As we get closer to our wedding date, I asked Alex if he would be willing to share something he has been thinking about regarding the wedding here on The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities).  I am proud to present you with the fruit of his labor:

From the Groom’s Point of View: How Do You Choose a Stand-In For Mom?

My mother has always been my guiding light and I have been able to count on her for as long as I can remember. But my mother is no longer physically with me; she died over 7 years ago from a massive internal hemorrhage in her brain stem.

She had been taking COUMADIN^® to break up a blood clot in her right atrium. This weakened her endothelial lining and facilitated a cerebrovascular attack. The doctor essentially told me that they would keep her alive on life support in hopes of preserving some of her organs so others may live. She was only 57. That day changed my life on multiple levels, one being that I lost any chance of being able to dance with her at my wedding.

I strongly believe in the American custom of dancing with one’s parent.  And I intend to up hold this tradition the best way I can, so I need to pick a surrogate. I have at least five female family members from which to choose:

• My mother’s cousin once removed, Pauline, who has been to every memorable family function in my life. I have very fond memories of being one of many cousins enjoying summer breaks at her family home.

• My godmother, Serena, who was technically first in line as my mother’s proxy and was the first person I considered. But Serena lives in Vermont and we probably won’t have an opportunity to practice dancing together.

• My mother’s closest cousin, Evelyn, who gratuitously took in Murphy and me as tenants after my mother passed. Murphy was one of my mom’s three cats that needed a home.  During my 6 years under her roof, I had an exciting life engaged in local politics, studying for my Master’s degree, and thinking up conversations to have with my future fiancé during our biochemistry class. And there is always the fact that at 71, Evelyn can still dance circles around me.

• My first cousin, Erinn, who is by far my favorite relative.  And even though she lives a few thousand miles away, I need no rehearsal to dance with her. She is truly like a sister to me.

• Christina’s mother, Betty, who has openly accepted me and was the first person I turned to when I needed help designing Christina’s engagement ring. She is someone I like and admire, and not to mention a terrific holiday chef.

All of these family members mean a great deal to me, so it is not going to be an easy decision. Not to mention that I also have to choose a fitting song. If Mom were around I would have found an appropriate Neil Diamond song to reminisce to.  Each of the above women represent a different aspect of my life, and finding an unforgettable song to match is probably going to be harder than picking which relative to dance with.

Hopefully Alex will share what his final decision on this turns out to be.  Stay tuned!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post called “Dressing the Groom.”  When I wrote it, I left out a crucial element of my groom’s wedding-day look, and I did that on purpose.  I knew I was going to be buying him something to wear on our wedding day – I just didn’t want to write about it until I was sure it was happening! Happily, I finally managed to place an order for the final piece of Alex’s wedding-day ensemble this afternoon. I intend to give it to him the night before the wedding, at our rehearsal dinner, but he already knows he’ll be receiving this particular item, so there’s absolutely no element of surprise.

A bit of background…
Alex and I fell in love over a telescope. Literally. We both have a passion for astronomy, and I happen to have saved up my money and bought myself a super-cool 5-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope a few years ago.  (I write a separate astronomy blog, but it has been some time since I’ve had a chance to update that website.)   Alex and I spent a lot of time when we were first dating  looking at stars and planets through this telescope. One time, Alex saw a shooting star and made a wish, then many months later told me he had wished that he would be able to marry me one day – NO JOKE!
When we first started talking about wedding bands, we were seriously considering buying wedding bands made from the Gibeon meteorite, which crashed to Earth in Africa a couple hundred years ago. Here’s what those wedding bands look like:

They’re completely appropriate for us, but there were a few concerns. First, they aren’t exactly cheap, at least not if you want the high-quality, not-going-to-fall-apart versions. Second, you have to buy them online. The thought of buying our wedding rings online seemed way too scary for us. Finally, while they are a unique idea, they in no way match my engagement ring, and given my penchant for getting upset when things don’t match, we thought this might be a poor decision, long-term.
It took me a while to come up with an idea for a gift to give Alex for our “Zero Year” Anniversary. But since we scrapped the meteorite ring idea, and he had been so psyched to possibly wear something from space at the wedding, I eventually decided I needed to find something he could wear that is NOT a ring, but still came from space. That’s when I found Starborn Creations. They make jewelry out of the same meteorite the rings would have been made out of, including… drum roll please… CUFFLINKS.
Alex doesn’t normally wear clothes that would require cufflinks. But he will be wearing cufflinks with his tuxedo at the wedding. So I am giving him these:

Like I said, he knows he’s getting them. But I still can’t wait to see his face as he holds pieces of a space rock in his hand and knows those pieces belong to him!

