It's All about the Bridegroom

I've  been thinking a lot about weddings lately--probably because in less than a month, our family will be experiencing one. It's interesting that when you're planning your own--as I was a little more than four years ago--there isn't a lot of time for deep reflection. But when you're not at the center of it--when you're watching from the sidelines--you start asking the questions that you probably should have been asking when it was your turn: What's actually happening here? What should be my priority as I spend thousands of dollars on one day of my life? Should I be spending thousands of dollars on one day of my life? What should we be communicating to the people we invite to celebrate this great occasion with us?

Instead, we get caught up in questions like these: What color palette should I choose? Can I afford the reception venue of my dreams? If I choose the reception venue of my dreams, what can I cut from the budget that will be less important to me? Should I use fresh flowers or artificial? Rent tuxes or purchase suits? Buffet style or a plated meal? If I invite this person, then will I have to invite that one lest he/she be offended? Unity candle or colored sand?

And in this Facebook age, when people are members of a social network of millions and we easily get lost because the next person has better vacations, a more exciting life, and more friends than we have, how far do we have to go to make our wedding stand out? What can we do that will make people sit up, take notice, and tell their coworkers on Monday, "I was at this wedding on Saturday, and do you know what they did? I've never seen that before." Planning a wedding has become a complicated thing.

Probably one of the most famous weddings ever is recorded in John 2. Clearly the people who lived at the time of Jesus (and earlier) made a big deal of weddings--probably more so than we do today. They lasted for days. It may be that they had a better understanding than we do of how important weddings were to God. One of the very first things that happens in the Bible is a wedding. And we know today that the last thing that happens in the Bible is a wedding. God is definitely interested in weddings.

And so in John 2, Jesus is on one of his early outings with his newly recruited disciples. Some think that perhaps the bride or groom was related to Mary, Jesus' mother, because when there's a problem--and it's a huge, embarrassing one--she seems to feel responsible to find a solution. The problem is that somehow the wine runs out. And that was disastrous. Mary, knowing something of her unique son's capabilities, asks him to do something about it, so reluctantly he does. He instructs the servants to fill six twenty- to thirty-gallon jars with water. Then, at Jesus' instruction, the servants draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. The master of the banquet is surprised. Usually the finest wine is served first, and then, after everyone has had too much to drink, they serve whatever is left. No one cares any more about the quality of the wine. But this bridegroom breaks with tradition and saves the best for last.

Of course it's the best wine because Jesus created it. And we could look at that and say, "See, Jesus knows the value of a good party! He wanted everyone to keep on having a good time. He wanted them to have excellent wine! We should have excellent wine at our wedding too. We should spend thousands on a reception hall and the best food, drink, and music. Jesus set the pattern at that wedding in Cana of Galilee."

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't have wonderful, memorable celebrations when we get married. We like to say that the wedding day is all about the bride, that it's a special day full of romance and joy that we'll never forget, a day when all eyes are on a couple who are just setting out on a great adventure. It's all about them. But if we really understand what is happening in Cana, we'll see that the point is this: weddings are all about Jesus. What Jesus was showing the people who were celebrating at Cana was that he--and only he--provides the fullness of joy that we need. He gives the best wine--he is the best wine--and he gives an abundance far beyond what we could ever ask for or imagine. The focus of any wedding should be him.

Our marriages are a picture of that great marriage that will one day take place--the one at the end of the Bible. They should point to that day, even as we celebrate the gift of marriage that God gives us here on the earth. It's a solemn thing when a man says, "I will love you like Christ loves his church and gave himself for it for the rest of my life," and a woman says, "I will submit to you as the church submits to Christ for the rest of my life on earth." There really isn't much place for silly fashions, silly behaviors, and silly breaks with tradition.

Keeping that in mind helps us keep weddings and wedding celebrations in perspective. When our first goal as a Christian couple is to show a picture of Jesus Christ and his love for his church, suddenly things fall into place. Brides aren't as eager to do something "unique" like pair formal wear with tennis shoes, wear cowboy boots, have a dance party up the aisle, or find the most elaborate reception venue possible. Because even though it's our special day, we want the focus to be on that greatest of Bridegrooms, the one who provides joy and celebration that no amount of money can purchase. And we want people to come to our wedding and say, "Mostly, I saw Jesus there. But the bride was beautiful, and the food at the wedding was delicious."

