* Fiona, Chief Officer Merchant Navy & Karl, Construction and Groundworker * Photographer: Lillian & Leonard (APW Sponsors) * Soundtrack for reading: "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros *
One sentence sum up of the wedding: A homemade, family effort with many friends game for a giggle—homemade love.
*Dianne Callahan, Deputy Executive Director, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society a.k.a. Fundraiser & Chuck Callahan, Sr. Systems Analyst, US Defense Media Center a.k.a. Nerd*
Today's post is profoundly overwhelming in an Everyone Has To Read This way, and also in a Not At All Safe For Work You Will Be Bawling At Your Desk way. But for me, it's way more special than that. Dianne has been reading APW since the very beginning, and in my fourth month of blogging, I wrote about her $10,000 wedding in reverse, where she worked to raise $10,000 for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Light The Night Walk. But it's more than that. At the LA book tour stop, which was my true hometown stop (more on that tomorrow), I started by saying that I'd founded APW because nothing I saw in wedding media bore any resemblance to the backyard weddings that happened where I grew up. And Dianne lives just a few blocks away from the house where I spent the first twenty-two years of my life. So, I'm proud to bring you a wedding from my hometown and from a woman I deeply respect. Now, I'm sure you'll all join me with a love intervention for Dianne and Chuck, and you will send them your good wishes and/or prayers. I hope this makes all of us think about what our marriages really mean.
Last September, my amazing husband, Chuck, and I celebrated our third anniversary. Actually, we put off celebrating it until November, which is our tradition. We put off our anniversary celebration each year because we chose to combine our 2008 wedding with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Light The Night Walk, and since I’ve been working for LLS for almost three years now and am in charge of the Light The Night campaign, our anniversary falls in my busiest time. So Chuck helps me by serving as one of our lead volunteers for the event so we can raise lots of money for this precious mission, and we wait a couple of months to celebrate our precious anniversary. Except for this year. This year, instead of getting away for a sweet weekend together, we were getting the news that my aggressive cancer had returned and once again I would have to fight for my life.
Which brings me to “…in sickness and in health…” You need to know that Chuck knew what he was getting into when he said those words during our traditional wedding vows. You see, Chuck actually proposed to me in a hospital room the night we found out that I had an aggressive form of stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. We had only been dating three months. That night, I told him he should run, that he deserved to be with someone healthy, someone who wasn’t going to lose her hair and maybe her life. His response? “When God gives you a gift, you don’t give it back.” He told me he was not going to run and that he already knew that he wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, however long that might be. He said he didn’t ever want me to worry that he would leave my side through whatever we faced. He asked me to marry him that night, knowing that my cancer was incurable and would, undoubtedly, come back.
I suppose it is natural that the thing I remember most about our wedding is standing beneath the tree in our backyard in front of our family and closest friends as Chuck and I repeated those age-old vows. Promises to love and honor one another in good times and in bad, in richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. The promises my parents made to each other that carried them through almost sixty years of marriage before my dad’s death just six months before our wedding. Promises that even today seem to echo back to us from all of the couples who went before us into this sacrament called marriage.
There were many things about our wedding (the second for each of us) that were not traditional that I loved. I wore an aqua dress and a white flower in my hair (that had grown out to almost 3 inches!). We greeted and mingled with our guests before the ceremony. We walked together down the aisle as my sister sang “When You Wish Upon A Star” (the music for the recessional was from Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade). Our attendants were Chuck’s son and daughter—my dream of being a mom answered at last! Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Dianne & Chuck
Today's post isn't just any wedding graduate post. It's from APW Advertising Manager Emily's Dad (with photos by Emily, obviously). You already know a bit about Emily's family, since we ran her grandparents' (fourth picture down) 1951 wedding and her great-grandparents' wedding. And now, without further ado, we shuttle you off to Thanksgiving weekend with a blast of family-centric joy. Have a wonderful holiday, from the APW family to yours.
