Michael and I are married, as of Nov 13! The day was so much fun, and life since then has been pretty special, too :-) So many people have said they had a great time. Our only goals were for everyone to have fun and not be stressed because of us, and for it to be classy -- fun without tackiness, traditional but with personality.
Highlights from the few days before the wedding:
My parents and sister (MOH) got to town on Wednesday. My sis stayed with me Wed and Thurs night, then her husband came into town on Friday and she moved into the hotel with him. On Friday my old roommate who now lives in Cincinnati stayed over with me -- she was a great help! She coordinates weddings in Cinti, so she was invaluable -- I'd wander around the house Sat am -- I'd walk into a room and wonder why I'd gone in there, and she was able to tell me. She and I drove to the church together (all the girls got dressed and did hair and makeup there together), then she took my car from there and got it back to my house (since I was in a limo to the hotel after the wedding, and we spent our first night in the hotel where the reception was).
Thursday was Veterans Day, which was cool -- I hadn't really thought much about a bridesmaids brunch, but it turned out that almost all of them had Thursday off, so we got to go out, before my sis and I had manicures.
Went to pick up the dress with mom and sis (so they could learn how to bustle it) and a friend of sis that she was having dinner with...and the dress wasn't hemmed. Yow! But no beadwork or lace or anything -- they just wanted to try it one more time and it was done on Friday in plenty of time. But it was a little bit of a heart-stopper. The woman I've been dealing with all along (who is very useful) wasn't there, and this little 80-year-old half-deaf woman was "helping" -- she must have showed my sister 6 times how to bustle it -- and there were only 3 buttons! So we were a little nervous, but when I talked to the regular woman the next morning, everything was fine.
Thursday night we had a lingerie shower for me with the girls (moms, sisters, bridesmaids, a handful of other close friends) while Michael had a "groom-honoring" (not a bachelor party -- he's not into that -- just the guys hanging at one of the groomsmen's house). Cute aside: the shower was at a friend's house who has two toddlers, and we didn't start 'til 9 so that they could get to bed. But they stayed up to say 'hi' -- they actually burst out of their room to say "I want to say hi to your friends!" Then they were asking me "Are you the one getting married?" and "Your husband's going to look like a penguin!" They know all about tuxes -- their uncle just got married a few months ago.
Friday was the rehearsal. Traffic between the hotel and church was terrible, so the families were late, but it went smoothly anyway. Michael's parents did an incredible job with the rehearsal dinner. They found a restaurant I'd never been to (Dalya's in Bedford), that was great. Lots of people made toasts or shared about us, we shared about everyone -- who they were and why they were part of our day, yadda yadda. It was obvious that our families were very proud of us, our friends were totally psyched for us, etc.
Saturday morning I wrote my personal vows. Found out later that Michael wrote his in the back room shortly before the wedding. We were joking later because Jeff had told us not to write them "the night before". Of course, he meant write them well in advance, not the morning of! We had thought a lot and talked a little about what we wanted to say, but hadn't put pen to paper.
Saturday morning was gorgeous! The wedding was at high noon. Girls all got ready at the building starting at 10, so we were basically ready by 11:30 and got to more-or-less relax. A friend had volunteered to do my hair, and that worked for me since she's done a lot of weddings and she could come to the church -- with a noon wedding, I didn't want to deal with salon appointments. She also did the two bridesmaids who had long hair (my sis and Michael's sis).
The wedding was fairly traditional -- we didn't see each other after the rehearsal dinner, my dad escorted me in, etc. So I'll just highlight things that made it "our" wedding:
My uncle Ken, a former minister, did the welcome and opening prayer, and had us all teary-eyed. He made it so personal, remembering when he got the news that I had been born, and other memories of me growing up. (Then our local minister Jeff, who is a good friend of ours and who did our pre-marriage counseling with his wife, did the wedding message and vows.)