Top Ten of 2008

It's that time of year: the top ten lists. Top ten books. Top ten movies. Top ten sports moments. Top ten rehab attempts by sleazy celebrity tarts. Top ten Obama gaffes. So what is left for someone who wants to create her own top ten list? While I've probably read more than ten books this year (it's my job), everybody does top ten books. I don't think I've seen ten new movies, and . . . sports moments . . . Was this an Olympics year? I'm definitely tired of tarts and politics. So that leaves me with only one natural choice: top ten personal surreal moments of 2008.

In a year filled with a middle-aged bride and groom, a bachelor (now married) merging with two teenagers, and a new house, there were more surreal moments than any one person deserves to dream about. So because I don't want you, dear readers, to be overwhelmed, I will give you five to start, and five more on Monday (hopefully). Here they are, as surreal moments should appear, in no particular order:

1. So many of my top ten surreal moments were, not surprisingly, wedding related. And so something that normally brings great joy--a shopping-type activity--ended up being not so pleasant. I had finally managed to convince my dear fiance to come with me to the mall to begin a gift registry. For some reason, I believed that Kohl's would be a good choice. It seems I always find things I want at Kohl's; in fact, I rarely walk out of that store without buying something. So we went to the counter and handed over my driver's license in exchange for a scanner. After a brief explanation about how to use the scanner, we headed over to housewares to decide just what we needed to make our new home complete. This was not such an easy task since we both had pretty much everything we needed to manage a household. We would look at an item like steak knives, discuss whether one of us had a sufficient set, and, if not, check them all out to decide which one was best, and then scan. (H is at the opposite end of the spectrum from impulse shopping, which is probably why he doesn't often go to malls. It's just too much work, and he needs something more to make a decision than just that something is a great color.)This was a rather lengthy process, and probably after an hour and a half of this, we headed back to the counter with a scanner filled with our hopes and dreams for kitchen utensils and small electronic devices. I handed the scanner off to a college-age young man, who carried it over to the kiosk and appeared to be doing what you have to do to transfer information from a scanner to a kiosk. However, the expression on his face lacked confidence as he looked at us and said, "You're not going to be happy about this." "Did you lose her license?" my ever-practical H asked. But it was far worse than that. A lost license would only require waiting several hours at the DMV on a Saturday morning and a replacement fee. He had somehow lost the gift registry list that had taken us so long to compile. He offered us nothing more than my license back and a mumbled sorry. The next day I called the store manager, hoping that there would be some sort of compensation for the incompetence of counter guy. After talking with a young lady from Kohl's IT who promised that this would not happen again if we came back and gave another piece of our life to the process, the manager offered us a whopping 15 percent off coupon. As a Most Valued Customer, I get better deals than that in the mail every week. Surreal. We registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where we should have just gone in the first place.

2. We opened a gift registry because several generous friends and family members hosted showers for us. The first was from the women of the Gysen family: Henry's sister, nieces, mom, an aunt, several cousins, and my mom. It was my first time meeting most of them, and it was such a nice morning. My sister-in-law, Diane, had done a fantastic job. I noticed that as I began opening one gift in particular, one of the cousins made sure her camera was aimed and ready to fire. I opened the box to discover a very teeny crocheted lingerie set--perhaps only a little too large for a Barbie. It was hilarious, but a little surreal, to see my future mother-in-law carefully looking over my gift. Better yet was when H's cousin asked, "Want me to make you one, Aunt Sylvia?"

3. Katie passing her driver's test and getting her license. Enough said.

4. Jonathan's eighth-grade class trip in early June was to Cedar Point, and H and I (not married yet) decided to go along. I asked him if he liked amusement parks, and he said not particularly--something we shared in common. I'm not much of a ride person; a surreal Tilt-a-Whirl moment in high school where I lost my lunch on my friend sitting next to me kind of made me not so excited about rides. But--for Jonathan--we sucked it up and went. And what did I learn about my soon-to-be-husband that day? He is a roller coaster fiend. He'll ride any roller coaster any number of times and like it. And for those of you out there who are scratching your heads saying, "She's married to Henry Gysen, right?" all I can say is . . . it's surreal. And I do have Raptor video footage of H and J to prove all of this.

