Tuxes and cake and Pooh! Oh, my!

Wow, have we been busy...

(Dude, we're all busy...what have you been up to?)
All right...all right...let me tell you...

If it's not helping to paint Alex's nephew's room or working in the garden, it's been fixing up our bikes or working on the wedding. We figure we've been doing about 5-10+ hours of wedding stuff a week and we've both expressed the sentiment that "Boy, it'll be nice when it's over!" Not that working on the wedding is bad, but we'd love to have that kind of time back.

Picture this: It's about 1PM on a Sunday, and we're driving to Best Buy, 'cause I need a new drive for my computer. We get the drive, and notice Men's Warehouse is right next door. They were my initial choice for tuxedos, so Alex and I went in, talked with the people there and looked over styles. Afterwards, we said "Hey, we should check out a couple of other places while we're at it..." So Sunday turned into Tuxedoday. We ran to Savvi Formalwear out in Crestwood and talked a lot with the people there, tried jackets and vests on dummies (yes, including me! LOL) and spent about two hours there asking questions. We were pretty happy there, but thought we'd check out After Hours Formalwear in the same mall. We weren't really thrilled there, so we decided on Savvi. By that time it was about 530PM or so, so most of Sunday was gone. BTW, the tux shown is pretty close to the one I'm getting, although the vest and tie will be in our wedding color of Celedon Green.


Ah, yes...then there's cake. Let me tell you how jazzed I am for cake. The last few weeks at work, we've had a few lunches for co-workers (leaving, anniversaries, etc.) Whenever I'm asked if I'm going to be there, the first words out of my mouth are "will there be cake?" (Really, I would go to them regardless, but still...cake is good.)
We went to McArthur's bakery to talk to the Wedding Coordinator about cake for our wedding. We got to look through multiple styles and got to try several cake flavours and fillings (mmmm...raspberry. mmmm...white buttercream mousse.) While the cake was pretty tasty and the fillings were really good...I hate to say we've become jaded on cake.
We have gotten hooked on this show on Food Network called Ace of Cakes, and looking at all the wedding cakes that Duff makes versus what McAruthur's makes...well...
Don't get me wrong...McArthur's makes very beautiful wedding cakes...but they all look like...well...like wedding cakes. Hopefully, McArthur's (or someone else) can make us a cake that will look non-traditional and still be amazingly tasty. (And no, we can't get a cake from Charm City...the cake and transportation fee would cost more than the reception!)
(BTW, Left pic is from McArthur's and the right one is from Ace of Cakes. And yes, that is Wrigley Field!)


We also went shopping at Target. For us, shopping at Target can get insane...we go in for one thing and walk out with $200.00 of stuff...not including the one thing we came for.
We both want kids. I think Alex would make a spectacular mom. When we were at Target we walked past the baby asile and saw the cutest Classic Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal. Well, we ended up getting it...even though Alex isn't even pregnant...oh, and the Eyore doll too...and a couple other pooh things for babies...As our friend Mary would say, "We've got some pooh in our shopping cart." :)
We figure we want our kid(s) to have Classic (read: not the Disney) Pooh...(See previous post "Itty Bitty Binky Pooh") and we will have kids after we're married...and if we need to, we can always give them as baby shower gifts. Also, we've gone to Target a couple of times before and not gotten something and it wasn't there later. But I must say, the Pooh stuff is cool and I would love to have our child have it...and it's kinda cool we've gotten it already... :)

Anyway, that's just a little of what's going on with us, recently...

Oh, the details are many...

...but they are all coming together, slowly but surely. Yesterday evening we attended to a wee wedding detail. We asked the daughter of a friend of ours to be our flower girl - I mean, blossom fairy. That completes the wedding party proper, but for one last person: My cousin, much older than I am because of the ages of our parents. I have to go over to my mom's to look up his number in the kitchen rolodex because she's out of town, so I can't just call her to get it.

Since my dad is not here to walk me down the aisle, I've asked three people to step in. It may seem a bit excessive, but I have to fight back sadness, if not actual tears, every time I think about the fact that my dad is not here to walk me down the aisle. I actually discussed arriving before the guests and just greeting them from the front with Brian... In the end, there are two men that I think of when I think of my dad, his peeps as it were, and I've asked them to represent. They'll walk me down halfway, to where Pius has a break in the pews (would be the transept, if Pius were a basilica), where my cousin (blood) will walk me down the rest of the way.

And now we have the wee one, who will be leading the way. According to some random site I googled, starting with the Middle Ages, flower girls were assigned a special job - to walk down the wedding aisle ahead of the bride and groom and spread grain (not flowers) in order to pave the way for a new beginnings, fertility and happiness in the marriage.

Whatever the roots of the tradition, it is so nice that we'll be surrounded by people we truly care about. In fact, it's pretty blinkin' awesome. We hadn't thought to have a blossom fairy in the beginning, but it works out well , and, besides, it was fun to ask. We took her flowers in the colors that she'll use (white, with spring green), and gave her a Save-The-Date card with ribbons in the wedding color on the back and a printout of the dress that the Ladies of Honor will be wearing, in case mom would like to model the blossom fairy dress off of that (we're not calling them bridesmaids). She seemed pretty pleased, and ran off to swing on the new swingset that had gotten assembled that day and explain to her little sister that she was going to be in a wedding. After all, being in a wedding can only compete with a new swingset for so long. :-) Anywho, I'm not sure the near-3-yr-old grasped the significance of what her big sister was trying to communicate to her, but it was really cute from the adult observational perspective.

We're spending obviously a lot, lot, lot of time ironing out the details. It's been frustrating and even stressful at times, but now, after months of working on things, now that I can start to visualize what it'll look like (at least, what I'm hoping it'll look like), now it's starting to feel like the time and effort and attention to detail are really more like us weaving a tapestry of events and details and ritual to commemorate the commitment we're making to each other. The Harper online etymology dictionary says that in Old English, the word was weddung or the "state of being wed". The word's meaning of a "ceremony of marriage" is recorded from c.1300; the usual O.E. word for the ceremony was bridelope, literally "bridal run," in reference to conducting the bride to her new home.

Interestingly, wedding cake is recorded from 1648, and the verb "wed" stems from the Old English weddian "to pledge, covenant to do something, marry," from P.Gmc. Aditional etymological history is: wadjojanan (cf. O.N. veðja "to bet, wager," O.Fris. weddia "to promise," Goth. ga-wadjon "to betroth"), from PIE base *wadh- "to pledge, to redeem a pledge" (cf. L. vas, gen. vadis "bail, security," Lith. vaduoti "to redeem a pledge"). The sense remained "pledge" in other Germanic languages (cf. German Wette "bet, wager"); the development to "marry" is unique to English.

Anywho, back to the blossom fairy's halo, the measurements of the aisle runner, the menu and beverage selection... All chosen with meaning, carefully selected, with hope and joy and anticipation.