the night before

Forgive me if this post turns to Ramble City, USA.  I'm not sure exactly what I want to say, but I feel like I want to say something.  Or I should.  Or something.

I am getting married tomorrow.  Well, it's 1:12am, so technically I am getting married today.  It's the most surreal feeling.  I told my dad tonight that I'm as ready as I'll ever be, that I think you can only be 95% ready until you've already done the thing.

Ari called me his wife today.  I turned into a little gooey mess of girly loveitude.  Really, honestly, I love the "stuff" that goes with my wedding, but I am ready for my marriage already.  It's not about my beautiful dress or lovely flowers (that my mom, friend Ros and I have slaved over for the last 2 days) or the dancing or the cake.  It's about this wonderful, incredible, perfectly imperfect person who has chosen to love me and let me love him back.  Ari, Baby, I can't wait to stand in front of all the people I love and tell them why I'm yours.

I have this song stuck in my head.


It's going to be a good day.  I can't wait.  Married.

The Final Countdown: One Week

Sorry for that little bit of down time earlier this week.  My parents took me on a last hurrah mini-vacation to Block Island.  Suffice (for now) to say that it was divine (minus my sunburn).  I'll have a real post for you once I get a chance to look at the photos I took.

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It's pretty astounding (to me at least).  One week.  Seven days from today I'll be getting my hair and make up done, chatting with my family and best friend and generally getting prettified and trying to stay relaxed.  Something will go wrong and I'll try not to fuss.  I'll get in the car and walk around with my face all done up and veil in my hair... and a tshirt and shorts.  I'll hide away in a restaurant manager's office and my mom will zip up my wedding dress.  Right now it seems so surreal...

Fact is, my to do list is still two full pages long.  Heck, my to do list for today has 9 things on it, at least four of which are starting or completing some big projects.  When I have so much tangible work in front of me, it's hard to think about the really huge emotional thing that's happening so soon.  I mean, in a week I'll be a wife!  Now if that's not trippy, I don't know what is.

I'm trying to think what to write next and realizing that this post has no structure at all.  Guess I'm a little rusty... the beach melted my brain in the most pleasant way.  I think maybe I'll throw in a random list of things about... here:

• I'm excited. 

• I'm worried about the wedding (and all the stuff I have to do for it!) but not the marriage.

• I am so excited about the honeymoon, I'd have a pretty hard time explaining it.  Whenever I get stressed, I add a day to the wedding countdown and say to myself "in 8 days I'll be on my honeymoon! honeymoon! honeymoon!"  

• There's a song that goes with the honeymoon chant.

• I got a letter from the White House yesterday in response to our wedding invitation.  I'm being a good girl and waiting for Mr. McGee to show on Wednesday.  He said I could open it without him, but it's not every day you get mail from the White House...

• I still have to get my ceremony readers and chuppah holders together.

• I'm pretty excited to not know every nook and cranny of my ceremony text.  I know Carie is going to say lovely things, and I loves me some surprises! 

• I am seriously marrying the best person ever.  (And we're getting married!)

• Plus, bonus points because he's so hot (we're going to make pretty babies some day)!

• Bachelor/ette party plans are in full swing and I absolutely cannot wait for mine!  I know any time my sister and best friend put their heads together to plan a party it's going to be beyond insane.

• On a related note, any tips for dressing up like "a sexy pin up girl?"

• Holy crap, I'm getting married in a week.

words

After our meeting with the rabbi on Sunday, Ari and I have sussed out what our ceremony is going to look like.  Well, so far as we want to know.  We know all the parts, but some things that the rabbi will say, and our vows to each other are still saved for surprises. 

Initially I had been reading all of these ceremonies (I moderate an online forum of knitter and crocheter brides and we have a dedicated thread for that) and thinking we'd use one or another as readings in our own.  I saved only my very favorites, and read them to Ari on the porch one night, but he just wasn't sold.  I was a little bummed at first (the words, they are so beautiful!), but I understood his reluctance and we decided not to have readings.

And this one wouldn't have worked anyway, not for our wedding at least.  But for a spring wedding, all sunshine and peonies and joy, this would be perfect.

Today by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
-------------------------------------------------------
source

And, in case you were wondering, my favorites were Our Union Could Be Like This by Hafiz, a children's book called I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warburg and I'll Be There For You by Louise Cuddon.

I found Billy Collins through the ever-awesome East Side Bride, who posted my now favorite video of a three year old kid reciting from memory Collins' beautiful poem Litany.

Three months and counting...

Originally I had planned for today the big checklist of things to do, but when I woke up this morning, that somehow seemed inadequate (the fact that I haven't actually finished the to-do list notwithstanding).

Today is Saturday June 5th, 2010.  92 days from today I will be getting married.  Exactly three months.

