More than a circle of metal...or always listen to your fiancee!

Finally! After months of searching and trying on several different styles of rings, we at last have The One Ring. Sorry... got a little Lord of the Rings geekiness out. But to be serious, it has been a long search to find a ring that would go well with Elizabeth's beautiful blue sapphire engagement ring. With it being so different and unique, most rings just did not go with it. The engagement ring would either overshadow the plain simple white gold bands we looked at or it would get overshadowed and swallowed by the big, clunky contoured bands we tried to match with it.

We even tried to look into getting a band of white gold made to match the ring. That way it would not have diamonds on it so as not to take away from the beauty of her engagement ring. But WOW! The price to get a custom-made ring without diamonds would be $600 to $700 dollars! A ring just made of white gold would cost more than one with diamonds? We were both sticker-shocked at the quotes we were given.

It was getting to the point that Elizabeth was thinking about not wearing a wedding band and just having her engagement ring blessed when we get married, doubling as her wedding ring. I did not like that idea at all. When she asked me why I didn't like it, I told her it was because of tradition and that she needed the wedding band. She giggled and we kept searching for the perfect ring for her.

We finally found it. A beautiful, delicate ring that was designed to look like it was a continuous infinity symbol made of white gold and very small diamonds. It matched her ring perfectly and the two rings actually complement each other. We checked the price for it and it wasn't that bad ether. We found it at Jared's, and since we got the engagement ring and my ring from them, we thought it would only be fitting to get her wedding band from them also. We debated about how we could pay for it, since this was an extra expense when our budget is already starting to feel the strain.

Believe it or not, it's because I was lucky enough to have my car blow up.

I know what you are thinking. 'How can your car blowing its motorhead be a lucky thing?' Simple, really. Without the car, my money is not going to gas and car insurance, just a bus pass. So it is now free to go to this special ring that we found. We were discussing our options on how to pay for it. I really wanted to go with Jared because they have treated us so wonderfully, and the lady who had sold us Elizabeth's engagement ring had gone out of her way to help us get the ring.

But then a little dilemma came up. We checked out a jewelry store in the Galleria before we had lunch. They had the same ring! And it was $100 dollars cheaper than Jared's asking price. As much as we loved Jared, that was a big price difference that we really couldn't ignore. We went to eat lunch and tried to decide which place to go to get the ring. We loved the price difference, but we love all the good customer service that Jared has provided for us. We had no idea how well this other place was going to treat us or to take care of the ring on their warranty.

Elizabeth suggested once again that she just use her engagement ring as her wedding ring. I told her that would not be right. She asked me, putting tradition aside, why it was so important that she have a wedding band.

I thought about it for a minute trying to find the right words. I told her that the wedding band is not just a circle of metal. It is blessed by our priest beside my wedding band, forming a spiritual bond between the rings and between us. It will not only join the rings together in love, but also our souls, and make it a promise that this time, we will make this work. She asked, "Why wouldn't it be the same with the engagement ring?"

I said that it is because the engagement ring is a representation of my love for her and the desire for me to marry her. The wedding band is the actual bond between us, with her ring and mine touched and blessed by a priest. She smiled and said that I was adorable.

We decided to go to Jared and tell them that we found the ring they carried at a cheaper price at the competition, in hopes that we could keep our business with them. As luck or fate would have it, the woman who sold us Elizabeth's engagement ring now works at the Jared store over on our side of the river. We went there today and we found the ring that we wanted.

Elizabeth told her that we had found this same ring cheaper at another store, and asked if there was any way they could match their price. Jared Lady told us she would talk to her manager about it. She went away and Elizabeth told me to go look at the shinies. That lasted until Jared Lady came back and said that would be no problem at all.

I was overjoyed and it showed on my face. Elizabeth informs me that I am not allowed to ever play poker because I have no game face at all. I made my first down payment on this beautiful ring and left the store.