5. And now an explanation of the pictures, another surreal moment from this summer. In August, we decided a little family vacation to Mackinac Island was in order. When you think of Mackinac, you think of romance, lilacs, boats, quaint bed and breakfasts, horses and carriages, the majestic fort overlooking the lake, beautiful trails through the woods and onto the beach. Yet for our family, Mackinac has come to mean something even more: bats. As we started to enter the shop with the hand buzzers, trick dice, and funny sunglasses, we noticed this little black creature, who was not quite sure what to do. Maybe he'd had too much caffeine or couldn't find a spot beside one of his bat friends (also pictured, doing what bats should do in the daylight), or had too much to drink, but the lady working in the shop decided to rescue him and was carrying him around (ewwww!). And then the phone rang. That is a bat in her left hand. I do think in all my years I've never seen a person holding a bat in one hand and a phone in the other. This was worthy of a Poe short story. And interesting that her shirt says, "magic?" Photos by the talented Katie Selden.

Come back next week for part two of the top ten surreal moments of 2008.

The Wedding Picture Display

One of the goals I hoped to achieve in wedding planning was to retain certain traditional elements of the wedding ceremony while throwing in a few twists. I wanted people to walk away saying, "That was different, but I liked it."

The wedding picture display was not an entirely original idea, but it was one of those things I hoped would set our reception decor apart a little. I had heard of a wedding where the bride asked guests to send in a picture from their own wedding. She turned the pictures into posters and hung them up in the reception hall. I hadn't actually thought about doing something like that until I met with Sharon, who manages the Postma Center, where we had our reception. She encouraged me to have something in the foyer that would let everyone know as they arrived that they were in the right place: the Selden/Gysen wedding.

I love pictures as a decoration, so it occurred to me that I could ask some close friends and family members to lend me pictures of their weddings, nicely framed, to put on display on a table in the foyer. The result was more beautiful than I could imagine, thanks to the creative skill of my extraordinary reception coordinator, my sister-in-law, Zella, whose lovely wedding picture with my brother as groom was on the table.

Among the display photos was this one of Henry's parents. I also had a picture of another Dutch couple, the Postmas, from the Netherlands in the 1940s, I'm guessing. Of course my parents' and grandparents' pictures were there, along with good friends' pictures from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties.

And it couldn't have been easier to coordinate. I asked participants to bring their pictures to me at work or church, framed (the more variety, the better), and then told them to take them with them as they left the reception. An easy idea that worked out well, and hopefully gave my guests something to enjoy as they wandered through the foyer. Thanks again to everyone who helped me out by letting us decorate our wedding with pictures of theirs. It turned out to be a great tribute to love, weddings, and brides and grooms!

That Dress

This picture demonstrates the creative and photographic genius of my friend, Judy G. She always thinks of photographing the things that I don't--which is why she is good at photography and I'm not.

At any rate, she had the presence of mind to photograph the ruching on my dress, a word I don't think I had even heard before I started shopping for wedding dresses. It's a great feature--clearly flattering to the waistline--and yet one more reason I fell in love with that dress--one of my favorite things about this whole wedding experience.

The dress, like everything else, it seems, was not without its own story. I won't review the details of my finding and falling in love with my dress (I already blogged about that, and I'm not sure a piece of clothing, even an expensive one, deserves this many blog posts), as that was the subject of an earlier posting. And yet the story of the dress, and its accompanying bolero jacket, has suspense, adventure, heartache, and ultimately triumph.

The dress came into the store in the last few days of June, and I immediately made an appointment with the store-assigned seamstress, Dottie, to get things going on a major overhaul. Dottie, who is 82, is an amazing woman with a great sense of humor, who is about my height. Needless to say, we bonded. While certain brides, apparently, express some reticence about having an 82-year-old altering the dress of their lives, I never worried for a moment. Dottie exuded confidence and knew exactly what she would do to make things work. And at the last minute, she made a little bolero jacket for me to wear with the dress.

On the Saturday before the wedding, I went to Dottie's house to try my dress/jacket on one last time. The dress was coming along well, but the jacket, which Dottie had nearly finished, was not the right shade. The dress was not a pure white, but it wasn't ivory either, and the white cloth she had used did not work. It would require another trip to the sewing shop to find material to match, but Dottie assured me that all would be fine.

On Wednesday, the day I was supposed to pick the ensemble up after work, Dottie called to say that she had been sick and so she wasn't quite done yet--but she would finish. And then I said that I could pick it up Thursday afternoon before the rehearsal. When I showed up at the bridal shop, she told me that she still wasn't feeling well and hadn't finished my jacket yet, but I would have it by the next day, which was a good thing since the next day was my wedding.

Strangely enough, I loved Dottie so much and trusted her so that I knew it would all work out. Judy, the store manager, started offering to deliver everything to my house the next day, but as things worked out, I picked it up the day of the wedding as I was on my way to get my makeup done--about two hours before picture-taking began. By this time, my jacket was ready to go, but Dottie had been hospitalized. My jacket was the last thing she had worked on.

