nightmarket.

perhaps a little too much wedding.

Maybe it is a bad sign that when we go to a concert now, all we can think to say to each other is, "We should have had a summer wedding - those suits look so damn dapper!"

we'll have plenty of time to take care of that later...

an improvement over our earlier to do lists

A and I went to a friend's wedding recently (as in, "over a month ago") feeling pretty good about where we were at with planning. At the very least, I was feeling good and blissfully ignorant and Amanda's list-making had been worn down by my regular rejoinder of "we'll take care of that in August." August, I imagined, would be a month when our only concern would be passing the pitcher of sangria while we leisurely took care of all those remaining details surrounding the wedding. Between our quickly filling-calendar for July and the inevitable stress of September's one-month mark, August became the receptacle for my procrastination.

Now, this wedding was the first that we had attended since we had announced our engagement; our first in-action look at what we were up against. Until this point, much of our planning had been based on the gauzy, soft-focus romance of how we remembered our friend's weddings (drawn exclusively from our blurry snapshots and champagne-addled memories). Here is what I remember from most of our friends' weddings:

There was food. It was held somewhere. I'm pretty sure they ended up married.

When you boil it all down, wedding's are just overblown, formal, expensive parties, right? If that was the case, then we had nothing to worry about. Our two main priorities had been securing the event space and the caterer and did we accomplish them? Handily. Promptly. Now top my glass off and make sure some of those boozy orange slices make it in.

Then we arrived at our friends' wedding. What started off as a night of Amanda making awkward introductions between me and people she had forgotten she had gone to grade school with, quickly devolved into an evening of conspiratorial whispering between she and I, dissecting their ceremony and reception:
"They have programs, is that on our list?"
"How far are we on compiling music for the reception?"
"Do we need a separate bouquet to toss?"
"Shit, they have, like, a dozen cakes! Maybe we need more cakes?"
"Look at the bride and groom - we won't get to sit the entire night of our wedding!"
"We won't get to eat!"

Great, the two things we had actually taken care of in advance would go unused by us. Meanwhile, everything that all of our guests would be expecting was still waiting to be taken care of in August. Damn, I just spilled my sangria all over myself.

We chose to get married when we did partially because it seemed like the right length for an engagement. We had seen so many of our friends have l o n g engagements with drawn-out waiting periods in the middle. We thought seven and a half months was short enough to be efficient, but long enough to take care of everything. If I could reschedule everything, I would have a one, maybe two month engagement. Like ripping off a band-aid, it would hurt and then it would be done with. And isn't that just the kind of lovely metaphor more wedding's should aspire to?

As I've said before, the wedding industry is huge and maybe a little bit evil. It's really quite easy to get overwhelmed by all of the details that, somewhere in our history, have been incorporated into our cultural idea of the perfect day. While originally we'd been overwhelmed to the point of catatonia, we have found that you can just as easily be overwhelmed into taking on too many projects. Most nights we spend making favors and invites, calling for various appointments and drawing out elaborate play-by-plays of the ceremony. Which reminds me to say that you should never look at wedding books - they overwhelm couples directly into that Martha Stewart automaton mentality. I really think that if we had maybe glanced at even one more wedding book "for ideas," we would be sitting on our living room floor this very minute, trying to figure out how to make individual birch-bark wrapped boxes to hold hand-picked and home-perfumed rose petals for our guests to throw. At least our place would have smelled nice. But I don't think I would have been able to find our to-do list under all of the birch clippings and glue-guns.

two colors = two printings

And these are the photos from round two. After this, I just have to put A to work cutting out and assembling the parts. For hours.



























It actually is a lovely color on the cards. Really.

we're still getting married. seriously.

I know that we haven't been posting at all very much lately (and as I hear it, you haven't been looking very often, either), so just to let you all know, we are still getting married. We're just hitting that mid-point in the planning process when the wedding feels like a dull buzzing in the background of our migraine. Or maybe thats just the heat. Because it is 102 damn degrees in Portland today! As soon as it cools off, we'll post about the planning process and the very special torture that it is to plan the happiest day of your life. For now, since our apartment has started to look like a Jo-Ann Fabrics with all of our wedding craft projects, here are a few photos of why exactly we are so damn busy:
















That's right, I made the brilliant decision to test run my temperamental new old 1950s hand-operated letterpress on our own wedding invitations.



































































I only have to do this 200 more times.

Game On.

So, I received a little something in our wedding email the other day. A picture of me (and Pat)! Yes, my dear friends and family, the game is officially on. The game of sending us pictures of the P-and-A robots you constructed, that is. Ms. Kate Lyman and Mr. Kalin Schmoldt of Portland, Oregon, receive the honorable title of "First People to Send Us Pictures of Our Squat and Robot-Like Selves." If you all send us some more, I just may come up with honorable titles for each and every one of you. And then I'll use them as place cards at our wedding. Actually, I'm not promising that last one, but you don't want to be left out of the loop, do you?

That's what I thought.

** UPDATE ** (By update, I mean, we got another one.)










"Best Use of Overgrown Bamboo/Thanks for Humoring Us" goes to Peter and Karen

Update - Update: Evidence of how much our parents love us...



