Adam and Brooke
Our friends Adam Devlin-Brown and Brooke Scull-McWilliams just got engaged and their wedding site is the cleverly named FourLastNames.com. Congrats, guys.
July 31, 2007
November 28, 2006
Jeanne and Jeff
In Your Face
Well, our wedding has now lasted longer than that of Pamela and Kid Rock, who got married the same day we did.
October 9, 2006
Her Special Day
The photographer who did Erica's most recent headshots, Johnny Knight, has been working on a series of photos for the last few years called Her Special Day that features brides in unusual situations. He's made a 2007 calendar with images from the series, which is available from Amazon. (Our friend Noah built the puppet-bride!)
September 12, 2006
Dana and Bilal's wedding
2006 is something of a wedding year for us -- by last count we have ten weddings to attend this year -- but August was definitely a wedding season. We got married July 29, we attended Dale and Stef's wedding on August 5, and then when we got back to Chicago we went to Erica's fellow Camenae member Dana Januszyk and Neo-Futurist Bilal Dardai's wedding on August 12. Happy Wedding, guys!
September 11, 2006
Honeymoon in Santa Fe
So on Monday morning after the wedding we got up madrugada* and got on a plane to sunny New Mexico. Well, cloudy New Mexico. My coworker Mary had kindly loaned us the Frommer's New Mexico and there's the NOAA site and there are a million things we could have researched ahead of time. And we did not. We had it stuck in our little heads that we were going to the "desert" and that that equaled "sunny" and so we packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts. A) Sante Fe is the "high desert", which means that it gets pretty cool at night and B) it was the rainy season. Oops. But actually it worked out well -- it was a lot better weather at 85° and occasional showers in Santa Fe than the 110° and 300% humidity we were leaving behind in Chicago.
Spaing
The main thing we were in New Mexico to do was relax. We had spa treatments arranged at the spa-hotel were staying in for the first half of the week. But from the moment we were in line at the Southwest check-in, people kept asking if, since we were going to Sante Fe, we were planning on going to Ten Thousand Waves**. Even the staff at the first spa suggested we go there. So we made an appointment.
The best individual treatment we had was a milk-and-honey wrap that Erica had at Loretto, but Ten Thousand Waves was the hands-down overall relaxation winner. We got the 'Buddha Treat' which meant we got to soak for an hour in an outdoor private hot-tub, take some sauna time, then an herbal wrap, full body massage, and then salt rub. Four hours later we emerged, blinking and relaxed out of our brains. Jealous? Well, get married and then you can go on a honeymoon.
Our second hotel was also a nighttime spa, and when they heard that we were honeymooning they gave us free hot tub time. The tub was on the top floor of the hotel and the roof pulled back, so we got to soak under the Sante Fe sky. I'm not sure that by that time in the week we could get any more relaxed, but we took our best shot at it.
Eating
I'm unreasonably proud of the fact that we ate at a different restaurant for every meal (but one) in New Mexico. When we landed in Albuquerque we were pretty hungry. We were thinking of just eating any old fast-food place, but decided to take a quick shot at finding somewhere nice. Erica pulled out the Frommer's and it fell open to "Northeast Albuquerque" and a highlighted*** entry -- the Range Cafe in Bernalillo. The food turned out to be great and we were off to a week of wonderful eating.
Once we were in Santa Fe, our main restaurant resource was the recently-published Santa Fe Reporter's Best of Sante Fe 2006 issue. We worked that thing like a checklist and we didn't have a bad meal the whole week. I just we could have had a few more chiles.
Everything Else
I'm a huge history buff -- I'll stop and read a historical marker at the drop of a hat. But our governing principal for this trip was rest. So we looked at making a couple of day trips (we had lost the Frommer's in the car for most of the week, but the Mary-supplied Guestlife New Mexico (2001/2002 edition) -- one of those big glossy magazines they give away in hotels, that are mostly ads -- proved to be a great resource for quick trips in the area) but in the end we only made it out to Bandelier National Monument just as it was closing for dusk. The guide boasted that Bandelier has archeological sites within 400 yards of the visitors center, so we hiked that 400 yards, saw a kiva and village ruins, and then turned around to watch the sunset on the way back into town.
