The Seattle Party Invitations are Away

In my last post, I mentioned the fact that we've sent out our invitations to our Seattle reception (which Girl Scout Fiancée calls the WAC, for WAshington Celebration). While Girl Scout Fiancée has been very crafty so far with many aspects of our wedding, even designing our own wedding invitations, the prospect of hand-crafting a hundred or so invitations to the Seattle party was a little too daunting for her craftiness.

Girl Scout Fiancée did some research on the internet and found the perfect solution for us at Invitations by Dawn. We had some pretty simple requirements: Girl Scout Fiancée wanted something that matched the whimsical-yet-rustic aesthetic of our venue, something that said both "fun" and "fairy tale wedding" at the same time. We also wanted invitations that included an RSVP card, and Girl Scout Fiancée hit upon some that were folded over so that the RSVP card tore right off of it, becoming a postcard that could be mailed back to us.

The great invitation that Girl Scout Fiancée designed.

In this area, I basically did nothing. Girl Scout Fiancée did all the work of designing the invitations; I was just a proofreader and occasional thesaurus for her. I think they turned out great, and we sent our first batch to our East Coast (and other non-Seattle-dwelling) friends and family. Knowing that these folks would need the most time to plan for a trip like this, and wanting to give priority to anyone traveling across the country to spend time with us (after all, we can only invite so many people based on our venue size), we mailed these invitations back in January, giving everyone nearly five months to respond.

The RSVPs trickled in, and as we suspected no one is going to be able to make the trip from across the country out to our reception, which was fine and expected. Unfortunately, we got a little sidetracked with finalizing our wedding and honeymoon details, and soon the RSVP-by date was creeping up on us as we realized we hadn't sent out the second wave of invitations to our local friends. In a frantic storm of address-gathering, label-printing, stamp-sticking, and invitation-folding, Girl Scout Fiancée managed to get the second batch of invitations out to the local folks...with about a one-week window on the RSVP-by date. Yeah, it's a little short, but we didn't want to waste dozens of great looking invitations.

We probably could have chosen a faster delivery method, too.

Fortunately, most of our local friends were understanding. Still, as the RSVP-by date came and went, I sent an e-mail out to everyone whose RSVP we had not yet received, explaining to them that we'd be thrilled to receive word back from them up through mid-April. So far, we're doing pretty well; almost two-thirds of the people that we invited have responded to our invitations. Of our local friends, only a handful haven't responded, and luckily I can chase them down in person and get their RSVPs when we hit zero hour...which is in about two weeks!

First Honeymoon Registry Gifts

I thought today might be a good chance to update everyone on how the honeymoon registry is working out for us. When we first set everything up, we didn't really tell anyone about it, so we went months without anyone buying us any gifts off of our registry. Once we sent out the first batch of invitations to our Seattle reception, we got our first gift (from someone who isn't going to be able to make it to reception, alas).

The nice thing about the website is that it sends you an e-mail each time a new gift is received. The weird aspect of this is that there is a delay of a day, sometimes two days, between the time the gift has been received and the time the e-mail goes out. Realistically, this doesn't really matter that much; no one need to know instantly when they receive a gift on their registry.

No, I need to know at the exact moment someone sends me a gift!

One thing that did come up is that, once you receive your first gift, you also receive an e-mail from the honeymoon registry explaining how to actually get your gifts. It's pretty standard stuff; bank transfer, check, etc. The only weird caveat is that you are limited to claiming gifts from the registry to three times, so I guess you'd better be really sure that you want to claim your gifts? Seems a bit arbitrary, but I'm sure there's a reason. They also helpfully show you how much of a cut they are taking out of the gifts, which we knew was going to happen, and show you what your actual balance is.

Right now, the only thing I'm a little concerned about is that the invitations we sent out were to our party here in Seattle...which doesn't start until almost a full month after we leave for Florida. Now, if many of our guests are like Girl Scout Fiancée and I are, they may not even be thinking of a wedding gift until, oh, say, the day before the reception, at which point we'll already have been back from our honeymoon for two weeks. Are we putting people in an awkward spot, then, when they go to our registry to get us a gift, only to discover that we're already back from our honeymoon? Fortunately, Girl Scout Fiancée and I have two more trips to Disney planned for the year (one at Christmas, and one next year for our first anniversary) to take advantage of our annual passes, so if anyone waits until the last minute they can still give us gifts off of our honeymoon registry. At some point, I guess it just transforms into our anniversary trip registry!

