Movin' On Up!

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Why has posting been light? Because we're taking a lesson from The Jeffersons and movin' on up!

At least I am for now. As of today, I've officially moved out of my basement apartment an hour away from work to a larger apartment 10 minutes from work. We hauled in the last items from my old apartment last night. Phew! it's been a 2 week long process between packing and moving things between the old apartment and the new.  In April, Kenneth will move in to what will be our first place together. Hooray! Fitting all of our things into the 700 square foot apartment is another story though...

We'll have more wedding related news after the move is complete, but obviously our attention is elsewhere for now. More to come in a couple weeks-- including ring shopping and showers.

My "Bouquet": Part Two

So I mentioned I wouldn't be carrying a bouquet. Instead, I'll be carrying a few other things. Starting with this:

It came in a package from my grandma. The note says "Here's the wedding prayer book with love. My grandma (Emmy) gave it to me." She sent it along with some pictures of family-- including my great-grandmother (we all called her Grandmother) and her husband ("Grandpappy").  Grandmother was possibly one of the most incredible women ever born. She passed away when I was 12, and I feel so lucky that I got to know her.

Here's a peak into the book.

"To Joyce, (my grandma) with a heart full of love and best wishes on her wedding day and for an ideal married life from Grandma McKenney. June 17, 1950."

Grandma and Grandpa Johnston's marriage certificate! There's my great-uncle's (Uncle Bill's) signature on the left under witnesses and my grandparents' on the right on the certificate.

And one last thing tucked inside-- another, smaller picture of Grandmother and Grandpappy, and a prayer card with "Johnny, 1950" on the back. Johnny was Grandpa's nickname in the Navy.

Side note: Grandma described this as an old book on marriage. I think she said it was "Not very pretty. It needs to be cleaned up a bit." I don't think it needs to be touched at all. Beautiful as flowers are, I don't know that anything else could  be better. Except maybe the other things that will be with me when I walk down the aisle.

My "Bouquet"

Early on in the wedding process, I thought I'd have white tulips. Tulips are in season in April, and I love how they can be classic but so modern:

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Along with that, I'd carry a nosegay in honor of each of our mother's mothers, who have passed away. I wanted to get the nosegays to be made of the same flowers that were in their bouquets, but that turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I was trying to come up with some other way to honor our grandmothers, and searched bouquet alternatives. There are some really great ideas out there:

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Beautiful, but they just won't work. Not really us, not really fitting in with the vision of things. But theeeeen I found an article that listed much better ideas, in addition to candy, seashell, button, and feather bouquets that others had mentioned. What stuck out most to me was the suggestion to carry a Bible or a rosary. It seems like too much to juggle a bouquet on top of a Bible and/or rosary, so I'd need to drop the bouquet, but I wanted to see pictures before committing to such a switch.

That's when I found this:

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What is it that Melania Knauss Trump is carrying? It's a rosary. If The Donald's wife can walk down the aisle without a bouquet, so could I. I'll show you what I'll be carrying in the next post. :)

Dream a Little Dream

"Planning a wedding is exciting, exasperating, exhilarating and exhausting. UN peace negotiations can seem like child's play in comparison... Some days, you just want to pull the covers over your head then run away and elope." *

Minutes after Kenneth proposed, I told him I thought wedding planning would be the biggest test of our diplomatic skills we've ever faced. As it has turned out, there have been times where that's been true.  It's not that I don't enjoy picking out flowers and debating the merits of different scripture readings, but balancing what we want for the day with the desires of our families, our budget, and our time constraints has sometimes made wedding planning a stressful process.

I won't deny that the idea of eloping is like a pleasant dream some days.

We would stroll some lazy Saturday with our parents and siblings to the county court house:

I would wear a simple dress like this:

Kenneth would wear a suit or maybe just a button-down shirt and slacks because he looks so good that way:

And after, instead of a reception, we would go to a restaurant like this:

Just when I'm ready to start going through with my little dream, I'm reminded that the stress is worth it if it means we will be married in a church, in the presence of God, not just the State of Washington.

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And years from now, photos like this will remind me of how great it was to have our family and friends with us to witness our vows

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And celebrate our wedding day with us.

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Maybe on our 30th anniversary, we'll look at those pictures and laugh at ourselves for how we danced...

Source and source (video)

Source, but you can believe if we had more coordination, we would go with something more like this YouTube video.

Or maybe we'll exchange stories about how we ate too much food that looked like this.

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And how we had not too few, but not too many of these:

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So, I'll remove the bookmark on that simple courthouse wedding dress, and keep my eyes on the prize. Once we make it to April 17th, we'll experience all that in the pictures and the months of planning, negotiating, crafting, and working will all be worth it.

*Someone far more articulate than I crafted that quote that conveys entirely what my life has been taken over by lately: wedding-planning and (M)UN. Source.

Walking Down the Treadmill

Long ago, Kenneth and I started running together. We both want to create habits of working out not only to stay healthy-- exercise is especially important with all the heart disease in my family-- but we also want to cheer on our child at the Olympics someday. Yep. We're doing it out of totally selfish motives: We want to set an example of exercising regularly and competing in triathlons and running events so that someday we'll have AMAZING seats at the Olympics. Like Michael Phelps' mom:

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These parents know how to instill Olympic drive correctly. I can't wait to get Little Jimmy a hair cut like this!

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Anyway, running together was a great way to stay in shape...until I started having knee trouble. After that, Kenneth would run a few days a week, and I'd go to the gym-- up to 6 days a week during the height of triathlon training. Which is also when I bought my dress. Hmm. Not the brightest idea. It leads to doing things like this...

