After nine years together, Matt and I decided to get
married. Well, we had decided to get married before, but life happened, I
decided to run for office, etc., etc. So this time we were really going to get married.
And we were going to do it in Philadelphia, where I’m from. You would think
that perhaps we’re a little crazy trying to plan a wedding from across the
country. And while I’m running for office in San Francisco. And you probably
wouldn’t be wrong. But it was actually easier than we anticipated. It only really
required one trip to Philly to look at venues before deciding. We deliberately
selected a venue that was all-inclusive (ceremony, food, bar, centerpieces) so
we would just have to show up, and we were able to talk to most potential
vendors via Skype or phone. We did schedule another trip about 4 months before
the wedding, during which time we met with a florist and officiate and did our engagement photo shoot (included in our photography package) and our food and cake
tastings. Considering how organized we were in the process, the planning went
pretty smoothly.
I live much of my life by color-coded spreadsheets and
calendars. And wedding planning was no different. I had one master spreadsheet
with color-coded detailed tabs for things like
·
Budget and to-do lists;
·
Due dates;
·
Guest list (further sorted by local and
out-of-town guests—those who would get an out-of-town gift bag);
·
Out-of-town gift bag contents (and when and
where to purchase them);
·
Bridal party gifts (and when and where to
purchase them);
·
Information for rehearsal dinner, including
transportation configurations;
·
Seating;
·
Decorations list, including what, how much,
where and when ordered, and to where shipped (some things I shipped to us in
San Francisco, others I shipped to my dad’s in the Philly area);
·
Task list for rehearsal and rehearsal dinner
(what to bring, who brings what, logistics, etc.);
·
Task list for day-of, including a point person
for gratuities (all in separate, labeled envelopes) and a point person for
things such as gathering cards and gifts at the end of the night and collecting
all personal items;
·
Timelines in 15-minute increments for day before
and day of wedding;
·
Potential vendors for each specific service,
including name, contact information, price, notes, and specifics about the
agreement with whichever one we chose (e.g., hair, make-up, dj, photographer,
transportation, officiate);
·
Various traditions we thought about including
(highlighting the ones that were ultimately included);
·
Music list (songs to include and
do-not-play-under-any-circumstances);
·
Photography list (specific family configurations
or other shots we wanted to have);
·
Hotel block information; and
·
Honeymoon options
It sounds complicated, but being obsessive-compulsive about
organization is a survival method for me and ultimately makes my busy life much
easier.
The travel part ended up being a little more complicated and
not without some bumps. For starters, I left for the airport without my dress!
For all of my organization skills, this was a huge “oops” moment. We scheduled
a shuttle to the airport and got about 10 minutes away when I realized I didn’t
have my dress (which was still hanging in the back in the guest room while the
rest of our luggage was by the front door). The driver refused to go back
because of his schedule, so I jumped out and took the bus home to get my dress
and call a taxi. I’m usually annoyed that we’re always the first to be picked
up and the last to be dropped off, but it worked in our favor in this case.
Because we were the first to be picked up, we were still in the city and I
could easily get on the bus. Had we been the last to be picked up, we would
have been on the freeway to the airport and I would have had to get a taxi back
home and then back to the airport. So, $70 later, I arrived at the airport only
about 5 minutes after Matt. Our plane didn’t have a closet (silly United) so I
lay the dress flat in the overhead (sorry to hog the space, fellow travelers).
It worked out fine since I was going to have it steamed in Philly anyway.
When we arrived, we got a minivan since we would be doing
some shuttling for the rehearsal (for the record, I was reminded why I will
never own a minivan). We were fine for the first day and a half, and then on
the way to my hair trial we got a flat tire! I must have run over something
serious in a construction zone because the tire was completely flat and ripped
on the side. My hair gal actually came and picked me up while Matt waited for
AAA to tow it to a nearby rental place to exchange the vehicle. Our trial went
quickly enough (or AAA took long enough) that she dropped me back off at the
vehicle when we were done. Now THAT is customer service!
