moriath

Or does a bowling afterparty (scroll to the bottom of the page) sound like an absolutely FABULOUS way to top off the wedding?

It's really too late to go all the way with this idea, but I'd really love to make my wedding more of a wedding weekend party than just a one evening affair. I'm already planning on starting the festivities Friday night, at least if I can get enough people to trek across the state on Friday vs. Saturday. I'd love to host a gathering at The New Holland Brewing Company after the rehearsal dinner. This way we can actually spend time with our friends before the wedding (I've been to enough weddings at this point to know that you don't actually get to talk to the bride and groom the entire evening). Then Saturday would be the wedding, naturally (potentially followed by the afore-mentioned bowling party) and then, depending on the honeymoon plans, have a brunch on Sunday.

I'm currently leaning towards delaying our honeymoon...I know, it sounds a little crazy, but here's the deal: we want to do Disney's Land/Sea Cruise package, where we split a week between going to Disney World and a Disney Cruise. It's totally perfect, but because cruises have strict departure schedules, we either do 3 nights on land and 4 at sea starting on a Thursday, or we do 4 nights on land and 3 at sea starting on Sunday. So in order to get any mileage out of that first day in Disney world with the latter package, we would pretty much have to leave immediately after the wedding. No bowling party. And no "wedding night."

Boo. Hiss. Et cetera.

Of course, delaying the honeymoon by very much means we start getting into Spring Break time...followed by hurricane season, when I DO NOT want to be in the Caribbean (true fact: last time Billy and I were considering taking a cruise, Hurricane Katrina ended up hitting. We ended up in Hawaii and as we were coming back we wondered why all of the TVs in the airport were showing New Orleans flooded).

Which means the dream honeymoon might actually become a one year anniversary deal. Which wouldn't be awful, but it wouldn't be ideal, either.

I thought planning the honeymoon was supposed to be the FUN part of a wedding!

Radio host angers parents of autistic children

And the executive vice president of Autism Speaks says we should just "ignore it."

With all due respect sir, this is not something we can ignore.

Summary of Michael Savage's assholery (this time around): children who are diagnosed as autistic are "brats" who haven't "been told to cut the act out."

I do think there's a time and a place for ignoring when idiots put their feet in their mouths, but I draw the line when an influential personality is spreading false and dangerous information. To me, this is no different than Tom Cruise telling women with post-partum depression that they should be exercising and taking vitamins rather than seeking psychiatric help for their problem.

See, as little as 20 years ago, there was still a persistent belief that autism was caused by the refrigerator mother. I know because people in my mother's own church accused her of being such when my brother was diagnosed.

Let me repeat that: people in her church accused her of being "emotionally frigid" and causing her son's impairment. Never mind that it was obvious by then that I was well on my way to being an above-average child (how would I have accomplished that without "maternal warmth"?).

The families of autistic people have every right to be livid that this guy is spewing hurtful misinformation to a national audience, just as families of depressed people were livid at Tom Cruise. We can not ignore speech that has a very real negative impact on families who are already fighting an uphill battle against misinformation. Ignoring it gets us nowhere.

Will Michael Savage be fired? Probably not. Look at what happened with Don Imus. Should he be held accountable for his actions? Hell yeah. I wish he would be fired (though I admit I'm terribly biased in this situation, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt), but that wouldn't solve the underlying problem, would it?

The best way to combat speech we don't like is with more speech.

"Ignoring it" doesn't put any more speech out there.

So Billy, James and I drove to New York yesterday. According to our little GPS-thingy the trip should have taken nine hours. Between stopping to switch drivers, going to the 24-hour Arby's in Pennsylvania (lol, as if it were the only one in the entire state), and having to stop at half of the stop lights in New York City, it ended up taking eleven.

Oh well. We had fun.

Especially when I drove in Manhattan :-D That may be one of my crowning achievements in life so far.