Just getting in a few more minutes on the treadmill before walking down the aisle.

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Usually, brides try and get in shape before the wedding and develop plans for slimming down or toning up. Me, I'm just trying to find a way to get back to where I was pre-wedding to actually still fit in that dress. Yeah, that dress that JUST fits at the moment. Yikes. So what's the problem? It shocked me at first, but wedding planning takes a lot of time. Add that to tonight's to-do list, which reads:

• Grocery store
• nutmeg, tomatoes, parsley, toilet paper
• Make butternut squash soup to freeze (for lunch or dinner on an even busier day) 
• Call University Inn (206) 632-5055
• Pack 4 boxes
• Edit Yvonne's background guide draft (this is for NMUN)
• Send a few save-the-date stragglers
• Find Christmas CD for co-worker. Bring it to work tomorrow
• Write/type up volunteer job description (this is for work)
• Blog about this and gym (an afterthought)

And, as you can see, there's no bullet with "Go to gym" next to it. There's just not going to be time. It's on the agenda for tomorrow, but at 9:30, I have yet to pack those boxes, edit Yvonne's work, find that CD, or work on that volunteer job description. They MAY appear on my to-do list for tomorrow. Whether a trip to the gym appears on tomorrow's list... I suppose I'll have to worry about that tomorrow.

B.

A wedding lasts a day...

... but marriage lasts a lifetime.

Ahhh, the phrase splattered across nearly every pre-marriage lecture, seminar, or class brochure. And like so many other cliche phrases, you can't help but acknowledge it's true.

Kenneth and I dated for years before he proposed, and we had time to get to know each other-- good and bad. Even then, the closer we get to the wedding, the more we realize that we have as much work to do getting ready for the marriage we're about to enter as we do for the wedding. We're required to take Pre-Cana (or pre-marriage) Classes to be married in the Catholic church, but due to the schedule at the church we're doing Pre-Cana at, we won't be able to take the classes until early spring, just before we're married. Not wanting to wait that long, we've been reading a few books on marriage. I've been reading books on marriage and Kenneth reads it after I do if it's a good one.

First, The Five Love Languages. This one is a classic, and for a reason. Kenneth and I are plenty compatible, but we have our differences, too. This eye-opener helped us understand each other, and ourselves. It used to bother me that Kenneth wasn't much of a hugger, hand-holder, or in-public-smoocher. But after reading this book, I saw that when he did the dishes after I made dinner, that was his way of showing affection. The best part is that it doesn't just apply to relationships between you and your (future) spouse. It helped me understand my friends, parents, and other family better. It's definitely a must-read.

Next, Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. Sigh. This was definitely a disappointment. "Finally," I thought, "a book for those of us who aren't quite married yet!"  Don't let the title fool you. This book constantly says "your husband," "your wife." It's not aimed at the not-yet or even newly-engaged. And the advice? Puh-leeze.  It was superficial and unhelpful.  What a waste. I'm glad I checked it out from the library at work. If I had bought it, I would've been kicking myself for days.

Moving along, the next one I checked out was Getting Ready for the Wedding, edited by Les and Leslie Parrot .(Yep, the same ones who wrote Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. That should have been my first clue.)  I was excited by chapters with titles like "What's the secret to having a great engagement?" and "How can we get married without drowing in debt?"  Fabulous! Just the sort of thing I was wondering about.  Ugh. Their advice in the wedding budget section was not aimed at the individual getting married, but their parents. Essentially, they said "Give your children a set budget, and let them decide how to spend it. It's their wedding." That's lovely and all, but not exactly in touch with reality for most couples in 2009, including us.

Next, I read Starting Your Marriage Right: What You Need to Know in the Early Years to Make It Last a Lifetime by Dennis and Barbara Rainey. This book had some good advice, such as making sure to take time for weekends away with just each other 4 times a year. The major drawback was that it was too broad and too shallow. There were chapters on nearly every topic that has ever caused trouble in marriages since the institution came into being, yet the chapters were just 10 pages long at most.  Also, like all the other books discussed here, some parts irked the special spot in my soul for women's empowerment issues. Notably, the authors advised wives to allow husbands to have their way in disagreements that last more than 24 hours.Yeah, that's not happening in this egalitarian partnership of ours. Moving on...

As an interlude, I watched Fireproof. The premise is that any marriage can be saved if you just love the other partner enough. This is accomplished through a method known as the Love Dare. Maybe it's the child-of-divorced-parents-cynic in me, but this seems a bit ridiculously naive. If marriage is a partnership, the commitment of both individuals is necessary, right? And, no offense to The Beatles, but I think you actually need more than love to make a marriage work.

Finally, I borrowed two copies of The Most Important Year in a Man's Life/The Most Important Year in a Woman's Life, from the library and parked one on Kenneth's nightstand at his house, and one on mine. This is where the clouds parted, angels sang, and God smiled upon us saying "It is good."  This book is divided so that half is addressed to the husband (or husband-to-be) while the other is addressed at the female partner in the relationship. In the middle is the oh-so-creatively named "Meet in the Middle" section, with conversation starters and questions for reflection. While The Five Love Languages is fantastic for learning to understand/communicate with your partner, The Most Important Year gives practical advice on  in-laws, time management, money matters and other issues. It also got us talking. We always knew our values aligned well, but this book is bringing us new focus in how we discuss what matters. Sure, it did occasionally rub me the wrong way with assumptions it made on the wife's role, but the authors were more progressive than the others. Ultimately, the book was good enough for me to invest in a copy for us to keep. 

While I know reading these books won't guarantee a successful marriage, hopefully we're that much closer to "happily ever after." Have you read any other books that might help us get our marriage started on the right foot?