On Marrying a Life Partner

Ice-cream cookie sandwiches (easy and tasty!)

Matt's special healthy "cookies" (yummy!)

Matt and I attended a fun birthday party this past weekend. The theme was "Cookies and Beer."

As a person who is sixteen weeks pregnant, I am neither partaking in sugar nor beer, but I wanted to go nonetheless.

My amazing life partner has decided that he, too, will abstain from eating sugar throughout my pregnancy as a way to be supportive and loving. For the Cookies & Beer party, he decided to make cookies without sugar. I was skeptical, but, fortunately, he proved me wrong. He used mashed up bananas, butter, soy milk, dried cherries, oatmeal, sundry spices, and sunflower seeds (following this recipe) to make a pretty decent "cookie." They definitely can't compete with a good ol' sugar-laden cookie, but they were absolutely a nice and thoughtful treat nonetheless. The dried cherries made all the difference.

Matt's amazing gesture of support is yet another illustration of his commitment to be a life partner.

Throughout my many years of dating, I opted for some not-so-supportive guys. I couldn't help it. I was attracted to them. However, I am so, so thankful that when it came time to tie the knot, I found someone who truly embraces the idea of being a life partner, for better and worse.

In the process of planning a wedding, it can be so easy to get preoccupied with all the wrong things. There are so many details and distractions. But at its core, this is what it's all about. It's about formalizing our choices and our commitments. It's orchestrating a moment of seriousness and celebration that allows us to proclaim our love and our intentions out loud. It's a precious moment--worthy our attention and effort--but it's just one precious moment in a long line of many.

Thankfully.

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Couples' Counseling

I haven't talked much about the biggest problem that Matt and I have in our relationship. I've mentioned it a few times here and there, but I haven't gone into much depth for one primary reason: we don't know how to solve it.

You see, our biggest difficulty is that Matt wants to have sexual intercourse more frequently than I do.

It's difficult to get at the route of the issue. I think there are several different issues at work. On my end, I think I respond to stress differently than Matt does. The more stress I have in my life and the busier I am, the less I want to have sex. On the other hand, the more stress Matt has and the busier he is, the more he wants to have sex.

I also know that I have issues with control (meaning, I like to be in control), so I wonder if I subconsciously relish the control I get from being the one who always decides when we have sex.

I also wonder if I just have a low libido. I once read a book all about a woman who had a low sex drive. She opted to start putting a hormone ointment on her vagina, and her sex-drive skyrocketed.

On Matt's end, I think his "language of love" is physical touch, so I think he feels unloved if I don't want to have sex. If it's been a while since we've had sex, he can start to get pouty. These moods feel "desperate and demanding" to me, which makes me less inclined to have sex.

Those are the only possible causes that come to mind, although I'm open to myriad other possibilities that we haven't considered. The situation has been exacerbated lately with my pregnancy, and it will only cause more tension when we move into the later stages of my pregnancy and when we have an infant.

We started looking into couples' counseling a while ago, as part of our pre-conception planning, but we realized that our insurance doesn't cover therapy, so we kind of lost steam. Then last month, my midwife asked, "What's stressing you out the most?" I explained our situation, and she said that we should seek help. She recommended a person to help us with this specific issue.

I'll definitely keep you updated about how it goes! I'm nervous, but I'm eager to deal with our problem in a proactive way. I think it's easy for small fissures in a marriage to become deep cracks.

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E-mail Updates

Matt and I are heading to Indiana for the wedding of our good friends in a couple weeks. I can't wait!

As the date approaches, however, I find myself asking Matt questions like, "Do we need to book our hotel?" I have no idea what our itinerary is for the weekend, where we'll be staying, what day/time the ceremony is, etc. Matt doesn't usually have a satisfactory answer to my questions. I know I could find all the information on their wedsite. But usually, I'm away from my computer when I think of such questions (typically, I'm brushing my teeth), so I forget to visit their wedsite and I remain in the dark about what's going on. [Editor's Note: I just visited their wedsite and all my questions have been answered!]

All of this reminds me of the beauty of the e-mail update. A couple of times leading up to our wedding, Matt and I sent an e-mail update out to our guests, with information about how to book the hotel, how to coordinate carpooling from the airport, and links back to our wedsite. I know e-mail communication with guests is usually taboo (it's impossible to letterpress an e-mail!), but I find that it can be a really good way to help guests keep tabs on the logistics of a wedding.

