It's been raining a lot this month!
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Thoughts
Kelsey and I went out to breakfast today and stopped by to see some Pelicans sitting around!
This is a link to a book written in 1974 about what life would be like in 2010:
http://2010book.tumblr.com/post/310745454/cover
The year is 2010
“It is seven o’clock,” says an alarm clock hidden in the wall. Suddenly the room is filled with the sound of music. Time to get up—off the floor.
In the year 2010 you do not sleep on a bed. There are no beds, no tables, no chairs. (That would hurt) The floor is made for sitting, sleeping, and walking on. It is soft where you sit or sleep, hard where you need a table or desk.
Your home is very carefully planned.
No family lives in a house or apartment too large or too small for them. Every room has several uses. (Just about in our house!) The bedroom is also an office, and the kitchen is a living room. In 2010 there must be no wasted space. There are so many people in the world that every inch of ground must be used wisely.
In your tiny bathroom there is no tub, just a shower. (That’s no fun, I like baths!) The shower makes it very easy to keep yourself clean. There are no faucets for hot and cold water, no soap to slither out of your fingers, no need for towels.
You just set the dial for the water temperature and step in. (Totally useful!)
Water pours down from small jets in the ceiling.
Then foaming water flows over you. More water rinses you. Finally, a blast of warm air (if I lived under a blow dryer) comes from vents in the side of the shower to dry you.
Now you are ready to put your clothes on.
In the year 2010 everyone wears a jumpsuit and shoes. The clothes may look odd, but they are sensible. (I don’t think that would ever happen – Kelsey needs her shoes no matter what decade!) The jumpsuits and shoes are made in thousands of colors, from a material so light you can hardly feel it. The material keeps you warm when it is cold and cool when it is hot.
…You can see how fun this is – click on the link to keep reading the predictions!
Main Entry: 1Doc.um.en.tar.ian
Function: noun
Etymology: Early 21st century, from Old American.
Definition: A company’s way of documenting events in life through any medium; whose objective in life is to always be capturing it’s moments so they may be viewed in the future at any time, by any generation.
That being said…
WE LOVE being wedding documentarians and capturing life’s little pleasures that come through our lenses! We are always so excited at the thought of what we will be photographing/filming; the characters, the places, the time of year, the weather, the foliage and fauna, the food, the style and so much more! The thing that makes us the most excited however; is when we see the result of our work. Before the final cut is made in a film we’ve shot or we touch a filter in photoshop to accentuate that picture that was already oh so amazing- we know we’ve made history! We’ve made the couple’s history. We are the historical documentarian for their children and their grandchildren to come- showing how things were so beautiful back then and full of love, how everything was started!
We just saw this great video from DJ Earworm – using pretty much every dance song that we have heard at receptions all year long! Keeping everyone happy and dancing while economic challenges hung in the misty background of everything that happened this year – it was a perfect place for these kinds of songs.
Here is our favorite priest from Saint Monica’s church in Santa Monica, California. It was great to see him come out of church and have fun delivering this message to a bride and groom at Trump. It is an Indian story about a man being chased by a tiger and falling into a well with snakes at the bottom. Should he worry that he is about to die, or should he just eat a fruit hanging from the cliff wall…
For anyone looking for a church, Saint Monica’s is great and Monsignor Lloyd Torgerson is the best Catholic speaker we have seen. He has a strong presence, very empowering messages and brings a lot to a wedding. He was just at the funeral for Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and he was great friend of Ted Kennedy.
I have this picture next to my desk that I took last time I was in New York. It is very serene, very calm…NOT LIKE ALL THE ACTIVITY GOING ON RIGHT NOW!!!!
We were part of three great weddings last weekend, which we will have highlights ready soon! We are editing, having tons of meetings and getting ready for next weekend’s weddings! We are also looking forward to all of the creative couples in September, we are going to have another great month.
Cheers,
David
This is an article by the most intelligent wedding officiant out there, Elizabeth Oakes. She has a web site called Marriage To Go and you can always see her purple PT Cruiser driving around the Westside of LA! She has an incredible wedding related column with The Examiner that everyone should have as an RSS feed. Here is one of our favorite articles:
The instant you announce your engagement you’ll be serenaded with a a little number called, “You Haff To” and it goes something like this (if you know it, sing along!):
“Oh, you HAFF TO be escorted down the aisle by your father/ Oh, you HAFF TO bear your drunken Auntie Tess/ Oh, you can’t defy tradition, though you’d rather/You HAFF TO or you’ll have a wedding mess!!!….”
(then, on one knee, like Jolson)
“….just like miiiiiiine!”
It’s an old refrain, a sad song, really, usually sung by people who know only one type of wedding: the kind they grew up with, or the one they were pummeled into having themselves. Here’s the scoop, kidlets: you don’t HAFF TO do anything no matter what anyone says, so please take the Haff-To Zombies with a grain of salt (admitting of course that you don’t haff to because I say so either, to be fair.)
But, after many years of working with couples beleaguered by Haff-To maniacs, I can say to you with confidence:
Five Ways To Screw Up Your Wedding, Part Three: Have A Wedding You’ll Hate!
