Category: Practicalities

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Key Events Practicalities

Suits and Bubbles

Just a quick update–we’ve been relatively quiet over the past few weeks. I had a bit of work travel, and Chris went to visit his family. Then we had a lovely long weekend in northern Spain where we attended the Williams College annual European alumni reunion–this year held in San Sebastian. In fact, this is the first weekend that Chris and I had together at home in nearly a month!

What this also means is that Chris and I finally had some time to do a bit more work for the wedding. We are now coming close to a consensus on what to wear. By virtue of being a tailor’s son, and also being the beneficiary of one of my father’s clients who collects suits (and who then discards them whenever he gains a bit of weight), I have a collection of very nice suits — some far nicer than I was aware of. We photographed ourselves wearing pretty much every combination of suits that Chris and I own to see if any of our outfits fit our criteria: A) we want to make sure we look like grooms and not like guests, B) we don’t want to look like we could have just stepped out of the office, and C) and we want to look great and not cheesy (so no top hat with tails, and no shiny suits like what a car salesman might wear or the guys from Miami Vice). I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag, but we’ll be stepping out for a shopping trip sometime soon–and will end up with two variations of the same overall outfit, each accessorized to complement our individual colours and tastes, yet with common themes to show that we are a couple (but not clones of one another). We also found a nice looking shop at Covent Garden with a two-for-one offer on at the moment…so stay tuned.

The other task we have been slowly tackling is to try to find the best bubbly under £10. This is rather fun, but also a bit disconcerting as it has been slim pickings so far with this tight of a price limit. Our drinks reception venue charges £10, so we  have to really watch our spending here. Having champagne instead of cava or prosecco automatically brings us to a minimum £25/bottle (+£10 corkage = £35). But too often, we have had totally un-memorable and forgettable champagne at different weddings and events. Unless you go higher end (Veuve Clicquot and Perrier Jouet are favorites, but not cheap at minimum £35/bottle), most champagnes represent very poor value for money. Meanwhile there are some very nice cavas and proseccos out there that don’t bear the premium attached to the French AOC.

So slowly (well, not so slowly since the stuff goes down so easily!), we have been picking up different bottles on offer at various stores. We’re looking for fine bubbles rather than large rough ones, and ones that “pop” (with forceful bubbles that you can feel on your face as you sip), and most importantly, a nice colour and flavourful memorable finish. Our frontrunner at the moment is Martini Prosecco, which is dry, light, zesty, and refreshing, with nice amount of fine bubbles. On the other side of the spectrum, there is a Chilean Vina Maipo Brut, which Chris wrote in his tasting notes as being “‘somewhat ass’, too astringent, and with an odd mouth feel.” Another one we tried recently was a sparkling sauvignon blanc, which would tick the box for something with a different finish. However, as soon as we unwrapped the foil and saw the artificial resealable cork, we knew it was not something we could serve in good conscience. And our suspicions were verified after the anemic pop of the artificial cork and the lack of vigourous bubbles.

So while we are having fun trying to pick a bubbly for our big day, we do need to also deal with the practicality of ordering large quantities of bubbly–it’s one thing to order 32 bottles, but another to have it stored, and then making sure it is all transported to the reception venue, chilled, and in time for the reception.

If any of you have any particular bubblies you would like to recommend, please let us know! And if you know of any distributors in the greater London area who are able to deliver chilled bottles, by all means please get in touch. In the meantime, we still have a few months of tasting left to do (there are worse chores in life!).

 

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Practicalities Reflections

Bored of the Rings?

beautiful wedding rings

If you have been following this blog for any length of time you will know Donny and I are trying to do things a bit differently with this wedding. Our aim is strip away as much of the meaningless wedding flotsam as we can, and do an event which focusses purely on the elements that are important and meaningful to us.

So we won’t be having lots of flowers, there won’t be a big fruit cake and there will be a significant absence of wedding favours on the table. These are things we can live without. But when Donny asked if we wanted bother with wedding rings, I was really surprised.

