The Wedding Ring Saga

Let me tell you a tale, future grooms, that I hope will prepare you for the kinds of things that can happen when planning a wedding. This is a story about how trying to plan things from a long distance can jump up and bite you in the backside, and what it's almost always a good idea to give yourself a large time buffer for anything related to your wedding. Work in advance, plan far ahead, order things well before you need to, and in general every time you stop and think, "Eh, I can put this off. We've got a long time until the wedding!" then slap yourself in the face and don't ever think that again. The motto I've been espousing for months applies: everything changes.

A long time ago, nearly two years ago as I write this, I began the process of planning my proposal to Girl Scout Wife. As a part of that, I knew I was going to get her engagement ring from a jeweler near her hometown in Pennsylvania, mostly because she more or less told me, "Hey, you should get me a ring from this jeweler near my hometown." The Girl Scout Wife, sometimes, she makes it easy on me. So, over the course of several weeks I e-mailed back and forth with the nice folks at the goldsmith, who helped me get the ring I wanted, shipped it to me, and helped set me up for the proposal that would set us off on this whole wacky adventure called marriage.

Fast forward to a little over a year after the proposal, January of this year. The time has finally come to order Girl Scout Wife's wedding ring, and things couldn't be easier. You see, many of the engagement rings that this particular goldsmith makes have matching wedding bands, and I'd specifically ordered the one I had so that the matching ring would nestle up snug against the engagement ring. So, I contact the goldsmith, provide them with the information about the ring I'd purchased from them previously, and they set to work on crafting her wedding ring. In my mind, things were going great, and at least one aspect of the run-up to the wedding was being taken of largely by the efforts I'd put in over a year previous.

Pictured: A metaphor for my situation at this time.

Unfortunately, things did not stay happy for long. We got the shipping notification on the ring, and one day it arrived at my desk at work as a bit of a surprise. That evening, when I brought the ring home, Girl Scout Wife tried it on to make sure it fit...and it didn't sit snugly up against her engagement ring. In fact, it pushed the ring away, and just didn't look right at all up next to her engagement ring. More than that, she didn't really even like it; the style looked strange next to her ring, and even though it was similar there were aspects of the design that didn't match. Well, of course we weren't going to get married with a wedding ring she didn't like, so I contacted the goldsmith again and, through about a week's worth of back-and-forth e-mails, we discovered that the engagement ring that I'd been given was not the one I ordered (although this turned out to be a good thing, as Girl Scout Wife likes the one she got better than the one I actually ordered!) but they are similar. So, when I ordered the matching ring, I ordered the match for the one I thought we'd received, not her actual ring. Fortunately, the goldsmith was kind enough to allow us to return the ring and get another one.

This, of course, was not as easy as it sounded. For several weeks, the goldsmith sent us pictures of various rings, allowing us to (slowly, over the course of many many days) to "browse" their styles until Girl Scout Wife could settle on something she liked. I was happy to let her take her time making her pick, but near the end, when she'd narrowed it down to two styles, I was fairly certain she wasn't going to make any decision at all. Thankfully, the goldsmith was extremely patient, and in the end Girl Scout Wife settled on a design for a wedding ring that wasn't even close to the design of her engagement ring. It did, however, have some of the same coloration and a line of beading that, when put up next to the engagement ring, highlighted the detail of both rings. Once that was settled, the goldsmith crafted the ring, sent it out to us, and, thankfully, the new ring fit as well.

Different, but complementary. Just like my wife and I!

Now, let's contrast that with the process of getting my wedding ring. Over the course of the months of wedding planning, Girl Scout Wife and I both discovered that Etsy could be a source of some neat and unique items to give a little flair to our wedding and reception. Girl Scout Wife saw some mens' rings on the site, sold by TallieJewelry, sent me links, and I quickly found a style that I wanted. The ring I liked popped out at me from among the ones she'd referred me to, and I placed my order. The ring arrived perfectly sized, and I couldn't be more thrilled with it. The design is unique but tasteful, and I like the way it looks on my finger. Easy as can be.

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The takeaway here, as I mentioned above, is simple: don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because when it comes to planning a wedding, everything is going to change, and you'd better have plenty of time to deal with those changes when they come.

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.

Engagement Photos Have Arrived!

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Old Spock through our wedding planning.

We received the digital copies of our engagement photos from McG Photography today, and they turned out much better than I would have expected photos that contain me to turn out. We had a lot of fun at the shoot at the Christmas tree farm, and you can see what winter in the Pacific Northwest is all about in the shots below. Girl Scout Fiancée's homemade signs turned out so well that Bethany asked if she could keep them for other couples to use, and GSF was gracious enough to hand them over. I felt a pang of relief that Girl Scout Fiancée didn't want to hang on to them for her next engagement shoot with her as-yet-undiscovered second husband.