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Registry Recommendations

It's funny how many parallels there are between planning a wedding and preparing for a baby (see this post about parallel industrial complexes...). As I finish up my third month of pregnancy, I find myself needing to create another registry. Oy vey!

When Matt and I were getting married, we used My Registry. I find the site to be a little busy and difficult to navigate (especially for guests who aren't as technologically savvy). I've also used Alternative Gift Registry to create classroom wish lists. Although I find it easier to navigate than My Registry, I didn't find it as easy to add items to from my end.

As I start to put together a baby registry for loving and caring family members and friends, I'm wondering what else is out there. What online registries do you recommend?

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Q & A: Renting Out the Reception Site

I know I've answered this question before, but I feel compelled to address it again. Our choice to rent out an entire Bed & Breakfast and invite our friends to stay with us for the entire weekend really shaped the nature of our wedding.

Reader's Question: When you chose your venue and booked the entire thing, did you pay for all of your guests' rooms? Or did you guys ask them to pay for themselves?

I sometimes wonder what Matt and I would have spent more money on if our budget had been more than $2,000. I worry that we would have invested in tablecloths (instead of using vintage sheets from the Goodwill) or that we would have made more cloth napkins in a cute, coordinated fabric. I use the word "worry" to describe these additional purchases because they would have done nothing to improve our wedding.

If we did have more than $2,000 to spend on our wedding, I hope we would have used it to cover the cost of our guests' hotel rooms, as a way to thank them for making the trip to share in our celebration of love and commitment.

Although we weren't able to cover the cost of their lodging, we did manage to find a very inexpensive Bed & Breakfast off the beaten path outside of Estes Park, Colorado. We were able to rent out the whole thing (approximately 40 beds spread out over several cabins and a main house) for $750 a night. We charged everyone $25-$35 per night (for Friday and Saturday), depending on the type of accommodations they were requesting. We set the price higher than the actual per person rate because we weren't sure how many people would choose to stay on site with us in shared accommodations.

Fortunately, we ended up with more people than we expected, which meant that we had money left over. We used it to pay the innkeepers $50/hour to heat up the food we prepared, keep it stocked, and clear it away at the end of the reception. We also used the extra money to cover lodging for a few people who went above and beyond to help us out.

In order to collect the money, we asked one of our most meticulous and outgoing friends to be the Pay Master. We made a form for her, and she went about collecting money from everyone. She started at the Friday night Welcome Picnic and continued through the goodbye breakfast on Sunday. She said she actually enjoyed the task because it meant that she was forced to meet every single person.

Renting out an entire Bed and Breakfast allowed us to have a free location for our Friday Night Welcome Picnic, a kitchen to self-cater our reception, a place to hold our wedding reception, and free communal breakfasts every morning. Although we sacrificed some aesthetic beauty (the cabins were a bit old, and the entire place is smothered in stuffed moose toys), we ended up having the best experience and we stayed within our budget. The innkeepers were the most amazingly helpful people who let us borrow so many of their resources. I didn't think we would ever be able to find something in Colorado, in the mountains, in the summer, with only seven months of planning, but we searched off the beaten path and made it work.

Wishing you the very best!

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DIY: Dress Applique

I finally got around to emulating Kimi's dress (well, to the best of my much-less-artistic abilities!).

Thanks to a kindred spirit's recommendation within the comments section from a post I wrote a while ago, I decided to use Wonder Under to attach the applique fabric to the fabric of the dress.