The rest of the prewedding days went fairly smoothly,
although we had a lot to do. One of our guests was staying at a hotel about an
hour away, so we drove out there to drop off the out-of-town guest bag, which
took some time. But that area had a lot of the stores we needed to go to (and
parking—thanks, suburbs!!), so it worked out well. In fact, one of our bumps
was helped here. I had realized that a couple of pages of the escort cards that
I designed were missing. Since I saved a master copy after spending hours upon
hours perfecting the alignment on the cards, I figured we could just pop into
an Office Max and buy more cards and print out the missing pages. That would
have worked well, except that Office Max’s printers were configured in a way
that wouldn’t align the Word doc to the template. Again, customer service was
great! The guy at the print center spent two hours with us trying to align
everything so it was perfect. We finally got it (even after a power outage in
the area).
The next day, the day of our rehearsal, was pretty hectic,
but also fun. We had stayed at a budget hotel near the airport for the free
parking, and on the morning of the rehearsal we were going to check in to the
Old City hotel where most of our guests were staying. Around 2:30 a.m., our
room at the budget hotel began to stink like cigarette and marijuana smoke. It
was so bad that Matt started to have an allergic reaction. We were able to go
to an unoccupied room around the corner and get a few hours of sleep, but it
was pretty draining. After a quick breakfast, we headed to Old City to meet up
with some friends and family who had arrived the night before and check in to
that hotel. My three bridal party members, my wonderful sister-in-law, and I
walked around the corner for mani-pedis and then lunch at Amada, which was a
lot of fun. We then came back to the hotel to freshen up for the rehearsal at
Valley Green Inn.
Matt and I had only seen the venue during winter, so we were
thrilled to see so much beautiful green. After wandering around the area and
taking in its beauty and coordinating with the venue on some logistics, we
actually rehearsed. My soul sister/maid of honor/voice of reason insisted that
I wear the shoes that I would wear for the wedding to practice, which ended up
being a very good idea. I knew then and there that those shoes were not going
to last beyond the ceremony. :-)
I also had a chance to see some of the decorations that my
dad and stepmother put together for us. Since we are avid travelers and
wanderers, our wedding theme was vintage postcards and travel. My dad and
stepmom found great old suitcases, which they decorated with tons of old travel
stickers they found on ebay. The goal was to stack them and leave the top one
open with luggage tags that spelled C-A-R-D-S strung across the top. The table
that the venue gave us for cards/gift was a bit small, though, so we just put
the smaller suitcase on the table and the larger suitcase (and it was large!)
in front of the table on its side. It worked great! And even better, my stepmom
brought a ton of postcards that we had sent them over the years to stuff into
the side pockets of the suitcase to add to the effect.
After the rehearsal we piled back into cars and battled
Schuylkill Expressway rush-hour traffic to get to City Tavern for our
dinner. We were really excited about this—almost as excited as the wedding
itself! We had been to City Tavern and love the food, the vibe, and the
atmosphere. It’s the oldest tavern in the country, built in 1773, and the
founders of the country and many revolutionaries broke bread there. The
original building suffered a fire in 1834 and was demolished in 1856, but was
rebuilt as a near-exact replica. The menu contains recipes the era, including
lots of delicious wild game and other foods from the 18th century. Some of the
dessert recipes are from Martha Washington, and some of the beers—the Ales of
the Revolution—are recipes from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and
Benjamin Franklin. The staff also dress in period garb and the tableware are
replicas from the 18th century. Our waitress was also one of the restaurant’s
historians, so we got a great schpeel on the history of the building and the
area. This was exactly what we wanted for our rehearsal dinner since nearly all
of our guests there (save my dad and stepmom and brother) were from out of town
and many had never been to Philly before.
Later that night, we joined some of our extended family and
friends who flew in and were staying in or near our hotel at the hotel bar. It
was a lot of fun hanging out with everyone, although it was hard to try to
divide our attention among so many tables of people who didn’t necessarily know
each other. We didn’t stay too late, of course, because tomorrow was a big day!
Matt and I stayed in a suite that night, and after breakfast
he went to one of the groomsman’s rooms to get ready and my bridesmaids, my
sister-in-law, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law came to the suite, where
champagne (and sparkling cider for the expecting) was waiting. After breakfast,
it seemed like there was plenty of time, but then the hair stylist came and then
the make-up person came and then the florist came and the photographers came
and it just went so quickly! We had a hoagie tray delivered around 11, and I
scarfed some food down before getting my make-up done. There was no way I was
passing up South Philly cannolis!
A shuttle was collecting us at 1:00 to take pictures around
the city (Elfreth’s Alley, Independence Hall, and the Art Museum), and Matt and
I were doing our “first look” at 12:45. We were going to do it beside the
hotel, but it was a little too windy so the photographer suggested a place
inside, which worked out really well. We had written each other letters, which
we read at our first look. By then the shuttle was there and we all loaded in
for our first stop for photos: Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest residential
street in the country, and Bladen’s Court off of Elfreth’s. It’s such a
beautiful spot, and we had great timing as there weren’t many people there. While
in Bladen’s Court, a large group of field trippers came and nicely waited for
us to finish taking pictures. When we came out, they were all excited and
clapped for us and yelled “congratulations.” It was very fun. We received the
same reaction from so many people walking around at each location—and I got tons
of compliments on my shoes, which I knew even then would not make it very long.
Our second stop was at Independence Hall. With the
new security measures in place after 9/11, it’s hard to stop and take pictures,
but we took a chance anyway. Our photographer is thankfully as adventurous as
we are and has our same philosophy of “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than
permission.” This worked to our advantage because when we were nearly finished
taking pictures a security guard approached us and told us that we were not in
one of the nine preapproved photography spots and would have to leave. We, of
course, thanked him for letting us know and were on our way. :-)
From there we headed to the Art Museum, where we
could all do our best Rocky impersonations. It was at the top of the famous
museum stairs where my feet finally had enough. We got some great shots at the
top, but I lost the shoes coming down and then switched to flip flops in the
shuttle.
By the time we finished with the photos we were hungry. We
asked the shuttle driver to make a pit stop at a Wawa for some snacks. We were
also tired! I think some of us dozed for a little bit on the way to the venue. After
all that excitement, it was hard to believe we still had a wedding to do! When
we arrived at the venue, I was so excited to see all of our details come
together. The place cards that I designed looked great next to the seating
chart that listed all of the table names (various cities around the world we’ve
traveled to together). And the guest book table looked beautiful with the
frames we put together describing the significance of our rosemary wreath
(love, loyalty, and remembrance in Czech, German, and Polish tradition) and
describing our donation to the Human Rights Campaign as part of our dedication
to each other in honor of our friends and loved ones who don’t have the same
right to marry as we do. The Chinese lanterns also looked great on the patio
for the reception, and our cake was beautiful. We had hired a Ben Franklin
impersonator to greet guests and mingle during the cocktail hour, so it was fun
watching people talk with him from the bar. I was also thrilled with the
weather! A week prior to the wedding weather.com predicted rain for our wedding
day, but it turned out to be sunny and beautiful and not too cool or warm.
The second shuttle, which had collected all of our
out-of-town guests from the hotel, was running a little late, and I was worried
that we wouldn’t start on time, but they arrived just in time and I think we
were only about 5 minutes late to start. Everything was a big blur from there!
The bridal party walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of the Hawaiian Wedding Song, then I walked down
with my dad to Train’s Marry Me. We
had the Hawaiian Oli Aloha chant
played after I arrived at the front of the aisle. It was actually supposed to
start after we settled in, just before the ceremony was actually to begin. But
the song seemed to transition right into the chant, so we missed most of it as
my dad was giving Matt a hug and going to his seat and then Matt and I were
saying hello to each other. Our officiate was great—we chose him because of his
openness, his work performing same-sex marriages, and his work with the Native
American population (some of his pay from weddings goes toward Native American
causes). We also had a San Francisco connection: he had lived here briefly in
the 70s. We had written the ceremony to reflect us and our story, and it came
across beautifully, if say so myself. :-) We also did a
log-cutting ceremony, an old German tradition that shows the couple can work
together to accomplish a task.
We were most excited about our ring bearer shark, which I lovingly
named Sheldon the Shark. When the officiate asked if we had rings, the best man
shrugged and signaled that he didn’t know he was supposed to have the rings.
Just then the Jaws theme music started up and Sheldon “swam” down the aisle
(attached to a remote control shark car to make sure the wind didn’t take him
away). Our rings were attached to the car (secret: the best man had them the
whole time—we weren’t going to take any chances of the car accidentally going
into the creek). Why a shark? I have a longtime fascination with sharks,
especially great whites. I have been diving with galapagos and reef sharks in
Hawai’i and with great whites in South Africa. I had read about a similar ring
stunt on a wedding board and knew that we had to replicate it.
We finished the ceremony and exited to Vicente Fernández’s La Yegua Palomina, which started our
Mariachi-themed cocktail hour. While guests were cocktailing, we took some more
formal shots with family and with Ben Franklin. After only a few photos I knew
that my feet were finally finished with those shoes and someone retrieved my
flip-flops for me.
The rest of the reception went really fast. We had our
parents introduced to Eye of the Tiger
and the bridal party introduced to the Magnum
PI Theme Song. We were introduced to I
Think I Wanna Marry You. I had joked that we should be introduced as Dr.
and Mr. Bacharach, but Matt wasn’t having any of that. J After that, we had a
short compilation played that joked about our taking nine years to get married:
It’s been a long road getting from there
to here; We’ve been together since way back when; Took the long way round.
Then our first dance song played: Christine McVie’s Songbird. It was a little weird being the center of attention for
long. We were thankful for dinner to be served as we were starved by then. Matt
and I both ordered the duck, and we also had a prime rib dish to share since we
didn’t get a chance to taste it at our tasting. The food was good, and in
between courses we tried to get to as many tables as possible to say hello and
thank them for coming. After dinner, my uncle, a talented professional singer,
sang Once in Love with Amy and had me
sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow,
which he recalled me “performing” often as a kid. It was fun, although I don’t
know how many people may have enjoyed my karaoke-like singing! :-)
We then cut our beautiful cake to Kurt Elling’s I Feel So Smoochie and opened the dance
floor. It seemed like people were having fun, although Matt and I were
preoccupied trying to make it to every table and say hello to everyone. I felt
really badly about not being able to talk more and spend more time with many
friends who hadn’t seen in a long time, many of whom traveled quite a distance
to be there. Suddenly, I was led to a chair and people started gathering around
to lift me up. I had a feeling that would happen (although it usually comes
after the Hora!), but I didn’t realize how frightening it was to be literally
in the hands of others! At one point I was falling forward and sliding off of
the front of the chair. I kept yelling that I was falling, and all of the guys
kept yelling back that they had me. A friend realized what I was saying and
pushed me back up into the chair from the front. When I was let down, it took a
few minutes before I could get up. :-)
Everything just went so quickly, and before I knew it, Matt
was telling me that the DJ was about to play our last song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. And
just like that, we were all getting ready to leave! But the party wasn’t quite
over: the shuttle was making a stop at Tony Luke’s cheesesteaks in South
Philly. We arrived at Tony Luke’s and everyone was very nice. The guy in front
of us drunkenly “announced” us and then bought our cheesesteaks! He also gave
us his ticket stub from that night’s Phillies game. It was a lot of fun, and
hard to believe the night was nearly over!
The next day we met a bunch of friends and family at one of
our favorite spots for lunch: Famous Fourth Street Deli. It was great to hang
out in a less formal setting. There happened to be a street festival on South
Street that day, so we moseyed along South to Front and then slowly made our
way back to the hotel. We relaxed a bit and then went to an Afghan restaurant
for dinner with Matt’s parents and a friend. We tried to get back early to pack
to leave for Europe the next day.
Before heading to the airport, we met my dad and stepmom for
brunch. We also gave them a bunch of things from the wedding, including my
dress, to ship back to us later. It was nice to see them, although I was
anxious to get to the airport since we were running a little later than I
anticipated. On our way to the airport, we hit our final bump in the wedding
travel: we got into a car accident! Rather, a guy in a very large truck backed
into our vehicle and smushed in the front. Thankfully, we didn’t have a huge
delay at the rental car return and made it to the airport in time. From there,
we were off to Europe, which is a story for another blog!
Ps: See more wedding pictures here.
Pps: At the last minute (about 3 weeks before the wedding)
we decided to also hire a videographer. I let Matt take care of that process
since his background is in television and he knew what he was looking for, so
it wasn’t included on my spreadsheet. I’m glad that we did hire a videographer
because there were so many things that I missed. For example, while Matt and I
were mingling with another table and taking pictures, someone wheeled my mother
in her wheelchair onto the dance floor and everyone danced around her. My
cousin’s husband busted out some serious Michael Jackson moves another time. I
didn’t see any of that during the wedding, but was able to see it on the video.
It was also fun watching our ceremony as an observer. I can’t say that we’ll
watch it often, or maybe even ever again (even as the bride it got pretty
boring about halfway through), but it was a good decision to get it and I’m
glad we have it. And I’m sure that Matt’s relatives who couldn’t make the trip
will enjoy seeing the ceremony part.
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