Side Effects from Attending a Cousin's Wedding

Poor Kenneth somehow ended up off to the side.

Chris and Ashley walk down the aisle; first steps as Mr. & Mrs.

Whew! Going to my cousin Ashley's wedding this weekend, which was beautiful, btw, made me a little anxious about our wedding. For one thing, her wedding was exactly 6 months from our wedding day.  That means it's time to get serious about planning! For another, it was intimidating to think that many of the people at her wedding would be coming to ours-- all the love that surrounded Chris and Ashley is a lot to live up to!

I'm sure it's no shock to learn that Kenneth and I talked most of the drive home from Salem to Seattle about what we liked, and what we would do differently at our wedding. We talked through who to have in our wedding party. We're still sorting that out, but we're much closer! We mulled over music options, discussed our registry, talked through rehearsal dinner ideas, and talked more about first dance and parents dance songs. We also realized that some things just can't be helped-- our ceremony is going to be an hour long, and we'll do our best to keep it lively for those with short-ish attention spans. But some things we can control, like making it a meaningful day. Ashley wrapped her bouquet in one of Granny's scarves, used Granny's cake topper, and had Ave Maria play before the ceremony. (Ave Maria was sung by Granny's dad at her wedding and the wedding of all her siblings. It's also been played at all the family weddings since.) Those little touches made the wedding truly special.

Last picture with Granny while at my cousin Jack's wedding, May 2008.

She was really a sweet, jolly old lady, even if the picture doesn't show it.

While we're being sentimental: Losing Granny last November was hard. (I'm absolutely giving an understatement here.) Since then, at each of the 4 weddings I've been to, at some point I have found myself tearing up thinking about how I won't get to see Granny's face or get squeezed in a great big hug from Granny on my wedding day.  Since starting to plan the wedding, it's been hard walking the line between my desire to make Granny as present physically as she will be in spirit at our wedding-- while also remembering that life is for the living. How do we honor our family members in heaven while also holding tight to the joy of the day? To make things more difficult, I'm stumped on how to honor my Granddad. I never met him since he died before I was born, but his marriage to my Granny is one of the best models for lifelong love that I've ever seen. A love that lasted nearly 30 years after one partner died. That's the kind of love I ask God to give Kenneth and I.

One last thing about the weekend: We finalized our guest list and addressed our save-the-dates! I stuck the little polar bear stamps on each one and sent them today. Being a bad blogger, I've got no pictures since my camera is still MIA, but rest assured it was momentous dropping those suckers in the mail box. One more major wedding task DONE! I'll post on the save-the-dates soon.

B.

And what will we dance to?

We've been having some trouble picking out our first dance song. We've got about 6 months to go, but since this is such a dang difficult decision for us, we're starting now. Here are some of the current contenders:

Can't Take my Eyes Off You, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This one is "our song."

Come Rain or Come Shine, either this version, or maybe even this one.

The Way I Am, Ingrid Michaelson

Oh, Dave Matthews

I'm Yours, Jason Mraz

Till Kingdom Come, ColdPlay

What a Wonderful World/Somewhere over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Oh so ubiquitous , but beautiful, right?

And, neither of these are first dance contenders, but we can't have our reception end without hearing this song, and this one. They're both silly jokes of ours, but no songs remind me of the very early days of our friendship and relationship than these. Especially the first one.

Wedding toasts

um.... right. Not exactly "us."

The wedding toasts are probably one of the more scary portions of the whole wedding reception things. Neither of us are terribly sappy people, except when it's absolutely necessary-- like, oh, our wedding. So, we'll indulge in a little sappiness on our wedding day, but toasts could end up being sappy overload.

Luckily our appointed toast-givers are more likely to be funny than sappy.

HIL-ARIOUS!!

Ok, so that's not Kenneth's kind of humor so much as mine. (You've probably already heard me tell my favorite joke before: What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fssssh. HAHA! Makes me laugh every. single. time. Love me a dumb, corny joke.)  Hopefully our toast-makers can find a way to maneuver both of our senses of humor...I just hope it doesn't end up looking something like this.* You may have heard of cake wrecks. Well, if there was a site to post bad toast videos, this would be on Toast Wrecks.

