It's Only A Paper Rose

Finally got the link to the gallery for the professional photos, which are absolutely lovely. (If the website asks for a password, it's "adamson".) Look, share, enjoy, order prints of any you particularly like - Seanna O'Sullivan is a very talented photographer and cool person well worth supporting.

I would go into a long narrative description of the wedding, but frankly I'm not sure I'm best qualified to do so - I was somewhere between "wanting to turn tail and run" and "disappearing into a puff of nervous smoke" for pretty much the whole day, and my ability to observe fine detail suffered somewhat. I will, therefore, leave the descriptions to others, and just say that absolutely everything about it was perfect, and while I'd never do it again, I wouldn't have missed it or changed a single thing, aside from perhaps the nearly-bawling as I walked down the path. (I will certainly post photos when the photographer makes them available; for the Facebook-enabled, my friend Jeanne has put up a few on my wall that she and her husband took that are really quite nice, if squashed into FB-friendly resolution. We'll just consider them previews.)

It's still a bit of a shock, hearing people refer to Brian as my husband, even though internal-monologue-wise I've made the switch pretty easily.  I wonder if that's because we process self-perception and other peoples' perception of us differently?  Thinking of myself in the role of "wife" doesn't feel any different from "long-term girlfriend" or "fiancee", but hearing myself referred to as Brian's wife by others still makes me do a double-take.

But hey, if nothing else, a wedding's a great excuse to take a vacation.  And after ten hours of flying yesterday (and a twelve-hour sleep following), we're in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawai'i, which is so far living up to its paradisaical reputation. In one day, we have:

• Met a Master Gardiner for the State of Hawai'i who helped us put together an arrangement of flowers the size of small children for our table
• Eaten two meals at oceanside restaurants open to the air and the surf, complete with adorable small birds hopping around the tables looking for crumbs
• Seen plumerias, hibiscuses, pineapples, bananas, coconuts, and any number of other plants growing in the wild for the first time
• Waded into ocean water warmer than a swimming pool and clearer than anything you see in Alaska
• Laughed at tiny little crabs skittering across the rocks on the shore, and adorable geckos darting across anything and everything on the mainland
• Bought some truly excellent flip-flops from a dude who not only loves selling them, but knows more about flip-flops and their construction than anyone I've ever met
• Discovered that the Chrysler Sebring is one of the most horrendously underpowered and imprecise (as well as other, stronger imprecations) midsize cars on the market
• Shared a strawberry pina colada made with fresh, delicious coconut milk and fruit blended together with ice and garnished with a ripe pineapple slice and a flower, and sworn never to drink another one from a mix again
• Eaten something called an "ice cream banana" fresh from the tree, which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a mainland banana
• Stood on a jetty to watch the sunset, and wondered aloud why no one else was standing there...just before getting soaked by a HUGE wave

I have it on good authority that tomorrow I will be twenty-six years old.  We'll have to see what we can find around here to celebrate.  I'm just not sure we'll be able to find anything really special, though; I mean, really, what else is there to do, here?

...I guess I'm married now.

Holy crap.

...why aren't you checking into a five-star inn and getting amazing massages and going out to dinner with family and friends in preparation for getting married?* Huh? It's the weekend! Do something that makes you amazingly, awesomely happy!

Everybody should tell me what they're going to do this weekend to make themselves as happy as I am. Because it's awesome.


*Less elaborate but equally awesome activities are perfectly acceptable substitutes. Rain and Roses makes no claim or guarantee, implicit or explicit, as to awesomeness of activities. Any pouting or negative attitude voids warranty. Life is what you make of it. Batteries not included.

Not so long ago, this whole "getting married" idea was a comfortable six months or so away.

Invitations, cake decorations, hair appointments, honeymoon bookings, housesitting schedules, three rings and two sets of formal clothes later, there's only the ceremony itself left to arrange. It's all been happily low-stress, but even so, I'm suddenly being blindsided by the thought that we've got less than six weeks to go.

Not that I'm feeling like changing my mind or anything, just, damn...where'd the time go?

...we has a honeymoon!

When talking about honeymoon plans, Brian and I were pretty much deciding between London and Hawaii destination-wise. I do very much want to see London, but given the costs involved in getting there (not to mention the horrendous exchange rate) we decided to go to Hawaii instead.

So of course, the very day we're planning to buy tickets, Brian gets an email from British Airways saying "Seattle to London, Business Class, $1700 - buy one get one free!"

Life is so unfair.

In keeping with my interests in human nature, and given current events in my life, I've been forming observations of late as to wedding traditions and behavior. I've noticed for a long time that our culture, especially the women in our culture, seem to suffer from a peculiar sort of insanity when it comes to Getting Married; indeed, to borrow an overused phrase from the news media, it's the sort of perfect storm of factors to make everyone involved, no matter how level-headed, at least moderately irrational. To wit:

--Weddings (as portrayed in mainstream culture) are an indicator of social status; hence, the bigger and more complex a wedding one can afford and the more flawless it is, the more prestige one earns

--Weddings involve the transferal of large amounts of cash, never a good ingredient for emotional stability

--Weddings (again, as portrayed in mainstream culture) are the penultimate realization of the Prince Charming fairytale that so many women absorb so strongly throughout their childhood

--Weddings often involve the gathering of extended relatives or old friends who don't normally see each other and may have all sorts of long-buried grudges or conflicts

--Even without all of the trappings and plannings and decorations and other frippery, and you're left with a very simple and profound truth - getting married is A Big Thing, signifying a significant change in both self-perception and external perception

So given the way a wedding seems to sit at this intertwined nexus of all our deepest fears and insecurities about prestige, money, family, pride, and change; and understanding that not everyone has been blessed with the gift of external perspective to the extent Brian and I (thankfully) have, I can certainly understand why it is that some people just go stark raving bonkers when it comes to their weddings. And given the way the "wedding community" has a vested interest in encouraging people to spend (hooray for capitalism), it's hardly surprising that our culture would indulge, even actively promote such insanity - especially when the solution (surprise!) is to buy more things.

