Posts Tagged ‘Not a Rom-Com’

Mar 2013

APW playlists are quickly becoming some of my favorite content on the site. There’s just something extra fun about getting to know you guys through your musical taste, plus now I have these great playlists that I’ll actually listen to the whole way through instead of just putting up with the random assortment of stuff that Pandora usually spits out at me when I’ve exhausted all of my allotted skips (though, have I mentioned lately how great my Pandora station based on “Baby One More Time” is? Because it is awesome).

Not to mention, the suggestions we’re getting for our crowdsourced playlists have been incredible. Finally, non-cheesy (or at least delightfully cheesy) suggestions for wedding music based on music that has been used at actual weddings! Novel! Speaking of which, our next crowdsourced playlist after we put together your parent dance suggestions will be processional music, so leave us your best suggestions in the comments and we’ll pull together some of our favorites for a future playlist. For now though, we hope to brighten your afternoon at work with the soundtrack to February’s wordlesses. Enjoy!

PS Meg is the traditionalist around here, and now that we’re doing ceremony music, she’d like to encourage you to include classical and/ or religious suggestions for music if you’ve got ‘em. She’s a fan of Trumpet Voluntary’s. Or so she says.

—Maddie

“Not a Rom-Com”

Not A Rom-Com from practicalmaddie on 8tracks Radio.

“Question” by Old 97′s from Ashlee and Brian’s Morning Wedding Hike in Zion National Park
“Offering” by The Avett Brothers from Jessica & Justin’s Vegan Wedding at the Hoover Y Park
“Postcards from Italy” by Beirut from Sarah and Casey’s Self-Officiated Philly Food Truck Wedding
“Everything” by Michael Bublé from Amy & Olivia’s Hill Country Peacock Wedding Continue reading Playlist: Not a Rom-Com

Posted in: Playlists | 99 Comments »

Mar 2013

Reclaiming Wife: A Scientific Love

The trouble I have with romantic comedies is that I can never really relate to the conflicts within them. Mostly because the conflicts are usually so far fetched they don’t reflect any kind of reality or are easily avoided. (Try not to lie to someone the first time you meet them. Don’t tell yourself that Gerard Butler is going to turn into a nice guy. Avoid breaking up your best friend’s wedding. Etc.) But the stuff that Novem Auyeung writes about today, about the fear of what it means to step into the role of wife, that is much closer to the kind of thing that used to keep me up at night. (Also, who knew that about Thai marriages? I certainly did not.)

—Maddie

Chris and I have been married for almost six months. While the fact that I am married to Chris makes me want to strut and dance like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in (500) Days of Summer after he got together with Zooey Deschanel’s character, I actually never expected to be a married person when I grew up.

I grew up with the idea that I can either choose to be a single, independent woman with a career, or I can be a married woman and spend my life putting my husband and eventually my children’s needs and desires before my own. This may have had to do with where I grew up—in Thailand and Hong Kong. It may have also been largely because of what happened to my mom. She thought she would be able to continue to work as a statistician, a job she loved, while she was a mom, but eventually she was pressured by relatives into quitting her job and becoming a full-time stay-at-home mom. Even though I realized that I was living in a different time and place, and I am extremely grateful to have had a stay-at-home mom, a part of me was still terrified of becoming a wife.

For a very long time, I just accepted the fact that I would grow up to be a single career woman because the alternative didn’t seem as good a fit for me. It wasn’t until I went to college in the U.S. that I fully appreciated the fact that 1) women had more than just two options in life and 2) marriages where both parties are equal partners exist and aren’t just made up like unicorns and the Pacific Northwest tree octopus. Logically, I understood those two things to be true, but for a long time, I had an irrational fear that marriage would force me to give up my career as a scientist, which had become a huge part of my identity. Modern American chick flicks—my guilty pleasure—were no help: there’s often some conflict between the leading lady’s career and her love life (e.g., The Devil Wears Prada, Kate and Leopold, You’ve Got Mail), and very few movies with men in the same situation (um, The Family Man?). Research on modern American marriages wasn’t very encouraging either: it all seemed to find that married working women spent a disproportionate number of hours on household chores and childcare compared to married working men.