I've heard through the grapevine that Dottie is on the mend--which is great news. There are many more brides out there who will probably benefit from her expertise as soon as she's up to it. I'm thankful that she was a part of my wedding experience--kind of like a fairy godmother in my Disney-esque wedding.

At Seventeen

This picture accomplishes two purposes: clearly, it is a picture of the lovely Katie outside the church just after the wedding ceremony. But it also serves to celebrate Katie at 17--a little late. (Her birthday was July 26.)

I'm not sure how many 17-year-olds have the opportunity to serve as their mother's bridesmaids, but Katie did very well and looked beautiful in her bridesmaid dress. Katie tells everyone that turning 17 means that she can now legally go to R-rated movies. Sometimes, however, the law doesn't quite line up with family rules, and then the law of parents prevails. Happy birthday, anyway, Katie!

And to celebrate this special girl, I will give you, as closely as I can remember, a bit of dialogue from the room with the bride and attendants just before that walk down the aisle.

Julie (matron of honor) to Annette: You better go to the bathroom before you go out there. It's going to be a long time.

Annette: I'll just have to deal with it. I can't go to the bathroom in this dress.

Julie: It's going to be a long time.

Annette: Who's going to hold my dress for me? Katie?

Katie: I think Julie should do it. She's the matron of honor.

Annette: I think you should do it. You're flesh and blood.

Moments later in the ladies' room

Annette: Just think of all those times I changed your diapers. This is payback. Don't look!

Katie: Don't worry . . .

photo by the talented Judy G.

The Big Day

It came and went in a blur of excitement, laughter, tears, and romance, but I have to say (and I may be a little prejudiced here) that it was the most beautiful wedding I have ever attended. And the reception was simply amazing! My good friend Judy offered her services photographing guests at the reception, and she got a few of Henry and me too. This is one of her favorites of the traditional cake cutting. We actually did this twice--once quietly before our professional photographer's time was up and then later on for our guests. We were fairly boring about it; neither Henry and I are fans of the smashing-the-cake-in-the face routine.

There were so many wonderful moments that I'll probably be blogging about my wedding of the century for weeks to come, so if you have a sensitive gag reflex, you may want to avoid the blog for awhile.

This photo actually occurred closer to the end of the day. The official start of the event was about 4:00 when all of the "girls" were getting ready at our house. We had already done the manicures and pedicures earlier that morning, had a lunch of Chinese together, and then Julie and I had our makeup done at Clinique while Elizabeth got her hair done, and Katie supervised. It was pretty much a perfect princess day--the kind that doesn't happen often.

Things were going quite well. The photographer, Leda, arrived at 4:00 and started taking some pictures of the preparations. She posted some of her favorites on her
blog. I'm so excited to see the rest of her work. So far, these are beautiful pictures!

And tune in next week for more of our wedding adventures!

Postage Madness

Who would have thought that a little postage stamp could produce such huge headaches? In the grand scheme of wedding planning, I considered postage stamps to be a fairly small consideration--not worth a great deal of thought. I was pleased with myself a few months ago when I discovered the Website zazzle.com, where it is actually possible to purchase customized postage stamps. For not much extra money, I purchased some lovely "G" monogram stamps to use on thank-you notes, wedding invitations, and RSVP cards. And I was especially pleased because they were forever stamps, purchased at .41 cents each but useable even after postage rates went up.

However, I am quickly learning that in wedding planning, you really never can get too far ahead. This weekend as my mom, sister-in-law, niece, Katie, and I were collating and stuffing envelopes with invitations, I noticed a little suggestion from the makers of the invitations that I have the invitations weighed before mailing them out. I thought for a moment how embarrassing it would be if people had to pay extra postage to receive wedding invitations and quickly decided that it would be worth a quick trip to the mailroom at work to find out if my G stamps would do the job.

As Teresa, our expert mailroom person, took the invitation in hand, she knowingly commented that the invitation was probably going to require more postage than a typical letter, and weighing it only confirmed that reality. I told myself that we could still use the G stamps--on thank-you notes, on anything, really, that needed to be mailed. They were not a loss. I'd just head out to the post office at lunchtime and get what I needed, and the invitations would be in the mail by this Friday--right on schedule.

Who can fathom the reasoning of the US Postal Service, however? The postal clerk weighed the invitation, told me that it would cost .59 cents to mail each one, and I observed a poster with a wedding stamp on it. I said, "Can I get 70 of those?"