As we drove home, I told her that I was surprised that they agreed to lower the price of the ring. She smiled and said I should always listen to what my woman says. I laughed, and said that she was right. She asked for me to repeat that. I gladly did. Elizabeth is always right... and I have no shame in saying that. ;)

Swag

We've just returned from a bridal event. Hush, three of the vendors we needed to talk to were there, so it was convenient. We conferred with one of our potential florists, rental company and caterer, plus we met a new cake vendor. Jimmy personally devoured half her samples, I swear.

When we got home, I sorted through the swag bag and found a pair of pink panties, tied in curling ribbon. I pulled them out and unfurled them. Courtesy of the Dillard's lingerie department, at which I have never shopped because literally nothing is in my size. Including these tiny pink panties they put in the swag bag. Now, there may have been a time when I could have worn this scrap of fabric, but it definitely was before graduating from school and bearing a child.

"Look at this," I said, showing them to Jimmy. "One size fits all my ass. Literally."

Jimmy took the panties from me and held them up. "Yeah, that's ridiculous."

Of course, Ian chose that moment to walk into the dining room. And saw me and Jimmy sitting at the table. With Jimmy holding women's lingerie up in the air.

Ian stopped in the doorway, staring. Jimmy turned to him, still holding the panties up in the air. "Um," Jimmy said. "It... it came with the stuff. From the show."

I was no help at all, since I was laughing my ass off.

Without missing a beat, Ian said, "Jimmy, if you're not too busy..."

Jimmy gratefully escaped outside to toss the Frisbee around with the boy. I still haven't stopped laughing.

By God or Godzilla...

Alas...poor Ronin...I knew you well.

My car died this past Friday. And when I say it died...I MEAN IT DIED A BITTER SMOKING DEATH! It was almost beautiful in a silly way how white smoke started to blow out the tail pipe then from under the hood. It happened on the way to St. Louis when I was following Elizabeth to help her do a set up for a convention. Once I got there and popped open the hood I saw the white smoke blowing up from the engine and I knew at once that my car had just died on me. I will say that I have to pat myself on the back because I did not have a freak out about it or get mad. I just figured...oh well.

We are lucky that we are AAA plus members and was able to get the car towed back to our mechanic's shop for free. I knew that whatever was wrong with the car, it was going to be beyond our means to fix it. Plus, the thing is/was nothing but a POS period. The fan had stopped working so I didn't have heat all winter, the transmission was starting to make a hard pop when I would shift it into reverse, and the catalytic converter had gone out so I couldn't the stupid thing to pass inspection. Which cost me getting a ticket. Hey, my fault, so nothing to do about that. So to get this thing fixed would come to well over 3,000 to 4,000 dollars or more. So...Elizabeth and I have decided to put a bullet in the poor thing and put it out of our misery. Folks...never and I mean NEVER buy a Suzuki car. The thing is maybe worth 2,300 dollars in good condition. Trust me...you don't want to know how much I paid on that stupid thing over the last three years.

Why am I talking about car troubles on the wedding blog? Because...we are NOT and I repeat, NOT going to postpone our wedding by using the tax return money to fix my car or just get a junker so I can drive to work. I am lucky enough that I only work maybe three miles from my home so I will be taking the bus and riding a new bike that I got from my future mother and father-in-law. Eh...it will make my doctor happy because I need to get in better shape anyway. But no matter what, this wedding is going to happen. Elizabeth and I are not going to let anything stop this from happening. She has gotten her tax money in and my refund will be coming soon and we will have our money for the wedding. Is it going to be a big blow out of one? No...but we ARE going to have one.

I have had the honor to plan this thing with Elizabeth and go with her to the wedding shows and look at flowers and dresses and tuxes and eat cake samples(my favorite part by the way)to my hearts content. We are not going to throw it away just because my car decided to throw us a curve ball. And while I am on the subject of dresses, some people may ask why I have gone with Elizabeth to watch her try on dresses. Let me just say that in my first marriage I followed the rule of not seeing the bride in her dress before the wedding and I still ended up divorced. So hey, I figure that if I see Elizabeth in her dress before we get married my luck just might be reversed this time. Hey, it could happen.