I had just assumed us having wedding rings was a given. You see, I like the symbolism of a wedding ring – I like that it symbolises that we belong to each other. I also really like the fact that it is probably the only physical thing that we take from the wedding event into the day-to-day reality of our married life.

Having said all that, I guess the nature of what we are trying to do with the wedding means we need to challenge everything – even the elements I personally like. Donny’s point is that historically in heterosexual Christian marriage the ring would be worn by the bride as a symbol of her belonging to her groom – to represent sort of transfer of property. Much in the same way a pig or bull might have a ring through the end of its nose. It’s only much more recently in history that the groom started also wearing a ring. We don’t want to ‘own’ each other, so why would we wear something that has this strong historical connotation?

So the question is: do we reject a symbol that represents the heterosexual norms of marriage so strongly, or do we seek to take that symbol and somehow redeem it representing something much more progressive and meaningful for us?

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Practicalities

What to wear?

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what to wear to our wedding. On the one hand, it is one of those extraneous details that we can just figure out when it gets closer to the date. On the other hand, it is something important to consider, since it is our day, and we want to look good for the big event.

One difficulty that we have is that getting matching outfits will not necessarily complement our complexions. Media images notwithstanding (no, I do NOT have yellow skin, contrary to the cartoons many of us grew up with), I do have dark hair and dark eyes. Meanwhile, Chris has medium-dark brown hair, but a generally ginger complexion (light skin with freckles). What this means is that I look best in darker coloured outfits (blacks and greys with white shirts) whereas Chris looks best in earthtones (green, brown, rust).

So where does that leave us? It will be difficult to finding matching outfits that complement us both. So perhaps we shouldn’t bother trying to match? We’ve already joked about drag, and wearing wedding dresses. And yes, both of us are equally horrified at the thought of wearing such a thing. (By the way, we are also fans of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which always features incredibly gaudy and eye catching dresses, that oftentimes don’t even fit through doorways). We’ve also been talking about some of the outfits that appear in some of the period dramas we’ve been watching (like Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey)–but that’s something inherently difficult to pull off without it being part of a larger overall theme. I did find this website for wedding outfits that caters specifically to GLBT folks, and a lot of the beautifully shot photos made me smile (and I can’t believe that one day soon it will be us in similar photos!!)…but I unfortunately didn’t get too much inspiration from the pics. (In part because lesbian couples can do a better job of pulling off different combinations of masculine and femine clothing than gay couples can–just look at how great Ellen and Portia look).

All kidding aside, our outfits are part of the big day and we do need to eventually figure something out that doesn’t break the bank. What we’ll try first is to pull all of our jackets out of the closet, and then figure out which combinations work best. And if none of them suit us, then I guess it is off to the shops–unless any of you reading this are size 38R and have nice taste in colours and fabrics?

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Practicalities Venue

Go With The Flo

The Florence

A quick update on the practical arrangements:

The Town Hall is all booked for the ceremony, and we have paid the sizable deposit for the restaurant for lunch (so whatever else happens on the day – people are going to eat!) This only leaves a couple of loose ends now – the main one being over what we’re going to do in the evening.

The plan has always been to have a more informal ‘after party’, where people can join us after work and have a few beers. But finding a venue in Islington that can accommodate us has been really hard work. For some mysterious reason, bars that would normally be crammed to the brim with thirsty booze-hounds on a Friday evening aren’t too enthusiastic about allowing a relaxed group of friends to spread out and take over the entire place. Can’t think why…

All our favourite (slightly swanky) places wanted a good £5-£10,000 guaranteed minimum spend for us to hire out the place, which just isn’t an option. We did find a couple of places that would let us reserve large areas, but the added complication is we’d like to have a bit of live acoustic music as part of the evening fun, and that just isn’t an option when the other half of the pub would be full of noisy Friday night revellers.