I didn't drive far (roughly 23 miles according to Google, but we took a slightly different route. And that's just what I did in New York; I don't remember when exactly I took over but I drove for a fair amount of time in New Jersey as well), but I was still impressed with myself. My dad apparently thinks it wasn't very chivalrous of the guys to "let" me drive in New York, but a) I volunteered b) Billy volunteered to take the first leg of the trip, which was highway night driving (aka bane of my existence) and c) after sitting through almost an hour of James driving, I never wanted to be in a car with him ever again. I didn't think anyone could actually be too cautious of a driver, but he definitely fits that description. After about 5 minutes I was itching to take over the wheel, but ultimately let him handle PA and NJ until the traffic started to pick up in New Jersey. Then I conveniently needed to use the restroom so we switched drivers at a Starbucks.

And then I drove in Manhattan.

Saw one apartment yesterday in Queens. It was a fine apartment, and definitely had the plus of not requiring 15 forms of identification + our first born in order to rent it, but I wasn't so in love with it that I felt the need to put down our deposit right there. But I'm sure there are worse apartments out there. We're looking at another one in Queens today, and after that I'm making the boys look up apartments. I have done 99% of the planning for this trip, from researching hotels to apartments to look up, to being the de facto navigator (I'm the only one who has any experience with being in cities on their own). Someone else can take charge (of everything except navigation) for awhile).

Summary: I'M IN NEW YORK CITY. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

If I'd known I could do something like this, Billy and I would totally be getting married in Vegas.

I mean, duh, of course you can do something more romantic than a drive through and/or Star Trek wedding (though the rehearsal dinner would have HAD to be at Quark's. Seriously; best food on the strip).

I don't want to think about how much that wedding cost, though. The Wynn isn't a cheap hotel/casino. Mom and I went there to see Avenue Q when I turned 21 and there's a bunch of signs at the front door saying anyone under 16 won't be allowed in the hotel. And even during the afternoon when we were there the table minimums were in the $25-50 range (during weekday afternoons, the minimums-at least at the casinos I hang out in-are usually $5. I wasn't a happy camper last time I was there during the week to see the minimums rise to $10 Friday afternoon! I'm a cheap gambler).

But damn. Getting married in a night club in Vegas? Soooooooo cool.

I can has magnetic macroz?

Everything's been quiet around here recently. Collecting the last few addresses for my save the date cards (they're going out before Billy and I leave for Origins tomorrow, whether I have everyone's addresses or not. To any forensics team members who see this: the entire team IS invited, whether they get a card or not. I've tried to e-mail everybody, but some people like to dawdle over responding. Or they don't check the e-mail that I have for them. So the cards will theoretically be arriving on Friday or Saturday, before the banquet. Feel free to spread this gossip there)

That was a long parenthetical phrase. I swear I didn't intend it to be that long.

So, yeah, just tying up a few loose ends here before I take off for the rest of the week. Gotta clean up around the apartment, and finish buying some sexy accessories for my boudoir photos back in Grand Rapids on Sunday (I have waaaaaaaaaaaay too many outfits suitable for boudoir photos. I have NO IDEA which 3 outfits to choose. Well, okay, I have one definitely picked out, but the other two I'm having a very hard time nailing down!)

Face shaving is such a masculine act that it can be psychologically confusing to do as a woman.

So.......am I psychologically confused because when I was little I used to pretend to shave my face while my dad shaved his? (He'd put the cap on a disposable razor and I'd put waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much shaving cream on my face, and then I would "shave" just like Dad!)

I mean, I'm not advocating that women should shave their faces (simply because I bet that would lead to a lot more upkeep than using any of the other methods mentioned in the article. Plus that nagging feminist belief I have that we really shouldn't advocate that people change their appearance for any reason other than personal satisfaction), but damn that's a dumb-ass reason.

DO NOT open an e-mail from the sex-toy shop while at work. Headlines
proclaiming MASTURBATION MAY IS UPON US are not appropriate in a
work environment (even if I am leaving at the end of the month! More on
that when I'm not in said-work environment)

Because my photographer is awesome, I've been collecting pictures online that I want to recreate on my wedding day (or during my boudoir shoot next week!). I found one today that practically made me squeal.



I WILL BUY A BRAND NEW MIRROR IF I HAVE TO TO RECREATE THIS SHOT. OR FIGURE OUT HOW TO SHIP THE ONE I ALREADY OWN. I LOVE THIS SHOT THAT MUCH.