Wedding registry, transform and roll out!

New Wedding Coordinator

In my last post, I alluded to another unexpected change of plans involving our wedding coordinator. One of the best parts of having a Disney wedding is having an assigned coordinator who is there to take care of all of the planning for you, and it's doubly important for those of us planning a wedding from afar. Up to this point, our wedding coordinator, Danny, has made us very happy. He's always been able to answer our questions, and though he's a pretty busy guy (nearly every e-mail we sent him got an out-of-office autoreply indicating that he was out helping run a wedding), he always got back to us in a timely manner. In fact, during the process of finalizing our BEO (the Banquet Event Order, which I'll write an entire post about soon), I got an e-mail from him at around 10 PM on a Sunday night—10 PM our time, which would have been around one o'clock in the morning in Florida.

No man, it's cool, I totally wasn't doing anything important...

A few months ago, though, Girl Scout Fiancée started hearing rumblings on the Internet from other Disney brides that they had been reassigned to a different wedding coordinator. At first, we didn't think anything of it; surely, we would have heard from Disney if that was happening to us. As time went on, the rumors grew more plentiful, and finally we just broke down and sent Danny an e-mail.  After all, at the point where we heard these rumors, we were less than 90 days from the wedding, and we were in the process of finalizing everything and getting the budget squared away.

XCKD's take on Internet rumors. Too bad Snopes couldn't help us confirm...

Danny e-mailed us back fairly quickly to let us know that it is true that he was being promoted to a position where he would be handling only Wishes weddings, the next tier up from the Escape package we are going with. He assured us in an e-mail that he would remain our wedding coordinator for as long as it took for him to train a replacement, and that it was possible that he would remain our wedding coordinator through the entire process anyways. In a separate call with Girl Scout Fiancée, Danny told her that he was going to continue being our wedding coordinator, even though someone else might work with us on the day of the wedding itself, and that he'd like to schedule a call with us to go over our BEO. We found a time that worked, scheduled the call, and went about our business merrily.

The night before the scheduled call, I realized that it was odd that I'd not heard from Danny; with our previous calls, he always checked in the day before to confirm that we were still available. I shot off  a quick e-mail asking if the call was still on, and was unsurprised to get back an autoresponse so quickly. I was about to delete it without looking at it when the response's text caught my eye: it was a mailer daemon response, an automated message generated when there's an error with the e-mail system. According to the autoresponse, Danny's e-mail address was no longer valid in the Disney system. OK, maybe it's just a glitch; they could be updating server software, or something. I got up early in the morning for the call, and decided to send off another e-mail to check in, getting the same mailer daemon auto response. I was getting a little concerned (who wouldn't, when the person you've been working with literally the entire time vanishes from the system without a warning), but decided to see what happened that morning. I warned Girl Scout Fiancée that we might not get a call at all, but to our surprise my phone rang at precisely the right time.

This is what Google Image Search provided for "mailer daemon" BTW

On the other end was, as we would soon discover, our new wedding coordinator, Sarah. As it turns out, Danny was forced to leave Disney's Fairytale Weddings due to a serious illness in the family. It's very sad, and I hope things turn out well for him, as he was always helpful and really made us feel special. We had the call with Sarah that we would have had with Danny, which was not just going over the BEO, but also a large portion of a "getting to know you" experience. Fortunately, Sarah seems just as capable, enthusiastic, and helpful as Danny, and I could tell that Girl Scout Fiancée felt better once we were done with the call, as well. Sarah had been able to answer some questions that Girl Scout Fiancée had about both the photography and the flowers, and by the end of the call our concerns were assuaged and we felt like things were on the right track for our wedding.

I feel like we may have dodged a bullet, here. Changing wedding coordinators mid-stream for a long-distance wedding could, potentially, cause chaos in the proceedings, but Sarah handled the transition well, and really put us at ease. It proved the maxim that I've come to believe about wedding planning ("Everything changes"), but in this case it seems like Disney was able to make the change relatively painless. Since then, Sarah has been very responsive to us, and even worked with Girl Scout Fiancée to find out who our photographer is supposed to be in advance, and worked with the flower department to put together a bouquet that Girl Scout Fiancée is very excited about.