However, even taking all of that into account...

Looking at a dress re-sell site, and reading some of the descriptions ("This is one of THREE dresses I bought, I can be really indecisive, lol"/"$3500 Vera Wang dress, never used, I wore a dress my cousin loaned me instead"/"This one was too small for me, I ended up buying it again a size bigger"), I STILL cannot fathom what must have been going through some of these womens' minds. $3500 is more than we have budgeted for our entire honeymoon, fer chrissakes. We're hardly being skinflints with our wedding - I may not want anything huge and fancy, but I do want a pretty dress and a nice ceremony with close family and friends nearby and a romantic honeymoon - but, thousands of dollars spent on a dress you don't even wear once? Obviously it made sense to them at the time, but how bloody insane do you have to be to the point where spending a year's tuition on something you don't even use seems rational?

I'm honestly beginning to believe that I'm not even from the same planet as other women. For my senior prom, I wore a powder blue raw silk probable-ex-bridesmaid gown that I'd picked up at a garage sale for $10. I looked lovely and had a great time with my friends, and had the cheapest dress there (including the obligatory girl who had made hers from duct tape - she'd spent $14.50 on supplies). Now I'm planning to get married in a dress that's costing me $300 with alterations, which I'd considered to be something of an extravagance. Now I'm starting to wonder if, given the comparisons we're dealing with, the latter isn't the bigger fiscal achievement...

It's here!  It's here!  It's here!

(Actually, it was here a couple weeks ago, but prom was just last Saturday and the poor woman at the alterations shop was swamped.  But it's here now, and she says I can come try it on anytime, so yay!)

We sent out invitations today, too.  I'd say that it's all starting to feel real now, except it all felt real when I saw the deposit on my credit card. :)

Seems like it's been a while since I did one of those random bits-of-life updates that nobody else really cares about, most people don't read, but that often grow in personal value as time goes on. I guess that means it's time to do another one. So, without further ado:

• Ever since the yoga class I was taking ended, I've been slacking off on it. Still doing a routine a few times a week, but with significantly less frequency - and I'm starting to feel it when I wake up in the morning (stiff sore muscles and joints = boo). It seems like lack of variety might have something to do with it, so I ordered a couple new DVDs, each of which includes a slightly more varied selection of routines. I'm also thinking that if I can do at least one routine per day for the next month, I'll get myself one of the super-nice thick yoga mats they have at the Balance store (a local climbing/yoga supply place that's located in the Rock Dump).
• Things are looking fairly good financially. I finally got car repairs and taxes and things paid off, and (with some not-insignificant thanks to my mother) we've got a fair chunk of cash stashed for the wedding. We should be able to do the wedding and possibly the honeymoon without having to go into debt, which makes me very happy. This wouldn't be a middle-class financial story, however, without something ominous on the horizon; in this particular instance, Kitty needs her front bumper cover replaced, as one of the particularly nasty crop of potholes this year has de-attached the already-weakened right side. She seems to still be in drivable condition, but I should probably get it checked out nonetheless, and I'm sure that's not going to be cheap to replace. Sigh. (On the plus side, if/when I get it replaced, all the scuffs and dings and dents she's collected from previous years of plowing through snow drifts will be gone. Yay!)
• Had my one dental appointment today, which ended up requiring three shots of novocaine - it all wore off only about an hour ago. I also finally got down to the DMV to trade in my old-school laminated driver's license for a spiffy new solid plastic one. Hopefully now the bouncers at Seattle clubs won't think it's fake (I nearly had my old one confiscated, but I think at the last minute the guy decided not to bother 'cos I was from another state). I think the picture came out cute, too, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Although, given that the entire left half of my mouth felt stuffed with cotton, I'm surprised my smile isn't crooked.
• On that note - holy carp, has it really been five years since I got my license? I guess it has. Which means I've been keeping this blog (for a given value of "keeping") for about five and a half years. Dayum.
• Brian read me Neil Gaiman's latest novel, The Graveyard Book, which is absolutely one of the sweetest and most authentic stories I've ever read. I'd say it absolutely deserves to have won the Newbery medal, and I highly recommend it. I know I'm a big Gaiman fan so my recommendation might be viewed as biased, but I'd like to think that's not the case - there are several stories he's written that I admire but that haven't grabbed me in the way this has. And while The Graveyard Book isn't quite a spit-and-polish perfect story, it has that emotional resonance that makes it feel like it's about real characters who are important to you. Which, I think, is what separates a perfectly decent story from a truly great one. 
• Brian invented a drink recently and requested I put it up here, which I'm happy to do because it is simple and delicious.  So, here it is:

Stygian Sunrise

1 oz vodka
1 oz pomegranate liqueur
orange juice

Build over ice in a short glass.  Fill with orange juice; garnish with a maraschino cherry or an orange slice.