In initial meetings I hear glum, sardonic-sounding clients tell me how they really don’t want to have such-and-such sort of wedding, but they’re going to anyway because the family (or incipient spouse or friends or whomever) demanded it. The wedding that is insisted upon is usually the “traditional” Big White Wedding with all the trimmings, but the client confides that he/she would really rather have a civil ceremony with just a few close friends, or have a cocktail party wedding with little black dresses and smart-looking jackets, or fly to Hawaii…or…or…or. This sends the Haff-To Zombies into a frenzy!!! and they attack these crazy newfangled notions of a wedding without considering that a) maybe the couple doesn’t want to have the same wedding the zombie did, and b) maybe the zombie’s wedding wasn’t so hot even though it followed all the zombie rules. These zombies are engaging in a bizarre reflex behavior, a self-delusion that they are the guardians of “tradition” (we use the word “tradition” advisedly in this column, since most of what people think is “traditional” is not–that’s fodder for another post.)
Anyway, this thoughtless enforcement of a questionable wedding status quo is a testament to the effectiveness of wedding marketing; it’s also a testament to the effectiveness of peer pressure and family/social guilt. I do understand that family relationships are complex and yes, you may want to defer to the wishes of others under some circumstances, but even so remember remember remember: you don’t haff to.
There are three trajectories once the Haff-To Zombies start singing the Haff-To song and your internal guilt/peer pressure switches have been activated:
Trajectory 1: Be tough and have exactly the wedding you want, no matter what anyone says.
You have every right, as long as you’re paying for it (this gets a little more complicated if your parents have ponied up the money.) It is true that, on a ritual level, weddings mark the dividing line between your life as a child–where you are told what you have to do–and your adult life, where you make the decisions about your own actions and take responsibility for them. Sometimes your wedding is the place where you introduce this idea and the boundary behavior (as shrinks call it) that make that changeover clear. Sometimes purposefully drawing this line is important, depending on how enmeshed you are with your family. Feelings may get hurt, but that may be a necessary price for your freedom from controlling persons. In my experience it is often true that controllers who choose to act hurt rather than being happy for you on your wedding day probably are not going to be made happy by ANYTHING you do, even if you completely give in to them. This is one of the trade secrets of controlling persons, acting as if nothing you do ever makes them completely happy. Don’t fall for it. It’s your wedding. You drive.
Trajectory 2: Compromise and incorporate some of the Haff-To suggestions.
As long as you’re dealing with reasonable requests and not total control freaks (whom, to reiterate, will not be satisfied no matter what you do) this is a feasible position to take. The questions to ask yourself are: how much ground do I give? Will incorporating this element make me cringe during my ceremony?
Common Haff-To tropes include insisting that a “real” father–maybe an absent biological father instead of a supportive stepfather–walk the bride down the aisle, or inclusion of religious content that is not consistent with the belief systems of either party to be married. These problems can be solved creatively by thinking outside of the Haff-To Box
(well, by understanding there isn’t a Haff-To Box, really.)
So for example, a bride can be escorted by anyone–both parents, both dads, brothers, a phalanx of flower girls strewing marigolds, the groom, or by no one at all. Yes, last I checked, women can walk down wedding aisles quite nicely all by themselves, ever since footbinding was outlawed anyway.
Trajectory 3: Give in to guilt and peer pressure; drink the Haff-To KoolAid® and have the wedding everyone is nagging you to have.
You’ll hate it, you’ll regret it, you’ll resent all those people who talked you into it, and if/when you divorce and remarry you’ll say (as many do, almost verbatim every time): “I want something intimate and meaningful and more in keeping with my wishes this time, because last time I had that Big White Wedding and I don’t remember it, didn’t enjoy it, and clearly it didn’t guarantee a successful marriage.” That’s from many horses’ mouths, people; it’s scary how often I hear it.
And a note to grooms here: I mostly hear this complaint from males who got dragged through a Big White Wedding that had no redeeming value for them. And you have my sympathy, but dudes (and I am wagging a knowing wedding finger at you in emphasis): you did it to yourselves. A wedding day is supposed to be important and meaningful for BOTH parties involved and, despite what the Marital Industrial Complex has told your bride, it’s NOT all about her. SPEAK UP. Indicate early on what your wedding preferences are and, if you’re being hauled by the collarbutton through a planning process that takes no notice of your wishes, state your objections strenuously. Refuse to go through with it if you have to. I mean, you know….. first try negotiating nicely and all, but this might not be fruitful. I’ve dealt with determined princess brides who have drunk the Big White Wedding KoolAid® and I know they are often not easily persuaded.
Anyway, you CAN have a great wedding experience, and you should! You’re entitled and allowed, but make your voice heard and your votes are counted. As we say in the wedding sector, your happy marriage starts with your wedding; don’t be a pawn during the ramp-up process or you can look forward to a lifetime of continued pawniness. You can start small if you like–why not float a trial balloon on a little issue first? say, your choice of tie (or no tie at all, if you hate them.) Quelle scandale!! Zombies, attack!!!
This is a long excerpt from Andy and Carol’s ceremony, but their pastor had tons of great advice that we all can use! It is also fun to watch if you speak English or Chinese, since it is translated for you live!