*Warning: the best man in this YouTube video has a bit of a potty mouth. You probably shouldn't watch it at work or around young folks.

Ceremony Venue: Blessed Sacrament Church, Seattle

When I first moved to Seattle, I wanted to get back into the habit of going to church regularly. I'd always gone for Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Christmas with my families (What? You don't have more than one family?), but I desperately wanted to get into going regularly. I lived just a couple blocks from this church, so despite the presence of  a Newman Center for UW students, I found myself going here nearly every Sunday. 

I immediately felt a strong connection to this church. This is the place where my dormant childhood faith woke up and started living again. Here I saw, felt, and worshiped God.  Yes, God is in all Creation (here's lookin' at you St. Francis!), but never is my faith firmer than when I'm praying inside these brick walls. I knew early on that when someone came along that I would marry, here is where I would marry them. After attending for a year, I decided to register here, and make it my "home," which I'm glad I did because it made our wedding a bit more affordable! :)

What I didn't take into account was Kenneth's family, and their strong attachment to their church. Truth be told, over the last year, I've probably gone to church with his family more often than I've gone to my own church. Still, my church holds a special spot in my heart. I couldn't immediately get over the idea of getting married in any other church. We talked it over, and after Kenneth visited my church, we decided to get married here-- but with his family's priest, from his family's church. :)

Why do we need an theme?

Kenneth asked that when we first started seriously wedding planning. He hadn't been to a wedding with a theme before, and didn't see the need. Never mind the fact that his aunt's wedding featured a cake with shamrocks on it, an Irish band with an Irish flag behind them, his aunt's ring was a claddagh, the flower girls' dresses had subtle little shamrocks on them, and the favors were CDs with names like "Blarney Stone" and "Killarney." (Can you guess the theme?)

I convinced him that a theme or central inspiration image would help with decision making if certain things were automatically excluded. With a theme of say, Scottish traditions, all else being equal, we could automatically exclude black and white polka dot invitations in favor of plaid invitations. With him on-board, I began making suggestions. The only thing we knew for sure is that it had to work with this cake I found in an old wedding magazine that we fell in love with early on:

First up: birds! I love birds, and have something with birds decorating every room of my apartment. My great-grandmother gave me an Asian screen with birds on it when she died because the first word I said was "bird" while pointing at it. It would look lovely with blue and brown, the colors I wanted.  Table centerpieces would be beautiful bowls of robins egg candy with sticks around them--- not quite looking like a bird nest, but suggesting it. I would get to use these beautiful tags somehow too:

Kenneth was not as excited as I was. (We aren't exactly members of the Audubon Society. It didn't feel like "us.")

Next, "Spring in Seattle." Think cherry blossoms and sculptural metallic elements. A few more colors would come in to tie with this inspiration image:

Again, Kenneth didn't share my enthusiasm. He rightly pointed out that it would be too hard to make it come through in a way that would make sense for people who haven't experienced the cherry blossoms on the University of Washington campus in the spring.

Then, it came to me! (And when I say me, I actually mean my sister, Sara who called to tell me the idea.) Why not just make the cake the inspiration!? Kenneth was pleased. (Success!) White would become more prominent, but little bits of brown would still be integrated into everything. Silver too. So with that, I created our inspiration board and we are able to move forward with centerpiece, website, invitation, flower, and color inspiration. 

The story thus far...

Since there's a chance Kenneth might be moving far from family before the wedding, we thought it might be helpful for family to be able to follow along with our wedding planning on a blog. Plus, we've tried sending lots of emails to family... but they don't like being bombarded as much as one would think. (You mean the world doesn't revolve around our wedding? Huh. Weird.) Finally, we want to be able to look back on these in-the-moment observations, dilemmas, and feelings when we're in our 50th year as a married couple. So with that, here we go. Presto-change-o, and now Brianna's triathlon blog is a wedding blog!