In the midst of planning a wedding, it is so incredibly easy to lost the plot.  What I mean is, if you get married for anything other than love, you're a fool.  That's not to say that you have to get married only for love, there are lots of other great things a marriage can bring like kids or stability or just someone to eat dinner with every night.  But marriages are hard work.  It takes a lot of effort to make them work.  Now, obviously I can't say this from experience, but I can't imagine anything other than love being a strong enough incentive to sustain a successful marriage.

Unfortunately, the business of marriage and the business of weddings are quite different animals.

Weddings are about menu choices and invitation options.  Dress fittings, china patterns, the perfect shoes and the bottom line.  Things you just have to have.  They are about pleasing everyone you've ever met while still trying to stay true to who you are as a couple (aka mission impossible).  They are the worlds' biggest confused jumble of pretty and stressful.

Last night I stayed up an hour+ after Ari had gone to bed looking for a new china pattern because the one we had chosen is discontinued (two weeks before my shower).  I tossed and turned another two.  Then a little less than three hours later I should wake up to stress about the invitations.  I'm ready to be done with this.  Don't get me wrong, I love my wedding and it hasn't even happened yet.  But in my lifetime I have traveled to Morocco, gone away to both college and graduate school, taken SATs, auditioned for plays, moved to Australia for six months, flown on the trapeze with no safety lines, written a masters paper in two days and agreed to the ultra-mega-huge life change of marrying someone.  But the fear, anxiety and stress associated with any of those things pales in comparison to the gnawing, ongoing unrest stirred up by planning a wedding.

What I realized, at 5am, when I was staring at the ceiling pondering wedding invitations and Ari snuggled up in his sleep, was that I had lost the plot.

I am not getting married for the wedding.  I am beyond thrilled about my dress and the great band and the delicious (like omgz amazing delicious!) cake.  But I'm not doing this to be the princess for a day (gag me with a spoon, please).  I am getting married because I want Ari to still be snuggling up in his sleep when we're 70.  After five and a half years, what I feel for him is so all-encompassing, it becomes harder to describe, and frankly, is so personal, that if I could, I'd tell him and not the internet (sorry, internet).

So three months from today when I'll probably be so nervous and excited that I'll be up at this hour again and the frenzy of wedding day activity begins, I hope that I can step back and pick up the plot.  Three months from today I marry the person who still gives me the good kind of tummy rumblins.  Three months from today I irrevocably join with the person I want to hug me when I'm sad.  And I'll be half of a whole but it won't make me anything less, I'll just be that much better for it.  Three months from today I become a wife.

This may or may not have made me cry a little.

I'm a big sap.  Don't judge me.  It's an adorable proposal.

Yes yes yes.

Today, I get up and start looking through my never-ending blog roll.  A day like any other it seems.  When I first started reading wedding blogs (maybe 8 months ago?) Style Me Pretty was pretty much the best thing going, the one really chock-a-block full of gorgeous wedding inspiration.  In recent months, however, other blogs have begun to assert their place on the forefront.  Let me tell you, today SMP has won me back.  Last month (?) they began a new feature called "From Inspiration to Reality" where they take inspirational images collaged by readers and transform them into admittedly awesome photo shoots from their sponsoring vendors.  Usually, I'm underwhelmed, simply because these orchestrated images are editorial and essentially digital magazine features.

Today was different.  Today's fantasy wedding shoot featured two brides... marrying each other.  I have seem same-sex couples getting married on other sites and it warmed my heart, but this was a situation where a main stream media with a lot of conservative subscribes intentionally chose to use a same sex couple because they could, and because, I hope, they wanted to represent a highly underserved but very real segment of the population.  (And hot damn!  Are these ladies sexy!)

SMP, I'm proud of you.

This new turn in wedding media is not totally unique.  Martha Stewart recently featured her first same-sex couple in her magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings.  There was no fanfare, just the same treatment as any other couple.

And of course, the New York Times have been doing it for ages.  This week there was R. Douglas Arnold and Alexander Michael Quinn, and that's just online.  I'd be mighty surprised if that was all there was in the physical paper as well.

In the insanity that is wedding planning, it becomes really easy to lose sight of why you're doing it in the first place.  A lasting, public and official declaration of love to the one person who means more than everything else.  That's why.  And everyone (lucky enough) feels that.  They deserve to get married regardless of their gender and the gender of the person they love.  Love is love.  It means something different to everyone, but it's always worth fighting for.


I haven't quite figured out how or when, but at my wedding I'd like to acknowledge all those who are still legally forbidden to marry the person they love the most.  When I think of being in their shoes, it makes my heart twist.  I am proud that the value of my marriage will only increase as same-sex couples are allowed in increasing numbers to wed across this country that loves its universal freedom and acceptance.