More Pixie Dust from Our Wedding Coordinator

One of the best things so far about the Disney wedding process has been the little surprises that pop up from time to time. These pleasant surprises are often called "pixie dust" by the folks in the Disney fan community, a little extra sprinkle of magic to make everything more exciting. A while back, we received some charms from our wedding coordinator, a coin for me and a bag for Girl Scout Fiancée's shoes. A few weeks ago, we received another such gift from our wedding coordinator. I've been a bit remiss in posting about it (due largely to general busyness), so I thought I'd do a little unboxing of our pixie dust here.

I'll admit, I get a little excited when a package boxed like this arrives.

Like before, this gift arrived in a small box marked as a special delivery to Girl Scout Fiancée and me. Inside was a card from our wedding coordinator, on top of a small tin containing the actual gifts.

The card on top...

The tin inside.

The goodies in the tin.

For me, there are a pair of collar stays marked with some Disney magic. Step closer, gentle reader, as I pull back the curtain to reveal the dark, inner truths about my lack of sophistication: I had no idea what these were when we got the package. It was only today, after buying my suit, that Girl Scout Fiancée was able to show me (with my new shirt) what, exactly, collar stays are for. Yes, that's right, I'm a fashion Philistine, but I'm learning.

Strange, alien devices known as "collar stays."

And a description of how to use them.

For Girl Scout Fiancée, the package included a small charm for her to keep on her on the wedding day. This is a lot like the coin I received in the first package: not very practical, but a nice gesture and a unique keepsake nonetheless.

Girl Scout Fiancée's charm (not to say that she isn't charming otherwise...)

And her instructions. Complete with hashtags.

This was a nice token from our wedding coordinator, but it should have been an omen. As I've said in previous blog posts: nothing goes the way you expect it to. More on this in a future blog post...

Cue ominous music.

Buying the Wedding Costume

For Girl Scout Fiancée, picking out her wedding dress was something that needed to be done months ago. She had to figure out a style she wanted, gather up her closest friends, and then head to Tacoma to shop for dresses in a day-long event. For me, picking out my suit has been an exercise in fumbling around the internet and practically begging Girl Scout Fiancée for suggestions. I'm not just fashion inept, I do actual, physical harm to the very concept of fashion. However, I've chronicled my few attempts to find something I liked on this blog, and ended up settling on the general style of a vest, a shirt with rolled up sleeves, and suit pants. I had previously picked out two items that I wanted to be a part of my ensemble, a pair of gray and green saddle shoes, and a Mickey Mouse bow tie.

These bad boys are so far outside of my normal style I can't believe I bought them.

After my friends surprised me by bringing my brother out for my bachelor party, I took the Monday after that weekend off, and he and I headed into Seattle to go to Pike Place Market (he'd been sent on a mission by his wife to pick up some of the Market Spice Cinnamon-Orange Tea, and he wanted to get some Pike Place Special Reserve for himself). I also figured this would be a good chance for he and I to bounce around a few of the nicer mens' clothing stores downtown and see if I could learn a little more about buying a suit.

Unfortunately, this outing did not start off auspiciously. The biggest problem was that I just didn't know what I was looking for; I needed an education more than I needed a salesman, and as it turns out that's hard to come by. At Nordstrom, the salesman was nice, but basically said, "We don't have anything for you, since we don't have any vests." OK, weird, and though he was super nice and directed me to go other places, I kind of felt like he didn't try very hard, even when I showed him the look I was going for on Girl Scout Fiancée's Pinterest page. Then we headed up to Suit Supply; again, while the salesman was nice, his answer was basically, "We don't have any summer suits in, and nothing with the vest separate." I wasn't averse to buying the whole suit, but again I kind of felt like I was getting the brush off. At Jos. A Bank, the salesman was pretty confident he could find me want I wanted, but only really pulled out one suit for me to look at. Whenever I suggested a different look, he almost always responded with, "Oh, yeah, we can definitely order that for you!" I wanted to look at some things, maybe try them on, and I got the sense that he didn't really have a lot in the shop that matched what I was looking for, despite his confidence that they could get it in. The next stop was Men's Wearhouse, where the salesman was pushy, kind of skeezy, and basically pointed me at one suit that didn't match my vision at all and said, "This here's the suit you want. Trust me. I'm from Florida." Despite being pushy, he was sort of also weirdly disinterested, like he was more interested in moving a suit than making me happy.