*Chris, Teacher & Marianne, Retired*
Our wedding was supposed to be a surprise. We billed it as a house cooling—she was moving in with me and renting out her house—and invited our friends over for a party. The hardest part of the planning process was deciding who to invite. Early on we decided we had to tell some of the guests—our own kids and a few others who had to come from out of town. Since we did the deed on a Thursday evening—the eleventh anniversary of our first date—it was likely that some would have had perfectly valid excuses not to come. We didn't tell people in town and one good friend in particular missed the party. Feelings were hurt. Other people weren't invited because they weren't immediate family or long-term friends. More feelings were hurt. If we had it to do over again we might have made the invitations more explicit and more inclusive.
We had both been married before; she with a big formal affair and I with a private court ceremony. This wedding split the difference, so to speak. The most important things to us were simplicity, informality and the absolute absence of stress. The event itself was entirely informal; we both were barefoot, our guests sat in camping chairs during the ceremony, and our dogs were maid of honor, best man, and "father of the bride." My best friend performed the ceremony using a one-time license (and was well-dressed for the occasion, yet was the only person who stepped in dog doo). Our grown daughters, both possessed of quirky sensibilities, were in charge of decorations and dessert, and Marianne's mother brought flowers from her garden. We barbecued tri-tips and everyone else brought something to share. A couple of impromptu toasts were made, and my younger daughter's boyfriend treated us to an impromptu fire spinning show. In every respect, save the invitations, everything went off perfectly and a good time was had by all.
The only surprises of the evening were positive. My friend Bruce, the officiant (a generally quiet and serious person), made a short speech with only a day to prepare, and came up with a hugely humorous homily; among other things, noting that we were barefoot (which he did not know beforehand) and saying that it should be called a weddin' rather than a wedding. After Marianne's uncle made a toast for her side of the family, my friend Alan volunteered to make one for my side, but he said it in Chinese and wouldn't tell us what it means. They couldn't have been funnier if they'd had weeks to think about it.
Thinking back on it, there is not a single bad memory. The food was excellent, everyone had a good time, everybody got to talk to everybody else, and we all ended up around the fire pit at the end of the night. There is nothing I would have changed.
Photos by: Emily Takes Photos
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I've started to get a whole new class of emails asking for advice. I call them the, "So-and-so offered to plan my wedding and all I have to do is show up, and I really don't want to plan a wedding, but somehow it seems wrong to take them up on it—is it WRONG?" emails. And my answer is always, "DEAR GOD. LET THEM PLAN YOUR WEDDING." Think about it. Just a generation or two ago, the bride's family always planned the wedding. It's only our current obsession with *personalization* that puts the burden squarely on the bride (and sometimes the groom), so what's wrong with letting your community throw a party to honor you? Which is just what Emily & Aaron did when their roommates offered to plan things. And oh boy, was that the right decision. And Emily wore a Betsey Johnson wedding dress, which is also always clearly the right decision.
My husband and I didn’t plan our wedding. From day one, we handed it almost entirely off to our loved ones, and that turned out to be the best decision we made.
When Aaron and I decided to get married, the last thing I wanted to do was plan a wedding. To make a long story short, we’d been together for six years and were completely committed, but we wanted to wait to get married until our gay friends could do so as well. Then we started looking into joining the Peace Corps. Immediately our passion for service came up against our dedication to equality: In order to apply to the Peace Corps together, we needed to be married for at least one year. When it came right down to it, we agreed that we don't want to look back on our lives sixty years from now and see "what ifs." We decided to go for it.
Easier said than done! Add my issues with marriage equality to the fact that I’m not one of those women who can discuss wedding colors with my friends as though we’re on the United Nations Security Council, and you can imagine how excited I was about planning a wedding.
