Marriage Mondays: Call for November Submissions

Would you like to submit a guest post for Marriage Mondays? If so, I'd love to read it! In exchange for your troubles, you get full linkage and some awesome promotional tweets. I get the honor of having a new voice chime in and share their perspective on marriage. : )

For November 2011, which is coming up oh, so soon, I'm still forgoing the traditional submission process and doing an open submission. In other words, you're not limited to what's posted on the calendar (though you are welcome to submit under those topics, too). Instead, I'm leaving the topic choice up to you. What have you experienced in marriage that you'd like to talk about? How has marriage changed you in good (and bad) ways? I want to hear it all!

Email me. Can't wait!

Stay tuned! The real post is up in just an hour! : )

Do you subscribe to Not the Marrying Kind? If not, you should! It's free and fun and it means you automatically get new posts when the blog is updated. No having to check back! Click here for more details.

Dance to the Music

Once again, the week has flown by! I almost can't believe it's Friday. Last week, I woke up on Friday in disbelief and I feel the same way today. Don't worry...I'm not knocking it. I love it when my work week flies by and gets me to that weekend faster. And this week has been crazy, though I got to leave work on time twice, which is a treat. Usually it's just one day and that's because I barrel out of there to make it to my guitar lesson on time.

Speaking of...we're coming up on recital time again. This time, I'm going to save face and practice like hell. I'm still nervous as all get out about being up on stage in front of strangers again, but I feel more confident this time around. It's been hard to muster up the wherewithal to practice lately, but I'm going to push myself to get it together over the next couple of weeks. Maybe, MAYBE I'll have A.P. take a video and post it. I'm debating. The thing is, I still can't sing with my sad voice, so I may skip it.

Now, on to bigger and better things. This week, I have another submission for you. This gorgeous wedding comes from an amazing photographer that a wonderful reader turned me on to. Chris Diset is an Orange County photographer who takes the most amazing photos! His second shooter/Not the Marrying Kind reader, Debra, wrote me raving about this amazing photographer. She sent me the link to his site and I fell in love. I also feel really lucky, because Chris is so cool he let me choose which of his lovely weddings I got to feature. But when I saw Brooke and Dave's wedding, it was all over. This wedding is filled with lovely details and the location is to die for! Check it out!

Can you believe that was a country club?? I'm usually such a big fan of super unique venues or small and handmade weddings, and I have to admit that this wedding is not my normal fare. But I kind of fell hard, and when Deb told me that it was a country club, my jaw dropped a little. It was so picturesque. Plus, that cake? And the couple seems so fun! I just loved it. Thanks again Deb for telling me about Chris! And thanks again Chris for letting me feature your gorgeous photos! You can check out Chris's blog here for more fantastic photography.

This weekend, A.P. and I are super psyched to enjoy three whole days together. We were going to go out of town, but I think we're going to do a bit of a staycation/day trip instead. We are talking about doing our tradition of going to Edwards Apple Orchard. Other than that, maybe we will see 50/50. We tried last weekend, but ended up getting stuck at the restaurant and missing our show. So, even though we need a mini-vacation and we're NOT taking one, I'm super psyched to hang out with my hubzband (That's my ghetto word for him. You love it.). What are YOU up to this weekend??

In the mean time, here are your dance moves for the week:

10 Unforgettable Wedding Moments

Loft Living

Love this article about one of my new favorite movies, Bridesmaids

13 separates...31 days of style

I'm green with envy that I will never own this.

Sadness.

Odd, yet beautiful.

I want to go to there.

I actually scored some of this. Can you handle it?? Specifically this and this. And I got both at Target for the regular price...not on eBay way, way over the retail price. Score!

And thanks to Musing on Beauty, I'm loving this. Catchy, catchy, catchy!

(Friday dance photo via here; Brooke and Dave's wedding photographed at Marbella Country Club by Chris Diset of Chris Diset Photography; Even coordinated by Leslye Hanson; Florals by Pamela Lowe Florals)

Wedding Wednesday: Other Side of the Aisle Submission

Hi lovelies! I'm so excited to FINALLY introduce you to one of our newest features around here on NTMK: real brides. The feature is called Other Side of the Aisle, because these real bride submissions are a bit different than other sites in that you have to have been married for a wee, little while. This won't be something you see every week, but rather once in a while. (It is also one of the different types of submissions I accept, if you're interested in being a NTMK real bride yourself, or submitting to any other features, check out the guidelines here.)

Helen is one of the lovely ladies who writes the blog Bettencourt Chase. She's an amazing photographer along with her wife, Lindi. And I'm so excited that she submitted her lovely real bride submission to Not the Marrying Kind. Their wedding was so filled with love and was so pretty (and totally budget friendly). They are both brave, amazing women to get married in a place that does not always welcome same sex marriages with open arms. And they didn't do it to be political or prove a point (although I'm pretty sure they did despite the fact that that was not their intention). They did it simply because they loved each other and because as Helen said, "I just knew that I wanted to know her for the rest of my life." Is that not the sweetest?? I hope you enjoy reading about this lovely, handmade wedding as much as I did!

1. First, please list and link (or provide link for) all vendors since it’s important that we give credit where credit is due (your credit is this post and the fame that will come from it). Remember, anybody you HIRED for ANYTHING gets listed
here. Future husbands/wives don’t count.

Photography: Stephen Ironside of Ironside Photography (http://www.ironsidephotography.com/) and Darby Ironside (flickr.com/dgieringer)

(Everything else, we did ourselves. Flowers: bought in bulk from Sam's Club. Food: made by Lindi, me, my sister and my mother. Decorations and favors: DIY. Music: iPod playlist and the building's sound system.)

2. Did you ever envision getting married? Did you know you would marry your partner right away?

I was never one of those little girls who cut out pictures of wedding dresses and pretended to be the bride during play time. Once I was older and dating, I thought vaguely about spending the rest of my life with those I had the most serious relationships with, but still never imagined my wedding or marriage in any concrete way. Then, I met Lindi. At first, when we were just friends and not romantically involved at all, I just knew that I wanted to know her for the rest of my life- and then, when we started dating, everything just sort of fell into place. Even before we formalized it by getting engaged and then married, we both knew we had a "for life" sort of thing. We bought our engagement rings about eight months into our relationship (and proposed- to each other!- a few months after that) and went from there.


3. What was your engagement like? Did you enjoy being engaged? Did you struggle with the idea of marriage? Or were you all, “I got this”?

We were engaged for 16 months. We moved in together four months after we got engaged and a year of wedding planning and craftiness commenced! Being engaged was a lot of fun, actually. We got to be all giggly and show off our pretty rings and tell people about it. Once I was with Lindi, I didn't struggle with the idea of marriage at all. That wasn't really true of our families, though. The majority of our close friends and family were supportive, but there were several that didn't agree with our choice (mostly for religious reasons, and one or two for age reasons, because they felt that at 21 and 25 we were too young to be getting married.)

4. How long did you take to plan your wedding?

16 months! It was actually a little long, if you ask me. I think 8-12 months would have been better. 16 months meant that things could kind drag out a long time. That might be great for some couples, but I really like GETTING THINGS DONE. That was hard to do that far ahead, sometimes. Honestly, I think we could have planned the whole shindig in about three months.

5. What was your budget (ballpark ranges are fine, too)?

If I had to sum up our budget in a nutshell, that nutshell would say: "As little as possible while still being pretty and awesome!" We were paying for it almost entirely ourselves, and we were poor college students about to go into our last year of university at the time. In the end, we spent about $2000 on the wedding. Here's how it broke down:

Wedding attire (for two brides: dresses- from the formals section of a department store, not a wedding boutique/store, a second dress for me when I couldn't make up my mind, funky shoes, special undergarments, materials for the veils I made): $400
Venue (we rented a community building near where we live): $100
Food (that is, supplies to make the desserts we baked and punch) and dishes: $300
Decorations including material to make tablecloths and new curtains for the building: $200
Save the Dates and Invitations (materials to make them): $100
Bridal gifts (jewelry for each other): $200
Bridesmaids' gifts (pearl earrings) and mother of the brides' gifts: $200
Rehearsal dinner (homemade) for approximately 20 people: $200
Flowers (bought in bulk), mason jars to put them in, ribbon and florist tape for the bouquets: $150
Other materials for centerpieces (wooden frames, photo printing): $50
Favors (photo magnets, Hershey's kisses, little cellophane bags and ribbon): $50
Photography: Free as a gift by our close friends who do wedding photography
Officiant: Free, a family friend
Music: An AWESOME iPod playlist and the sound system already in the building

We opted out of videography, a DJ/band, alcohol at the reception (it was in the middle of the day.)

If we had not had the option of having our two very talented and wonderful friends as our photographers, we would have cut back on other things or saved more to add to the budget to allow for a good photographer. We are both photographers ourselves, and that was one of the most important "details" for us.

6. What was the hardest thing about planning your wedding?

The hardest thing about planning our lesbian wedding in the VERY red part of the country that we live in (that is, Arkansas, with the wedding in Oklahoma). It was rough at times. We had friends and family that didn't understand our choice to be with one another, and several very important people made the decision to not be there with us on our wedding day. It was hard, and sad. However, we had so many amazing, wonderful people there that did support us.

7. What was the easiest thing about planning your wedding?

Choosing each other! Hah. Seriously, though, it might have been finding my dress (though not Lindi's.) I found my dress on accident, actually, when I wasn't even looking for one yet. We had only been engaged for about a month and I was shopping with my mother when I saw the prom section at the department store we were in was all marked down after prom. Never one to turn down a pretty dress, I tried a few on and ended up getting one. I said, why not? It's 95% off and is only $23. If I choose something else later, it wasn't like it was expensive. Anyway, I ended up looking at lots of other stores and dresses (and even buying a second, inexpensive, not-very-wedding-dressy dress) but wore the first one in the end.

8. What was your favorite detail in your wedding? If it was a DIY already on the internerd, do link some instructions, please.

I really loved our guest book cards- they were cream card stock, about 3"x2", with prompts on them like "Love is..." or "We wish for you..." for the guests to write on. I think we actually might have gotten them from the Martha Stewart website, of all places, though I couldn't find the template there when I went back to look. They were a big hit. We went home after the reception and read them all, and it was amazing. I also love that we (along with my sister and mother) made all of the food- over 1000 cookies, brownies, tarts and cupcakes. Lindi and I loooove to bake, so I thought that was really a personal, "us" part of the wedding.

9. How much did your now partner help you with the wedding planning? Did wedding planning affect your relationship either during the planning process or after you got married?

We did it all together. It was one benefit of marrying a girl- at least there were no societal expectations that one of us would hate the wedding planning process and be bored about it all. It was stressful at times (like when the glue ran on half of the magnets we were making as favors, or when our oven broke during the week before the wedding when we were in super baking mode, or when people didn't agree with where we were having the wedding or the fact that we were having a wedding in the first place) but we got through it. There was one very stressful day when everything seemed to be going wrong all at once when we almost just decided to elope, but in the end, I'm glad we didn't. The wedding was worth it.

10. What was the best advice you got as a bride-to-be/bride/married person? (If you got good advice for all three situations, either pick a favorite or briefly explain each. You be the judge. It’s okay. I trust you.)

I think when I discovered A Practical Wedding as a bride-to-be, that was pretty much a gigantic truckload of good advice in the form of archives. I had kind of muddled through all that WIC wedding porn for the first bit of our engagement, and when I found APW, I realized that all that didn't really matter as much as everyone was telling me it did. There are a lot of wise, funny, sane women (and a few men) on that site, in the form of both bloggers (Meg, Alyssa and Lauren) and commenters. I recommend it to everyone I know that gets engaged. As a married person, I really liked this: No matter how mad you are at your partner, always remember that you love them more.


11. How has marriage changed you? For better? For worse?

Even before we were married- actually, even before we were engaged- we both knew that this was it for us. We were all in. Getting married didn't change our relationship in many of the big noticeable ways it does for some people- we were already living together, we were already committed to one another and monogamous, we already knew we wanted to be with one another for life. I think the change was a lot more subtle, personally: a sort of settling in, if you will. More so than that, though, I think that getting married is more of an outward change for us. We announced what we are to our community, and that makes a difference. So perhaps for us it was more of a cultural/societal recognition thing than a personal change thing, if that makes sense.


12. Spill the beans, has marriage changed things in the bedroom? (If you’re shy, be creative with this response. And funny. We likez funzies.)

It actually hasn't changed things all too much for us, really. We were together for several years before we got married and living together for a year and a half of that. I will say, though, that when we are having a "slow" week for the bedroom side of things, one of us may or may not say something along the lines of, "Well, I guess we really ARE old married people now, and we don't even have to TRY or anything..." in a semi-snarky manner. Most of the time, though, our sex life is pretty similar to what is was pre-wedding-day. I will say, though, that I would hazard a guess that any relationship takes more work over time to make things exciting and new even if you see each other every day and sleep with each other every night. That's not really a marriage thing, per se, but more a time thing.

(Also, the night of our wedding, we didn't do ANYTHING. We came home, opened some presents and read our guest book cards, and then fell into bed exhausted. Hah. It's built up to be such a big deal, but we were just SO TIRED!)

13. What’s your favorite thing about being married? Least favorite?

I think my favorite thing is that we've declared ourselves publicly bonded to one another, and it gives our relationship more gravity (in the eyes of others.) Also, even if we argue about something, we know that we are both in this for the long haul. Neither one of us is going anywhere. My least favorite is that our marriage isn't legal- we aren't lucky to live in one of the few states where it would be!

14. Any last words of wisdom?

I decided to give the wisdom out in the style of question #10, hah.

Bride-to-be (or groom-to-be!): Pick the things that are important to you (and your partner) and stick to your guns, but compromise elsewhere. Also, make decisions together! Also, I would advise any nearly newlyweds (or actually everybody, even if you're already married) to try out couples counseling. I think it's a really valuable tool, even if you think you may not need it, and can really strengthen your relationship. I regret not doing it before we got married. We were going to, but the therapist we were scheduled to see canceled our first appointment, and then we had a family emergency and canceled the second, and it never worked out for us to get in there and actually talk to her.

Bride (and groom): Bask in the amazing glow of your wedding day, and remember that this is not the most important day of your life- it is just ONE amazing, important day, and if things go wrong, it will really be okay. You are beginning something important and amazing.

Married person: learn how to fight WELL with your partner, because you're going to fight. Do nice things unexpectedly (like bringing home cake, or cleaning the kitchen, or leaving a love note on the mirror in the bathroom). Also, don't forget to do fun stuff together and be spontaneous even when it's really easy to just fall into a routine.


(Photography by Stephen Ironside of Ironside Photography and Darby Ironside)

Do you subscribe to Not the Marrying Kind? If not, you should! It's free and fun and it means you automatically get new posts when the blog is updated. No having to check back! Click here for more details.

Marriage Mondays: Call for October Submissions

Would you like to submit a guest post for Marriage Mondays? If so, I'd love to read it! In exchange for your troubles, you get full linkage and some awesome promotional tweets. I get the honor of having a new voice chime in and share their perspective on marriage. : )

For October 2011, which is coming up oh, so soon, I'm forgoing the traditional submission process and doing an open submission. In other words, you're not limited to what's posted on the calendar (though you are welcome to submit under those topics, too). Instead, I'm leaving the topic choice up to you. What have you experienced in marriage that you'd like to talk about? How has marriage changed you in good (and bad) ways? I want to hear it all!

Email me. Can't wait!

Stay tuned! The real post is up in just an hour! : )

Do you subscribe to Not the Marrying Kind? If not, you should! It's free and fun and it means you automatically get new posts when the blog is updated. No having to check back! Click here for more details.

What Does It Mean to Be Not the Marrying Kind?

When I first started this blog, it was all about me. I called it Not the Marrying Kind because years ago, when I was fresh out of college, my mother told me I wasn't the marrying kind. It was something I never thought about and which profoundly affected me because it made me question something I'd already questioned for much of my life. I've written before about how A.P. and I are both the product of divorce. So you can imagine how much I struggled with the idea of marriage to begin with. Throw in my mother's comment and, well, in some ways I was worried it would all become a self-fulfilling prophecy that would leave me alone and sad with twenty cats and no man.

Until I met A.P., I never really thought about weddings or marriage. I'd thought a little about weddings, but nothing crazy. But when A.P. and I got serious, I started a folder on my computer. It was called "Secrets and Lies" and I filled it with wedding inspiration. It was then that I realized, maybe I am the marrying kind after all. Maybe my mother was (gasp!) wrong.

When I got married, I didn't feel like that idea of me not being the marrying kind went away. In fact, it made me rethink marriage and the traditional rules that sort of come with it. A.P. and I decided that marriage could be what we wanted it to be. For the most part, we're pretty normal, but we definitely divide our roles a little less traditionally than some.

As this blog has changed over the last couple of years, especially this year, which I think really pushed me to explore what this blog is and what it can become, I have realized that there are a lot of women out there who relate to the idea of being "not the marrying kind," even if the "not" is crossed out. There are many of us who never imagined getting married, but then we did. And not just that, but we liked having a wedding and wearing that ring (even if we don't wear anything but a little old band). And then there are many women who read who aren't married yet, but who still aren't certain if they will make the leap. Either way, I want this blog to make all of them feel welcome.

Beginning this month, I am featuring real bride submissions. If you'd like to be one of them (and I would LOVE for you to be), I encourage you to check out my submissions page. These real bride posts differ from other blogs in that I ask that you be married for a wee while before you submit *and* I ask the brides to really reflect on whether or not the concept of marriage was something they jumped into willingly or struggled with. It's, I hope, I far more interesting conversation to be having than just focusing on the pretty. And one I hope you'll join me in.

Check back next week for our first real bride, the lovely Helen of Bettencourt and Chase. Also, keep your eyes peeled this week for an amazing engagement shoot that was submitted by the talented Emilia Schobeiri and was photographed in...CHICAGO! Woot. Not to mention a few other amazing weddings I have in store for you. And please, if you know a great photographer, or a bride who has an amazing story to share, please have them contact me.

Be Right Back

Hi everyone! I hope you didn't miss me too much! We got back rather early yesterday evening from our camping vacation. We spent a wonderful weekend in Leland, Michigan enjoying great company, good food, and some beautiful scenery. I'm beat and still unpacking the bazillion bags we took with us (camping involves packing so much stuff!). I'll be posting regularly again starting tomorrow.

In the mean time, did you know that you can submit a guest post for Marriage Mondays? It's true! Check out the details here.

See you soon! : )

(Photo via here)

Marriage Mondays: Open Forum

I really see Marriage Mondays as a way for me to not only talk about the things I consider in my own marriage on a daily basis, but also as a place for others to share their daily struggles with their own marriages.

In addition to the fact that I would love to hear from you about marriage role models, I also feel like it's great to open the floor to you guys. I don't promise to be an expert on all of these topics, but maybe that's where you guys come in. : )

Some ideas...

...infidelity

...children

...dating/date nights

...routine

...sex

...stressors (e.g. deaths in a family, kids, etc.)

What things would you like to talk about here? Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment box!

Do you subscribe to Not the Marrying Kind? If not, you should! It's free and fun and it means you automatically get new posts when the blog is updated. No having to check back! Click here for more details.

The Big Announcement and Time to Breathe

So yesterday, I made a big announcement and I'm hoping you are as excited as I am! That's right, I'm taking submissions! I'm certain this will be a slow going process, but I figured why delay it. The details are up in a new page under the blog banner. Here's a quick overview of what I'm accepting:

1. Engagement/Real Wedding/Anniversary Shoots from Photographers - This one is pretty self-explanatory, I think.

2. Not the Marrying Kind Bride Posts - So for years, it was the bane of my existence that my mother had told me I wasn't the marrying kind. But now, it's like a badge of honor. And talk about turning lemons into lemonade! It's become the whole point of my blog! Crazy! Anyway, what I've realized along the way is that there are a lot of women who are "not the marrying kind" out there, too! Maybe you never pictured yourself getting married, maybe you are mega-independent and had a hard time meshing your life with someone else's, maybe marriage seemed fine, but once it hit, you didn't know what to do. Whatever the case, I want to hear from you. Here's how NTMK wedding submissions are different than other blogs. For one thing, you have to be married for a wee while before you think about submitting (at least 2-3 months, please!). For another thing, besides writing about all the pretty details and planning, you will also answer questions about your engagement and subsequent marriage. Think of it as a cross between Marriage Mondays and Dance Fridays.

3. Marriage Monday posts - Finally, I will also be accepting Marriage Monday posts. Each month I will post a calendar with the topics I will be blogging about the following month. Look over the topics and if you want to write a post, do so. Then, submit it to me via email. You can also click on the submissions page to get more details.

Fun, right? Please help me spread the word about submissions by tweeting, posting on Facebook Google +, or your own blog. I so very much appreciate it.

In other news, I've got some exciting and fun stuff to share with you this week, too. Tomorrow I'll be posting about a great promotion I got the heads up about yesterday. And Thursday I'll be posting my pictures from the Perfect Cup event in Chicago which I attended with my mom as a way of getting number 5 crossed off my list for 2011. Plus, I hadn't seen my mom in a while because I'm a bad daughter.

That's all for today. Yesterday was a mega-awesome day (10 posts in 1 day!!) and I want to give you time to catch up if you got lost in all the posting. I hope you enjoyed the Marriage Role Models Series!