Thursday, April 5, 2007

Decisions

Tastings is in as the caterer.

Joan Beers is in for the florist (Joan owns and runs the Arabian Horse Inn). She sent a killer proposal today with every single flower we had talked about on Monday at our meeting.

I've decided on a dress for the bridesmaids, with Maggie's help. Of course, the dress in in a style and color that David's has made for 10 years but has recently decided to discontinue. Of COURSE. So it's now a rush to get Leigha and Liz to David's, so that they can get their sizes in their local store. Sorry, ladies!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Wedding traditions

Writing about Jhong's Singapore wedding blog has gotten me thinking about wedding traditions. So I searched...

World Wedding Traditions seems to have them catagorized by geography. The oddest in this collection:
In Somalia a man is allowed to have as many as four wives if he can support them all, and it is not uncommon for a girl to be engaged before she is even born.

To this, I ask only one question -- sonograms not being all that common in Somalia, I assume, how does one know whether the unborn child is a girl or boy, and thus whether to offer the child as a bride or not?

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YourWedding101 has some American traditions. What it says about the (now out-of-date) tradition of tossing rice:

Showering the couple with rice is an ancient tradition. As rice is considered a "life giving" seed it is thought that by throwing in on the couple they will be bestowed with fertility and have many children. Many churches now forbid it on their property but there are some safe alternatives to throwing rice.

Life-giving maybe to some, but not to the birds who don't do so well with the eating of the rice. ;-)

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WeddingFlowersAndMore says that the wedding kiss means the bride and groom swap souls (Prelude to a Kiss, anyone?!):

You may exchange souls with the bride
Yes, this is what the big wedding kiss symbolizes--the swapping of souls between the bride and groom. Even earlier than this Christian belief, the Romans used a kiss to seal a contract. The kiss was considered legally binding. I don't know about you, but I'm glad that a handshake suffices today.

What's more, a bride marrying in the Church of England had to kiss the minister before she smooched the groom. I would really love to go to a wedding where the minister said, "Now, I may kiss the bride."

I'll give you a smooch, Dad! No worries! Just lemme kiss Paul first, eh? Need I remind you what you said to Uncle Stan when he told you you could "kiss the bride" at your wedding 21 years ago?

I'm just glad tongue was optional in the deal-sealing kiss of ol'!

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Hitched says there's a reason the bride stands on the left:

The bride stands on the left of the groom during the marriage ceremony to allow his sword arm to be free ready to fight off other men who may want her as their bride.

Maybe invitations should say "Black tie and swords optional."

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GagGirl (unfortunate name for a site that has a list of wedding traditions, ain't it?) has one tradition I'm a fan of:

Ritual Bath -- A ritual bath is a widespread custom in many European countries, especially in France. The custom symbolizes the purification of the bride of all evil influences - and thoughts of previous boyfriends - from earlier in her life.

Also, you know, it made the pretty brides smell nice. "Especially in France" -- I love it! And since when are previous boyfriends NOT evil influences? Oh, I'm just kidding, relax!

Links are the currency of the blogosphere

So it's been said by social media gurus. And so I will prove here again.

Jhong Ren, who gave his wife-to-be a blog and Web site as "my first wedding present for my wife," has to be commended for his constant attention to the site, even three months after the nuptials. The site is dotted with wonderful helpful anecdotes about how they got good deals and why you should stick up for yourself and bargain with vendors. Basically, it sounds like this guy really participated in the nitty-gritty of the wedding planning himself, which I kinda dig him for!

If nothing else, it's a great searchable bucket of wedding planning advice... I'm thinking this guy could have a pretty wonderful career planning weddings if he wanted to.

Oh, and did I mention he lives in Singapore? It's a wonderful cultural lesson, for those of you who want to travel the world from the comfort of your desk. Read Who has control over my wedding? for a good example... We have some pretty odd traditions on this side of the pond, too, Jhong!

Another day, another bridal shop

So I'm done with bridal shops. Maggie and I were bombarded by the same question ("When's your wedding?") about 7 times from 3 women today at Special Event Bridal Shop and when we said "September 1st," their only, repetitive comment was "Ohhh... that's soon!" People (my sister-in-law and my stepmom) have MUCH shorter engagements than even 5 months (which is what we're down to now), so I don't want to hear "Ohhh... that's soon!" from anyone. I'll pick out my dress in my own time, thank you very much, without the comments from the peanut gallery.

The shop, even though we had an appointment, was rushed and all I felt in the air was commerce. The owner wasn't all that friendly and only when we put our coats on to get out of Dodge did one of the women ask what we were looking for and pulled out a possibility from a rack (read: wall) of dresses that I hadn't seen. Where was she 20 minutes earlier? Anyway, I tried on the dress, which had a very nice element to it, but kept comparing things to the dress I saw (and have since "improved" in my own mind) at Maggie Flood's a few weeks ago. So it's back to them to see if I can alter the design to be "my perfect gown" and get the color swatches for the bridesmaids' dresses.

Maggie and I are off to David's tomorrow (we have an appointment set from our first visit there) to see if we can find dresses (or at least colors) for Liz and Leigha. Then, hopefully, they can pick out their own favorite styles in their local David's and voila! We'll have some bridesmaids' dresses. Maggie and I will get ours at Maggie Flood, I think.

The hierarchy of service at the three shops I went to:
  1. Maggie Flood (they were WONDERFUL)
  2. David's (believe it or not, the service we got there was pretty damn good)
  3. Special Event (ah... not so much)

Monday, April 2, 2007

Engagement announcement, stay tuned

So the People Editor from The Ambler Gazette sent us a form, which we filled out and sent back. A draft of the announcement came back to us for approval, thusly:
Carol Ann McCurley of Maple Glen and Foster and Jannine McCurley of Mohnton, Pa., announce the engagement of their daughter, Dana L. McCurley, to Paul D. Gillin, son of the late Rose Marie and the late Donald Gillin formerly of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Ms. McCurley is a 1995 graduate of Upper Dublin High School and a 1999 graduate of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, where she received a bachelor’s degree in English. She is the director of Paul Gillin Communications in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gillin is a 1975 graduate of Arlington High School and a 1979 graduate of Boston University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He is the principal of Paul Gillin Communications.

A Sept 1, 2007, wedding is planned.


"We're writers," we think, and forge forward with a more "interesting" version:

Carol Ann McCurley of Maple Glen and Foster and Jannine McCurley of Mohnton, announce the engagement of their daughter, Dana L. McCurley, to Paul D. Gillin, son of the late Rose Marie and the late Donald Gillin formerly of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Ms. McCurley is a 1995 graduate of Upper Dublin High School and a 1999 graduate of The Pennsylvania State University. She met Paul while working at TechTarget and is now the director of Paul Gillin Communications, a writing and communications consultancy run by her fiancé in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gillin was previously editor-in-chief of Computerworld and founding editor of TechTarget, a successful Internet startup. He is currently principal of Paul Gillin Communications. He is a 1979 graduate of Boston University.

A Sept 1, 2007, wedding is planned in Mass.


"No, no," says the People Editor. Apparently we have to stick to their formula. So the boring first version it is. But let's just pretend we got the better one in there, eh? ;-)

Oh, and we didn't send the picture that my mom took of us at the restaurant, as previously talked about (Engagement announcement in my hometown newspaper); we sent in this one: