Now I know a picture's worth a thousand words, so the one thing we did agree on was that we didn't need any video... still shots would tell our wedding story. Great, second thing was finding a photographer - I didn't really care about this but I did know what I wanted to spend... no more than $500 for the day. Why? Because I just wanted them to show up and snap pics, we'd pose after the ceremony but otherwise they would just be recording the days events. Seriously I planned on leaving a disposable camera on everyones table and figured crowd candids could fill in the gaps between pictures of ourselves. Can you tell how off-track I am yet?
I had spent so much time making albums of my trips that there was no way I was going to trust anyone else to do that. I wanted my friends, family and the hired shooter to hand me a shit load of .jpg's and I'd handle the rest, touching up with Photoshop and adding effects when the shot called for it. I've never been a big fan of still photography effects, so I figured I'd just add that stuff in if my wife & friends agreed this could enhance it. I could create the framers and eventually an album she could remember the big day with.
So now that you know how I feel, I'll tell you how it's actually gonna go down.
Apparently my budget wasn't high enough for my love, and she decided to take her tax return and invest it into our wedding photography. Lets just say it was WAY higher than I had imagined, and I'm perfectly fine with her taking this on by herself since "posed" shots won't mean nearly as much to me as "candid's" in the long run. Brides have their ideas, and we just need to agree and accept them sometimes. She was very generous to work this out herself, and I've agreed to "perform" whenever she needs me to. I still hope to make my own albums, focusing more on the event than on her & I.
Enter BlueFlair Photography, Nikki was a former coworker of Dorothy's, she and her partner had built a great website promoting their wedding style... my fiancee was in love, again. Now as a member of the media for the past whatever years I'm well aware of retouching, and airbrushing, and all that fancy stuff that makes one look different after digital enhancements. I'm not impressed, but she is, and she wanted everything that most brides want including the book and an engagement session, in addition to their work on the big day. Fine, after a bit of arguing I surrendered, she wanted the expensive professional since they had agreed to knock a nice chunk off the price tag and their package included everything she was looking for.
I guess I should be happy, we're getting great work done for a discount, my Donia is getting what she wants, and I'm not paying for it. The first step was getting to know the ladies and what they had to offer, an experience I didn't require since they didn't need to sell their services on me, their only job at this point was to not miss the big moments. After an evening of planning and deciding on the package we wanted we planned our engagement photo session, we knew it was gonna be on the cliffs during the spring flower season.
Dot & I have always held a special place in out hearts for the Sunset Cliffs and we knew that early April it would be in full bloom. We hit up Macy's for some nice clothes and met the photographers at the cliffs one evening for our session. The flowers did not disappoint, and neither did BlueFlair, we found some nice places to pose and they proceeded to shoot us from all the angles. I like working with Nikki & Stefanie, after a few minutes I started to understand what all the money is for, they bring out your personality and help you feel comfortable in front of the camera.
They also bring along special filters, lighting enhancers and a makeup artist. I don't encourage my wife-to-be to wear makeup, but will admit that a little mascara makes her already brilliant eyes glow in a fascinating way. They caught us in the dwindling light and impressed me a few weeks later with great shots of us silhouetted against the sunset. Additionally I'm well aware of the hours they spend in post making sure every hair is in place and no shadows or power lines are distracting our photographs, after doing the math for two photog's AND a makeup artist I've decided it's well worth the money.
I'm now very excited that they are shooting our wedding, and rest a little easier at night knowing they'll have everything under control making one less thing for me to worry about.A shorter story about the invites.
This is fun, really, putting all of your friends down and deciding who's important enough to make the cut. (that was sarcasm)
This went on for a while, everyone that had emailed me or called me in the last two years was on the list. Of course it's hard to really decide how big that list is gonna be till you know where you're having the wedding, so the list was big. I think we had over 200 people on it at one point, and once we decided on Las Rocas we narrowed it down to 180 or so.
Now comes the fun part, getting everyones email address... our plan was to email everyone our "Save the Date" promoting jasonanddorothy.com and requesting their snail-mail address. I'm a big fan of technology and still think this was a good idea, it saves the earth and a hell of a lot of work in the long run. I started my "wedding list" excel file that as I write this today, is still the main spot I come back to when checking stats for our big day. It totals up the attendees, how many bus riders and contains info on gifts and address for the eventual thank you notes. It's even telling me who's in what car going down Friday for our rehearsal dinner... ridiculous, I know.
Once we had the list narrowed down it was time to order the invites. Now having a designer as one of my groomsman I again thought we could just whip something up and send it to the printer. Wrong again, all that custom shit costs extra bucks... we found a nice gray/yellow invite on zazzle.com - you could design all of the wording, choose your own font and also have matching RSVP cards. After a few weeks deliberation we ordered these invites and enough envelopes for them and the RSVP cards, the price was right and we were on time for our early May send.The last step was easy, once I figured out how it's done. Of course ideally every invitation, all 117 of them, should be handwritten by some fancy calligrapher. No thanks, I found some clear labels and printed them out myself. Once we had them all addressed & stamped, including the return envelope, they went in the mail!
Overall the response was average, we're looking at about 60 for the rehearsal dinner Friday & 100 for the wedding.