We also did plenty of shopping (if only Santa Fe had more art and trinkets). And I took lots of pictures. Oh, and we went golfing (Erica for the first time), which was an event for our friends' wedding...
We capped off the week by going our friends Dale and Stef's wedding. It was, in fact, why we had picked Santa Fe in the first place. How romantic, to finish off celebrating our own wedding, by celebrating someone elses. Whee!
* My favorite Portuguese word which means, as I understand it, "way too early".
** For Chicagoans, no relation to Thousand Waves.
*** On the trip we were giving Mary credit for the fortuitous highlighting, but it turned out to be a previous borrower of the book.
June 22, 2006
I've read it's good to have props for wedding photos
June 13, 2006
Alternative Weddings in the NY Post
I've been reading comedian Mandy Stadtmiller's blog Bloggy McBlogalot for a while and today she had a piece in the New York Post about "Alternative Weddings". The article points to another couple's website: Another Fucking Wedding (sorry about the language, mom).
May 22, 2006
Whirlwind trip to Mississippi
We spent the weekend, and by "the weekend" I mean less than 48 hours total, down in Mississippi. On Saturday afternoon we went to Erica's friend Barbara's wedding out in Eagle Lake, with a reception afterwards at Tara Wildlife. Hummingbirds!
On Saturday evening Erica's aunt hosted a wedding shower for us. It was very odd for both of us to be the center of attention like that -- just sitting there opening presents. Thanks to everyone who came out that night and to everyone who dropped off presents. We're overwhelmed already, and that was just Mississippi folks.
I'm not sure how to segue to this, but I'll note that Erica's parent's next-door-neighbor has a website.
Sunday we spent the day cooking out, visiting with callers, and playing with the new kittens.
April 26, 2006
Tory and Steve's Wedding
Erica's friend and co-Camenae-member Tory Crowe got married this last weekend to her fiancee Steve Geary. I barely made it back from Phoenix for the wedding, but I was there to video the ceremony.
Of course the wedding was important to Tory and Steve, but it was important to us, too -- it was Sara's first time officiating a wedding, and so a chance for us to find out if she was a total spaz at it or what. Fortunately, she was a delightful officiant and I'm looking forward to having her guide our wedding ceremony.
The Marryin' Man
Andy Ihnatko recently was asked by two of his friends to perform their wedding ceremony and he's documented the experience of writing and performing someone's wedding:
As a matter of form the state insisted that I possess the proper legal standing required to perform a wedding service and formally execute the marriage license. Sheer bureaucracy. At this very moment, little girls are marrying Barbies to Kens...and they aren't even mammals, let alone a couple who've had a blood test, bought a marriage license, and sat through a sex talk with a priest. Does the State step in to do anything about it? Of course not; they're too busy making honest, pious men like me fill out paperwork while thousands of dolls all across America are living in sin.
The Marryin' Man (Part 1)
The Marrying Man (Part 2)
The Marryin' Man Part 3: "I Feel Pretty"
The Marryin' Man, Part 4 - The Service
April 4, 2006
Carrie and Matt's website
Carrie and Mugsy (excuse me... Matt)'s wedding website is up. All the cool kids are doing it.
March 15, 2006
Wedding dress sizing
An interesting anecdote from Jason Kottke about how an experienced dressmaker sizes wedding dresses.
Erica has hers, and is looking for someone to do some alterations on it. If anyone has any suggestions, please leave a comment or let Erica know.
February 24, 2006
Wedding Movies
Our friend Dana is getting married, too, this summer and asked her friends their favorite wedding movie. Which is a silly question, since the answer is Four Weddings and a Funeral. (I just have to pretend in my head that Andie MacDowell is some other actress. She drives me insane.) (And despite my emphasis, feel free to disagree.)
January 23, 2006
We clean up good
We just got copies of these photos...
Us at the Wilson-Claremont wedding, Oct 2, 2005.
Us at the Kallay-Telfer wedding, Dec 31, 2005.