"Best representation of our true habitat - Munchkinland" goes to Marty and Chuck.

So, as I will only make nametags for those who sent us pictures, it appears that this is going to be a very small wedding. That, or no one else gets to eat.

Think about it.

***Updaaaaate!***

I really am as excited as that sounds.

Erin Yvonne Dickey now holds the honor of "Best contrast to my current expression!" Exclamation point!

Ms. Dickey assures me that her sad expression relates to the fact that she did not have an adhesive strong enough to keep the P&A robot together; I should not, she says, take this as a sign. I assure you that I have very strong, body-builder-esque arms (though they don't look it) and I will not let Patrick go.

does your wedding have a moose?

When I started compiling links for this post, I felt like sharing some of our more indie/DIY/alternative wedding ideas might be fun or helpful for people to look at.

Then my mail arrived.

In the last two months, I have seen articles on sustainable and socially-responsible weddings in everything from ID to the New York Times, the Sierra Club, Brides magazine, and online wedding-overload-emporium, The Knot. This year has even seen the debut of an online wedding magazine devoted exclusively to green nuptials, portovert (which seems to be targeted more towards those interested in spa treatments and the color green).

With all of this recent press it seems like every publisher is just trying to make sure they aren't left behind in the coverage of green weddings. At a certain point, it all starts to just feel (unfortunately) like a fad. Still, if you are a magazine looking at jumping on to a wedding-theme bandwagon, sustainable weddings are a much better choice than jumping on (or maybe, for that matter, creating) other bandwagons.

None of this will stop me from adding my voice to the cacophony of eco-chatter.

What is interesting to me about this green-minded wedding trend is that the tone of most of these features, excluding the NYtimes and Sierra Club pieces, doesn't differ much from the regular Martha's Vinyard-linen-and-lace-caviar-canape fare normally seen in wedding mags. The main difference is more wildflowers in the decorations. I know there are good tips, and probably an earnest intern out there gathering the details for these articles, but does it seriously relieve anyone's concern over the state of our planet that, thank God, bachelorette getaways can now save the environment?

Now, I know that the demographics for these various activities probably skew towards each other, but having yoga retreats and serving vegetarian food does not necessarily make your wedding environmentally friendly. By offering a $100,000 budget option (vintage couture gowns?), portovert just makes the green wedding option conform to typical bridal rag standards of over-the-top-princess-for-a-day luxury. I just feel as though it makes it a fashion statement, rather than an exercise in considering the weight of your choices.

For all of the eco-hype this wedding season, change to the wedding industry does not seem to have taken real root. A lot of the options that I have seen bring to mind a Crate & Barrel catalog we got in the mail the other day that advertised things with "organic appeal" or "natural textures"—green-sounding language with no substance behind it. The "appeal" of being green appears to have garnered our cultural attention without too many efforts to change the status quo. Decisions that would have been simpler by being green-conscious are still simpler and those that would have been more difficult by demanding sustainable options still require that extra dedication and searching.

By choosing to feature seasonal, local flora and harvest crops, our decorations can be kept simpler and put off until closer to the event. Using a small-scale caterer has made that entire portion of the planning process a pleasure—their menu will be seasonal, locally-based and good and rustic. Meanwhile, tracking down recycled or Forest Stewardship Council-certified papers and soy-based inks for invitations has been an ongoing task of calling local printers and driving around to paper suppliers, only to find a limited range of options.

As for the moose, that was something that was made considerably easier (and more awesome) by seeking out a local, progressive events space. That moose is a resident of our event site (and a family heirloom of the president of the building's main tenant - no new moose were harmed in the planning of our wedding). The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center is home to Ecotrust, which has to be one of the coolest environmental organizations I know of (and, completely coincidentally, Amanda's workplace). They focus on preserving regional ecosystems through strengthening local cultural systems and economies - the way more conservation efforts should be undertaken. More importantly for our wedding, they renovated a great old warehouse in the first LEED gold-certified building restoration in the country, providing us with a beautiful venue for our wedding on their rooftop terrace, overlooking their very own green roof!
The building is stylish, urban, and accessible by public transportation (all things that many people don't think of when they imagine environmentalism as a bunch of hemp-clad hippies eating kamut-grain trail mix in the woods). In a way, I suppose that this reflects one of the good things about the recent green wedding articles—they all show weddings that manage to be green while still having modern, cool looks. The attitude has definitely changed about the appearances of the green movement. We just need to watch that being fashionable and green doesn't get confused with being fashionably green.
***
Maybe you'll call this all a case of "the pot calling the kettle black" and say that we are probably doing many of the same things, but I suppose that this whole craze over green weddings irritates me on the same level that "Organic Living" or "Real Simple" magazines do for their underlying absurdity.
We are just hoping that our choices don't get viewed solely in the light of the latest trend, but that they create a wedding that is meaningful to us and suitably reflects us and our quirky little city. So while everyone's wedding this season may be green, they don't all have a stuffed moose overseeing their celebration.

PS.
One of the best ideas we've seen was the result of a partnership by portovert and a carbon-credits company. They've taken the concept of purchasing carbon offsets and tailored their carbon offset calculator specifically toward the guest travel surrounding a wedding. Now that's a pretty cool result of the buzz around the green weddings.