Oh, you guys are just amazing. Amazing, I tell you. Every day you blow me out of the water. Brandi, who is giving away a lovely grey dress to a Team Practical member, picked AM as the winner. AM is, I-swear-to-god, getting married at Walden Pond, where Thoreau did much of his writing, and having a reception afterwards at their fixer-upper home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her response is amazing enough to get it’s own post:
Hello Meg, Brandi, and Team Practical,
I would love to wear this dress to my elopement, which will (hopefully!) take place at Walden Pond, sometime this summer or fall, and/or the post-elopement celebration of our marriage at our home in the Blue Ridge mountains. My fiance and I chose Walden Pond because (1) Thoreau’s writings, and his emphasis on self-reliance and simplicity, are at the core of the life we are building together, (2) the permit is only $17, (3) we want our marriage to take place where any loving and devoted couple may marry, and (3) other life reasons, explained below.
I have been reading this blog since July 2008, when I got engaged to my long time beau. I was planning a spring wedding with lots of family in Nashville, my hometown. I had even found a great, old pub for the reception. My Dad wasn’t always there for me growing up, so when he offered to pay for the wedding, it was a meaningful gesture. I was also thrilled because it allowed me and my fiance to buy a fixer-upper house together this winter, since we weren’t worried about wedding expenses.
In the middle of my plans for what I thought was already going to be a relatively practical wedding came the news of my Dad’s layoff. He lost his job in December and is now collecting unemployment. My fiance’s parents also lost a huge chunk of their retirement in 401k’s in recent months, so we’re not in position to ask them for help either.
Given all that’s going on, my wedding needed to be a little more self-reliant and a lot more simple…so we dreamed up a Walden Pond elopement/honeymoon combo we thought Thoreau might approve of. With a $17 permit, a justice of the peace, and no more than 20 onlookers (Pond rules!), we plan to elope in the late summer or fall (if we can wait that long!) We’ll each have two witnesses/dear friends as witnesses to an utterly simple, quiet ceremony in the beauty of nature. Our reception will take place at our new fixer-upper house in the Blue Ridge mountains (which will hopefully be somewhat more fixed by then!) sometime afterwards, complete with homemade food, a bonfire, and intertubing on the New River, which is just a few miles from our country house. Guests and family will be invited to camp anywhere on our five acre backyard, to help keep travel costs low.
The beauty of all these difficulties is that we now get to be even more creative and unconventional about the celebration of our marriage. So, in a way, these “difficulties” are the perfect excuse for letting us break rules and justify the lack of tradition to our parents…a true blessing in disguise. It would be an honor to wear your lovely dress at either the elopement itself or our homestyle Appalachian celebration afterwards, whichever is more practical!
See? Now don’t you feel especially blessed to be part of this community? I do. AM, please drop me a line, and I’ll put you in touch with Brandi. You are the proud new owner of a stunning grey wedding dress. From Team Practical to you.
If I know one thing, it's that kindness begets kindness. After my post last week on community I got this email from Erika, who's wedding you'll remember from the fall:
Cutting to the chase, I want to give away my wedding dress. I know there are a number of charities through which I could do this, or I could try to sell it here in New York, but today I stumbled upon the idea of offering it up to Team Practical.
I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy from your post today about the community you've helped to create, and from Cate Subrosa's post too. And today is my six-month wedding anniversary (yeah!) and I guess all of these things together got this crazy idea in my head that maybe someone else in this community would want to wear the dress. Our wedding day was extraordinarily joyful, and so I think the dress might carry some pretty great karma too.