Here's what I did:

1. At the fabric store, I searched high and low for an applique fabric that would not fray. I managed to find a velvet that didn't fray, but it was stretchy. I worried that the stretchiness would make it difficult to deal with, but since I wasn't actually sewing it to anything, it didn't end up making the project too much harder.
2. I asked the fabric store clerk to direct me to the Wonder Under. I've used Steam-a-Seam before, and Wonder Under is like its less expensive twin sister. You buy it by the yard, and it's so cheap! I got enough Wonder Under to match up with my velvet fabric.
3. Following the instructions on the Wonder Under, I ironed the Wonder Under to my velvet.
4. Next, I flipped the whole thing over and started to draw my design on the white paper backing (remembering that it would be in reverse). I tried to use a light pencil, so I could erase every time I messed up (which happened a lot!). I mainly drew my design by staring at Kimi's dress (even though mine completely pales in comparison!). I also looked at clipart of birds to help me draw the bird. If I were less lazy, I could have printed clipart, cut it out, and then traced it onto my paper/fabric.
5. After I sketched everything out in pencil, I went over the design with a black Sharpie, so I knew exactly where I needed to cut.
   
6. Then I spent a very long time cutting out the design. Emphasis on very long.
7. After peeling off the back of the Wonder Under, I was then able to lay out the applique on my dress.
8. With the design in place, I slid the ironing board under my dress and began ironing on the applique (again, following the directions that came with the Wonder Under).
   

And that was it! (Those directions definitely make it sound easier than it was...the process was quite tedious at times...).

I've worn the dress once (and won't be able to wear it again for a while because my breasts are swelling big time, in response to this pregnancy!). I didn't get a single compliment on it, but I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I think this process would be an excellent way to embellish a wedding dress.

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The Never-Ending Industrial Complexes

During our seven months of wedding planning, I started to grow pretty tired of the Wedding Industrial Complex. I grew weary of messaging about how I needed to look at my wedding as a "Once-in-a-Lifetime" event or the "Best Day" of my life. I sighed every time a company beseeched me to obsess about X, Y, or Z because it could make or break the wedding.

Now that I'm in the throes of planning for a baby (T-minus six months until the birth!), I'm faced with yet another insidious network of corporations and cultural messages conspiring to make me spend, spend, spend. Enter, The Baby Industrial Complex.

A good friend of ours gave us a book called, Baby Bargains. It's all about the things you have to buy in preparation for the baby. For example, it has 83 pages about buying a crib (and that doesn't include the 43 pages about bedding for the crib). Although I'm enjoying the book (and it actually does have some conscious consumer messages, such as don't buy a coordinated contraption in order to store your diapers), it's still page after page of products.

There's nothing inherently wrong with products. For example, we need to get a car seat, just like we needed to get plates, napkins, and utensils for our wedding. Some products are absolutely necessary. The problem, however, comes when we start to obsess about those products or become convinced that we need more than we really do (which is bad for the environment and the budget).

Another book, Attached at the Heart, really gets to the core of the issue:

When preparing for the birth of a child, it is easy to get caught up in the material things associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care. Cute infant clothing, the latest maternity fashions, and all the baby gear can be an all-consuming part of preparing for a baby, but the lasting investment of preparation involves creating a peaceful, loving environment in which to grow, birth, and care for a new life.

The same thing applies to preparing for a wedding. It's easy to get up in the material things: the dress, flowers, chair covers, napkins, bridesmaids dresses, cake toppers--the list goes on and on. But the "lasting investment of preparation involves" preparing for marriage: joining finances, distributing domestic responsibilities equitably, learning to disagree in constructive rather than destructive ways, figuring out how to forge your own path as a couple without alienating good-intentioned friends and family, continuing to cultivate yourself beyond your relationship--the list goes on and on.

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DIY: Living, Growing Scrapbook

For those of you who have oodles and oodles of photographs on your hard-drive but haven't yet figured out what to do with them all, you might find this easy-peasy recipe for making a living, growing scrapbook helpful.

Here's what Matt and I do:

1. We bought a regular binder from an office supply store. We spiffed it up by putting an image from an old Nikki McClure calendar inside the plastic cover.
   
2. While we were at the office supply store, we also bought a bunch of sheet protectors, white cardstock, and double-sided tape.
3. Every time we return from a trip or have a new set of photos that we want to add to our scrapbook, we upload them to Snapfish, search for a coupon on retailmenot, and have the photos delivered to our house.
   
4. Then we use the tape to adhere the photos to the cardstock. We write a few words on the page (nothing fancy! just functional...). Then we slip the cardstock into a sheet protector.
5. Voila! It's such an easy, low-pressure way to create a tangible record of our lives together...
   