Here's where the real heroes of our wedding story come in: Our roommates. They are sisters, two of our closest friends, and an absolute blast to share a house with. They also happen to have über type-A personalities and a serious love affair with stress. The original wedding plan, as we ran it by the roomies in June, was: "We're going to the courthouse in August, and then we'll have a barbeque at the house afterward. No big deal." This was met with two sets of eyes rolling and "Just leave it to us." Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Emily & Aaron
Way back when I started APW (it's funny that 2008 seems so long ago now), one of my goals was to prove, once and for all, that simple weddings were traditional. Or, in other words, to prove that all this nonsense about but-you-have-to-have-it-it's-tradition, was just that: nonsense. And then I wrote a whole book about that very same subject, which you all will get to read come January.
So I'm beside myself with glee to share Emily's, of Emily Takes Photos, Great-Grandmother Emily's wedding from 1924. First, let's all swoon over her grey wedding dress and her adorable hat and flowers. And then, let's chortle with delight over how simple their invitations were:
Indeed. Simple and traditional and proper. And yes, you caught that. At the bottom of the invitation it indicates that the reception will be, "At Home." Traditional indeed.
But the best part of all of this? The newspaper announcement, that starts with, "Simplicity will characterize the wedding this morning of Miss Emily Mon..." it continues, "A luncheon at the Mon home will follow the service at the church. This will be simple in keeping with the charming dignity of the wedding..."
And don't even get me started on, "The two young matrons of honor at today's ceremony were also recent brides. In their early girlhood, Miss Mon, Mrs. Dietze and Mrs. Nicolaides agreed to serve as bridesmaids or matrons of honor for each other and this morning the romantic contract is fulfilled in its entirety." I know. Anne of Green Gables and I will be over here with the smelling salts, trying to pull ourselves together.
Today's wedding is awesome, not just because it's a lesbian wedding that took place in a deeply red state (though I love that bit), but because of everything else. It features partners who don't see eye to eye on aesthetics and styles (you don't have to!) and DIY everything, from photography to food, and a dessert (but country club style) reception. Hurrah!
Indulgence was the word of our spectacular, DIY wedding day. Hayley and I aren’t much for themed events (or so I thought), yet our wedding was absolutely centered on indulgence, with a dash of hedonism and political rebellion. We’re a gay couple getting married in a completely crimson state, and we only set out to please ourselves. Ever wanted to see a feminist country club wedding? You should have been there.
Hayley and I come from vastly different places in the world. Geographically, she was born and raised in Louisville, KY, a city with severe bipolar disorder (Midwestern? Southern?), while I grew up in romantic, deeply Old South Georgia. Her fondest memories from childhood include riding her bike to the country club to swim the day away, while mine tend more toward riding my bike down the dirt road to the local pond to fish. She has political anemia: she knows, but she never gets too fired up about much of anything. I, on the other hand, have been known to scare lesser mortals with the vehemence of my social zeal. We may be best friends, but we’ll never be total birds of a feather.
So when the planning began we struggled to conceive of an event that said “Candis and Hayley totally love each other” in a way that was both exciting and authentic. We thought big wedding, small wedding, beach elopement, farm weekend, country club soiree, art gallery chic, etc, etc, ad nauseum. After months of ideas being rejected, we settled on one that had been heavily endorsed by Hayley and that didn’t make me want to vomit. Compromise is the name of the game after all. With Hayley’s family home as venue and garden cocktail party as the style, we were ready to get serious.
Like all couples (maybe more so with two brides) we went through the inevitable arguments over invites, flowers, cakes, dresses, favors, blah, blah, blah. Even the date wasn’t sacrosanct as we changed it twice to accommodate family members. Eventually all things were decided, plans set, dresses bought and gifts arriving in the mail. Wedding planning turned out to be both harder and easier than imagined. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Candis & Hayley
Hi, I'm Meg Keene and I live in San Francisco. I started this blog to talk about planning our 2009 wedding, but it grew to include a lot of grounded smart-alecky women talking intelligently about their weddings and marriages. My first book, A Practical Wedding, was released in January 2012.
*photograph by Emily Takes Photos
