* Erika, Actor & Tristan, Payroll Administrator * Photographer: LittleBat Photography (APW Sponsor) * Soundtrack for reading: "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons *
One sentence sum up of the wedding vibe: We had a wonderful party where our friends and family could be completely themselves in the most glamorous way.
So it turns out, when we asked you for moving posts last week, there was more this community had to say on the topic than we could possibly imagine. Which makes sense. At this point in most of our lives, we're in a state of transition, of moving forward. Possibly literally and certainly metaphysically, we're all in a state of moving. Which isn't to say this week is about packing boxes. It's not. It's about going the distance in a whole variety of ways. So today is in two parts. First, we have a Reclaiming Wife post from Lauren McGlynn (with her adorable Texas courthouse wedding photos) about uprooting her life and her business and moving to Scotland to be with her husband. Then, this afternoon we have Lauren's amazing Scottish wedding. So let's dive in. This one has huge lessons for all of us.
The year that Aidan & I got married was one of the craziest years of my life. A timeline of that year goes something like this:
Me: B&B cook and aspiring wedding photographer. Him: Philosophy PhD candidate.
January: Aidan and I are engaged!
February: I photograph my first wedding and I love it.
March: People start booking me to photograph their weddings in the fall. I am thrilled.
April: Aidan and I get married in Texas.
May: Aidan and I get married in Scotland.
June: Aidan stays in Scotland while I move to North Carolina to live on my friend’s blueberry farm in the hopes of picking up some weddings so that we can have some money. I can’t legally work in Scotland and he can’t legally work in the States during the summers.
July: Aidan and I talk on the computer a lot. I photograph more weddings in North Carolina.
August: After two months, neither of us can stand being apart anymore, so Aidan flies to the farm, decides that he can not stand the heat, nor the insects, nor the lack of air conditioning (he is a delicate Scottish flower after all), so we drive back to Texas where it is hotter but there is AC.
September-October: I photograph lots of weddings.
November: I am laid off from my job. My new husband, still living on mere grad student salary, tells me not to look for another job, that I better make this photography thing work. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I marvel over my good fortune at marrying such a person. I dump more money than I have ever spent on anything into advertising.
December: I start booking weddings like a crazy person.
January: Aidan is offered a Philosophy post doc… in Scotland.
Did you hear that? That record scratch? Is your neck tingling in sympathetic whiplash? Because what’s happening here is that both of our dreams are coming true—ON SEPARATE CONTINENTS.
When I met Aidan he was still a PhD student, and I had recently dropped out of grad school to work at a grocery store. I usually like to dress that up a little to make it sound more respectable by adding that it was a small neighborhood grocery store and that they sold lots of organic cereal and stuff. But whatever: When I met Aidan I was making seven dollars and hour working a mindless job at a lame grocery store. When Aidan finally came through my line, the first thing I did was add "Scottish accent" to the top of my list of sexy man things. After a few months of getting to know each other over brief one-to-three minute checkout line interactions we went out on a date.
A few months later we had a conversation where I asked him how serious he was feeling about our relationship. He made some very serious noises, but then he told me that the future of our relationship depended on me being willing to move wherever he got a job. That might be Canada, that might be the UK, that might be the middle of nowhere Alabama. At the time my career had progressed from grocery store clerk to chopping down trees with a chainsaw then dragging them through a chigger infested desert field as an Americorps volunteer, so I was like: Yeah sure, sounds good to me. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Big Risks for Big Rewards
You guys remember Zan? She's the one that hosted the APW book club meetup at her farm in upstate New York with cows. You knew you wanted to know more about this girl, but you couldn't figure out how you were going to do it, right? Well, today she's here with her wedding half grad post, as she calls it. She and her English Cowboy Husband (I know, right?) got married at City Hall in Manhattan last month, after last minute immigration issues. They have a full wedding to come, but this story, with lovely truthful photos from APW sponsor Katie Jane Photo, is a must read. How Zan thought through the process of getting married, and getting married suddenly, is so articulate, thoughtful, and helpful. Even to the already married among us.
Having done it myself I can tell you that getting married at City Hall in Manhattan is kind of like getting married at the DMV – but with better seating and a shorter wait. That observation probably doesn’t shock anyone, but the fact that I’m the one who made it is fairly surprising (to me, at least) considering I only got engaged a month ago and am in the midst of planning the wedding on my fiancé Stephen’s farm. Er wait, my husband Stephen’s farm. The story of how we became couple C809 at City Hall a little over a month ago isn’t the wrong story, but it isn’t the one I had anticipated telling either.
It began that summer when I – the New York City girl out for a two-week working vacation on a gigantic cattle ranch “out West”– accidentally got zapped by an electric fence while moving cattle. I shouted something unprintable that made Stephen –the handsome but silent head cowboy I had just met – fall in love with my sass. When I had to hoist myself onto the back of my gigantic horse that made him fall in love with my … uhm, it rhymes.