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Dress Giveaway Results

Hooray! Generous Jennie (of our dress giveaway) has picked one lucky winner to be the next wearer of her joyful wedding dress.

[insert drum roll....]

Russell Jill!

Here's what she said in her entry:

Hey! I love your blog! (new addict) This dress is stunning on you. I would love to win it as well. My future hub and I will have to settle for a courthouse wedding since we are both in the military. With military pay checks and being away all the time working we can neither afford or have the time to plan a big wedding. If I win this dress I would also pay it forward by donating the dress.

Even if I don't win, thank you for your donation to the deserving bride. If only more people were willing to make things a little easier for their neighbors!

I am giddy that we've got a little sisterhood of the traveling dress going on among kindred spirits! If you would like to giveaway your wedding dress, please let me know!

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Q & A: Wedding Magazines

Reader Question: I'm looking for some suggestions and thought maybe you or your blog might be a good place to start. My mom really wants to subscribe to a bridal magazine for me, but I don't want to get sucked into the Wedding Industrial Complex. Do you know of any magazines that are more along your lines of what a wedding should be like? Perhaps some other readers would have some suggestions as well of what magazines they do and don't like.

I wish! I really do. Maybe someone out there will know of something?

All I can say is: Tell her you want books instead! You're right to worry that reading too many wedding magazines can cause you to see the world through the lens of the Wedding Industrial Complex. Magazines are chock-full of advertisements that try to convince you that you absolutely have to spend more money in order to have the once-in-a-lifetime wedding you always dreamed of. And not only do you "have" to spend that money, you should want to!

Even the magazines that feature interesting weddings (like Martha Stewart Weddings) seem to overemphasize the "pretty details" of a wedding. The truth is, most of our guests don't gush over such details. They notice much bigger-picture things. When we look at too many pictures of pretty details (either in magazines or on blogs or on TV, etc.), it can become easy to get obsessed with recreating them at our own weddings or feeling guilty if we don't have the time/money/desire to do so.

I'd say skip over the magazines and head for the bookstore. Ariel's book, Offbeat Bride, is full of lots of awesome examples of weddings, as well as solid, how-to advice. I'd also recommend One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding if you want an in-depth analysis of the Wedding Industrial Complex. Although I haven't read it, I've heard that The Conscious Bride does a good job of exploring the deeper, emotional issues surrounding weddings. I also found The DIY Wedding to be super-helpful in my own planning.

Or how about some books about relationships, since our weddings last approximately one weekend and our marriages should last the rest of our lives?

I recommend the Five Love Languages (even though it's super-cheesy) or Getting the Love You Want couples workbook, for starters.

As for your original question, I'm eager to see if other kindred spirits do have some good magazine recommendations!

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Tip #22: Ideas for Building Successful Relationships

The other day I was watching the movie Love Story for the second time (I think I've read the book more than once, too).

There's a scene where the husband loses his temper toward the wife, and she storms out of the house in protest. He immediately regrets what he's done and heads out to look for her. He spends the entire day scouring local coffee shops, the library, etc. At the end of the day, he heads home and finds his wife shivering on the doorstep. She says that she forgot her key.

The husband immediately starts to gush an apology and the wife says something like, "Stop. Love means never having to say you're sorry."

That line makes me very, very irritated. I am of the school of thought that love means having to say you're sorry a lot. In fact, being an honorable and courageous person means saying you're sorry--a lot!

It is inevitable that we make mistakes in our partnerships and in our relationships with others. If we're tired or stressed or hurried, it can be easy to say something or treat someone in a way that we regret (lord knows this happens to me all the time!). Although we can work hard to proactively prevent those mistakes by being more aware of them, we also have to be diligent about fixing those mistakes once we've made them. Not only do we need to say we're sorry, but we also need to fully explain what we're sorry about and why we regret it. We have to be sincere and heartfelt.

In fact, accepting responsibility for our mistakes is such an integral part of my relationship with Matt (we make a lot of mistakes!) that we actually wrote it into our vows. At the end, we said, "And if I stumble and fail to live up to my promises, I will look you in the eyes, hold your hands, and apologize with sincerity. I will be my best for you."

It definitely comes in handy!