Speaking of my boudoir shoot, I need to go pick up some sexy underwear sets tomorrow. And maybe a new pair of sexy shoes (I really wish I was better at keeping track of days so I could have ordered a new pair of Frederick's shoes) since I'm going to be spending the rest of the week in Ohio for Origins

I've had three wedding-related dreams this week. Two last night! Although last night's two were almost the exact same thing both times...but I think I still get to count them individually. 'Cause really, who has repeat dreams like that?

Last night's dream I, once again, didn't have everything finished the day of the wedding. As in, while I was on my way to changing into my dress, I realized that I hadn't written my vows yet. WTF? And there was related craziness.

Then I woke up for a little bit when Billy came to bed, and when I fell back asleep...I STILL hadn't written my vows. But it was actually only the rehearsal dinner? So why the hell was I all done up in my dress? I mean, Billy's going to see me in my dress before the wedding, but not the night before!

My grandmother needs to send me the last batch of addresses so I can just MAIL these friggin' save the date cards. Maybe once they are gone I can relax again and stop going crazy?

Because I'm poor right now and thus can't afford either of these shirts (one for me, one for Billy):





(Roslin would kick Obama's ass. Just sayin'. Most likely because she'd rig the election...but you know you want a prophet for president!)

They would, however, make wonderful wedding presents. His and Her geek shirts! Totally better than monogrammed towels.

Apparently, you can now create google pages that don't rely on your gmail address. This would have been nice to know BEFORE I printed off all of my save the date cards with angela.craft.googlepages.com as the address. Now I look like such an ego-centric bride :-(

A couple of weeks ago my mom was wandering around downtown Holland and saw an awesome dress in the window of a bridal salon there. So now that I'm in Holland for a few days, and wanted to try on dresses to see different fabrics and make sure my mermaid style gown would in fact be a good fit for me.

UGH. I HATED the dresses at this store. Every single dress was a stiff taffeta style, and while the sales woman said they had "lots" of mermaid gowns, I only saw big poofy ball gowns. Yuck, yuck, yuck. So we walked out without trying anything on.

And then we went to the fabric store and got the charmeuse fabric I've been in love with. My gown isn't terribly structured (I'm not having a super dramatic mermaid style, just extra fabric at the bottom of the dress so it's really swishy) so the slinky fabric will be perfect. While it wasn't my original intent, my dress has definitely taken on a glamorous '30s style. AND I LOVE IT.

Oh, and I just need to brag a little bit about this: the fabric for my dress only cost $36. Mom figured my dress would cost $100 with half of that being fabric, the other half beads. I haven't totaled up yet what she's spent on beads, but I'm pretty sure even after we add in the price for the patterns (we're putting together multiple patterns to come up with the perfect gown) my dress won't be much more than $100!

Okay, now to wake Billy up and make our way back to my parents house. And make him harass his mom for their guest list and addresses!

If you click the eBay link in my last post, you may notice that bidding has ended on the item.

That is because my mother bought the shoes for me this morning. Eeeeeeeeee!

Being the shoe lover I am, especially when it comes to obnoxiously high heels, I've maintained since the beginning that I'm not going to be a two-shoe bride. Well, okay, I am, technically, because life is much easier when both feet have shoes! But I intend on sticking to one pair of shoes for the night, because after a lifetime in heels I know that it IS, in fact, possible to have comfortable high heel shoes.

Of course, finding said comfortable pair of shoes is easier said than done. I have had many pairs of shoes that are great for sitting around and looking pretty, but try to walk any distance or stand any length of time and you're hobbling pretty quickly.

My mother has had foot problems for most of her life (due to problems in her childhood, not wearing heels), so she's always instilled in me the importance of good shoes. Good shoes are about the only thing she'll drop over $100 on without batting an eye, simply because it's a medical necessity for her. When I started forensics, and part of the "uniform" was high heels, Mom immediately gave me the money to buy myself a good pair of heels. And they were good, but probably the best pair of shoes I have ever owned is this shoe



Why yes, that is a shoe from Frederick's of Hollywood. Yes it does have a 4" micro stiletto. And they are amazingly comfortable. Ask anyone who was on the forensics team with me: I wore those shoes almost every weekend for three years (I didn't get them until half way through my second year competing) and never brought a pair of flats with me. I still have the shoes and wear them regularly, though they're fairly scuffed up now and have had to be re-heeled multiple times.