Long before he formally proposed I knew I wanted to marry him, to be on his team and build a life with him. He told me later, “I knew everything I needed to know in the first week.” When I got my Fellowship offer he followed me back to New York and found a farm within commuting distance of my PhD in the center of the big city. I was so ready to write the rest of this story with him that we went to premarital counseling before we were even engaged for Pete’s sake. As I imagined it, the story went something like this: we’d have a slightly-off-beat, low-key and very-practical wedding, which would nevertheless be beautiful, joyous, and full of love. Once married the fun would really begin as we traveled the world, herded cows, had babies and tried to install a new kitchen sink.
Then, on January 16th of this year we went for a lovely winter walk. At the edge of the farthest pasture he asked me to marry him. The first thing I thought wasn’t “Yes!” but “Ohmygod I’m going to puke,” which was startling. Even though I had been thinking so much about getting married, even though I had been intentionally working my way towards this moment – this moment that I wanted – I was unexpectedly scared. I was the kid who, after climbing to the top of the high dive, stands there protesting, “No, no, I’m not ready.” But I looked at him. I loved him. I said yes.
I had read the now-famous APW post on Weddings, Love, Marriage and Anxiety many times before, I had mulled the topic over enough times to know that my nerves were more about me than about us or our relationship. Rationally I knew this, but I was still scared. Continue reading Wedding (Half) Graduates: Zan & Stephen
Today's wedding is one of those beautiful international weddings that happened twice. Each with a particular sense of place, each with with a slightly different mix of loved ones. Eleanor & Armin had a civil marriage in Munich, where they live, followed by a homespun, DIY wedding in Sebastopol, California. I love these weddings because thy teach us (me, really) that there can never be an excess of love. Eleanor, today's graduate, is not only wise, she also happens to be an APW Wedding Elf, and one of the people that helps support this site (yayyy!) She offers beautiful, printable, crazy affordable wedding invitations, and apropos of Friday's discussion, printable affordable thank you notes (achem). I love her work, but after today I feel so invited into her life, now I want to move to Munich and hang out with her and drink Prosecco. So, for all of you couples with families bridging multiple countries or cultures, this one is for you:
After this year, I feel not only like a Wedding Graduate, but like I've just earned my post-doctoral wedding degree! My husband is German and I'm a California native. I've lived in Munich for over ten years and we met about four years ago at work. When we decided to get married, we went through the gamut of possibilities, should we elope? Should we get married quickly in the U.S. instead of Germany? Do we have one wedding or two?
In the end, we decided to have a celebration in each country. We didn't want to ask or assume our guests could just shell out a few grand to fly to Germany or California. We knew if we just had one wedding, it would by default end up being either more my wedding or my husbands. We also didn't want to have a destination wedding in a place that held no personal meaning for us. It took me awhile to accept this, because one of the things about being an expat is that, in some ways, you live a dual life. I have my American family and friends and my German friends and family and only rarely do the two lives intersect - which saddens me sometimes. It wasn't until we really started talking about the logistics of getting married, that I had to let go of my fantasy of having one big wedding where both of my lives finally merge in a magical, matrimonial blowout celebration.
It being Germany and all, there was a very logical way to break down the festivities. It is standard in Germany to have both a legal ceremony at the Standesamt (sort of like city hall) followed by some sort of religious ceremony afterward (sometimes months afterward). Since neither my husband nor I are religious it made sense to have the legal ceremony in Munich and then to have some sort of home-made wedding ceremony, several months later at my parent's place in Northern California.
I'm so glad we ended up breaking things up this way. A dual-national marriage in Germany involves a LOT of paper work; you need to provide a recent copy of your birth certificate, an 'Apostile' (basically an international notary) from the state of your birth, then get everything translated into German and finally, approved by a judge. This takes time and patience, but there is a pretty clear process to get it done (I don't know how people got married internationally - or did anything for that matter - before the internets!) I found all this paperwork and our regular meetings in the government-y but friendly office of our 'Standesbeamtin' (marriage office clerk) oddly reassuring and confirming.
The process provided the space and time for me to savor and appreciate the gravity of our decision to get married. No quick signing of a certificate after the ceremony for us - we were meeting with officials in government buildings, getting international documents approved, having the ins-and outs of marriage rights in Germany explained to us. It was all very serious and grown-up and was the antithesis of 'it's all about you and your special day!!!!' It felt right to me that the sober, serious part of getting married came first. Plus, there are tender little perks to getting married in Germany, one of which is the 'Stammbuch der Familie.' This is given to every couple getting married - it's a little book which contains a place to store your marriage certificate, a family tree template, each and every article of German marriage and family law(!) and a (not too subtle suggestion to get crackin') book of German baby names.