I love this woman. My beautiful Star of the Night Sky. We ARE getting married this year. It WILL be in our church and not at the court house. I did that once and I never felt like I was married because of it. So this time I'm doing it right and marrying Elizabeth in front of our priest and God in Heaven. No car break down or other craziness is going to stop us. Besides, we have more cake tasting to do before November. Just joking. But when it gets right down to it, I'm marrying this wonderful woman. By God or Godzilla...we are getting married this year.

Rant over. Thank you and see you in the world of Bitstrips. 

Weddingblitz

We've been blitzing wedding nonsense for several days, and I'm starting to recognize what my stepbrother Kurt told me about planning a wedding: It's like a part-time job.

In this case, though, it's a fun job, albeit one where you write a lot of checks instead of earning them. The blitz came about because we compiled our funds from the various places we've been saving, earning and otherwise acquiring cash for the wedding, and realized that once Jimmy's tax return comes in next week or thereabouts, the wedding will be fully funded.

All the money in the bank. Wedding paid for and it's all covered until the fittings. You know, as long as we stay on budget and nothing disastrous happens.

So naturally this was the weekend his car decided to crack its motorhead. A $2,000 repair, plus $600 for a catalytic converter and ominous rumblings from the transmission. Were the gremlins trying to stop us from getting married?

If so, they failed. Several conversations began and ended with, "No, we are NOT postponing the wedding a third time." And not just because of the nonrefundable deposits and our family members who've bought plane tickets, though those are definitely inspiring reasons.

It's not like we hadn't discussed the possibility of the car's demise before. Jimmy's car was a 2007 Suzuki Forenza. If you take nothing else away from this blog, I hope you will take our advice to never buy this car. Its blue-book value would be $2,300 if it was in perfect condition and everything worked. Now roll your eyes back on up to the second sentence of this paragraph, and realize that this is a car that depreciated almost its entire value in six years. My only defense is that he bought the thing before we were together, so it's not my fault.

Given the state of his car, we'd talked about him being unhorsed. And the weekend's carsaster (I just made that up) determined that instead of repairing his Suzuki, we would buy him a bus pass. Hopefully this is not a long-term solution, but he has the good fortune to have a job only three miles from home that is in a fixed location, whereas my job requires me to have constant access to a reliable vehicle to go anywhere. Sometimes I will be able to drive him to work; sometimes he'll be reliant on the buses and the lovely Raleigh bicycle my parents just gave him; most nights he'll need to bum a ride home from co-workers because the buses stop running at 11:30 p.m. and he gets off work at 2 a.m.

But the wedding would not be postponed again. He literally stomped his foot.

We determined the smartest thing to do would be to prepay for as much as possible. Anything that doesn't have to wait, we're doing now. We put down the deposit on my wedding gown and paid the balance on the reception hall. We paid off the boys' tuxedos and are meeting florists and bakers. I'm cruising the internet for any Schtuff we need that we can buy now: jewelry, shoes, LED candles, etc.

It's fun. If I close my eyes, I can pretend we're spending someone else's money. Oh hush, I'm just kidding. We planned for this, and one of the advantages of lower-income people having a loooong engagement is that we have a long time to save cash. We postponed when he was laid off and gave ourselves extra time to catch up, and now it's paying off.

This past weekend, I was a tad stressed, and my friends caught the worst of me at a convention I was doing. Part of it was the car, and trying to figure out if and how we could get Jimmy back on the road. Part of it was that I had an absolutely terrible week at work, am behind on a few projects and was feeling pulled in several different directions. I spent much of Sunday thinking about running away for a writer weekend just to reset my batteries (until I realized how much housework needs to be done at Donald-Smith-Gillentine Inc.).

But I realized I'd given the wrong impression when a friend posited that weddings shouldn't be allowed to cause so much stress.