Photo credits: from Style Me Pretty, Carla Ten Eyck; from Martha Stewart Weddings, Jaclyn Greenberg and Chris Brown of JAG Studios; from the New York Times, uncredited online but if I can check from a paper copy and let you know, I will!

Mrs. McGee?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a long, involved post about names and whether I should take Ari's last name or not.  Yesterday, the ever-wise Meg posted about names, and the comments went nuts.  Seriously, hundreds of equally lengthy and convoluted posts from people really agonizing over this decision the way that I do.  I've gotten through the first hundred or so, and I'm still going.  I even chimed in myself.  I'm not (much) closer to making my own decision, but knowing that I'm not alone in this awkward, personal, sticky place, is a whole boatload of awesomesauce.

The Name Game

It has been ::ahem:: brought to my attention that perhaps I've gone off on a bit of a tangent in here in blogland.  I promise it's not all shoes and shiny things that occupy my mind (though they do have a place, mind you).

Anyhow, as I wade through this whole wedding planning process, I have approached the question of tradition (as in, "But everyone throws a bouquet/cuts a cake/wears a white dress, so you just have to."  "Why?"  "Because it's a wedding, you just do.") with thoughtfulness, attempting to weigh the value of the tradition against the personal importance of the custom.  Sometimes something is important because the tradition adds a certain feeling to the act.  For instance, I am wearing a white dress because it feels bridal.  I took the time to learn about the history of the custom and found that contrary to popular belief, white is not symbolic of purity and virginity (side note: brides in past centuries often wore blue wedding gowns as that was supposed to represent purity).  The custom of white gowns was popularized by Queen Victoria who wore white because she had some lace she wanted to use!  I decided my clothing choice had nothing to do with my moral virtue and mostly with the emotional construct created by my society that I chose to participate in.

All that said, being married is more than getting married.  There's all the day-to-day stuff that actually makes up a marriage.  Those days are influenced by all sorts of things.  You, your spouse, your society, your opinions.  Many decisions you make as you enter into a marriage are reflected throughout its duration.  In that light, my biggest decision is what to do about my name.

Here's the sitch:

• Ari doesn't care one way or the other if I take his name, but doesn't want to take mine.
• I already have two last names, Momslastname and Dadslastname.  And I have a middle name.
• In my generation of cousins (my sister and I and my aunts' kids) there are no boys to carry on the Dadslastname.  I have no idea if Dad cares about this fact at all.
• My mom kept her name, so there's no pressure from my parents from that standpoint, one way or the other.
• I don't really love my last name, or Ari's, I'm kinda ambivalent at all.
• That said, I'm picky about names when I can pick.
• I don't want to hyphenate.  Or have five names (It's hard enough to fit on official forms as it is.  My driver's license can't fit even three.)
• I really really want to have the same last name as the rest of my nuclear family.  To me, it's like a team, a unity thing.  I'm not worried about having a different name from my kids (though the fact that the kids get the dad's name when the mother gives birth is a whole other can of worms I plan to leave open for another time), I just like the idea of having a common identity with the person I chose and the people we will (eventually, hopefully, someday in the faraway future) make.

The easiest way out would be to take Ari's name.  People are assuming I will, and to do it would certainly simplify many things.  But the feminist in me absolutely hates that idea and turns into kicking, screaming, protesting child when I consider it.  It doesn't make me feel more wifely to give up my name (I realize that might be crucial, that I view it as giving up my name rather than taking his.  Though I do think that given the choice to select the name I assumed would assuage this discomfort.)  What's important to me is having the same name, not that the name be his.  And frankly, I resent the gender hierarchy in Western society that dictates that the male's name take import over the female.  We don't live in a time where women are their husband's property (thank goodness!), so why continue this archaic tradition?

What I would be most happy with (and to merely say happy is an understatement) is for both Ari and I to create or select a new name together and assume that name when we get married (I wouldn't care if he kept his last name as a middle name, but I likely wouldn't, see the second-to-last bullet point).  He has begrudgingly agreed that if I come up with something "totally awesome" he'd "consider it."  He really doesn't want to change his name.  I can't say I really blame him for feeling that way.  His name is part of his identity and he was raised with the societal patriarchy of names.  I know I should respect his feelings, but I don't know how to navigate this when he and I feel so differently.  I suppose this truly is our first foray into marriage.

So here are the options:

1. Keep my name
2. Take his
3. Ari and I both take some new assumed name

Any way it works out, I really want to decide the matter.  It's really stressing me out (though it likely shouldn't).  But I also really want to know how to address the return labels for all this wedding crap (save the dates, invitations, etc.) we have to mail.

So please, what do you think I should do?  Alternatively, got any awesome suggestions for my new last name?