Mrs. Saltveit

While Mark was posting to our blog like wildfire, I was busy getting married.

Actually we both got married, to each other no less.

Yet, somehow, I became consumed with wedding prep, in a way that Mark did not ~ and the reason I write about this is that I wonder if it's a girl thing.

We agreed to create as simple yet meaningful an event as possible, and it was as DIY as could be ~ but I still found myself counting the silverware and glassware in order to calculate the number of wine glasses and forks (not to mention tables and chairs) I'd need to rent so our families and closest friends would be comfortable. I created the invitations and announcements, designed and purchased the gifts for our wedding party and guests, took care of shopping for Mark's daughters as needed, and coordinated with our bridesmaids and ushers about what to wear. I bought the bubbles instead of rice.

It thought provoking and time consuming and I enjoyed every second of it.

Mark did his share of the most important things; he rented the park site, downloaded a tons of songs for the dance party, and was in charge of all the food shopping and cooking for the reception (thank heavens!). We went ring shopping together.

It wasn't out of laziness that he didn't tend to the minutiae; he had decided he wanted to do quite a bit of remodeling before my parents arrived for the wedding, and he went at it full force. In the final week before the wedding, even after my parents arrived, he was still busy sanding and painting while I went shopping for fabric with my mother and my cousin.

My mother made my veil and my cousin made the flower girl basket and my bouquet. Together my mother and my cousin sewed the cushions for our two ring bearers. Our friends Maya & Maria helped decorate for the dance party, our friend Dañel created our cake topper, and my friend MaryHelen volunteered to decorate for the reception...

Happily.

68 Days Until the Wedding

So tells me the Wedding Wire website from where I e-navigate this event. This website is helpful; it contains the guest list and the photos of our wedding website slideshow, it hosts the html editor from where I update the wedding website, it has tools I don't even use, such as the checklist (eg, mani-pedi appointment) and the budget (eg, videographer).

Up until now, managing this website, writing on the blog (any of them), indeed all the details of the wedding, have been not much more than a sweet diversion. I take a break from work to look up information about local wedding sites, or Norwegian wedding cakes, or Portland hotels. I crafted a first draft of the ceremony at lunch one day, that Mark's begun editing it. I bought a dress out of the blue.

But now, as my wedding web service tells me that July 18th is but a little more than two months away, this sweet diversion has by necessity become my next big project.

The timing is great, really. I just opened a show last night, and was feeling a bit glum today (as I usually do) after the energetic drive that led to opening night turned inevitably into exhaustion, sadness, and the realignment of priorities. Thank God, Mark sat down with me tonite and we talked through some of the wedding logistics, budget, as well as the big list of home improvement projects he wants to finish before the wedding day (bless his nesting heart).

Sitting with Mark, the calendar open as we each created our own to-do lists, then starting a spreadsheet and even writing this blog entry, have whittled this daunting prospect down to a manageable size. I think we can actually get married in two months, with tradition and our unique touches, surrounded by our family and friends, with celebrations for the younger and older sets.

I may not have the mani-pedi date on my e-calendar, but I trust the day will come, as the next 68, 69, 70 days will come, and those that will come after, peacefully and beautifully, just in time.

Wedding Planner

It's no secret this will be my third wedding. The first was a City Hall elopement when I was 18, and as casual a ceremony as could be. I wore the dress in which my mother met my father, a lovely 1960s cream chiffon with little black polka dots. We didn't know if we needed one witness or two, so to be safe we invited our two closest friends, and Richard volunteered to be my "maid of honor". Afterward, the four of us went out for Chinese food in nearby Chinatown, then back to the NYU dorm where my new husband lived, hung out with our friends and never told anybody we got married for months.

My second was a much more formal affair, a church wedding with a reception, again in NY but this time in Brewster, where my parents live. The whole family was invited and many of my fiance's family flew out for the occasion. It was a good-sized wedding, many of my NY and NJ "cousins" were able to attend. One of the best things about it was wearing the dress created by my mom & grandmom that I had envisioned, a lovely white off the shoulder dress with a flamenco-style skirt. We held the reception at Sciortino's, one of the nicest Italian restaurants in town.

It was during the preparation for this event that I realized that hosting a wedding was not unlike producing a play (which I'd done for years) ~ actors, setting, costumes, props, sound design? Check. Straightforward, until the day of the show, when things started going awry and it fell to the "producer" to straighten things out. So, when we arrived to the reception hall and there was one table less than required, I had to chase down the waiters to set up a new table. And when my cousin decided to change the music tapes to play more dance music, I had to soothe my new husband's rightful indignation. And when the priest skipped over a part of our ceremony, I had to decide to let it slide...

