazing photographers snapping away behind us. Talking with folks after dinner, lighting up the sparklers and playing bags in the dark. The parts of the day where I just got to relax and be me for a little while were great.

So my advice to brides everywhere? If you are a planner by nature, a manager by trade, or any kind of control freak, hire a day of coordinator, let them worry about it and get your bridal crew to run interference so no one asks you a single blinking question all day long. Your opinion on how to handle clearing the tables is not even vaguely as important as you enjoying your first meal with your spouse and dearly loved ones, so let someone else handle it. I was lucky that Chels did so much of that for me with no warning and little enough thanks, but even so no fewer than four people asked me how I wanted the tables cleared as I got a plate of food and sat down to eat. Hire someone competent who you trust then relax and be present with your spouse and your loved ones. It's not an opportunity we get often in life.

Looking back at the wedding I know it was beautiful, that it was full of people who came to wish us love and happiness, that it reflected Brett and myself (sometimes too much!) and that it brought us closer together. It set the stage for the life we're living now and for that I will always be thankful.

Week one

Today Brett and I are going to take a hike at nearby Waterfall Glen. It's the second day we've both had off together since our wedding eleven days ago, so we're going to get out and do something fun.

The wedding was awesome, though I'd like to wait a few more days before I really crack into writing about it. I've had some pretty strong and even conflicting emotions about it in the week since it happened, so I want to continue to let my thoughts about it formulate and settle in my head before I try to memorialize it on The Blog.

Suffice it to say, for now, that Brett and I are an extremely fortunate couple to have such wonderful generous people among our friends and family. There is no way we could have had such a lovely day without them. In Offbeat Bride (please treat yourself to this book if you are a bride in identity crisis) Ariel talked about wanting to have her wedding reflect the people who she cared about, instead of a commercialized idea of what a wedding was supposed to be. I'm very glad to say that everyone I worked with to organize the wedding was a pleasure to work with from the professionals Joni the caterer and Joe and Libby the photographers, to Chelsea and Aunt Karen who arranged all the flowers and decorated the church and reception site, to friends of my mom who stayed to the end of the party to help us clean up. I'm grateful to you all for everything you did for us and will be grateful every time I look back at pictures of how beautiful the day was.

We celebrated our one week anniversary with cake (Honus ate the leftover wedding cake we brought back from Iowa. Can't blame him. It was awesome!) and then ice cream.

We got a Kitchenaid stand mixer and ice cream churn attachment as wedding presents and a cookbook with collected LHF recipes from some farm friends, so we whipped up a batch of vanilla farms ice cream. I should have thought more carefully about the fact that the recipe makes enough for a 5 quart churn and ours is decidedly less than that. But we split the "batter" into two batches and now we have some waiting for us to churn tonight.

I added some fresh strawberries to mine for a little added umph and it was delicious.

Now as to my particular choice!

I just read an amazing blog post by Sharon at Practical Wedding. She talks about how she answers the question, "When did you know he was 'The One'?" with such eloquence and honesty, I feel like I just want to steal everything she said.

Rather than a fluffy romantic moment where fireworks went off and the heavens opened and a golden light shon down upon her fiance, she uses the metaphor of buying a house. It's awesome and, I feel, accurate expresses how I knew I wanted to marry Brett.

When you're looking for a house, Sharon says, you look at lots of houses. Some of them might be dumps, but most of them will be beautiful in some way. You might be able to see yourself living in lots of the houses you look at, but eventually you decide on one and you make it a home by the time you invest in it, by trusting it with things you care about, by having amazing experiences there. And you grow into never being able to imagine living anywhere else.

Of course Brett's a wonderful person, full of energy and enthusiasm and a driving desire to be better tomorrow than he is today. He is sensitive and sweet. He's so unbelievably smart and interested in so many things. He works hard and likes to be outside. Our interests overlap and even when they don't he supports me in what I love to do. He treats me like a partner and respects my work. I know he's going to be a wonderful father. He's a great kisser. I get a funny jumpy feeling in my tummy when I see him.

But aside from his practical features and my feelings for him, he's the one I choose. We've grown together over the years, over big dinners at a hundred year old tabl and over nights of cable news and political discussions. We've experienced setting up camp in the rain and the dark on a trip to Niagra falls. He's taken me to baseball games and I've taken him to Rhinebeck. We've shared darkness and frustration and hopes and goals. He knows me better than anyone else and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without him beside me.

As a commenter to that post said, "Love is an action," not just a feeling or something that happens to you. At least, it's not in my experience. I do feel love for Brett, of course, because of who he is as a person. I couldn't help but feel love for him, and I wouldn't say I have much of a choice in that.

But on Saturday I will choose to (verb) love him for the rest of my life. Not the romantic-comedy idea where if you don't feel lovey about someone, you don't really love them, but a deep pledge to continue to grow together and to care for him above all other men. I want to make a genuine honest choice to make love a action in our household, not just a feeling, starting from day one.

I'm so glad he asked me and I'm so glad I said yes.

First, my reasons for marrying..

Ok. So, I'm going to be a little bit busy this weekend.

Turns out I have this wedding to go to.

Mine!

Brett and I will be getting married at 5:00 on Saturday at the Church of the Land at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa.

I've had a lot on my mind with the new job, the move and planning the details of the wedding, but I've also been trying to keep in mind the reasons behind all this big stuff.

I've thought about what a wedding is and what it means. I've looked at the historic customs of marraige and tried to make them coincide with the modern expectations of marraige. I've considered my identity and how marraige can and will change it. I've thought about my specific relationship and what makes me confident that I can honestly vow to commit to it for a lifetime. I've looked at my husband-to-be and thought about what it will be like to see him next to me for the rest of my life.

Because that's what's important.

We will wear our finery, a beautiful cream dress and a custom-made grey suit, and it will be an outward expression of our inner joy, a symbol of starting fresh, and a sign of our respect for each other and the sacrament we're partaking in.

We'll exchange wedding bands, mine of simple gold so I can wear it every single day, his of titanium and meteorite, durable and rare, and our families and friends will bless them. Rather than being passive societal witnesses, our friends and family will have the chance to participate in our ceremony, to make their own vow to support our marraige and help it thrive.

I'm thrilled about the pretty calico bunting my mom made to decorate the church. But what makes it important to me is the care that my Mom took in creating it, that it's fabric and hand made and unique and will make me think of her when I look back at pictures.

I can't wait to taste the carved baron of beef and the garlic mashed potatoes. But what we're really doing is marking the first time my husband and I feed our friends and family together.

When we cut into the baseball-and-yarn-shaped cake and share it with each other, what we're really doing is representing the sweetness of life, the things we love, and how sharing those things with each other is our responsibility to our marraige and our great pleasure.

All those little details that I've worked so hard to coordinate and plan will tell our guests who we are as a couple and who we would like to be: unfussy, traditional, fun, creative, steadfast, generous, loving, happy.

It's about finding blissful happiness with another person and seeing it side by side with complete frustration and still knowing that you want to share your life with them. It's about bringing the strength of family and friends to help you keep that commitment. It's about celebrating love and life and happiness. What could be a better way to spend a weekend than that?

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