Can I Stay Away From my Spreadsheet?

I'm at a self-designed writing retreat (meaning, no externally-imposed schedule or structure, meaning I gotta keep myself on task, no mean feat) in the Santa Cruz mountains this weekend, and I'm doing my best at not letting myself spend all the time I have here doing wedding planning. I did take a peek at my wedding workbook in Excel last night (all ten tabs of it! Yes, I am a planning freak!), but I only made a few minor changes to the budget and then I put it away after a few minutes.

It does help that I don't have any internet access in my cabin and therefore can't spend time surfing the web for the perfect pair of shoes--I'm looking for ivory or silver wedge-heel, no-platform, satin heels with open toes if you know of any nice pairs that cost less than $100--or jewelry--something with pearls.

It's a good thing. I need to get my writing done. It feels good too. And when I go back home in a couple days, the wedding and everything that I need to get done for it will still be there, waiting for me.

Coupla More Links

The semi-closeted, future-fabulous event planner in me stumbled upon this cool blog by Soiree Special Events as I was looking for creative ideas for escort cards. I love the ideas that they and their clients came up with which are featured in the blog. So cute and creative--although the pumpkin one is a little cliche for a Fall wedding. We'll probably do something nature-y but not anything that screams 'Autumn!' even though our wedding is in September. We're trying to be as unique as possible. We're trying to be as eco-friendly as we can with our wedding without totally alienating our family or doubling our budget (don't believe the hype--getting recycled everything isn't always cheaper, as evidenced by the cost of cloth versus paper tablecloths, but we do believe in paying a little bit more so that Mother Earth can be happier).

Speaking of tablecloths, almost definitely going to go with Piedmont Party Rental for our rented tablecloths for the reception. Their customer service so far has been really good--friendly, knowledgable and efficient staff--and their prices are decent. Plus they have a good set of choices for china (aka plates) and silverware, which at some places is just downright ugly. But we're probably going to end up buying our own cake platter, at the suggestion of our reception staff coordinator, since we'll definitely use it again when we have parties in the future.

And with the whole gay marriage thing just exploding over here on the West Coast, I have to say there's a big part of me that wants to become a wedding planner and specialize in gay weddings. How much fun that would be! H. and I were very happy to see our colleagues Carol Cantwell and Rachel Lanzerotti featured in the San Francisco Chronicle this past week. How cute they are! And you can't beat a wedding 'album' complete with a full spread of photos from a major daily! Congrats Carol and Rachel!

Booked! And a New Vendor Link

So we finally booked our reception event staff, who will pick up the food for our pan-Asian (mostly Chinese and some Filipino and Vietnamese) dinner buffet from Chinatown, set up all the food and the drinks at the venue, and serve and clean up. Awesome!

The vendor is Gina's Party Staffing, a small, woman of color-owned company that I found, bizarrely enough, the old-fashioned way: by calling a number posted on a bulletin board at the Piedmont Grocery. I was attracted to Gina's use of 'diverse staff' on her business card--it's important for H. and I to have an ethnically diverse, culturally competent wait staff who won't be freaked out by the whole suckling roast pig (lechon) we'll have at the reception, or the very diverse (in terms of race, gender, language, sexual orientation, etc.) group of guests we'll have at our wedding. Gina and her crew totally fit the bill, and she's got lots of Filipino friends so the lechon will be no problem!

I vibed with Gina immediately when we talked on the phone, and as I explained in previous posts, that 'realness' that we've found in the vendors that we've chosen to book for our wedding is (wedding vendors take note) extremely important to us. We didn't want to go with a corporate, impersonal staff for our wedding who wouldn't make it feel homey and welcoming and fun. Gina had great referrals and was super-helpful from the get-go. We booked her and her team (we'll have four waitstaff and a bartender as well) the other night and I'm so excited to work with her!

Moving Forward! Getting Sh*t Done!