However, just when we were starting to give up on the idea of doing music, The Florence (a pub right between the Town Hall and our lunch venue) got back to us and offered us their function room. It might be a bit of a squeeze, but they will let us do music and bring in our own food, and people can always spill into the main pub downstairs if it gets too crowded. So it looks like a very pleasant evening is on the cards. Can’t wait.

[EDIT: Now we’ve got the entire pub for the whole evening. Amazing!]

The Florence

Categories
Key Events Practicalities

Yay! We’re not related!

Yesterday we did our first official wedding thing.

Early on Monday morning (well, it was 9.30, but that’s early for us) we journeyed through the melting snow to Islington Town Hall and met a registrar to ‘give notice’.

Giving Notice is the process by which you tell various official bodies that you are who you say you are, and there is no legal reason for you to not get hitched. The registrar we met was a lovely lady called Viktoria who talked us through everything, and answered all our random and ridiculous questions with good humour and grace.

Here is a picture of Donny signing a piece of paper that confirmed he hasn’t been married before and also confirming that we are not related:

Phew!

Actually, the whole thing started off all a bit ‘Green Card’ as the registrar asked me a few questions about Donny. I managed date of birth alright, but when it came to occupation I came a bit unstuck:

“Something market researchy… Heading up diabetes…. stuff?”

I got there in the end.

Now that’s done the next job is to try and get some venues pinned down for the whole thing. The idea of an ‘Islington Wedding Crawl’ around three different venues sounded great in theory but that means of course it is three times the administrative headache compared to just going to a single venue for the day – and who knew that it would be so hard to find a home for 100 people for an evening do in Islington?

Time to get on the phone again…

Categories
Announcements Dates Family

Parental encounters of the third kind

SCENE: Weekly Sunday night call home. Chris is in bed already. I am still on the couch, with a glass of scotch for both encouragement and premeditated consolation. We were watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind earlier. The Superbowl is now on in the background. I have already listened to 1.5 hours of extended Asian family drama, including sibling issues, squabbles about money, and 40-year old grudges that used to be brought up once every few months, but which seem to be brought up every other week now (and almost always involve some tears of anger, regret, and anguish)…
ME: So you’ve spent so much time talking about dad’s family today, what about your own family?
MOM: What do you mean? I’ve already told you about my mom and dad, and how bitter and difficult their lives were, and how hard they had to work…
ME: Well, your son is part of your family too. And your son has some news for you. Chris and I have decided on the date of our wedding.
MOM: As I said last time, congratulations to you and to Chris.
ME: (after a pregnant pause). So are you going to come?
MOM: You know I don’t like to fly. I couldn’t handle such a long journey. But if you want, you should talk to your dad and he can decide for himself if he will go or not. All I want is for you and Chris to be happy.
ME: So that means you won’t come? It was just last year that you were saying that you and Auntie [her sister] wanted to visit me in London and then go to Paris.
MOM: But that was last year, and we never said when we were going to do it. It was going to be after I retire, but now…now I still have to work and your aunt has a bad back and can’t travel…
ME: So is it that you really are afraid to fly, or is that you just don’t want Auntie to find out why you are going to London, if you end up going without her?
MOM: (Long silence). [Busted!!]
ME: Well I don’t really care if you come or not. It’s your decision. But I would like you to come. You say you only want me to be happy. Well, it would make me very happy if you came. This is probably the most important day in my life, and I want my mother and father there with me. I want my brother and sister-in-law there with me. I want the family to be whole together, even if it’s just for one day, for the most important day. That would make me happy.
MOM: So what would you like for a gift? I’ll send you a gift.
ME: No, I don’t want a gift. And I don’t want your money either. I just want you to be there, to see me happy, and to be happy with me.
MOM: (More awkward silence).
ME: Well we’ve been on the phone over an hour and a half already and it’s really late now. Think about the wedding. Whether you come or not will be totally up to you. But it would really make me happy if you and dad did come.
MOM: OK.
ME: Stay happy. I love you.
MOM: I love you too.
<click>
ME: *sigh*
Categories
Practicalities Venue

All The Money In The World

Remind me why we are getting married in London? Why don’t we just bus everyone out the middle of nowhere and then bus everyone back again. IT’LL PROBABLY BE CHEAPER!