So, anyway, since I know I love that shoe and it's totally comfortable, I figured I'd get them for the wedding in white. Kind of boring, but comfort is worth forgoing a little bit of style, right?

But the more I've thought about it, the more I've decided that I would really love to have some color poking out from under my dress. Not that the dress itself will be devoid of color (hello LOTS OF PURPLE BEADS), but the shoes would be a nice addition.

So I poked around a couple of places, looking for purple shoes without much success. Probably because what I want (a classic pump) isn't much in style right now considering the entire country is melting in the heat. Everything's about flirty sandals in lots of colors that aren't deep purple.

And then I remembered that, again for forensics a couple of years ago, Mom had bought me a bunch of designer shoes on eBay for cheap. So I searched tonight, and that's where I found these:



They are sooooooooo pretty! I'm seriously considering calling Mom tomorrow and asking her to buy them for me. They let you return them if you don't like them for whatever reason (though they do charge a restocking fee).

I think I need to sleep on it before making any decisions.

OMG, the wedding planner at the hotel responded to me within a reasonable amount of time! With a sincere sounding (looking? It was an e-mail) apology for the communication difficulties.

Now I need to pick a time to go back to Holland and meet with her. And a prospective officiant!

So I spent most of today's oppressively hot day putting together my wedding planning notebook. Sure, I could have gone to Borders and bought a pre-made book for $20-$50 , but spending that sort of money just didn't make sense for me. Most of what jacks up the price are all of the planning lists: what to ask your caterer, photographer, etc. But I've already bought books covering those questions.

So instead I went to Target and bought a heavy duty binder, a plastic envelope (for holding receipts), paper covers and folders/dividers and spent today setting up my planning book.

I've made inspiration boards for each section. First is my overall inspiration board, just giving the feel for the whole wedding overall. Very glamorous, if I say so myself. And wintery. Which was nice to think about when the humidity was offensively oppressive. That's where I have the receipt envelope, keeping careful track of the money Mom has spent so far.

Next is the attire section, with my beautiful dress inspiration board, then the floral section, photography section (where the inspiration board is just to keep track of shots I want for our wedding. Our photographer is awesome and said I should definitely send her any photos I find that I want to replicate) and the reception/misc section for things like the DJ contract and cake inspiration pictures.

I'll share the boards on here eventually, when I feel like scanning things. Oh yeah, I was old fashioned and printed out all of my pictures, cut them out, and then physically taped them to paper to create my board. Sitting at the computer is waaaaaaaaaaay too hot in my poorly-air-conditioned apartment.

The book ultimately is serving two purposes for me: first, it gives me a place to put everything so (hopefully!) I won't lose it. Second, now when someone asks me "What's your dress going to look like?!" I can whip out my binder and say "Well, these are the two patterns we're using, and then here's some inspiration for the beading..." Because trying to describe my dress (especially to people who don't know fashion/wedding gowns) is nearly impossible. In this case, the pictures really will speak a thousand words.

Also? Perhaps I can stop stressing out about my mom doing stuff on her own if I can leave her with a couple of inspiration boards. It will be much better for both of us, I think.

and I'm missing all of it.

No, this isn't some emo post about how I wish I'd done more with my life or something. It's because half of my favorite sites haven't updated/are updating infrequently this week with no explanation. Is there a holiday somewhere that I'm unaware of?

Okay, have to go do some novel writing now (need to get my couple through the next sex scene!), then I need to put together some wedding stuff. Maybe I'll even get some cleaning done before the air conditioning wears off (our air conditioner is OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD, thus making it impossible to think, let alone do anything productive while it's on. So we turn it on at night and any time we leave the apartment and it keeps us fairly cool. I think the cats are melting, however).

And then later this afternoon Billy and I are going to see either "The Strangers" or "Kung-Fu Panda." Yeah, we aren't eccentric in our movie tastes at all!