Thank goodness we were captured in our natural environment: sitting.

The blanket is not just for decoration. It was cold!

This photo taken while, off-camera, other people wonder why we decorated a still-growing tree.

Girl Scout Fiancée lassoed me with Christmas lights for this one.

The traditional Evil Fiancée photo.

Right before Girl Scout Fiancée backhanded the photographer (not really).

Engagement Photo Shoot

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Ted Theodore Logan through our wedding planning.
 
Today we did our engagement photo shoot. I've never really understood the big deal around engagement photos (maybe because my own parents didn't seem to have any), but Girl Scout Fiancée was pretty excited to do some cute ones to use as Christmas cards this year. While I don't really get it, I'm always happy to make her happy, even if that inexplicably means taking photos that can prove, in a court of law, that she is somehow associated with me. Why she would damage her reputation like that, I'll never know.

Our photographer was Bethany from McG Photography, who did an awesome job. If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend hiring her. She was very accommodating to our location request, and made the two of us look great, despite our own insecurities. We took our photos at a Christmas tree farm way, way, way up north of Seattle. Let's put it this way: it was an hour and twenty minutes to drive up there.

I was rewarded for my acquiescence, however. Girl Scout Fiancée allowed me to stop at my favorite nerd bar/restaurant, AFK Tavern (which is exactly as geeky as it sounds) for a delicious lunch of fried foods and beer. On the way home, I lapsed into a food coma (which totally sounds more socially acceptable than "passed out after only two beers") and Girl Scout Fiancée decided to stop in Newcastle to buy our Christmas tree. Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain, but we got a tree we liked and got it home safely.

We're going to use these photos on our Christmas cards, which double as engagement announcements. GSF even went so far as to design some custom signs for us to use during the shoot, which should turn out really cute.

Extra points for figuring out which one of us held each sign.

So, I got engaged this week...

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Marty McFly through our wedding planning.

Over five years ago, my girlfriend and I moved from Knoxville, TN to Seattle, WA so that I could take a job as a game designer at Wizards of the Coast. It was a risky move; at the time, we had only been dating for about six months, and we'd be making a move across the country, thousands of miles from every friend or family member either of us have. We've been through some rough times, and some great times, and the years have seen us do a lot of fun things, undergo changes in careers, and even saw my girlfriend start and lead her own Girl Scout troop (which is why I have dubbed her Girl Scout Girlfriend, so as to protect her true identity from those supervillains who might be reading this blog).

We'd talked about getting married in the past, but the time never seemed right. Both of us wanted to come into the marriage in a good, stable financial place, and earlier this year that became true for both of us. So, after some sneaky trickeration in which I obtained an engagement ring from Marc Williams Goldsmith, a jeweler in her home state of Pennsylvania that she has wanted her engagement ring from since she was a child, I popped the question to Girl Scout Girlfriend this week. Luckily, she said yes. I guess now she's Girl Scout Fiancée!

It was really tough for me to pick out a time and place to propose to her. We didn't really have any places in Seattle that were super special to us; we'd already been dating when we moved here, and neither of us get terribly emotionally invested in dates or other events. With Thanksgiving coming up, I knew we would have a house full of friends (we host Thanksgiving at our house every year for the many, many friends of ours who, like us, moved to Seattle from elsewhere and have no family here) and I knew that Girl Scout Fiancée would want to show off her new engagement ring to our friends. Plus, what better chance for a bride-to-be to be the center of attention than a day when all of our friends are going to be at our house, eating her delicious cooking?

I spent a few months dealing with the awesome folks at Marc Williams and was able to order an engagement ring and have it delivered the week before Thanksgiving. Given that GSF had been none-too-subtly hinting that she wanted a ring from Marc Williams for years, this seemed like a no-brainer. Picking a time and place to ask her was trickier, since we had no special places in Seattle. Worse, Seattle weather in November is not always conducive to romantic outdoor proposals, and I didn't want to do the proposal in anything less than a beautiful, private place.

In the end, I decided on the Lake Wilderness Arboretum, which was conveniently on the way to the town of Black Diamond where we'd be driving to pick up our delicious smoked turkey for Thanksgiving. I fed her a line about wanting to take some photos to send to our grandparents, something we do occasionally to help them keep up with our lives, and, in a quaint little gazebo all decorated with Christmas lights in the middle of a wooded area of the arboretum, I asked, and the rest is history.