I didn't expect suit shopping to feel like shopping for a used car.

We returned to Pacific Place, the mall in downtown Seattle where we'd parked and had lunch, and as my brother made a pit stop before we headed home, on a whim I walked into the J. Crew store. Girl Scout Fiancée had suggested going to J. Crew, and I'd planned on stopping at the mall closer to our house to do just that, but since I had a few minutes to kill I thought, "Why not?" The sales lady I spoke to was attentive, asked questions, gushed over our choice of Disney World for the wedding, took the time to look over the Pinterest page Girl Scout Fiancée and I had put together for my look, and showed me a lot of different options. Even knowing that I wasn't buying a suit that day, she spent a good 15 minutes talking to me about my options, and recommended that I make an appointment with Sean, their men's suit specialist. After the lackluster response I'd gotten everywhere else, this was a breath of fresh air, so I set up an appointment so Girl Scout Fiancée and I could come back together and speak with him.

Earlier today, Girl Scout Fiancée hopped in the car and headed back to Seattle. We were a little late for our appointment with Sean, thanks to some pretty bad traffic headed into the city, and as luck would have it Sean was actually running over with a previous appointment, so we weren't in too bad a shape. After waiting only a few minutes, Sean came out, introduced himself, and took a few minutes to look at my shoes and bow tie, look at the ideas Girl Scout Fiancée and I had put together, and make a few recommendations just so we could get started. The entire time he was very enthusiastic, extremely attentive, complementary (and reassuring, since I admitted my lack of fashion sense), and basically just made me feel comfortable with his helpfulness.

Maybe not quite this comfortable.

In recent weeks, Girl Scout Fiancée has noticed that one of the trends in hip weddings is a slightly mismatched style. This can be a mismatch between the bride and groom, a mismatch between the groom and groomsmen, or simply a mismatch in the groom's outfit. Right away, Sean took a liking to the green and gray saddle shoes I'd picked out, and the bow tie, and put together a slightly mismatched outfit: darker slacks, and a dark navy blue vest, along with a green shirt. I'd been imagining a matching vest and pants, maybe designed to complement the gray of the shoes, so I was a little skeptical at first, but decided to give it a shot anyways. Right away, I could tell I'd made the right choice in going there. The pants complemented the shoes perfectly, and the dark vest really set off the darker tones in the bowtie.

Unfortunately, everything wasn't quite coming together. At first, Girl Scout Fiancée thought that the bright green of my saddle shoes was the problem, but one look from Sean and he diagnosed a different issue: the shirt. Reassuring me that he wanted to "pick his battles" and leave the shoes in place (I wasn't really that worried, but I guess he's probably used to dealing with fussier customers than I am), Sean recommended switching to a white shirt with pinpoint navy polka dots on it. As soon as I made the switch, everything clicked; I'd gone from a slightly mismatched mess, to looking like a million bucks. Look, no one has ever accused me of looking hip, but I think what Sean helped us put together is pretty great. At the very least, I'm going to give some of these Seattle hipsters a run for their money. Plus, everything in the ensemble can be worn with something else (especially since the vest matches the blazer I bought back in the fall, which will be nice to wear to Victoria & Albert's for our chef's table dinner).

Kind of like this, but less disheveled, without a hat, with a bowtie...you know what? Only a little like this.

I'm not going to spoil the outfit by showing me all put together, but I will show off the component parts. The pants are the Ludlow slim pant in glen plaid Italian cotton-linen. The vest is the Ludlow suit vest in Italian worsted wool.The shirt is a Ludlow spread-collar shirt in dot print. I also got a white braided belt to go with it, which should work nicely with the Super Mario Brothers belt buckle I picked out a while back. Combined with my Giorgio Brutini shoes and an Etsy-made bowtie, Girl Scout Fiancée and I both really liked the way I looked.