We said personal vows to each other, followed by the formal traditional ones (repeating after the minister, the "for better or worse...I do" part). During our personal vows, I gave Michael my Death by Chocolate recipe as a symbol of my giving everything to him. I've built up a legend around this recipe -- my friend (from 3000 miles away, Carrie Eager, San Diego) who gave it to me swore me to secrecy, and I make it for birthdays a lot. Michael's been trying to get it from me for a year -- I totally shocked him -- after a fraction of a second of shock, he threw back his head for a full belly laugh. Shocked Jeff, too. The whole congregation was laughing. After I finished my vows, Jeff paused before doing the formal vows, and said, "You know, I'm in a great position right now. If they want me to pronounce this marriage, *I* get the recipe." Michael didn't miss a beat and handed it over, which also shocked Jeff :-) (He didn't take the recipe....) (The friend who gave me the recipe was at the wedding -- I hadn't had a chance to tell her my plan, but when I saw her at the reception, her greeting to me was, "We need to have words!" She forgave me -- she was tickled that I'd built up such a legend, and she gave me another secret recipe (with permission to share it with Michael) for brownies -- looking forward to trying it!)
We did a cord of 3 strands instead of a unity candle. This was something I'd seen in an outdoor wedding in San Francisco. We had an arch set up on the altar table (the table the candle would have gone on) with three cords suspended. The middle one was a different color to represent God being entwined with us. During the song, we tied the 3 cords together in a couple knots. (So we literally "tied the knot"!) We had this scripture in our program: "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4) I was so pleased with how this came together. I was the only one involved in the wedding who had ever seen this before, and when I saw it, they had rafters to suspend the cords from (the outdoor wedding was in a pavilion -- like a huge gazebo everyone fit under), and our church had nothing -- the whole front of the church was high and open and simple. I described the idea to the wife of one of our groomsmen -- he's an engineer and she's an artist/sculptor -- and to our florist (a friend of ours), and they came up with something beautiful.
Another vague idea turned into a beautiful execution was the music. I waffled forever about it, which was ironic 'cause I'm a musician (singer and pianist) who's played in many weddings, so when a friend who's a violinist (we've played together in weddings) asked me if she could do anything, I asked her if she wanted to coordinate the music, kinda flippantly. Anyway, I had helped with her wedding, so for her gift to me, she pulled together a trio of professional classical musicians together (herself on violin, plus flute and cello), and picked some music she thought I'd like (great job), and even put together a Swedish folk medley for the mothers' entrance -- she and I both have a Swedish heritage. Wow! Very classy.
At the reception, we opted against the bouquet toss -- I've been to something like 100 weddings, and I got to hate being put on the spot like that, so we presented the bouquet to a couple who got married three weeks after us. The DJ (who's been DJing well over a decade) loved it and plans to share the idea with all his brides. (I wore a garter, my "something blue", but we didn't do anything with it.)
We had three toasts -- best man, Matron Of Honor, and my father. My sister (MOH) did an incredible job. It was funny -- she claimed responsibility for all my talents and interests. (She has plenty of her own, but they're different from mine.) She said, with an obvious look of "yeah right", "I taught her that. Basketball and ultimate frisbee? I taught her that. Piano, singing -- everything she knows about music -- that was me." It was very nice -- honoring me while being funny and not over-mushy. (One of my friends took her seriously!) Then she made a great analogy -- one of the bridesmaids mentioned at the rehearsal dinner that she and I liked going to amusement parks together. My sis took off on that and offered a toast about life being like roller-coasters, something like "Stand up and scream at the peaks, hold hands through the dips, stay close through all the loop-de-loops, and remember that it's all the more fun because you're together." Got me all choked up.
Now, I should mention that both Michael and I went to MIT, and I worked there for several years after graduating, so we had a few MIT elements for fun. Of course we have a lot of friends who also went there, but most of our friends rag on us for being "brainiacs". We were both actually pretty humbled being there, but we do have a mix of interests and we work for a software company, so we're somewhat stereotyped in fun. Anyway, I explain that to explain some of the other touches, below.
