Introducing…

While I cannot wait for our real “Mr. and Mrs.” introduction during the ceremony and the reception, I got to jump ahead a little bit yesterday.  It was Step Up Day at the high school I am teaching at next year, and since I didn’t want to confuse the kids by telling them one name and then coming back as another, I told them I was Mrs. Library.  It. Was. Awesome!  I got to write it on the board, spell it out for kids (though I am not sure why I had to spell the name three times in a row… it’s an easy six-letter name), and introduce myself to new coworkers.  The feeling of being a Mrs. with a new name made me smile all day.  Others might have thought it was because of liking my kids (which I totally do), but it was at least partially due to the fact that I got to take my new name for a test drive.

What small victories have made you happy lately?

I Have the Right

With the wedding only 39 days away (how is this possible?), I have had my share of things that haven’t made me the happiest person on the block (and since we’re in Maine, that’s a HUGE area!).  My latest phrase has been, “Agh, I just want to punch him/her in the face!”  Will I actually do it?  No, of course not.  But different things have that effect on me.

Any time something makes me anxious, like when people don’t return their RSVP cards by the return-by date, I get a little upset.  Others roll their eyes, give me a glare and tell me to chill out and get over it.  People don’t ever return them, so there is nothing I can do about it.  While that may be true, I have a right to be upset.  I hate being told that I should just get over it.  This wedding means a lot to me, and I have put in a ton of work.  When people don’t play by the rules and just blow off my hard work, it’s going to make me upset.  Wouldn’t it make you upset?

It’s also delaying me making more progress on other projects, like our escort cards for example.  If I have no idea who is coming, how do I make sure I have enough cards ready and all of their names spelled correctly?  Also, the meals.  Now, this isn’t me just being anal.  The hotel needs to know in a week and a half who will be sitting where and what they will be eating.  That’s a whole lot of pressure on me to find out how many of our 38 missing guests will be attending, where they are sitting, and what they are eating!

I’m just saying, for those of you who haven’t RSVPed, you’re all at one table in the corner and you’re all eating chicken.  The end.

Moral of the story?  Don’t tell a bride she doesn’t have the right to be upset.  When she works really hard on something and has people act like they don’t care, it’s a little crushing.  So please, be nice, and she’ll be nice back (and won’t punch you in the face!).

What makes you upset lately?

The Kickoff to Wedding Season

This weekend was an honor for me and Mr. Library.  We were invited to attend a wedding for one of my friends from elementary school.  K and I met in second grade, and though our lives took very different paths, we have loved and accepted each other throughout the years.  We have kept in touch every once in a while, and I knew it was important for me to invite her to our wedding.  I received a call from her about two weeks ago, and in the middle of chatting, she stopped and said, “Oh, guess what?  You’ll laugh, but I’m getting married in two weeks!  Want to come?”  Thus began the kickoff to our wedding season.

The wedding location was about 3.5 hours away from our home, so we packed up, booked a motel room, and hit the road on Saturday morning.  With the wedding at 7:30 in the evening, we had enough time to get to our motel, unpack, eat some lunch, and take a nap.  Yep, the nap was very much needed.  The room we booked was pretty adequate, and as we discovered later, came with a pretty fabulous breakfast in the morning.

Once the time came, we got spiffed up and left enough time for any misturns.  When dealing with coastal Maine, you want to make sure you have written directions, a GPS, and a whole lot of time.  You never know which part of those directions are going to steer you wrong.

We did find the location the first time, and it happened to be a beautiful lake house down a long dirt road.  It would have been the perfect place for an outdoor wedding if it hadn’t have been raining.  The wedding was moved inside during the afternoon, so the living room was decorated beautifully as a result, overlooking the setting sun on the lake.  It was gorgeous.

Before I introduce the key players, I suppose I should get to the heart of this wedding.  This wasn’t a regular wedding.  According to the state of Maine, it couldn’t be.  K married a lovely woman named L.  This past fall, the majority of voters in Maine voted to veto the right to same-sex marriage.  I have never been more ashamed of my state.  K and L were highly involved in the effort to get people to vote to keep the law, and that is where L proposed, but when the law was overturned, these two did what any engaged couple in love would do:  get married anyway.  Screw the state laws; these two lovely ladies are in love, and they deserve the same right to commit themselves to each other as any other couple.  So while this marriage isn’t recognized by the state, it is recognized by the rest of us who love and support them.

The staircase by the kitchen acted as the aisle for the wedding party.  K’s bridesmaids came out in green, while L’s bridesmaids wore purple.  It worked very well with their peacock feather motif.

L came down the aisle first with her grandfather.

Then, it was K’s turn.

Once the two brides were united at the front, the lovefest began.  This was where I knew I should have worn waterproof mascara.  Everything made me tear up.  Mr. Library held me against him throughout the ceremony.  I can only imagine that he was thinking what I was thinking:  this will be us next!

The wedding was gorgeous, filled with love, and very much about the two of them.  I understand that some people don’t agree with same-sex marriage, but I do not understand how people can look at photos like these and only think thoughts of disgust.  There is nothing more romantic than two people who love each other committing themselves to sharing, growing, and maintaing that love for the rest of their lives.  That’s what marriage is about, not the sex of the person.

Congratulations to K and L!  We are so happy for you, and we cannot wait to see you again at our wedding in six weeks!

Have you been to any gorgeous weddings lately?