"No," she responded, "those won't be available till mid-June." Hasn't the US Postal Service heard of June weddings, which would require wedding postage stamps to be available by late April to early May? At this point, I decided to exhibit my maturity by finding out my other options. There was probably a pretty flower stamp or something attractive that I could use to mail my lovely invitations.

I discovered that the US Postal Service is charging us all .59 cents for mailings of two ounces, but does not yet have stamps available. One option was to purchase the above shown 2007 wedding stamp and add a .01 cent stamp with a Tiffany lamp on it. I would have to go downtown to the post office there, however, to purchase the dated wedding stamps. Another possibility was to use the .42 cent G stamps and add a .17 cent blue stamp with a ram's head on it. Then there's always metered postage, which the clerk told me I wouldn't want to do. I could have purchased stamps that cost .63 cents that were some kind of an orange shade, and there was another stamp in the .60-.70 cent range (the options began to blur after a while) of a river cutting through a hilly area, but for the extra cost, neither of them said anything of elegance, love, marriage, or romance.

Of course, the Friday deadline loomed ever before me, but I turned again to zazzle.com. In hindsight, I had decided that even though the G stamps were classy looking, they probably weren't the best choice, since I had G monogram seals for the envelopes, and the fonts really didn't match. So this gave me the opportunity to select an image that would be even more attractive and eye catching than the G.

This whole experience leads me to several questions, to which I do not have answers. Please, please leave your theories in the comments, because I really want to know.

~Why, in the grand scheme of things, do I care whether there's a blue ram's head stamp accompanying a G stamp on my invitation envelopes?

~How was I ever able to convince a man with Henry's maturity level to drop what he was doing to surf zazzle.com to find a suitable replacement for the G stamp?

~Has anyone ever really noticed the postage that came on a wedding invitation? Did it ever affect anyone's decisions on whether to attend?

~Will this be the biggest crisis Henry and I will ever face together?

~Who is the genius behind the US Postal Service who increases the rates yet makes it impossible for customers to buy postage?

~Why do there have to be so many pieces that go into the wedding invitation envelopes, making them too heavy to require regular postage, and is the CIA somehow involved in this?

~Have you ever considered fonts on a postage stamp before reading this blog posting?

Anyway--I paid extra postage to zazzle.com so that I can receive new postage in a couple of days to replace the inadequate postage I originally purchased because I was unable to purchase adequate postage from the post office. Hopefully this is the only glitch in the wedding planning, and things will all resolve so easily, at so little cost. And the invitations will go out on time. And from here on, let us all pay attention to the stamps that come on wedding invitations; some bride (and groom, possibly) has thought longer and harder than anyone ever should about it!

Finding the One

What is it about wedding dresses that completely levels the playing field for all of us women--no matter what age, what style, what size, what social status? Even if we don't pay a second of attention to clothing otherwise--we all sit up and take notice when the subject of wedding dresses comes up.

And so I was thrust into the quest for the dress--the one that would feel just right, the one that I would immediately know when I put it on to be THE ONE. As surely as Henry is THE ONE to marry, this dress would be THE ONE to wear when I marry him. And as recently as two weeks ago, I would have laughed you out of the room if you said this to me. And yet, experience, which really isn't always a reliable teacher, has taught me differently.

I started looking in earnest about two weeks ago for . . . I wasn't exactly sure what. I was more sure of what I didn't want than what I did: no strapless dress; nothing that might look like I was a woman who wasn't exactly 25 trying to look 25; nothing that wasn't ivory; and no trains or any of the other fru-fru stuff that makes 16-year-old girls starry eyed when they flip through the pages of Bride magazine.

So two weekends ago, I headed out with my all-girl dress posse, Katie and my niece, Elizabeth. We hit a small bridal shop, where I tried on quite a few dresses and learned very quickly that I was going to have to be more open minded about this thing. I did put on one that brought oooo's and ah's from the store owner and Katie, and I was kind of impressed myself. And yet I wasn't prepared to commit so quickly in the process. Our next stop was at a clothing store with a wide selection of formal wear--no traditional wedding dresses. Again, I was very surprised--and torn--when I tried on a dress that on the hangar I was sure was ridiculous. And now there seemed to be two good options. Oh what would I do?

But by Monday, the feelings were gone, just like a bad junior high crush. And my attempts to satisfy this longing in my heart with a quick lunchtime visit to a bridal shop near my office brought only frustration and confusion--and fear as I tried on a dress that was a bit too small and wondered how I would get out of it. From that, I learned that wedding dress shopping was at least a two-woman job.

