Posts Tagged ‘At Home Weddings’

Jun 2012

*Maureen, Archivist & Scott, Digital Collections Manager*

This week we wanted to talk about Curveballs, both in weddings and in married life. And yes, that means there is going to be some difficult but really important posts to read this week. So I thought we’d start it all off with a post that’s just important. Important, and also really really fun (in a fist pumping way YES way) and smart in an “I’m not getting married right now but I wrote notes on a post-it” kind of way. Maureen’s wedding graduate post is about what happens when deciding to get married in the first place is a curveball, and feminism. It’s a read-it-if-you’re-not-wedding-planning-too post.

Dear Future Maureen,

Do you remember how concerned you were at first about what feminist-group-house-living, queer, radical, 22-year-old Maureen would think of you (of us) when you decided to marry Scott? Do you remember how unsure you were of the very idea of marriage as an institution, how contractual it seemed, how antithetical to the idea of waking up everyday and choosing to be with your partner because you love him (or her), instead of being there because of some promise you made when you were a much younger and different person?

Now that I’m on the other side of this, I think that 22-year-old us would be very happy with the way we addressed these issues openly, ferociously, and with love and respect for those around us. And now that we’ve been through it—and you’ve been through many years of marriage—let’s take a moment to remember together what we’ve learned about marriage and promises through the process of having a wedding.

Promises are important. They can bring freedom rather than bondage: Scott and I have been living together for years. We went through a devastating fire together. And I didn’t really believe that I would feel differently after getting married—but strangely enough, I do.

Promises are a wonderful foundation on which to make plans, to think about the future, to go deeper with one another. There’s something about the process of committing to each other in front of God and our families (and about them committing to seeing us as a team and supporting us) that has given me a feeling of peace that I didn’t feel before.

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Maureen & Scott

Posted in: Gender & Feminism, Wedding Graduates | 16 Comments »

May 2012

Wedding Graduates: Hannah & David

*Hannah, Marketing and Publicity Intern & David, Law Student*

I’ve been waiting for this post for two years. No joke. Two whole years. Hannah has been reading APW since back in the very early days, and when she got married, the note she sent me about her experience so closely mirrored mine it was eery. Gorgeous pictures? Check. Day full of love? Check. Feeling of being emotionally raw and overwhelmed and Oh My God Is This Right Has Anyone Ever Felt This Way Before Am I Broken? Check, check check! So for me, this post is what no one ever told me about getting married. The thing is, the raw emotion is perfect, in it’s own way, but if it hits you, it’s nice to have a voice in the back of your head telling you, “Normal, this is normal.” So, as we explore the theme of Memory this week, coming off the US’s Memorial Day, let’s start with Hannah’s wedding, explored at two years distance.

I’ve been planning on writing this post since before I got married. I’ve been reading APW since before I met David and I assumed that after reading so many Wedding Graduates and having such reasonable non-WIC expectations. Remember my parents? I was expecting to have a nice party and go on with my life. I thought I’d be able to tell you how the Wedding Zen set in and I felt the love of my family around me and I basked in it and it was amazing.

Nothing anyone said prepared me for what it felt like to get married. I felt raw and shocked, my soul felt different and weird. I was scared. I went back to the B&B and cried myself to sleep because I felt wrenched. No one told me it was going to feel like that. I’ve seen a gazillion pictures of gorgeous glowing brides and no one told me that when your dad gave a speech and you cried it wasn’t a photo op, you were REALLY CRYING and a lot of people were looking at you crying and you were actually sad. I think it’s okay to feel raw and wretched. Marriage is a big deal. It is something to be taken seriously. I felt bad about feels scared and sad and raw and wrenched. I felt really guilty.

None of which is to say that I didn’t love our wedding. I did. It was a gorgeous wedding. When David proposed I was in my ninth month of being unemployed and within weeks my dad lost his job too. Out of economic necessity and my own long-lived devotion to make stuff I crafted and my sisters crafted, and my mother and my friends crafted.

I made the cake topper because I couldn’t afford one and because I made clothespin dolls with my mum as a child; I couldn’t afford a florist so my bridesmaids and friends and I put together made the most beautiful flowers ever; I poured candles for weeks; my maid of honor and my little sister did hours of calligraphy. We didn’t have any money but we had a lot of time and we built our wedding out of nothingness. I made flowered headbands for the flower girls and tote bags for the bridesmaids; David and I hung papel-picado and bistro lights and we swept the barn and my mother and cousin made fresh blueberry chutney and sandwiches on wedding day for us all.

I heard time and time again during wedding planning that the details don’t matter and for some couples maybe they don’t but my sister’s handwriting on my place card, my brother’s band playing, my nephew carrying the ring bowl my mother made, the bridesmaid assembled flowers everywhere, the tissue paper pom-poms hanging from the rafters, the flowered combs in my hair made by my friend who drank a box of Franzia and burnt the hell out of her fingers with a hot glue gun, these things mattered. I can’t even tell you how much they mattered. They felt like a gift and I felt wrapped in the sweetness and the love and the care that had gone into them.* It was a gorgeous wedding and I felt the love. I felt the magical love we are supposed to feel but I also felt like I had been hit by a bus. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Hannah & David

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 65 Comments »

May 2012

Wordless Wedding: Fiona & Karl

* 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.

Continue reading Wordless Wedding: Fiona & Karl

Posted in: Wedding Graduates, Wordless Weddings | 21 Comments »

Feb 2012

Wedding Graduates: Dianne & Chuck

*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

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Graduates, Wedding Graduates Return | 34 Comments »

Nov 2011

Wedding Graduates: Chris & Marianne

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

This post includes Sponsors, who are a key part of supporting APW. For more information, see our Directory page for Emily Takes Photos.

Posted in: Wedding Graduates, Wordless Weddings | 18 Comments »

Oct 2011

Wedding Graduates: Emily & Aaron

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

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 54 Comments »