For my brother, we're not really sure what he should wear, but we had some ideas to pass along. Girl Scout Fiancée thinks she wants him to match her sister (her maid of honor) more than me, so we suggested some gray pants, a green shirt (maybe a green-checked shirt, for something a little more casual), and, if he can pull it off, some navy suspenders. Fortunately, my sister-in-law has things well under control, and will make sure he's my good looking sidekick on our wedding day. It's a great relief to have my suit, and be happy with it, and Sean at J. Crew was amazing at making me feel comfortable and confident. He wasn't pushy at all, and seemed to be able to zoom in on exactly what we needed to pull off a look that both Girl Scout Fiancée and I liked. I got his card when we left, and can guarantee that the next time I need to look good for something, I'll be going back to see him.

How to Bachelor Party (for Geeks)

One week ago today was the start of a two-solid-day bachelor party for me. My brother, being both my best man and in Tennessee, was not going to be able to come to Seattle and throw me a bachelor party, so three of my friends and co-workers (all of whom are named Chris, weirdly enough) hatched a plan a few months back to be my best man surrogates and throw me a bachelor party. Over the course of a couple of months, the plans solidified, and when they asked me what I wanted out of my bachelor party, I said I wanted to play games (including beer pong), drink beer, and eat food that is delicious and bad for me. I also had a trio of don't wants: I didn't want it to turn into a drink-so-much-you-barf debauchery fest, I didn't want strippers, hookers, or anything stripper or hooker related, and I didn't want to do any extreme sports. I basically wanted a weekend away with my friends where I could enjoy myself and not worry about things like counting calories and transportation.

After giving them these guidelines, and setting up a list of the folks I'd like to invite, the guys decided that our best bet was to rent a house or two in the Ballard area of Seattle; it's hip, there's tons of good food there, and it's practically exploding with new breweries. Last Friday we set out early from work and drove up to Ballard, dropping our stuff off at one of the houses and then beginning the first real activity of the weekend: a brewery crawl. We had brought several growlers with us, planning on getting them filled with beer at the breweries we went to so that on Saturday we would have plenty of good, local craft beers at the house.

I was hoping when I took this photo that it would not become "Exhibit A" in some future trial.

Over the course of a couple of hours, we hit up Maritime Pacific Brewery (and filled up one some starchy foods to prep us for the brewery crawl), Reuben's Brews, Stoup Brewing, and finally (on the way to dinner) Hilliard's Beer taproom. It was at this last destination that I learned a valuable lesson: losing over 100 lbs. (and drastically reducing your beer intake in the process) does some serious violence to one's alcohol tolerance. Granted, I was about seven beers in by this point, but it had been nearly four hours since we started this magical mystery tour of beer, and I'd expected a slight buzz. Fortunately, we had about a mile walk to the place where we were having dinner, and I think if it hadn't been for that bit of brisk exercise I would have wound up at dinner far more than the pleasantly jubilant that I was.

Who could say no to a face like this?

Dinner that night was at the Ballard Pizza Company, a relatively new pizza place that I'd never been to before. They put a beer in front of me, but my lower weight and lack of tolerance was catching up to me, so I eschewed the brew (blasphemy, I know) and focused on the pizza, which was pretty good. In Seattle, the pizza is...typically not great. This place served New York style pizza, and it was pretty tasty. The first slice I had was delicious and covered in meat, just the way I like it. Unfortunately, I think I bit right into a small bit of pepper, because very quickly my mouth was on fire. Downing a couple of glasses of water (which was probably a good thing, given my swimming head) did little to alleviate the heat, so I forged ahead with a slice of pizza that wasn't covered in spicy meats, hoping to cleanse my palate. Dinner was great, but after two slices of pizza I was stuffed. Of course, it was time for dessert, and that meant heading over to Hot Cakes, a great dessert shop, where I got a spiked milkshake that was far, far more strong than I anticipated it would be. Any gains I made at dinner were quickly lost, but once again I was saved by the mile walk in the cool Seattle air back to the house. By the time I arrived home, I'd hit my second wind, and managed to get in a few games before bed.

The next day I woke up feeling not so great. Fortunately, I'd been drinking a lot of water the night before, so I was in mostly good shape; however, I'd had to skip on my allergy medicine, and my stomach was just not used to the amount of rich food that I'd put into it the previous day, so all I wanted was some coffee and something a little more tame than pizza for breakfast.