Oh yeah – that’s why.

<fx: breathe>

So, we knew the meal would be a bit pricey but that’s OK as Donny and I are both big foodies and we wanted to treat everyone to a really nice meal because, frankly, how often to you get to do that for a huge bunch of your close friends? Well, hopefully not too often or else your bank manager will be having words.

Anyway, after the meal we were thinking what would be easier and nicer then all piling down to a local bar, taking the place over and having a lovely relaxed evening of drinks, snacks and live entertainment? Except when I started to arrange this today I discovered our top contender for bar of choice wanted a minimum spend of ten thousand pounds.

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS!

OK – let’s figure this out. If their staff costs all came to a grand that would leave £9,000 split between around 150 people. That’s £60 per person. That’s enough for a really good meal and a bottle of wine each. Not an evening spent drinking beer and eating sandwiches.

So it’s back to the drawing board. The plan is to look for places within a 15 minute walk from the restaurant which are a bit more off the beaten track and have a rather more manageable minimum spend. I’m sure there’s a place out there with our name on it.

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Announcements Dates Key Events Practicalities Venue

Days and confused…

Save the Date!
Finally, we have a date!

So it has been difficult to select a date for our wedding. You naturally want to be inclusive. And you instinctively want to be practical. And yet you want to please as many people as you can. But at some point, you just have to let go and accept the fact that the one all-inclusive-date-that-fits-100-peoples’-schedules does not exist. And so you have to make sacrifices, and take chances, and eventually just commit to a date that you think will work for the greatest number of people.

It seemed easy at first. We found a venue we liked (Islington town hall) and a restaurant we liked (to be announced), with the seating capacity we were looking for. So you’d think that it would be a simple matter of marrying together the available dates from both places to see what we are left with. With the help of a lovely lady named Viktoria, who is the friend of a friend who works as a registrar at Islington town hall, we were able to get a list of times for dates we were interested in. And the restaurant had previously told us that they didn’t yet have many wedding bookings. Ace.

We had started off by blocking out a series of dates that we knew would not work. This included bank holidays, upcoming trips that we already knew about, other friends’ weddings and celebrations, the Greenbelt festival that a lot of friends go to every year, Chris’ band concerts, and of course the Olympics (during which London would be crowded, hotel rooms would be scarce, and transportation would be chaotic). Then there were two other criteria we wanted to consider: school holidays and peak summer flight fares. And this is where we started running into trouble.

Oddly, both Chris and I have quite a few friends on the invite list who are schoolteachers, and their needs are very similar to those of parents with school-aged children (even if they dont have children of their own). So one key issue we had to consider was that the school holidays are different between the US and UK. Whereas the school season starts up in earnest at the very beginning of September in both countries (Labor Day is the typical last hurrah before school starts in the US, while the August bank holiday serves that purpose in the UK and students are back to school the first Tuesday in September), the academic year doesn’t end until July 20th in the UK, whereas it ends a full month earlier on June 22 in the east coast of the U.S.

So suddenly, we found ourselves with a much narrower timeframe than we thought, when both countries are on summer break, and that timeframe is sadly punctuated by the Olympics, which will knock 3 weekends out of commission. And of course these times also correlate with peak fare season for the airline industry. I checked out summer fares to London and whereas the inbound trip to London was as cheap as $250 from the east coast of the United States, the flight back was almost triple that price! (In contrast, flying in June or September, while school is in session, could easily knock 40% off of those peak fares.)