So we finally got our invitations out and the wedding web site up--a free thing through TheKnot.com that actually seems to do what we need it to do. And I don't want to jinx it so I won't say we've already booked her but we are meeting with the potential lead event staffer for the reception tomorrow night to make our deposit and sign the contract. We're getting five servers to help with picking up food, setting up the buffet, serving drinks (only beer, wine, soft drinks, water and sparkling cider instead of champagne) and clean up.

And we're really starting in earnest to plan our honeymoon to Belize, which really does seem like one of the most amazing and beautiful places on earth. I swear, the whole country is like a National Park! It's a tiny country, less than 9,000 square miles (by contrast, California takes up over 130,000 square miles) and on all the maps I look at it seems like every region of Belize has numerous wildlife preserves (including ones for sea tortoises, manatee and jaguars!), national parks and Mayan ruins that are being protected. It's amazing that such a small country is doing so much to protect its environment and wildlife, while still having a thriving tourist industry, while in the US we can't seem to develop so-called 'undeveloped' areas fast enough to suit our crazy lifestyles. I'm sure there are many places in Belize where people's homes are threatened or changed by the tourist trade, but relatively speaking it seems like a fairly 'pristine' (to sound like a travel guide) place.

I'm SO excited about these developments you can't even know! I've been waking up at like 5am (withOUT an alarm, mind you) the last couple days to add new things to add to our to-do list, checking out how many hits our web site has gotten, or reading about places to visit in Belize in this book we bought the other night, cheesily entitled Adventure Guide to Belize. And I'm happy to report that I'm not stressed out about all this, I'm actually quite happy about it all.

I can't wait for the wedding and for our honeymoon. Now I finally understand why people want to get married this way. How much frickin' fun!

Our First Wedding

Just booked the venue and officiant (sort of) for our first wedding, which I'm proud to say will be taking place at the elegantly beautiful and historic San Francisco City Hall. The pic above I snatched off some web site (it didn't look copyrighted, okay?). We probably won't be lucky enough to have our ceremony under the rotunda, which is where the photo above is taken, but that's fine with me. The Hall has been made famous in recent years because of the big gay marriage legalization drama, which makes me even more proud to be having our first wedding here. Here's another, public photo of the front of the building:





H. and I decided to have two wedding ceremonies because:

1) we wanted to cover our Chinese pseudo-astrological 'good luck' base with a wedding in August, which is supposed to be an auspicious month for weddings because the number '8' sounds like the word for prosperity (I think). So a lot of people are getting married on August 8, 2008 (8/8/08) to take advantage of this. We waited too long and had to settle for a slightly different date, but it's all good. August is what matters!

2) We wanted to get married in San Francisco, at least this way, because it would've been super-expensive and logistically challenging to have our 'real' (aka big) wedding in the City. Most of our family and friends live in the East Bay or even further away from Frisco, but since H. is a proud Frisco native we wanted to at least have one wedding in his hometown.

And I've been home sick for the better part of this past week, today with a raging phlegm-producing cough that makes me sound like a 60-year-old chainsmoking lounge lizard. But being forced to stay indoors is helping me get a lot of wedding stuff done. Invitations are going out this week (finally! And thanks to our fabulous wedding crew for helping us assemble the suckers) and I am going to be booking our event waitstaff for the reception as well. Only three more months to go!

The Transformation of Stress into...Excitement!

I had a moment this morning, laying in bed at 6:45am, where I started spontaneously thinking about who was going to walk me down the aisle. As some of you may know, I don't really have a 'father'--my biological father having abandoned my mother and I before I was born and my step-father having been abusive; I'm not inviting either to the wedding. And even if I did, the whole idea of being 'given away' by someone seems disturbing and just not authentic to how I've chosen to live my life.