I opened the fridge looking for half-and-half for coffee. This is what I saw.

Of course, the plans for someone to go out and get pastries for breakfast and bring them back to the house never materialized (partly because one group of folks decided to go out for breakfast, and partly because the folks at the second house decided to sleep in), so instead I had a plate of Girl Scout Cookies (which I'd purchased from Girl Scout Fiancée's troop that week in anticipation) for breakfast. Breakfast of champions, I tells ya!

Thanks for the healthy breakfast, Girl Scouts of America!

Saturday was set aside as a day of geeky gaming, which is exactly what I wanted, and it began with a one-two punch of awesome surprises. First, my good buddy and coworker Pete painted a custom set of six miniatures for me, each representing one of the characters from the Tales of the Arabian Nights board game (and also their real Arabian Nights counterparts), and they were gorgeous.Then, one of the Chrises who helped set up my bachelor party revealed that he had designed a custom Dungeons & Dragons adventure for my bachelor party, themed after the stories from 1,001 Arabian Nights. It is well known among my friends that I love Arabian myth, and my favorite campaign setting for D&D is based on that mythology, so this was a real treat for me.

Pete is an amazing painter. I was completely stunned by this awesome gift!

So, we played D&D for a few hours. When another couple of guys announced they were going out to get some more beer, I was baffled (our refrigerator was crammed full of beer still), but I figured maybe they didn't like what we had in the fridge and wanted something specific. Over time, I noticed that they'd been gone an awfully long time, but my buddies assured me that they were just stuck in traffic. Soon, though, they sprung a huge surprise on me: my brother! These awesome fellas had all pitched in to fly my brother out from Tennessee as a surprise, and what an awesome surprise it was! I was astonished and pleasantly surprised to see him, and we had a blast together for the rest of the weekend.

Five minutes after he arrived, he had a beer and a character sheet in hand.

The rest of Saturday was filled with gaming of all kinds. We ordered lunch in from Red Mill (some of the best burgers in Seattle), and while some of us continued playing D&D, others were playing board games in the other room. We broke for dinner and headed out to Skillet Diner, recently opened in Ballard, and then headed back to the house for more gaming.

Skillet put us at the big table right in the middle of the floor, so everyone could see our gluttony.

Grilled peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich with a side of poutine. That's right, I said it.

Among the highlights of the night's gaming were getting Towerfall Ascension and Nidhogg going on the TV in the living room (both of these games are part of a retro aesthetic local multiplayer renaissance taking place in PC games right now), while others played board games (including Concept, which I purchased on Sunday from Card Kingdom on our way out of Ballard because it sounded so great).

Towerfall, shortly before the screaming and threatening began.

More beer was consumed, and as the evening turned into true night, my brother and I descended into the basement to claim our rightful place as the beer pong champions of the weekend. It is true that my love of beer pong labels me as a frat boy (which I am), but I don't care. How can I not love a game that combines manual dexterity, strategy, and beer? My brother and I ended up going 6-1, including winning a best two-out-of-three championship round against two of the Chrises, with bragging rights and a randomly scraped together $26 pot on the line.

Shot of the weekend, folks.

My boss/the Commissioner of Beer Pong awards us our prize.

The following morning we did a little gaming, but alas it was time to check out and head home. Some folks had already had to bail, since GDC was this week and many of my friends were headed to San Francisco for that convention, or to Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show. After leaving the houses, a small contingent of my friends humored me and went to the always delicious Hi Life with me for breakfast (we waited for nearly an hour on a table, but I still say it was worth it). A quick stop at Card Kingdom later and we headed south, bound for home.

It was a great weekend that generated a lot of memories and memes (including hot booze, Chris's sarcastic celebration of feeble accomplishments, my brother sleep-creeping behind the door of another bedroom, and more). I really hope everyone had a good time; I know I did, and everyone did such an amazing job of making sure I was having fun and keeping me pleasantly surprised. The toughest part of the weekend was that I spent more time with some folks than with others, just by virtue of the large number of people that were there for the weekend, so I hope I didn't neglect anyone. I'm grateful to have such awesome friends, and desperately needed the stress relief that the weekend provided.