Also, for extra flexibility with budgets and negotiating, we wanted some weekday options. For an American guest, a wedding on a weekday versus Saturday would be neither here nor there since they would likely be on vacation anyways while visiting London. Time off can be very difficult for school teachers to get during the academic year, so this was another reason we wanted the flexibility of having the wedding during the summer recess. But this then opens a new can of worms as all our friends who still have to work during the summer would have to take a day off.

And lastly, the other dates we considered were in September and October but the problem there is that anyone with school aged kids, and our schoolteacher friends, would not easily be able to attend.

To make matters more complicated, last week being Chinese lunar new year and all, I started looking into “fortuitous” wedding dates based on the lunar calendar (not that I really believe any of that stuff, but it doesn’t hurt to choose a lucky date if you have options. Friday 13th was another date on our list!). The system is very complicated, but certain dates are earmarked as good dates to get married–although not for everyone because there were exceptions for those born in the year of the dog, rat, dragon, or whatnot. My sign, the ox, wasn’t affected negatively by any of the dates on our short list but Chris’s sign, the dragon, was affected by a couple of dates. I can only imagine Chris’s face when he saw my email talking about these special dates–we were getting stressed out enough just with having to make some choices, all the time realizing that time was ticking (and other people were out there booking venues too!!).

And so at the end, I needed a zen moment. And so I learned to let go.

We got some advice from friends who had gone through the same thing several years ago. And it was good advice–the gist of it was that you cannot expect to please everyone. So the most important thing is to find dates that work for you. And so, there you have it.

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Dates Uncategorized Venue

Shadow puppets in love. What’s not to love about this video?

No major news this week, but we’re winnowing down sites, dates, and options. Everything is becoming a little more real–and hence a little more scary too! Anyways, here’s a fun video with a cute message that’s all done with shadow puppets.

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Practicalities

Zeroing In

home

home

Since Mum, Dad and my brother all moved up to Wales it’s really challenged me about the concept of ‘home’. People talk about ‘going home for Christmas’ but I don’t really have that sort of home any more. The house I grew up in has strangers in it, and I certainly no longer have an ‘old room’ to go back to and feel sentimental about. West Ewell, where I lived for 4 happy years before coming up here, has a huge pull for me with so many close and dear friends there but it was never ‘home’. But the good news is that I can honestly say that Islington has become my home.

Following on from Donny’s post I too have become a massive fan of Islington. I love going jogging round Clissold Park and visiting the goats and deer there, I love pottering down the overpriced interior nic-nac shops on Upper Street and even enjoy walking up to Lidl at Finsbury Park for the weekly shop. So it feels really right to me to think about us getting married in this area.

Yes it’s going to be expensive. Yes, it’s going to limit what we can do. I know all that, but we also know we want to get hitched somewhere that means a great deal to us. So Islington it is. For better or for worse.

Now we’ve decided an area to do everything in it gives us a few limitations to work within, but at least when you have limitations it allows you to make more constructive decisions. I had been getting thoroughly overwhelmed and bamboozled with the hundreds of different wedding options available in London, so to limit it to an area is brilliant. It means we can start zero-ing in on a workable plan.

I had set my heart on getting one of the old Routemaster buses to take everyone from the wedding venue to the reception venue but a) they start at £500 a pop and b) we would need 2 of them. Yikes. That would be £1,000 which would be better spent on better food options, or enabling us to invite a few more people. So the plan is to find a reception venue walking distance from the Town Hall. There are a number of possibilities there (Upper Street is a fantastic area for restaurants) so the hunt begins for somewhere pretty that can fit us all in, and not cost the earth.

We’re actually thinking a morning ceremony followed by a lovely long lunch could work quite well. It helps with costs, and means there isn’t that usual 2 hours of standing round awkwardly drinking champagne on an empty stomach waiting for dinner, having not had time for lunch before setting off for the service. We can then go on from there for somewhere more informal for chatting and drinking fun into the evening.

That’s Plan A anyway. We’ll see whether we can make it a reality.

Looks like the flock of doves is out though…