"And it won't mean a thing in a hundred years" -Blues Traveler
OK, I'm back in San Diego and its time to start living like a local once again. I hadn't stayed put for more than a few weeks in almost a year and I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with my social network, in person.
Damon had moved in, with a vengeance. We had spoken briefly before he starting making changes, he was all about creating a happy environment for a few reasons; he wanted my recently reacquired love, Dorothy, to feel comfortable if she was hanging out at her old residence; he didn't want me to be too reminded of what her & I had here; and the place was old, so he wanted to brighten up the dingyness as much as possible. I was all for it, so when I got back he had painted all of the wood paneling white, and added in some nice artsy elements to mellow out the place.My new Pagan friend/roommate Damon seemed to be exactly what I needed, I was not interested in moving in with a person I had known forever, I'd gone down that road before and knew that the overall result would be anti-motivational. I have a tendency to hang out if I know the person I'm living with, and we get into trouble easily. This guy, although I enjoyed his company, had his own life and his own friends leaving me plenty of time to find my own path.
Life goes on, during the day I was driven to look for work whenever I wasn't studying or working for Hat Trick. In the evenings I was eating dinner with family or friends, and trying to work out my future. I stayed up late with my OB family and got up early to login to my virtual one.
Lots of changes were about to happen, I just didn't know how fast
Sometime during mid-October Dorothy was informed by her roommate (she'd been living there just over a month) that he was going to be moving to New Zealand, she needed to find a new roommate or another place to live by December 1st.
So I'm faced with the ultimate ultimatum, how serious was I about getting back together with her? Her summer infidelity was still fresh in my mind but I wouldn't be with her if I wasn't trying to make it permanent. Kicking Damon out was not an option, she wasn't moving back in anyway, she hated that place and all of the nastiness that came with it. (it was an old house, lot's of mold had accumulated over the years and nothing short of demolition was going to save it.) So my decision is either move into her place or find a new one.
It wasn't really much of a choice, other than losing my bachelor pad everything was working out the way I had hoped. I had really planned on keeping the cheap rent till I landed myself some full time employment, but she agreed that if we were doing this she would be on board to help me out during any tough times... she really wanted to grow up and create a real home, with me. The signs were there, it was time.Now I needed to explain it to Damon, from my side of things it all seemed to be worked out, but I needed to solidify my decision with a concrete commitment to her therefore justifying to Damon why, after living with him for two weeks, I was giving my notice. He understood, he is a true romantic at heart and knew he would have no problem finding another roommate... he was pretty stoked to inherit 4741 and I was happy to leave it to a friend.
So her & I do a bit of apartment shopping, I've agreed to move in with her at the end of November, we just needed a place. Apartment hunting isn't fun, and I won't bore you with the details. We saw a bunch of places but no decisions were getting made yet, I was busy working with Zach, planning our Halloween trip to the desert and actually obtaining the ring in preparation for the big day.
Nancy was a few grades behind me at C.E. McCall Middle School when I met her, she was the quiet daughter of Jackie's Sister, Cindy. She moved here maybe ten years ago, after some time she met Dino, and they got married on the Sunset Cliffs... it was a beautiful ceremony and a fun reception, Dorothy & I had such a great time dancing & spending time together I was sure the decision I'd made was the right one.
The Proposal
On the cliffs, we were tired from apartment hunting so I asked if we could de-compress for a few minutes before heading to Dad's for dinner.
I walked her out onto a promontory, actually got a little lost and ended up on a rather precarious/narrow spot. She went to sit down, I made her stand, grabbed her hand, knelt down and asked her if she was ready... she was like, are you serious?
So I poured my heart out for about 90 seconds, asked her if she would marry me and she responded "yes" as I was reaching in my pocket. I presented the ring, her jaw dropped and I removed it and put it on her finger. She was shaking as she hugged and kissed me.... after a few minutes of her being like "I can't believe this is happening" we were walking away and some crazy blond was yelling for us...So we waited as she joined us up the hill, she said she was visiting from Florida and saw the whole thing, and took pictures of it. She wanted our email address so she could send us the shots. (I still haven't gotten them :( )
I thought that was pretty cool, wish I could have found a more secluded spot but the mild crowd seems to have worked out. A few peeps were watching, I guess we drew a crowd and a runner came up and congratulated us. Cute & Embarrassing, totally OB.
The next day I gave notice to my landlord Nick, he was cool and promised to drop some papers off to complete the official side of transferring the lease to Damon, I would be moving out of the Brown House by December 1st. Nick was happy he wouldn't need to find another tenant, and I was glad to leave someone I know in such a convenient spot. I think Damon was so grateful he lent me the biggest tent I've ever been in, it had three rooms & could hold a dance party. He also lent us a double thick inflatable mattress, all of this was in preparation for the "ocho" as we've come to refer to Phish 8.
Zach made the drive down with a ton of camping crap, and once we made it to Indio the caravan was complete for our entrance into the show. I could probably write more but the pictures tell the story just fine. The shows were great and we had a blast seeing old friends. I was a Tibetan Monk for Halloween, otherwise known as "Fee, the Buddhist Prodigy" a character from one of their earliest songs.
To be continued...
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| Campo de Los Ochos Locos |
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| Hippieshop Bus |
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| Sunday Night |
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