I've been in a funk all day. I think it's because today Hilary Clinton gave her concession speech. And it bums me the hell out. I haven't read the transcript/watched the speech 'cause I'm pretty sure I'd be a blithering mess of tears. Even reading some of the articles about it gets me choked up.

Obama won the nomination; I'll certainly vote for him in November. But that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed that my candidate didn't make it.

For those people who I'm sure just DON'T CARE, I'm now going to preface all of my wedding posts with a big note in the subject line. Please skip these posts if wedding details make you feel nauseous :-)

Anyway, the reason for the excitement? All of my bridesmaids have picked out their dresses!

( Pretty pretty pictures under here )

HUZZAH for that being out of the way! Now I just need to figure out where we'll order from, lol. It didn't look like the shop in Ohio was going to give us the greatest of deals (you only got a discount on bridesmaid dresses if you bought a wedding gown), but later in the month I'm visiting home to see what the shops around there might charge.

Next wedding projects: Picking out what engagement pictures we want prints of, an officiant, and sending out save the date cards!

So working at Borders pretty much sucked the life out of me. I was totally not meant to be an office drone. Doing the exact same brain-numbing thing every day was killing my desire to do anything but sleep. Oh, and killing my back. And my wrist. I've decided that eventually my entire generation is just going to have carpal tunnel, because all we ever do is sit in front of computers.

Yeah, anyway, so yesterday was my last day at Borders. It came about for a couple of reasons. Primarily the soul-sucking-ness of it all, but also because Billy and I were just BORED OUT OF OUR SKULLS and a little depressed that we weren't doing anything with our lives that involved our expensive degrees. I have to start paying back that money in June and $10.75 an hour just wasn't going to help with that.

So quitting Borders gave us the impetus to say that by July we're going to move out to New York. I've been frantically submitting my resume to all of the publishing houses I can think of since I want to go into publishing. At least for a little while. I'm going to do one more office job, and if I can't handle that again I'm going back to school to get my media studies degree. I have absolutely no problem parlaying my geekiness into a degree, lol.

In the meantime, I'm going to start writing porn. Lol. No, seriously, Billy has been pushing me forever to try my hand at writing "real" stuff (smutty fan fic doesn't count). I've always refused because I've just never felt the drive to write anything original. I could come up with characters galore but nothing to do with them. Then he suggested romance novels, which seemed even more preposterous. I'd never read a romance novel in my life, how the hell could I write one? Why would I want to?

Except that romance novels can now double as porn. I've been reading a few of Harlequin's Spice novels and...they're not half bad. Some of them are not as great as the others(this month's novel, What Happens in Vegas... has some ridiculous plots that are totally just tired old romance novels with explicit sex), but essentially they're not much different from some of the fic I've written. It's all about sex; I can write sex. Seems like a perfect match.

So I'm dedicated June to bashing out the first draft of the novel. I already have a couple of chapters finished written (I'm sure I'll go back at some point and read them and ask WTF I was thinking). It'll be my own personal NaNoWriMo. Then at a later point I can go back and see if the darn thing actually makes sense.

Wedding plans are coming along fairly smoothly. Getting ready to send out save the dates soon (mental note: need to get addresses from Billy's mom. And forensa-addresses from...whoever has those at the wedding today. Marisa? Anke?). Doing a final round of bridesmaid dress shopping at the end of June with Carling.

And speaking of weddings, I have another forensics-related one to go to later today. That makes 3 forensics-weddings in less than a year. RIDICULOUS. And then in August two of our former coaches are getting married. And then there's a break until February...which is mine. That is still so surreal to think about. Over Memorial Day weekend Billy's brother had a barbecue that a bunch of the family went to. At one point while I was chatting with some of our friends there the whole Coffing family was gathering for a big picture. I was completely oblivious (I think we were having a really interesting conversation) until Billy's dad started calling me over. I "said yes" so now I had to be included in the family portrait. SO WEIRD.

Anyway, need to go start getting ready for Lauren's wedding. I need to go rouse Billy from bed and then dye my hair. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay hair dye.