Wait for Me

I didn’t know whether I should do a post on this or not.  It’s a touchy subject, and a lot of people may not think that it’s proper for a woman to talk about it, but I feel that it is a large part of who Mr. Library and I are as people and as a couple. (If you are weirded out by personal details, read no farther.  Okay, thanks, bye.)

Paper Goodness

About half of our RSVP cards have made their way back into our hands, and with the due date coming up, we’re still waiting for a bunch (do you hear that Library wedding party?  SEND THEM BACK!).  I love getting mail almost every day, and since Mr. Library has been in Cambridge for most of the process, we play a game on the phone every day.  I read him where the postmarks are from and then we guess who each card is from.  Mr. Library has gotten pretty good at the game, and it is a fun way to open the cards together even though we’re in different states.

The other day, a card with the postmark of Los Angeles landed in my mailbox.  I knew it had to be Mr. Library’s cousin T, whom I have never met and Mr. Library only slightly remembers, because she is the only one we invited from California.  I have suspected for quite some time that the response would be a “No,” but I ripped open the envelope anyway (I’m not dainty when I’m excited to see something).  As I had thought, there was an RSVP of no, but on the other side was a note.

It reads:

Best wishes to you both for a beautiful wedding and future life together.  Enjoy your celebration; it will be well earned. ~ T

This was one of the first cards with a message on it, and it really touched me.  I’m not sure how well Mr. Library knows his cousin (he is substantially younger than all of this cousins thanks to a 10 year age gap between his aunts and his dad), but this note says so much about the kind of family I am lucky enough to marry into.  Even though she won’t be able to make it to the actual event, cousin T took time out of her day to write this lovely note to wish us well. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

What surprises have you loved lately?

Getting into the Movement

During our long weekend together (which felt so incredibly good to be able to be wrapped up in Mr. Library’s accomplishments and our love for each other), Mr. Library and I sat down to take a look at what we are going to need in our potential new apartment.  Okay, so I did most of the research.  Mr. Library did a lot of the sitting.  But either way, we found that the major gap in our apartment needs came in the form of something large…

Furniture!

Oh.  Yeah.  That.  The things we need to be able to have people over or sit down.  Oops.  In reality, there wasn’t any time for Mr. Library and I to pick this sort of thing up over the past six years.  We both lived in dorm rooms during undergrad, and I lived in a furnished dorm apartment in grad school (don’t judge… it was free!).  Mr. Library bounced from apartment to apartment in Cambridge, and as many of you may know, moving furniture in a city isn’t the best idea.  All of his apartments, just for this reason, were pretty well furnished.  So, no furniture acquisitions were needed.  Until now.

I put up a board topic on Weddingbee to see where other ladies and gentlemen had gotten their furniture on the cheap.  Trust me, with a wedding, a honeymoon, a teacher’s salary, an unemployment, student loans, and a new apartment to pay for, brand new expensive furniture is not on the top of our must have lists.  Thankfully, we don’t need that many pieces; we really only need the larger essentials like a couch and a dining set.  We both have bureaus and desks for an office.  I have a chair that can be put in the living room for one person to sit in (sorry hunny, it’s pink), and he (bless him!) has an air conditioner for the summer.  We already have the bed that I purchased earlier in the fall when I decided that the twin bed I had had since I was seven didn’t cut it anymore.  Not too shabby for the college nomads that we were.

I got quite a few replies to my post, most of them saying that I should look at Craigslist.  Call me crazy, but Craigslist has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since the Craigslist killer was one town over from my grad school location (and Bridesmaid Al’s mom from Hawaii called to make sure we weren’t harmed).  Furniture from Craigslist?  Really?  Like, really really?  As it turns out, yes!  Really really!  Now, this isn’t going to turn into a story about how we found brand new furniture at amazing prizes and bought up everything I clicked on, but it turns out that there are some nice pieces that people want to sell at pretty reasonable prices.  I contacted a few listings and waited for emails to come as I went back to Maine on Sunday night.

I mentioned our new furniture plight to my parents Sunday evening, and because of the glory that is Memorial Day (thanks to all who served!), yard sales were everywhere!  Too bad I missed a bunch during the actual weekend, but Mom Library, Dad Library, and I jumped into the car and went in search of some local people who may have some furniture to sell.  We were really only looking for wooden furniture as buying someone’s mystery couch makes me queasy (seriously dude, what is that stain?!), so we kept an eye out for dining sets.  Our first stop was a mile down the road, and… Jackpot!  There was a cute little Farmer’s table with fold-down leaves on both sides and four chairs.  There were some spots that marred the finish of the wood, but all in all, it was a good find.  The man wanted $75 for it, which was reasonable for the set, so we kept this in mind as we went in search of other options.  As we drove away, Mom Library said that if I didn’t buy it, she probably would.  Huh.  I’m competing with my own mother for furniture.

The next locations either didn’t have anything or had something with crayon all over the bottom.  I’ll pass, thanks.  The first option kept looking better and better.  Once we had circled the town and come up with nothing, I went back to the first location.  I called Mr. Library on the way and asked for his thoughts.  “I trust your judgment.”  Thanks hunny!  With the seal of approval, I got the cash out of the ATM and went back with Dad Library to load it into the truck.  The man must not have remembered what I looked like because he said he had sold it to some other lady, but it turns out it was me all along.

So now this baby is ours:

It needs to be sanded and refinished, but for its age, it’s in fantastic shape.  Dad Library, Mr. Library, and I will be sanding it all down and staining it with a darker color.  It might take a while, but I think it will be a great project for all of us to work together on.

Next stop, COUCH!

What have you found you needed as a cause and effect of marriage?