So, for most of college and beyond, I experimented with serious dating and casual relationships. Maybe I fantasized once or twice about living together with a partner indefinitely in that artist-bohemian way, but that was as close as I got to fantasizing about marriage, until I met Chris. It was nerd love from the beginning: he’s a mathematician; I’m a scientist. (Cue: romantic music.) We talked about invasive plants and the Mean Value Theorem on our first date. Then I discovered that we were actually on the same page when it came to gender roles and the division of labor within and outside of a household too. (Swoon!) Then we dated for a couple more years while I wrapped my mind around the idea that getting married in the U.S. did not mean literally signing away your rights as it did in Thailand. (Okay, so this part usually doesn’t normally happen in a romantic comedy, but it’s still important: according to Thai law, my mom needs to have my dad co-sign every legal document, even things like a credit card application. My dad, however, doesn’t need my mom’s signature.) Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: A Scientific Love

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife | 44 Comments »

Feb 2013

Overcoming Infidelity

I keep coming back to Shiri’s comment on our open thread the other day. It is the idea that there are going to be sustained periods of your relationship where things just aren’t great. That’s the nature of promising forever while still being human. They key, of course, is to know how long is too long and how much “not great” you’re willing to live through. Infidelity is often lumped into a category outside this spectrum, usually under the umbrella of unforgivables. And there’s a lot of shame around choosing to stay after a partner has cheated. But I’m inclined to agree with Mari here that there has to be room for some grey area on this one. I know not everyone will agree with me, and that’s just fine. But I think, as Mari says, that we should be able to have these conversations, without the concern of stigma or judgment, in order to make the best decisions for our relationships.

—Maddie

Three months before our wedding I found out that my then-fiancé had cheated on me. It came as a total and utter shock. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. When I first received the news I started hyperventilating and began pacing from one room in our apartment to the next, as if the next room would hold the calmness and clarity that had suddenly been sucked out of my world. I had no idea that the man I believed was perfect for me, a man who seemed so dedicated to me, the man I was about to marry, had had an affair during the first few months of our relationship.

I thought I had known almost everything important there was to know about him. I was one hundred percent sure he would never do something like this to me—the thought never even crossed my mind. The revelation that he had been with someone else while we were together was earth shattering for me, and I felt utterly disillusioned and betrayed. I felt like a fool. And yet at the same time, I knew that I was still going to marry him. I knew that I would not leave him. It’s hard to explain, and I know it sounds ridiculous even as I write this, but we had been together for three wonderful years at that point, we were great together, and I felt a certainty that he would not jeopardize our relationship again.

My fiancé apologized at length. He explained that it had been a confusing time for him, how he didn’t mean to hurt me and how deeply he regretted his past actions. He told me he was head over heels in love with me and had never in his life been more excited about anything as he was for our wedding day.

It wasn’t easy, of course. It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of talking, and a lot of tears to get through this, and it is probably something that I will continue to struggle with for a long time. I continue to deal with insecurity and, at times, fears that it could happen again. He works hard to remind me that I am everything to him and that it will never happen again. We have slowly been picking up the pieces and rebuilding the trust that is an integral part of any successful relationship. We know that without it, we won’t be able to function. Continue reading Overcoming Infidelity

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 112 Comments »

Feb 2013

Reclaiming Wife: A Year Of Dates

“Rekindling the romance,” as an idea (and phrase), has always left me feeling a little queasy. The concept just seems so contrived. I mean, hey, rekindling the romance is something we should be doing every day, right? Well, from experience, easier said than done. And while I still, on some level, think that it would be very nice if we could just retire the phrase altogether, I don’t think the idea has to go with it. There is certainly an argument to be made for making an honest, concerted effort to put more thought and energy into cultivating our relationships, whether the effort be contrived or spontaneous. Because at the end of the day contrived is a whole hell of a lot better than nothing. So here is our own Editorial Assistant Emily, with a nod to Pinterest, and her first attempt at a year of dates.

—Maddie

When Ian and I started dating, I was so nervous I couldn’t eat around him. I still have a very clear memory of picking apart a sweet onion chicken sandwich with a fork—a fork—while sitting across from him at Subway. (Tiny college towns have limited dining options.) Later in our budding relationship he took me to Chili’s, half an hour away from our dorms, and sighed while I looked over the menu. “It’s not like you’re going to eat whatever you order anyway.”

Cut to last week, two and a half years into our marriage, me sitting at the coffee table inhaling a meatball sub as if I’d recently been released from a labor camp. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ian looking at me. “What?” I said. Or at least that’s what I was trying to say around the French bread and marinara sauce. He just laughed. And I went back to my sandwich.