(Photo credits: ring pictures from ArizonaSkies.com // cufflink pictures from StarbornCreations.com)

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I did not particularly enjoy the process of shopping for my wedding dress.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the moment when I said “this is the dress I want,” I just didn’t have much fun going from store to store, trying on loads of dresses with little privacy and being told things like “I can tell you’re plain,” or, “you don’t have much of a chest” by saleswomen who were trying to convince me to spend thousands of dollars in their store. (For the record, the store I ultimately bought my dress from did NOT do any of those things to me!)

But, if I’m being honest, I was a lot more nervous about finding a place to rent the guys’ tuxedos from than I was about finding my own wedding-day outfit.

We have male members of the wedding party scattered across 3 different states. Simply going down to the local tailor and ordering up 8 tuxedos was not going to work for us, because the chances of getting all those guys to come into town for both measurements and to pick up/try on their tuxes are slim to none. Never having had need for a tuxedo myself, I had no clue which places were the best to check out, so I turned to the local chat forums on TheKnot, where I was told to try Savvi Formalwear, and to avoid Men’s Wearhouse at all costs. Well… that’s not fair. One bride told me Men’s Wearhouse worked out great for her wedding party, but she was the only one with a favorable opinion.

You may have noticed that when it comes to our wedding, Alex and I seem to be involved in a comedy of errors. Nothing we think is a great idea seems to work out the first time – planning our rehearsal dinner is a case in point. Tuxedo shopping was no exception. I had looked up both Savvi’s and MW’s websites and found both had locations in the Danbury Mall. So we headed there over the holiday break, thinking we’d check out both places and make a decision once we got a feel for each store.

… Guess what? Savvi seems to have closed their Danbury location. Moreover, MW doesn’t rent tuxes out of their mall location, they want you to go to their location across the street if you’re only looking to rent!

Being that Savvi was nowhere to be found, and therefore would not be convenient for 2 members of the wedding party, we had to cross it off our list. That left Men’s Wearhouse. I was pretty skeptical of MW when we walked in – after all, I had been hearing negative reviews about them for a couple of months now. But I’ve got to say, the 2 guys we spoke with there seemed to know their stuff, and weddings seem to be most of what they do. Alex told me that a tux is a tux, so we decided to go ahead and order ours through them. I’ll admit this: a big factor in making this decision was the fact that Alex would get his tux rental for free because of the total number of rentals we are going to be doing.

After a bit of talk, we decided Alex will be wearing a black/black tux combination, while the groomsmen will be wearing a black/sage combo. The bridesmaid dresses are also black with sage, so I think everything will match pretty well. I’m undecided what colors we’ll do for our little ringbearer, but they don’t want to measure him until May anyway, so there is plenty of time for that! Here is an image from the Men’s Wearhouse website of the sage vest, so everyone knows what I’m talking about (sage doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to everyone):

We asked a lot of questions while we were there, and I feel like we’re OK about our decision to go with Men’s Wearhouse for right now. If the wedding comes and we have a disaster, I will certainly post about it!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I am so ready to come out of this wedding planning down time!  It’s just too early for me to start planning so many of the fun things every bride gets to pull her hair out over.  You might want to tell me I’m wrong, and I’m actually running out of time to plan things, but because of the venue Alex and I chose, that’s just not the case!  Our wedding venue coordinates loads of the important items for us, which is great, but also has created this feeling of waiting around for the exciting stuff to happen.

I got a rush of wedding excitement, then, when I learned (through Nicole – THANK YOU!) that CafePress is now selling customized Flip video cameras – and that “weddings” is one of the options for customization!  I bought Alex a Flip camcorder back in June, and we use it all the time, especially for big events like when we were in Italy.  CafePress is selling them for about the same price as Amazon, which makes them a bit expensive to buy as bridesmaid or groomsman gifts (depending on your budget) but I still want to share some of the awesome designs. If you’re interested in purchasing one (and I in no way receive compensation of any sort for this) you can get more details here.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.