Our Nuptial Hour Draws On Apace

What Hippolita REALLY looked like 4 days before her wedding

11 days!!!!! OMG! I'm really excited and of course - nervous! Not about being married, but about GETTING married, the planning, the headache - oy! This has been a good exercise for me in terms of learning how to keep myself less stressed. There were a lot of things I wanted to do for this wedding that I didn't get to do. Sure, I could have done them, but it ultimately would have led to me being more stressed than I wanted to be. The last thing I want to be is a Bridezilla, for my own sake as much as everyone else's. I am so happy and thankful that I am marrying such a wonderful man, I want to be happy about the wedding, too. So I've been juggling as best I could; throwing things over board (like my centerpiece idea) when I needed to keep afloat and channeling all the anal-retentive organizing skills I've honed.

In honor of that, I made my very own variation on the meme of "what I actually do":

Yes, that's right, I will cope with the stress of my wedding by becoming Obama.

We still have to write the vows, plan the ceremony, and decide where we're taking our mini-honeymoon [we're taking a one-night get away to relax but our real honeymoon will be this summer]. But I know it'll all work out and that anything that doesn't make it into the ceremony will not be lost forever.

Recap of wedding details:

Happening on March 10th at 3pm at 100 Aptos creek drive in Aptos, CA.

We're registered at http://www.honeyfund.com/wedding/hatchstone

It's a pseudo-potluck, many people will be bringing items to give it a community, melting-pot feel.

Live streaming info will be posted soon, I promise. How slow this old moon wanes!

Directions to Wedding

Sorry the directions haven't been posted til now, it's been busy! Click here to see the Google map. If anyone needs directions and doesn't feel comfortable using GoogleMaps, let me know by commenting below and I can post directions coming from your area.

We've also registered on the site Honey Fund, which is a wedding regsitry/honeymoon fund website that I heard about from a friend. Click here to view our Registry.

Also, anyone who cannot attend the event: We will be streaming the wedding and details of that will be up soon. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Can't wait to see all of you at the wedding!

Registry

As our wedding day draws nearer we thought we'd brooch the subject of gifts. Traditionally in America, when a couple got married they did so fresh out of their parent's houses, and thus had no things to put in their new and shared house. So wedding gifts would consist of useful household things and keepsakes for the new couple to treasure. Crystal and china have been popular wedding gifts this last century, perhaps because of their status as something special they have been considered a staple for weddings and various anniversaries.

 

The circumstances of our wedding will be a bit different, though, from this traditional path. I have had my own set of dishes since I was a teenager (I know, I'm such a dork!) and we have both lived on our own and have accumulated most all household items that we need. The last thing we want to do is look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, we'd love to be able to share our wedding gifts with our wedding guests. That's why we'd like to give the option of people choosing to gift specific parts of the wedding. Our plan is to have a tapas-style dinner with lots of easy-to-eat food so that the atmosphere can stay social and movable. We'll have cheese, fruits, marinated morsels of deliciousness and more. For people who don't know what to get us but would like ot get us something, this would be perfect. Instead of a punch bowl we may never have an occasion to enjoy, why not give the gift of wine or cheese or fruit? That way you and all the other guests can share in our collective enjoyment of your gift.

Example

This Absolut ad is a great example of postmodern with kitsch, the idea of taking back kitsch to be something enjoyed rather than shunned. The ideas I had for the centerpieces are actually very close to this!

This Is The Cake I Want!

Meditations On Theme

So when I was going through ideas in my head, the color schemes of Indian weddings and Dia De Los Muertos came up. I like the idea of having vibrant colors at the wedding and no pastels. But I wanted a little more pliable theme with room for me to get creative and keep it personal. We both like the idea of post-modern deconstruction.

Here is a link I like and identify with. I prefer deconstruction as the idea of divorcing automatic meanings from events. I believe we can make our own meaning, in a reasonable, case by case manner. I further believe that it is necessary to our humanity and that it is our duty to create our own meanings with events we experience.

The recycled arts and crafts I do is an example of the literal, physical deconstructionism that I enjoy. I want those to be prominent in the wedding decor - from the centerpieces to my dress, which is my mom's old wedding dress, cut up, dyed, and resewed to fit me.

So I decided I want a post-modernist, deconstructionist, whimsical, hipster wedding. I'm talking moustaches, swallows, octopuses, bicycles, suspenders, anything vintage, kitschy, artifacts of our lives worked into the decorations.

The idea of blurring the lines between ritual, ceremony, and performance is very exciting. The wedding will have an entirely different structural feel than most weddings, and we haven't even finalized what the ceremony/performance/ritual will be. But it will be some blending of those two!

Casual Engagement Party

Thanks to everyone who could make it to our casual engagement party, we posted it on facebook only two days ago, so it was small :) Here's some pictures of Whitney and Ethan dancing!