Wedding colors were approximately MIT colors (cardinal and gray, interpreted as "cranberry and silver"). This started as a joke -- my mom and sis were bugging me early in our engagement to start making any decisions, and I said, "OK, since it's an MIT wedding, we'll have MIT colors, cardinal and gray." They took me seriously, then I thought, hey, why not. Red isn't used much for weddings and looks good on lots of people if you get the right shade. Silver is basically shiny gray and is a great accent color. Cranberry is a great November color (and flavor!) in New England.
One of my bridesmaids made the favors, little jars of cranberry jelly with our names and the date on it (her boyfriend, the best man, printed up the labels, which turned out beautifully, and they put cranberry colored bows on them). (That way people can remember us everytime they make a toast -- Michael and I are both known for puns :-) We ended up with about 20 jars left over (not everyone picked them up), and it's very yummy!
We set up the tables at the reception with the even numbers on one side of the dance floor and the odd numbers on the other side, symmetrically. The head table (me/Michael, best man/his girlfriend (a bridesmaid), matron of honor/her hubby) was at the head of the dance floor (DJ and bar at the foot of the dance floor). This odd/even arrangement seemed natural to me to help people find their tables. It didn't even occur to me that this was the MIT campus layout -- there's a courtyard in the middle of campus, and all the buildings to the east of it are even numbered, and the buildings to the west are odd numbered -- some of the other MIT folks noted that, but I wasn't doing it deliberately -- just seemed logical. Yikes!
Our first dance was "What a Wonderful World" (Simon, Garfunkel, and James Taylor's remix of Sam Cooke's original -- the "Don't know much about History" song). We picked it for the irony, plus this version was beautiful. Everyone was laughing during the song, and we were hoping that it was because of the song, not because of our dancing -- dancing lessons was one of the things we hoped to do but didn't happen before the wedding.... Anyway, one of the 'maids confirmed that they were laughing at the song -- people were adding a NOT after every line: "Don't know what a slide rule is for...NOT". (Actually, we wouldn't be able to do anything with a slide rule, and we don't remember any trigonometry, etc :-)
Our parents dance (me with dad at the same time as Michael and his mom) was "What a Wonderful World" (the Louis Armstrong one). Short, classic, same name as our dance :-)
I sing in a gospel jazz women's a cappella group, and we have a funky song based on the same Ecclesiastes scripture about the cord of 3 -- the song is "2 R Better Than One." I had most of the group at the reception, so we sang it together -- it's never sounded better -- everyone was having fun and was full of energy. (Our lead soloist sang a song for the wedding, but all the processional/recessional music was the trio.)
Oh, about glass-clinking. We didn't at all mind kissing-on-demand, so we let people clink, but we also have enjoyed when tables get up and sing a song with the word "love" in it. So we let people do both. We got the usuals, "Stop in the Name of Love," the Oscar Meyer weiner song, "...everyone would be in love with me", etc. But one table stopped the show -- they got up and sang, to the Flintstones' theme song:
Metzgers. Meet the Metzgers. They're the couple that just got marr - ried!
From the, world of SpeechWorks. Doing something with technology.
Now that, they have both truly found love; that is, what their lives will be made of.
When you're, with the Metzgers, have a yabba dabba doo time, ....
That was the last table song -- no one could follow it :-)
My mother and one of Michael's aunts got together -- we watched them scurry around the reception -- and found out how many years of marriage were represented in the room, and totalled it up. We have something between 800-900 years of marriage behind us, just out of our 150 guests! Our parents and grandparents (we each have one set of living grandparents) are still married, aunts and uncles -- even my uncle who's divorced and remarried has been in his 2nd marriage for over 20 years, Michael's high school cross-country coach, friends, etc.
The whole thing was so much fun. We just wanted people to have a good time and not be stressed because they were chasing balls we'd dropped, and everything went so well. People were telling us things like it was the "best" wedding they'd ever been to, the most beautiful, etc. And people were SO generous with gifts. We are very set up in our new home.
My suggestions, to be taken with a grain of salt on a case-by-case basis: