We’ve both just posted write-ups of the last two days over on LiveJournal:
Category: Wedding
We made it!
Thanks to everyone who helped out with the wedding on Sunday, and thanks also to everyone who came!
It really was like a play – one with no rehearsals and only a half hour of blocking. (Sometime last week it hit me that what I was really nervous about was that this was the Actor’s Nightmare: performing a lead role in a play you barely knew and hadn’t rehearsed.) And like a play, it had its share of things that went wrong behind the scenes, but all the important things worked!
No, we’re not off on a honeymoon right now. Getting the wedding together was enough to plan, so we just spent Sunday night in a really nice hotel (the Surf and Sand resort in Laguna Beach) and went to Disney’s California Adventure today. (We’d never been to it.) We’ll work out where and when we’re going when we’ve got the time.
To anyone who’s curious: the Surf and Sand is very expensive, but it’s very much worth it. The view, the service, the amenities and the food are all fantastic, and there’s a lot of the resort we never even saw just for lack of time.
Anyway, I’m going to post a few Strange World photos and then go to bed.
Megajelly
In case you were wondering, this is what 5 kg of jelly beans looks like:
Things we’re not registering for
I got this ad a few years ago in my Science Fiction Book Club mailer and kept it for the fall-on-your-ass-laughing value. What with the picking out of china patterns that goes along with modern weddings, it seemed perfect to trot out now.
I’ve tried to find out if it’s possible to get just a set of mugs, which it wasn’t at the time. Maybe I should start hunting around on eBay……
This is why you plan ahead
It seems that Benton County, Oregon, has decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses until the state makes up its mind who can and can’t get married. For now, straight couples in the area will have to go to the next county over to get married.
The rationale, of course, is that they “need to treat everyone in our county equally” — even if it’s not clear whether they’re allowed to let one class of people marry.
So I suppose gay marriage can negatively impact straight marriage after all: (1) Longer lines at the courthouse might deter spur-of-the-moment weddings. (2) Confuse the clerks enough, and they’ll just throw up their hands and say “Come back tomorrow!”
Not that either is likely to happen here in über-conservative OC, but I am glad we’ve already picked up our license.
Registry
For those who are wondering, we’re still in the process of registering. We’ve got a partial registry at Target so far, and by the end of the week, we’ll also be registered at Robinsons-May.
(It’s been kind of tricky, since we already have a lot of the things people tend to register for. You know, toasters and stuff. So we’re trying to choose things we haven’t gotten around to picking up, or things that are worth replacing with newer/better equivalents.)
We keep talking about registering at Fry’s, but we’re not sure they’d even have a wedding registry!
Songs Not to Play at a Wedding
Remember the song “How’s it Gonna Be” by Third Eye Blind? When it was new, a lot of high schools apparently chose it for the prom theme, proving that teenagers don’t actually listen to the lyrics (it’s a breakup song), which should mitigate parental concerns about explicit lyrics.
Anyway, Katie and I were talking about this the other day and started tossing around titles of songs that would be just plain wrong to play at a wedding reception.
- You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette)
- Paradise by the Dashboard Light (Meat Loaf)
- Song for the Dumped (Ben Folds)
- Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
- Brick (Ben Folds Five)
- Playboy Mommy (Tori Amos)
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Deep Blue Something)
- Anything But Down (Sheryl Crow)
- Back to Good (Matchbox 20)
- Me and a Gun (Tori Amos)
- Anything by Liz Phair
- Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) (Vertical Horizon)
- Guys Like Me (Aimee Mann)
- Anything by Evanescence or Linkin Park
- Melanie (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
- Almost anything by They Might Be Giants
- Don’t Stand So Close to Me (The Police)
- Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)
- I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
- Anything by Rammstein
- Gollum’s Song
- Anything by the Chipmunks
- I Don’t Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
- Anything by Nirvana
- I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying (Sting)
- King of Pain (The Police)
- I’m Still Remembering (Cranberries)
- One More Minute (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
- If I Were Brave (Shawn Colvin)
- Jumper (Third Eye Blind)
- Yesterday (The Beatles)
- Roxanne (The Police)
- I’ll Never Tell (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
- Anything by Garbage
- Positively Fourth Street (Bob Dylan)
- Torn (Natalie Imbruglia)
- Taxi (Harry Chapin)
- The Freshmen (Verve Pipe)
- Power of Goodbye (Madonna)
- Waitress (Tori Amos)
- Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler)
- Uninvited (Alanis Morissette)
- Unsent (Alanis Morissette)
We’re not sure about The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (Loreena McKennit), since the subject matter is wrong, but they’re quiet and unobtrusive.
This is an open list – feel free to add your suggestions! The idea is not just to get something that isn’t appropriate, but something that’s especially inappropriate (breakup songs, twisted relationships, put-down songs, etc.)