We’ve come a long way in our relationship. You couldn’t pay me enough money to be transported back to our unmarried days. For one, I like food too much. And for another, I was never very good at dating. (If Ian ever witnesses a Mob hit or decides to become a Catholic priest, I am in so much trouble.) So I thought I’d be excited to be done with dating when I became a wife. I thought dating had served its purpose. We met, we married, the end. After all, we spend most of our time together. We have our meals together, we go to the movies, we watch the same television shows, we have the same friends. Why would we need to go on dates?

Then the year of dates gift started making the rounds on Pinterest. The idea is that you give twelve preplanned, prepaid dates to your spouse, setting up an entire year of date nights in one fell swoop. Knowing how difficult it is to shop for my practical husband who doesn’t really believe in Christmas presents, I latched on to the idea. I spent a lot of time and energy coming up with the dates. I planned activities that took one or both of us out of our comfort zones. I even took into account the fact that we were probably going to move in the middle of the year. And then, shortly after we rang in 2013, we started methodically checking the dates off the list.

Ha! I’m totally kidding. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: A Year Of Dates

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife | 94 Comments »

Feb 2013

Wordless Wedding: Sarah and Casey’s Self-Officiated Philly Food Truck Wedding

* Sarah, Illustrator and Graphic Designer & Casey, Software Developer * Photographer: Kateryn Silva Photography (APW Sponsor) * Soundtrack for reading: “Postcards from Italy” by Beirut *

One sentence sum up of the wedding vibe: Pure Joy.

Continue reading Wordless Wedding: Sarah and Casey’s Self-Officiated Philly Food Truck Wedding

Posted in: Wedding Graduates, Wordless Weddings | 32 Comments »

Feb 2013

The Miracle of the Latkes

One of the motivations behind choosing Not a Rom-Com month was that we wanted to draw attention to the fact that life, in all of its complications and imperfections, is so much better than the fantasy we’re sold in the movies. But I understand why the movies need to deal in broad strokes. Because it’s almost impossible to transpose onto film the feeling you get when invisible life shifts happen. Like finally being trusted with an old family recipe, or when the holidays move to your house instead of your parents’, or when your kids start turning into little people with their own personalities. So today we bring you a story from Julia Halprin Jackson that proves to me the miracles of life are wrapped up not in the grand gestures, but in the minutiae of our everyday existence.

—Maddie

My mom has written before about Hannukkah miracles. The most famous one took place about twenty years ago, when, in the midst of one of her renowned block-wide latke parties, her food processor broke down halfway through a batch of her famous potato pancakes. My dad disappeared into the garage while she and some of her friends huddled around the machine, patting it as if it were a dead dog, murmuring faint praise. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight and I was absorbed in a game of dreidel, which in those days we always played on the linoleum floor, watching to be sure that the tops never stuck in the cracks between tile, and when I looked up again my dad had surprised us all by sneaking in amongst all the neighbors, cradling a half-wrapped, brand-new food processor still in its box.

“I was going to give you this for Christmas,” he said, and before I could really understand what had happened, my mom had crumpled into him, hugging this most O. Henry of gifts. Before long the new machine was up and whirring, the kitchen buzzing with laughter and frying oil.

This is one of my mother’s signature stories. I’ve since learned the subtlety of it; the careful way my parents have navigated their interfaith relationship. This weekend I was reminded, yet again, of how much those gestures mean.

Ryan and I decided early last week that we wanted to ring in Hannukkah somehow this year, and so we invited a few friends over for dinner and started planning recipes. My parents were out of town and I didn’t feel right making latkes without my mom.

“But we can’t have a Hannukkah party without latkes,” Ryan said.

“It isn’t the same without my mom’s recipe,” I said. “Besides, we don’t have a food processor, so…”

The truth was, I was terrified of making latkes. Some part of me had always been terrified of all that hot oil, of laboring over a soaking tub of scrubbed potatoes, of straining the batter through towels, of getting stuck in the kitchen above the hot stove. Some part of Ryan still quietly persisted, bringing it up again when we went to the flea market to get ingredients. We bought fresh vegetables and spices and two pounds of potatoes…just in case. And then we passed a small stall selling kitchen equipment, where an entire row of used Cuisinart sat, their plugs trailing off the table. Continue reading The Miracle of the Latkes

Posted in: Tradition, Wedding Undergraduates | 55 Comments »