So I lay there thinking about the possible friends and other relatives who could, in my mind, 'escort' me down the aisle instead of give me away, and for a minute I thought, "This is ridiculous that I'm thinking about this at 6:45am on a Wednesday morning, before I've even gotten out of bed!" But then I breathed and paid attention to the feelings in my body, and realized that not only was I not feeling stressed about this spontaneous, type-A thinking--stress for me usually shows up as tightness in the chest and shoulders, and a sense of not being able to breathe properly--but I was actually feeling happy...no JOYOUS to be thinking about this not-minor detail of our wedding ceremony.

As I posted below, H. and I have had our share of stressful moments the last few weeks re: wedding stuff. So it was really beautiful to feel, finally, this morning, a sense of lightness and levity in the midst of my OCD detail-planning thinking. I was actually HAPPY to be having that moment, and let myself feel excited and yes, even girlishly giddy, about getting to decide who was going to escort me down the aisle. It wasn't stressful anymore, it wasn't something I was somewhat ashamed of (not having a father that one can be proud of is definitely not something most people want to brag about). I guess I experienced what might be called a transformative or revelatory moment, where the shining, simple essence of this big, sprawling, complicated event and planning process was perfectly clear to me: I'm getting married to the man I love, in front of our friends and family, and I'm frickin' HAPPY about it!

I'm going to sit with this feeling for a while, and enjoy it. I'm sure it will pass, but I'm also sure it will return, and I'll be sure to breathe and to bask in it when it does.

Disappointment and Excitement

I wanted to blog a bit about how this wedding-planning process can be such an emotional, up-and-down roller coaster ride. The emotional stuff that has to do with my own issues about marriage, fears of commitment, high expectations of myself and my partner and family stuff was to be expected, as was the excitement around planning a big wedding and gathering all our friends and family together to celebrate with us.

What hasn't been as expected for me is having the disappointing experience of friends who've been less-than-supportive of H. and my vision of the wedding trying to impose their visions and ideas of what weddings should be on our process. Notice I said friends and not family. Our family has been surprisingly cooperative and accomodating--especially considering that H.'s father and my mother are paying for most of it--and even though they haven't been super-excited about every element of the wedding (e.g. my mom saying in a less-than-approving tone that the simple wooden chapel where we're having the ceremony looks like a 'country church'), they've pretty much held their tongues. I take that as a sign that 1) they know we're not going to change our minds even if they protest; and 2) they recognize us as adults now who can make our own decisions and, more importantly, have the right to.

It's been very disappointing to have one close friend--I won't get into details but if you're an IndieBride Kvetch member you can probably find my post there--who, I think because of stuff going on in their own life, has called me 'very self-absorbed' about the wedding planning and really stressed me out one day by trying to make us rethink some important decisions we'd made, supposedly in the name of helping us 'strategize'. Around what I'm not sure, and the advice was not only totally unsolicited but also completely unhelpful, but this friend has all but blamed me for the argument that ensued, although I tried my best to be patient and explain why we'd come to our decision. It was a fascinating experience of human nature and the clash of needs, and I hope that my friend can soon understand why we can't do it the way they wanted us to, and why their approach wasn't helpful.

It was exciting and helpful, on the other hand, to talk to other folks that are helping to plan the wedding and find out that they're not only happy with how we're moving things forward, but also down to do whatever we need them to for our wedding. These are the folks that I want to stand up for H. and I during our ceremony as our wedding party--people who know that this day truly is about our relationship and the vision we have for how we want to share this ritual with others.

I'm trying to let their excitement take me out of my frustrated and disappointed state when I think about my other friend, but it's hard. Even H. was starting to feel despondent about the wedding, telling me yesterday, 'I wonder sometimes how excited people really are about our getting married.' That made me really sad, and so I shared with him all the supportive words that our friends shared with me, and reminded him that at our next wedding planning meeting (we meet about once every six weeks), we'll get a nice shot of enthusiasm and support from our crew.

So please send positive, uplifting thoughts and energy our way. We're in the home stretch now and we'll need all the help we can get.