So I had decided that I was going to start fresh on Saturday with a new addition to the posse--the one person who will always tell me the fashion truth--my mom. We headed out to West Michigan Bridal Gallery, and I nearly turned around and left when we couldn't get into the parking lot for all of the cars. On entering the store, I was handed a card to fill out and asked what I was looking for. I was handed a set of blue shower curtain rings and sent down the aisle of informal wedding dresses and told to put one of the rings on the hangars of the dresses I wanted to try. I would be told when a dressing room was available. Not very romantic, lots of rules, but definitely organized.

While we waited for a dressing room, Katie, who doesn't completely understand that the wedding isn't all about her dress, found about twenty bridesmaid dresses to try on. After what seemed like a very long time, my mom, Katie, and I entered the dressing room and started trying things on. I found a couple that were interesting, but nothing that gave me "that feeling." My poor mom was busy trying to give an opinion on the dresses Katie and I were trying on and re-hanging up our discards. Finally I put one on; Katie was looking at herself, and my mom was trying to make order out of madness. I said, "You guys--look." It was THE ONE, and we all knew it, deep down in our souls. None of us had any idea how to fasten up the back, but I marched out, clutching it to me, to check it out in the big mirror. In the meantime, the woman working there was busily trying to find me the appropriate undergarments, lacing up the back, and straightening out the train. None of it mattered. Not even the price.

And so I left the store, having purchased a dress. I had a quick thought: How will I feel on Monday? Was this just another flirtatious dress encounter? But on Monday, I was pulling up the Website and sending an e-mail with the link to all of my work girlfriends for their approval. And like the true girls they all are, they heartily approved. Who is going to tell their girlfriend they hate her wedding dress?

I was watching a TV show where a mother of the bride was sharing her memories of the weeks leading up to her wedding at a bachelorette party. She said that for a couple of weeks, before the wedding, she would put her dress on every night after her mother had gone to bed and look at herself in the mirror. I don't have my dress yet, so I can't put it on, but I've been visiting it on-line. The feelings are still there, and they're strong. I really think this is the one that will last. (And I'm pretty sure Henry is a keeper, too.)

Survey Monkey

Today I discovered this great new e-toy--Survey Monkey. It's so much fun creating your own survey, and it's all for free! I don't think the developers of Survey Monkey intended that people should goof around and create silly surveys just for the fun of it, but if you put a service on the Net and offer it for free, what do you expect will happen?

Anyway, this is the second survey I've written today, and so please, please take it. I guarantee that it will at least make you smile, and you might even chuckle a little too. So only 150 of you can respond, or I will have to pay. I'll be sure to post the results, and if you offer up a particularly creative response to one of my questions, I promise to publish it right here on my blog.

The topic? Something I've found that nearly everyone has an opinion about: weddings. There are only ten questions, and you won't have to think very hard. And you may influence some of the decisions Henry and I make about our wedding. Probably not--but maybe. Thanks so much for participating. Just click on the link below.

Click Here to take survey

Wedding Update

With 164 days to go, THE WEDDING looms ever nearer, and with every day it seems we fall farther behind in the decisions that must be made, the deposits that must be paid, and the services that must be reserved. And yet--there has been some progress. We have decided the following:

1. The date--July 11.

2. The place--Trinity United Reformed Church (Henry's church).

3. The ministers--each of our beloved pastors has agreed to have a part in the ceremony.

4. Each of us has chosen our best man and attendant of honor--and yes, "attendant" is an intentional choice on my part, and it has nothing to do with political correctness. I just think the word "matron" sounds old and fat (neither of which describes my attendant of honor).

5. That we aren't going to just run off somewhere like Vegas (admittedly my idea--Henry finds this to be a less-than-Reformed approach).

6. The color theme--I let Katie choose, and so it's pink.

7.Invitations have been selected as well as the sentiment. Now I just have to order them.

8. A photographer that I'm really excited about. Her Web site is here.

9. And on the negative side: There will be no cake smashing in the face at the reception; no pictures taken after the ceremony just before the reception (as many as possible before the service); and no bird seed/rice/strange things being thrown at the bride and groom as they leave the church. No unity candle or New Agey sand thing. No receiving line at the end. These little bride and groom bears will be nowhere at the actual wedding. And even if my pastor forgets to say "You may kiss the bride" at the end as he has done at one other wedding I've attended, we shall kiss anyway.

We only have about a thousand major wedding- and marriage-related decisions to make before now and July. We'll be fine.