I'm looking at my next and please God, last wedding. I don't want to hand off responsibilities to anyone else unless they're really interested in spending the day focused on an element of a special party. I understand why couples hire wedding planners, but we don't have the budget and as we're doing without many of the trappings of the "perfect" wedding, I'm not sure if a planner would be an appropriate addition. Yet, neither do I want to spend my day focused on the decorations, carpool logistics, food heat and champagne chill temperatures, etc. I have a wedding to think about. With my maid of honor coming in from out of town, with her two young children in tow, I can't just hand off duties to her as if she were a stage manager.

How do we host a celebration that doesn't make us insane, or worse, unfocused? Mark is confident that going the relaxed route is best, and while I know he's right, I'm not sure he fully appreciates how complicated this could get.

And so, another conversation needs to be held between us, sooner rather than later, about how we're ever going to pull off this wedding stress-free and well... We've decided to spend a little time talking about it this weekend!

The Perfect Wedding

We don't have a date for our wedding, but of course we've been talking about it ever since Mark proposed in October; when & where to hold the ceremony, who will officiate, where to host the reception... those are the basic questions. Then other ones begin to come up. Do we hire a band? Do we cater? Do we hire a photographer? Do we have a rehearsal dinner?

I was curious about using an online wedding planner and so I signed up for Wedding Wire (our website host) through a link on Facebook. A whole new set of questions arose. What's our theme? What gifts should we get for the wedding party? Where shall we register? What about the invitations, embossed or email?

I am intrigued by the traditions that have come to define the "perfect" wedding, the color-coordination, theme-orientation, multi-thousand dollar extravaganza. I'm not interested in splurging on a big shindig but the window shopping is fascinating. Ever since October I notice more and more services geared especially for the big day. My friend Miriam and I went to a small Bridal Show at a country club just outside of Portland. It was lovely; we met a dj, caterers, planners, makeup artists, honeymoon travel agents, florists and more. Wedding professionals, very kindly sharing their recommedations on how to achieve an unforgettable celebration of love. It's alluring. But it leads me to ask, what does all the pomp add to the circumstance?

As I look at all the options that face me, the big challenge I find is to plan a wedding that honors the big step we're taking in our lives and the lives of Mark's daughters, but doesn't cave in to industry standards that have nothing to do "us". And so I return to fundamental questions.

Why do we invite guests to our weddings? We do so in order to have witnesses and supporters who will remind us of the love that brought wife and husband together, especially when challenges threaten to pull us apart.

And we invite our guests to celebrate with us after the ceremony in order to nourish life with a meal that sustains us, and to celebrate romance with dance.

This all makes good sense but it seems as if these basic elements have been overblown by the market. We're told that the "big day" is the one day we can (and should) demand it all, spend as much money as we dare to create an unforgettable day.

Granted, a wedding is a rare opportunity for the couple to express its unique style on a big scale, to display its shared taste and values before their whole community. To say: we stand as one, united from this day forward, and this is what you can expect from "us" in the future.

There are also centuries-old traditions of hosting parties that display family wealth and generosity, sharing good fortune so that it may continue. Modern posh weddings with their A-list guests, designer dresses and secret locations are similar status symbols. Our contemporary wedding industry is fueled by our very human aspirations for greatness and good fortune.

Mark has been a little surprised by my fascination with all-things-wedding, which I've manifested in building the website and this blog, attending the Bridal Show, contacting musicians, surfing the internet for cake-bakers, caterers and photographers. I've already bought my dress. He's expressed concern that I might desire The Perfect Wedding.

What's happened is that my inquiry has helped me identify the meaning of The Perfect Wedding.

I don't think there's any such thing, even though my brother's came pretty darn close. I think perfection, as far as weddings go, is ultimately found in the kiss, in the "I do", in the heart of the relationship, and the breath between "will you marry me?" and "yes."

In a few days we'll pick the date of our wedding.

I've decided that I want a simple wedding. I'm pretty sure Mark does too.

That is perfect.

How did they know?

I wouldn't have started this blog had not the wedding website I'm building offered me the option to link a blog to the site. I had really enjoyed putting together the slideshow for the website, looking at the photos of our family and things we'd done over the past two-plus years, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to try another new tool.

And so I left the wedding website and went off to create a new blog from scratch. But how did my new blog know the title of the webpage I'd built at a completely different location? Apparently some cyber discussion has occurred between the two sites. A little strange, but...

It reminds me of when Mark & I first met, through an online dating service. Actually, it was two services, belonging to The Seattle Times & The Onion, but they shared a pool of seeking men and women. An ocean full of fish, so to speak.

Very early on in our internet conversations, our emails began to do funny things, such as squish the letters of our names together or add smiley-face icons! I have never included a smiley-face icon in an email in my life. I don't even know how to make those text-based colon-close-parentheses smiley faces. Wait a second...

:)

...I guess I do! Nevertheless, for some reason, the email programs with which we communicated took it upon themselves (because this happened on both sides of our conversation) to add flirtatious formatting on our behalf!

Did they think we weren't doing a good enough job?

Perhaps I should thank them...