Item! We are moving back to Chicago. I’ve accepted a job as the Director of Production at Some Reasonably Important Theatre Company. And we are moving next month, because it didn’t seem like enough to plan a wedding (with significant DIY components) and train for a marathon (which takes place 2 weeks before the aforementioned wedding)…we decided to throw in wrapping up one job, starting a new one, and a cross-country move into the mix as well. If I survive to November it will be amazing. On the upside, if we survive until November, we will be married, living in Chicago, and I’ll have an awesome new job.

whoever told you that you could save some money by printing your own wedding invitations was clearly smoking crack rolled up in those $100 bills they saved on printing costs. because, if we value our time at $20/hour, these are $2000 worth of wedding invitations. fortunately, we also happen to like making stuff.

my mother is a mosaic artist, and she made this beautiful birdhouse for me several years ago. up till now, the only creatures who wanted to live in there have been spiders. Ben joked that if birds ever moved in, they’d find a fully-stocked fridge (assuming they were of the spider-eating variety of bird, i guess).

a few weeks ago we noticed that a pair of birds have actually built a nest inside! they sail back and forth with bits of grass and twigs in their beaks, and will never go inside the house if they think that we are watching, but hop about the branches of a nearby tree and call to one another. when you stand near the bird house you can hear a softer cheep-cheeping, so high pitched it almost seems like crickets. lately there is a ruffle of movement that is audible as well. zeke lays on the porch in the morning sun and chirps back at the parent birds, who scold him relentlessly for getting too close to the nest. the laziest Mighty Hunter that there ever was, zeke seems to hope that if he just lays there long enough, one of the baby birds will fall into his mouth. i think mama bird has the good sense to wait until zeke goes inside for the afternoon.

i entered into the wedding planning process with the utmost confidence. “i am smarter than the wedding industry,” i assured myself. don’t try to tell me i need to buy monogrammed disposable cocktail napkins. and what does picking spirit colors have to do with getting married anyway?? also, i can organize the shit out of an event — i’m a professional event organizer! and then…fast forward 5 months, and i find myself designing my own wedding dress and hand-making all 105 of our wedding invitations out of repurposed national geographic maps. what happened?

the wedding industrial complex (WIC) uses the same sort of ominous fear tactics that the network nightly news uses: “is there something your doctor isn’t telling you? tonight on ABC news at 10”. here. i’ll open up my email box and provide a selection:

– Your color scheme for the wedding has the power to set the vibe – so choose wisely.
– Not to freak you out or anything but picking your the bridal party is very important.
– You’re engaged — that means it’s time to step up your beauty routine.
– 20 details every bride forgets: Think you’ve got it all covered? Well, we’re betting there are at least a couple items on this list you missed.
– Only 5 More Months to Get the Ultimate Bridal Body. Click here to feel great in your gown
– Wedding Details Not to Freak Out About: On your wedding day, the little things can seem like big issues
– 20 biggest planning mistakes brides make: These common missteps can add up to big problems on your wedding day — but luckily, you can avoid them now.
– 20 WAYS YOU’RE SABOTAGING YOUR WEDDING

oh and that last one? i didn’t add the caps. i mean…back the fuck off, right!? it’s also a strange phenomenon that the instant that you get engaged, the internet just knows. and begins sending you things like “how to get the bridal bod your fiance has been dreaming of!” or “super cute BM gifts under 5.99!”* and also dress sample sales, dates at Macy’s to register for gifts while drinking free champagne, bridal expos, and, i swear this is true, an invitation to audition for this reality show in which four brides attend each other’s weddings, award one another points, and the winner gets an all-expenses-paid honeymoon.

i think where we really get into trouble is that the WIC is really into the DIY wedding right now, and coincidentally, we happen to love making things. the theatre business is all about finding the hack in order to 1) save money, and 2) get exactly what you want. repurpose materials to do things their makers never intended, mix your own paint to get *exactly* the right color, build a coffee table to the exact dimensions. applying that to my own situation: can’t find/afford the perfect wedding dress? then design your own and get your costume designer friend to make it. well, there *is* hidden cost. it turns out that still requires 4 visits to bridal salons to try on dresses, untold number of hours trolling the interwebs for research images, pinterest boards assembled and curated, sketches, trips to new york to swatch fabric, to chicago to meet with costume designer friend, to vancouver for dress fittings after your designer moves to cananda, and THEN still hiring a local stitcher to finish off the dress and, probably, hours of hand-finishing by yours truly while watching trash tv into the wee hours of the night just days before the wedding. the same routine applies to our wedding website (those prefab ones just aren’t as good as the fabulous one that ben has spent countless hours building), our invitations (we love old maps), wedding favors…ben points out that the problem is that we have very discerning taste.

where is the sanity in this madness? i’m pretty sure it lines in the fact that while this project constantly feels like it is ballooning out of control (every to-do item spawns 2 more items, like Mickey and the Sorcerer’s magic brooms), this at feels like a project that ben and i are doing together, and each contributing according to our strengths. not surprisingly, i’m pretty good at organizing an event. wrangling a budget, resources, schedule, audience, talent, and vendors? that’s what i do for a living. i had spreadsheets already made up for this. ben, as the one who actually has a degree in the design field, well, turns out he’s really good at designing things. like our wedding invitations. turquoise and orange? who knew that would work? answer: ben did. (again, it’s good that we abandoned the whole “we have to pick two colors and conduct our wedding in the shadow of mocha & baby pink, or jade & sapphire”** plan). and our rockin’ wedding website? all ben. the online RSVP system will be a game changer. (mail-in RSVP cards, your days are over). and we actually both love making/organizing things. it’s only overwhelming because there is SO MUCH of it to do and there’s this intimidating sense that if we don’t work on the wedding every night after work, we are slipping even further behind on the to-dos. Like an army of Mickey’s magic brooms are sneaking up behind us. that’s where i blame the WIC and its fear tactics.

the goodness is that if we survival all of this, on October 21 we’ll wake up and 1) be married, and 2) know that we can face the next project, and all the future projects that come our way, as a team. and in the end, isn’t *that* the point of getting married?

xoxo

*please, no one ever refer to a bridesmaid as a BM ever again, okay?
** what IS IT with people picking the most pretentious color names for their wedding colors anyway? mocha and baby pink? don’t you mean pink and brown?

i’m training for the See Jane Run half marathon in Alameda in early June, so my long runs have been creeping up in length. this weekend was a 10-miler that, despite the fact that i ran most of it uphill (home to the end of the fire trail at Strawberry Canyon, then back to the start of the trail), felt pretty good and left pretty much no risidual soreness the next day. it always feels good to ‘touch’ a distance that i haven’t reached in a while. just how long a while, however, was a bit horrifying when i went back through my training logs and discovered that the last time i’d broken into double digits for a run length was AT the big sur marathon in april of 2010. it’s been two years since i ran a single 10 miler?? yikes.