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Postcard #6: Plan Your Day Your Way

This picture cracks me up. It comes from our wedding rehearsal. Matt and I asked our wedding party to join us for our first dance. We choreographed a dance to "Kiss" by Prince and then videotaped an instructional video to distribute to our wedding party in advance. On the day of our wedding, we spent about 30 minutes putting it all together. This particular picture comes from the free style portion of our dance.

It reminds me that we need to plan our "in between" times carefully. Our weddings are not just the big, formal parts; they are also the in between moments. Here's what our schedule looked like:

• Sleep in
• Spend two hours lounging on the flagstone patio with our friends, eating breakfast
• Rehearse our ceremony and first dance
• Eat lunch with family and close friends
• Spend a couple hours cooking food for our reception
• Get ready among friends
• Ceremony
• Take a limited number of family photographs
  
• Reception

It was exactly how we wanted to spend our day. That's how it should be! It can be easy to let the day get consumed with obligations. But ultimately, we are in control of how we spend our time. Do you want to spend hours being pampered among friends? Go for it. Do you want to go for a hike all alone with your partner-to-be? Go for it. It's up to us!

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Bridal Shower Alternatives

The youngest attendee Addie, who won the ScavengArt, and Mary, the Bride-to-be!

I get a lot of e-mails about how to escape from the confines of a traditional bridal shower. My answer is the same answer I give to questions about how to plan a good wedding: Think about what kind of parties you like to go to and plan accordingly!

That's why I was ecstatic when Mary shared her "Bridal Show Book Swap" and art scavenger hunt with me. Here's what she said about it:

Your blog has really helped me put things in perspective as I struggled in the beginning on how to make this day meaningful and creative on the nonexistent budget we have (I work in non-profit visual arts and Blake is a student!). I really loved the way you and Matt made the day about love and family and friends.

This was the same philosophy that was taken when my friends and I were planning the bridal shower! It was based around one of our favorite hobbies: reading! We had a lot of guests coming from out of town so we decided to roll all the traditional events into one weekend and make a mash-up of an engagement party, wedding shower, and bachelor/bachelorette parties. The result was a really fun and eventful weekend of celebration, that ran from Friday night drinks to Sunday afternoon BBQ at the Lake! The “Bridal Shower was the main event on Saturday.

The Bridal Shower Book Swap was a HUGE success! It was co-ed and everyone brought a book to exchange. The guests could leave with however books many they came with! The leftover books were donated to the local library for their resale event.

In addition to the book theme, the shower was held at a local art gallery that I am affiliated with through work, so one of the games we played was called “ScavengArt.” My friend Kathy, who works at the gallery, helped to make a scavenger hunt based on the pieces that were on display! This was great fun and everyone commented that it was nice to incorporate the venue into the party.

The second thing we did for fun was had all the guests fill in a “wedding Mad Libs,” which is one of my favorite things to do since I was in High School! These were so fun to read later in the evening while we drank wine and opened the gifts (we didn’t open them during the shower because it felt too isolating for our guests and we wanted them to be as important to the party as anything else).

Everyone pitched in and made food and drinks (we had the most amazing Lemonade/Rosemary Spritzers w/vodka …as well as non-alcoholic lemonade with blueberries and fresh lemon slices!) and the spread ended up having a sort-of 1950’s retro meets farmers market feel! My friend Katy picked up flowers that morning and gathered a bunch of mismatched bud vases and it looked beautiful!

We played Nina Simone in the back-ground and everyone mingled. I couldn’t have asked for more….

At the end of the weekend, I was exhausted but so happy that everything turned out! It makes you feel really blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.

Hope this inspires someone else!

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Contest Winner

And the winner of a free Lulu photo book is...

Molly Hei.

Please e-mail me so I can put you in touch with the right people over at Lulu!

To everyone else, thank you for entering! I always love seeing all your comments and links. If you want to order your own photo book, head over to Lulu and use the code 2kblog -- good for 25% off all photo books, expires 8/31/10, (max savings $100).

Happy Monday!

s.

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Dress Giveaway

Hooray! Kindred spirit, Jennie, is giving away her much-loved and full-of-joy wedding dress to one of you. I almost had the opportunity to meet Jennie while Matt and I were on our Annual Adventure, but we didn't make it to the most western part of Canada.