I also loved the Standesamt ceremony. There is pretty much a ceremony every 25 minutes, but they did a really good job of not making it feel that way. One wall of the Trausaal (room where they perform the legal ceremony) was a huge floor to ceiling window that looked out over the red tile rooftops of Munich. This was also fitting because both of our weddings were so much about place. I was not only marrying my husband, I was committing to a life residing in, as well as a lifelong connection, to a foreign country, as was he by marrying me.
After the small intimate ceremony we went to a great little cafe in our neighborhood, which is sort of a hipster take on a kitschy Bavarian grandmother's living room (and about the same size). We whiled away the afternoon chatting, visiting, hugging and happily drinking Prosecco with elderberry syrup, eating yummy panninis, soups, snacks and cake. It was leisurely, intimate and wonderful.
As my friend Elyse said afterward, "I mean, Dayenu, right?" knowing that this was the first of three wedding celebrations. In many ways she was totally right. That simple, happy day would have been enough. Because of our spread-out life, I'm deeply glad we had our multiple wedding parties, but I also saw that you really don't need much to have a wonderful, happy, lovely and meaningful wedding.
A day later we had a dinner for about 80 in the banquet room at a traditional Bavarian Wirtshaus (sort of like a tavern) around the corner from our apartment. It was a warm and happy dinner full of tender toasts and followed by fun and dancing and hangin' at the bar. There was a lot of love floating through the evening (which our photographer captured beautifully) We also loved that the events were all at our 'neighborhood places' and that we worked with small and/or family-owned local vendors to get everything done. One more way that getting married in Munich helped connect us even more to the city we love and call home.
As I'm sure many of the other wedding graduates have experienced, we were in a blissful haze in the days following. There was a physical feeling to it. I truly believe that some sort of physiological alchemy takes place when you are with everyone you love and they are sending loving vibes your way.
Eight months later. Sebastopol, California...
You guys! YOU GUYS! Today we have a real-true-honest-to-God elopement wedding. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! I get a lot of questions about elopements that go something like this, 'Should I? Shouldn't I? Should I? What if people hate me? Shouldn't I? Ahhhh!" And I think this post answers the question about what the decision to elope should sound like. It should sound a lot like, "F*ck it." (And don't worry, if you don't elope, you can still get to feel like this. I did, the week before our wedding). When I got the email from Nina this weekend about her recent elopement, I couldn't have been more excited. And this week felt like the perfect time to run it - here is Nina's super wise contribution to the ongoing discussion of weddings and tradition. Because, after all, what is more (and less) traditional than an elopement? Nothing. So here is Nina. I hope she makes someone braver today, and makes someone really embrace that f*ck-it feeling. Plus, I might be a little in love with their wedding. Just, you know, a little.
Richie and I planned our June 2011 wedding for six months. But instead of six months of progress, it seemed like on September 19th, we were exactly where we were when we first got engaged. Everything was going wrong. Our restaurant reception venue refused to give us a contract; the dress I ordered a size too big (and even lost weight while waiting for) came at least a size too small (irregular), and the manufacturer wouldn't take it back because the style had been discontinued; caterers were asking for a minimum of way more dollars than we were planning (and able) to spend on the entire affair. And on top of all that, we had the kind of family drama that you only see in movies.
So after a particularly difficult weekend, Richie suggested (again) that I consider eloping. Before, it was something that sounded nice and romantic, but it just wasn't for me. I needed my family and friends there to celebrate with us. But this time...I had finally had enough of things not working out, making me wonder if the universe was telling me not to get married. This time, I said I okay. We brainstormed where to go and decided on New York City because it's just a short drive away, plus NY has only a 24-hour waiting period and it's, um, New York City.
We found a married couple officiant/photographer team that specializes in elopements. I emailed them about their availability for Saturday, September 25th-- the upcoming weekend. I heard back almost immediately, and it was a go. In the couple days leading up to the weekend, we finalized our ceremony with the officiant (we sent her a reading and our own vows), booked a hotel, and I even found a dress at a bridal shop on my lunch break on Wednesday. It was in these final days of wedding planning that I realized what was important to me.
Sure, I would have loved for my family to be there, but I knew that they hated how unhappy I was during the planning process. I knew that they'd want me to feel relaxed, sane, and like myself on my wedding day. While we were planning, whenever I was stuck, I'd ask Richie: "What do you want at this wedding?" and he'd always say, "To marry you." And I felt the same way, but there were centerpieces to make! And menus to plan! And people to seat! The week before, though, I got it. Yes, I wanted to look beautiful and get great pictures-- those things would be nice, but mostly, I just wanted to marry him. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Nina & Richie’s NYC Elopement
Continue reading Wedding Graduate: Mayi & Jon And The San Francisco City Hall Wedding
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