According to our sources, the beginning is a very good place to start. Here's how our lives changed on a very hot day in Italy:

After a year of planning and saving, Kenneth was going to propose over breakfast at the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Oregon, a breakfast Brianna had been raving about since they had met. For Christmas 2008, he gave her a card "good for the famous breakfast and trip to the spa" at Columbia Gorge Hotel. Unfortunately, soon after, the historic hotel closed.*

On to plan B. In May 2009, Brianna, her mother, her mother's husband, and Kenneth left for 2 weeks in Italy to celebrate Brianna's graduation from the University of Washington. Kenneth seemed particularly preoccupied with avoiding pick-pockets throughout Italy-- the Rome subway, throughout Florence, while wandering Assisi, and so on.

The trip ended with a special trip to Cinque Terre, a region of 5 villages along the northwest coast with hiking trails between them. The trails opened the way for interaction between villagers from different towns--- including marriages between lovers from two different towns. The trail between two particular villages-- Riomaggiore and Manarola-- is known as Via del'Amore or "The Path of Love." The trail has the names of famous lovers carved into the cliff side-- Romeo & Juliet, Cupid & Psyche, etc. From the trail, every so often there are rickety stairs leading down the cliffs to giant rocks in the water, and Kenneth suggested we go down one to the water. We got up to go, but the setting was very romantic, and they hugged before heading back.

Kenneth stopped though and said "I wouldn't have imagined we'd be here, when we first met 5 years ago. Now, I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Before he had a chance to pull a ring out of his pocket (which he had carried with him at all times during the trip-- no wonder he feared pick pockets!) Brianna blurted out "Is this a proposal? Are you proposing right now?" He showed Brianna the ring and asked if she would marry him. She responded "Really!? Yes!"**

*It all turns out well in the end: Kenneth had a back-up plan. As for the Columbia Gorge Hotel, it was bought and re-opened in September 2009.

 

** Why was Brianna so surprised that Kenneth would actually propose? She had been dragging him through museums, on trains and on mad-dash tours through Florence (in 5 hours) and Pisa (in 3 hours, including lunch). Brianna is still trying to understand how eating could ever trump a tour through the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica. Kenneth is still trying to understand how the love of his life, who normally would stop everything for a pasta and wine lunch, could ever say "we don't have time to eat!" We discovered our travelling styles differ, but not until after spending half our time being cranky with each other. Clearly, love really does conquer all... including grumbling tummies

Team Kendy

This picture is of the team of co-workers I did the Danskin with. Why did we call ourselves Team Kendy? One of our team-mates was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 months out from the Tri. We snapped into gear to support our dearest team-mate who could no longer compete with us., We made dinners at one of those Dinners Ready places. We committed to using our training/work out time as prayer time-- to pray for her. And we made these AWESOME shirts. None of us actually raced in them (as had originally been planned), but we wanted to show our support for her. Now, the shirts are being made into a quilt for Kendy. We can't make the darn cancer go away, but we wanted to show Kendy that we cared.

So how did Kendy find out she had breast cancer in the first place? She started training for the tri and noticed she had some skin irritation going on after work-outs. If she hadn't been training, she wouldn't have found out as early as she did. (That God guy...He knows what he's doing sometimes.) Kendy says signing up for the Danskin saved her life.

She's been having chemo every other week since June, and that'll continue for a little while longer still. She also had surgery to remove the cancer. She's amazing though-- still works almost full time if not full time most weeks.

Another thing-- the event raises money and supports women who are going through or have survived cancer. Some of the waves were just for cancer survivors (they wore pink caps of course). There's really nothing so inspirational as having a cancer survivor kick your ass in a triathlon.

Kendy is planning to join us this year. Go Team Kendy 2010!

(Oh-- and this is another one of my "join me in a tri!" next year posts. Not only will it motivate you to stay on track with working out and getting serious about getting fit-- but it might just save your life)