Here's what Jennie has to say about the dress:

I was the second bride to wear this dress. I bought it online from another bride who had a wonderful, happy day wearing it! It is white taffeta with a sweetheart neckline accentuated by a beautiful beaded lace feature and beaded lace straps. t fits anywhere between a size 6 to 12 because of the lace up back. The back panel can be easily removed if you don't want to use it. I am 5'4" and I wore flip flops with it, but it would work with a bit of a heel as well. I found the dress very light and comfortable to wear. I had a perfectly wonderful day in it and hope that another bride will too!

If you'd like the opportunity to score a free wedding dress (you just pay for shipping), please leave a comment explaining why you want it. Jennie will pick the winner.

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Holding Your Mail (while Honeymooning or Otherwise Vacationing)

This Public Service Announcement may totally be a statement of the obvious, but I wanted to make sure that absolutely everyone in the U.S. realizes that you can go online and request that the postal service hold your mail while you are on vacation. Then, when you're back from vacation, they will deliver it all in one nice bundle. It's such a snap. I seriously love the post office.

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Mini-Adventure Update

Matt and I were brainstorming where to go outside of Las Vegas, as we made pizza together the other night (incidentally, did you know that Whole Foods will sell you a glob of ready-to-go pizza dough for a couple bucks?). I said something along the lines of: "I'm basically looking for someplace with a pool that has comfortable lounge chairs. And I want to be able to go on half-day trips to do something like white-water rafting or swimming in a lake or creek or something. What do you want to be able to do?"

Matt explained that he was fine driving several hours to get to the place, but once we were there, he didn't want to spend a lot of time driving around. He wanted to be able to go for runs in the mountains. And he agreed that swimming would be nice.

Hmmm....

Then, thanks to your awesome recommendations, we realized that Zion National Park is a mere three hours from Las Vegas. Since the lodge inside of Zion apparently fills up 23 months in advance (thank you, Lonely Planet USA edition), I started searching for B&Bs in small, surrounding towns. Thanks to Trip Advisor, I stumbled upon The Perfect Place (no, it's not actually called that; I just capitalized it for excited emphasis).

It's called The Desert Thistle. And it's right near Zion National Park. And it has a pool. With comfy lounge chairs. And a king-sized bed. And satellite TV. And wireless internet. And a nearby river for swimming. And they have one room available (for $130/night) for the three nights we need it.

I am agog.

I can't wait to spend a delicious three days with my Partner-in-Awesomeness!

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Anniversary Traditions

Matt and I celebrated our anniversary this past weekend. Here's how our traditions work:

One of us writes a letter to encapsulate our year together, while the other person plans some sort of date. We alternate who does what each year.

This year, I was in charge of writing the letter (thanks for indulging me in my brainstorming process!), and Matt was in charge of planning the date.

On Sunday, he informed me that I needed to leave the house for a couple hours. I asked if I could instead sequester myself in our office/craft room, to which he responded in the affirmative.

When he gave me permission to emerge, I walked into a beautiful backyard picnic. He had covered a folding table with one of the tablecloths (er, vintage sheets) from our wedding, put up Christmas lights in the shape of a heart, and had set up flowers, music, drinks, and a menu for our three-course meal. Even the dog was wearing a tie. (Apparently, he made ties for the chickens to wear, too, but they weren't having it.)

We dined, chatted, played Scrabble, and flipped through our living, growing scrapbook, which included the letter I wrote to him this year.

I'm growing very fond of our little anniversary tradition. It's something to look forward to every year without being overwhelming. If you're looking for more anniversary inspiration, check out John and Sherry's ideas over at Young House Love.

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Contest: Enter to Win Photo Book

Hooray! Another contest I am so excited to announce!

Lulu is offering:

• a free hardcover photo book (of any size!) up to 20 pages (which is really 40 pages when you count the front and the back) plus free shipping to one lucky winner.

I love photo books. Matt and I made one of our wedding for each set of parents. My best friend used Lulu to make a memory wedding book for us. So awesome!

To enter:

1. Leave your first name and first three letters of your last name in the comments section.
2. Enter to win by Monday, August 2 at 11:59 EST (one entry per person, please--although you can get your partner to enter, too!).
   
3. Cross your fingers!

Happy Entering...

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