A hot booze maker.

Meeting with the Minister

One of the hardest parts of planning out our wedding has been our geographical situation. We're 2,700 miles from her family in Pennsylvania, 2,500 miles from my family in Tennessee, and 3,000 miles from Disney World. Fortunately, planning a Disney wedding makes that a little easier, since they handle a lot of the details for flowers, food, and so forth. However, this also has the side effect of leaving us feeling a little bit like we're on the outside of our own wedding. Early on, when discussing who would officiate the wedding, I suggested one of my friends and coworkers, a former minister and a really great, charismatic, and funny guy. We agreed that by having him perform the wedding it would give us a chance to at least have some direct control over one part of the wedding. With our friend as the officiant, we can at least rely on having a wedding ceremony that we had a hand in crafting.

Nothing was off the table. Nothing.

We first met with our officiant months ago, back before Christmas, shortly after he agreed to officiate the wedding. Fortunately, James has some experience officiating weddings and has done so in the past, so he was able to sketch out a basic outline of the wedding with us. Girl Scout Fiancée had also done a good amount of research on wedding ceremonies, even going so far as to check a book out at the library (a book which we soon came to own once late fees transformed into us simply buying the book from the library). Our first short meeting took place over lunch on a weekday, and we went over the basic outline, identified the places where Girl Scout Fiancée and I would need to make some decisions, and bounced a few of our own ideas off of James. We also discussed travel arrangements (we felt it only fair to fly James to Florida and put him up at the Boardwalk for a couple of nights as thanks for officiating our wedding) and ended with some homework for Girl Scout Fiancée and I to take care of over next few months.

I actually had a really hard time articulating what I wanted out of the wedding ceremony, specifically James's role; for some reason, my words failed me. After a while, I finally managed to distill it down to something comprehensible: since we live so far from our families, we wanted James to be the part of our wedding ceremony that represents our lives in Seattle. We've been together for over seven years, all of but six months of which was spent living together in Seattle. Our lives have taken us far from our friends and family, and at the wedding we're going to be surrounded by our loved ones, but will be far away from the home and friends we've come to know over the better part of a decade. I want James to represent our lives in Seattle, since he's come to know us over the last several years, and to communicate to our families the kind of life we've built together. Despite being tongue-tied at the time, I think I managed to get across to James what I wanted.

I rarely have this much trouble communicating.

Through the new year and well into February, Girl Scout Fiancée would spend a few minutes every now and then discussing the ceremony in general terms. One night we would talk about our vows, and another about the order in which we wanted the ceremony to proceed. Girl Scout Fiancée found an awesome reading, and I found a few bible verses I wanted to consider using, but everything was just kind of a jumble of ideas stolen from other weddings. Eventually, we set up a meeting with James again so we could build out a more formal outline of the wedding. Of course, this meant Girl Scout Fiancée and I needed to actually make some decisions about what we wanted, and we went into the next meeting with James with a far more solid plan.

We met with James again at Azteca (a Mexican restaurant chain) to discuss the ceremony. Now that we are closer to the wedding, we also had quite a bit more information from Disney about how the day of the wedding is going to go. Armed with our Frankenstein's monster of a ceremony outline, printouts of the readings we were considering, and a more solid day-of schedule from Disney, we met again to go over everything. James had some great advice on ordering all of the various pieces, and seemed comfortable with the sections of the ceremony where we want him to speak in his own words a bit. It was during this meeting that it really became clear for me that while I'm excited about how unique and personal our wedding ceremony is going to be, there are a few parts that I want to be more traditional. I want to say, "I do" at some point. I want the exchange of the rings to be a little more traditional. I'm not sure why. The world may never know.

Maybe not quite this traditional.

Regardless, we've built out our ceremony, given the information to James, and now he's working on his portions. I think our families are really going to like the ceremony, because so much of it comes from us (yes, we stole a lot of ideas from the Internet, but we worked everything over to make sure that it fit us). It's not going to be a long ceremony (for which I'm sure everyone is thankful), and it's going to be a nice mix of traditional, unique, and whimsical, which I think fits the ideas that Girl Scout Fiancée and I have had for our Disney wedding as a whole.