I had to stop and think about that. Funny. The wedding is the one thing that isn't stressing me out.

The wedding blitz is fun. It's fun to try on overpriced silly dresses while on a Facebook chat with my sister and friends. It's fun to plan a big party with our nearest and dearest. It's fun to shop for this-that-and-the-other-thing, to look at lovely stuff and pick something we like, and Jimmy would say the cake testing is the most fun of all.

It's fun because our friends and family have a sense of humor.
It's fun because we realize what's important and what's not.
It's fun because we planned for it, saved and used our heads.
It's fun because we're doing it together.

And that's the most important part, I think. If I had to do it all by myself, it would become a joyless chore. I had to go to one wedding show alone, because both bridesmaids were sick and Jimmy had to work. And there was no fun to it. I collected my coupons, made my appointments and left. The fun comes in doing it together, in enjoying the planning as a hobby - or our part-time job, as Kurt would say. Jimmy wants to be a part of it, and we get to have fun doing it, and our friends crack us up, and our families are as excited as we are.

Work, writing careers, kidstress, budgets, touring, other obligations... all those things tend to pile on and cause stress in our lives. The wedding is fun. I have no doubt that something (many things) will go wrong and there will be stress and drama at some point, though my bridesmaids have pointy knitting needles and are under orders to stab drama before it breeds.

But for now, at least, it's all about fun. And cake.

Days to Go: 256

A Matter of Space and Money...But Not Love...

261 days to go...

Wow! You see that number up there? When we started this crazy trip back when I tripped over my heart in Disney and went to one knee to ask Elizabeth for her hand in marriage we had nearly 800 days to plan this little thing called a wedding. But look how the time has flown by! Like Elizabeth said in her own blog post, when we first compiled a list of guest it was well over 400 people! All of our friends and family that we would love to be with us on the day we become husband and wife. Then the harsh reality of it slapped us across the face.

We just can't have that many people. And it simply comes down to the fact that it has to do with two things. Our church can only hold 115 people in it. And that is with everybody cramped in together in the pews like in a sardine can. Then there is the reception! We want this to be a wonderful party! Not just a quick toast and sharing cake and then everybody leaves. That just wouldn't be fun for either of us. I want people there to dance and laugh at my Godzilla cake as the song 'Godzilla' by Blue Oyster Cult is played in the background when I cut my first slice off.

So it comes down to space at our little church and money for this little wedding that we are putting together. And believe me, it has been a painful time looking through our guest list and having to try to decide who we send an invite to and who we don't. If I had my way and had the money Will Smith gets off of one movie like 'After Earth'(which sucked, but that is another topic unto itself) we would have this wedding at the big cathedral in St. Louis and have the reception at the Fox Theater with lobster tails and stakes to eat. But...we are poor. Very poor, and me getting laid off when I did ruined and hindered me from being able to donate money to the wedding fund we had put together. Even when I got me my job at SIUE it was at a rate of nearly four dollars less than at my job at the factory so our money was still tight.

So now, here we are with only 261 days to go and with a guest list of 191 that needs to be paired down to 115. I have already dropped family and friends that hurt my heart to have to do so. People I have met since I have become a writer and started to attend conventions as a author that I look up to and admire. People who became Elizabeth's and I's biggest cheerleaders when they found out that we were in love and were keeping their fingers crossed that I would pop the question to her and that she would say yes to me. Guys that I have shared drinks with at parties at the cons and laughed with and that I consider brothers and family.

Members of my family that I love more than anything and that I wish to God above they could be there with me on the day I see Elizabeth walk down the isle toward me with her wedding dress on. But it all comes down to money and space. And no...we can't have people streaming live video of the wedding so others can watch online or in another room at the church. Photography of any kind is not allowed at our church during the wedding. Why not get married at a larger place so more people can come? Because this little church we go to is special to us. It is where we go to worship and where I serve as a chalice bearer for communion. It is the home of my soul for God and that is where we want to be joined together as husband and wife.

Why am I saying all of this? Because we both wanted people to know that if you don't receive an invite it is not because we did not wish you to be there. It is because of lack of space and money. But no lack of love for all of you. We hope and pray that people who are not invited will understand and still wish us happiness and good luck. Who will look forward to seeing all of the pictures of Elizabeth in her wedding gown and me wearing a tux with tails acting like I'm singing the song 'Puttin on the Ritz' with her father and my sons and friends who have done me the honor to be groomsmen and usher. We hope that if you are not there in the flesh, you will be with us there in spirit sending all of your love and happiness to us.

Bottom line...please don't hate us. We beg you. Now that that is out of the way...does anybody have any ideas how we can cut another 76 people off of the list. We sure could use the help. I need a rum and coke the size of Godzilla right now.

A church, a hall and a shoehorn

So far this is the only part I hate about planning this wedding. We are cutting the guest list.

It’s brutal. Who knew I had this many friends? And family, and colleagues… to say nothing of the plethora of relatives I’m about to acquire. To put it in perspective for you: when we did our initial list of all the people we wanted to invite, there were more than 400 names.

The church holds 115. Max.

But now we’re down to the wire, so it’s time to get really serious about redlining the list. It’s depressing - even heartrending - to cut people off our list, so many people.

We've cut friends from high school and acquaintances from the book tour. Professional colleagues, fellow volunteers, friends of our parents, coworkers, internet pals. Jimmy cut relatives by the score; then I started in as well, and I have fewer relatives by far. We cut people who lived far, far away for whom it would be an expensive imposition for them to attend.

Now we’re down to 240. Someone shoot me.

It’s down to painful proportions. I’m cutting friends I’ve known for twenty years or more, people who’ve advised me, who’ve helped me in times of trouble, people to whom I am very close. On the one hand, it’s brutal to the point to tears, as though by eliminating them from the list I’m eliminating them from my life.

On the other hand, my sanity brain knows that isn’t true.

If it weren’t so brutal, it would be a nice affirmation to know how many lives have touched us, how many people wish us well and have been part of our lives separately and together. We are blessed in friendship and family, and the list is a reflection of that.

On the other hand, we’re going to need a shoehorn.

I started employing a new mindset: instead of asking, “Do I want this person at the wedding?” I am asking, “Will this person hate me forever if I snub them by not inviting them? Will they understand?” After all, everyone knows this is a bare-budget wedding, and the church only seats so many…

191.

ME: That’s it. It’s going to be me, you, the wedding party and the priest. Nobody else.
HIM: Let’s try again.

Days to go: 262

Longest Engagement in History.

Okay, that's not actually true. The Guinness Book of World Records establishes that the longest engagement on record belongs to Octavio Guillan and Adriana Martinez. They got engaged in 1902 at age 15 (okay, things were different then). They married in 1969 at age 87, after having been engaged for much of the 20th century.

Jimmy and I got engaged in July 2012. We originally planned to marry in June 2014, which was a respectable 23 months. However, that turned out to be the single most inconvenient month for half the wedding party, and thus the wedding was postponed.

The current (tentative) date is November 8, 2014. But we've also discussed moving it up to September 21. Whichever date we choose will become not-so-tentative once we make up our minds on certain salient details and save sufficient money to put down nonrefundable deposits. That's really when a couple ties the knot, you know.

On a more serious note, since becoming engaged we have survived Jimmy's layoff and subsequent unemployment, my temporary furlough from my job and more car troubles than we care to think about. Silk and pearls sometimes have to wait in line behind bread and milk, particularly when feeding teenagers.

In the meantime, we are happily ensconced in our home, enjoying our engagement and ducking the question, "So when's the wedding?" The people at the wedding shows have begun to recognize us on sight, and my collection of price lists and brochures is becoming ridiculous.

Yes, we will get married. Eventually. And if anyone suggests we try to beat Octavio and Adriana's record, be prepared to face Jimmy.