Sneak peak of the wedding!
I've said my thanks to all those involved so many times, but it doesn't seem enough. Thanks everyone.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
A British bride's guide to an American bridal shower (now with added surprise element)
I was over in PA spending a week with Mr and his family for the last time we'd see each other before the wedding, and the last time I might be allowed in the US for a while (though hopefully I can visit when my visa is pending, after marriage). While I was there I read a blog post on the private Offbeat Bride ning entitled "a British bride's guide to an American bridal shower". I have to laugh now about the moment I read it because I didn't realise at the time that it'd be a guide I'd be using at all. I had only read it out of interest because the author is a fellow transatlantic immigrating bride, emigrating from England and immigrating to NY in a kind-of-the-same-but-different-situation to me.
On Saturday Mr and I went to play crazy golf (I won both games) and eat hot dogs and ice cream. It was very windy out on the crazy golf course, so I wore Mr's hoodie, and my hair went crazy golf windswept wild. When we got back to his place and entered through the garage door I heard "surprise!" and saw a room full of people taking photos of me that look like this:
Mr's mom and sister had arranged it all, a bridal shower just for me, and in the few hours we'd been out of the house they'd decorated and made a fab spread of food and a bowl of punch served in the in-laws' 1930s punch bowl.
They invited the aunts and uncles, including two who'd driven up from DC with their pooch just to spend a few hours at the party before driving back home again. I don't have any friends in PA (yet), but it was a lovely family affair nonetheless. I was handed a glass of punch (against the traditional I'd heard that bridal showers are dry affairs) and told to sit down and open gifts.
As a reserved British girl thrown into a loud Anglo-Saxon-American Bridal Shower environment, I happily did as I was bid. I remembered what the other blog post had said about it feeling a bit strange being the centre of attention and opening gifts, but Mr's sis was great at keeping things moving and handing me gifts. Traditionally bridal showers are slightly matriarchal events, held by women of the family exclusively for the bride to receive housewifely gifts to ensure she's well set up for becoming head of her household's domestic affairs. My Mr was there the whole time though, which I liked. It made it our shower - so when I opened the cereal bowls I could joke that these were for him to make me cereal every morning like he used to when we were at grad school. Later when I opened coffee mugs I told the story about how he made me cereal and coffee every morning, but one day threatened to stop making me coffee because I never drank it, and I had to admit that I don't like it black but was too shy to ask for milk.
This is me with our new slow cooker, asking with desperate perplexity "but what is four and a half quarts? what is a quart? I'm British, I don't understaaand" to which everyone laughed, but couldn't give me an answer in metric. Oh, the adventures I shall I have in Fahrenheit.
Lovely gin and tonic glasses from my sister-in-law-to-be. she got them while antiquing in Georgia.
I was the only Brit in the room, but for the rest of the family a bridal shower is a normal occasion, so I felt quite relaxed, even as my sister-in-law-to-be started putting together my 'bridal shower hat' (a phrase I must admit I googled afterwards to see if it really was a 'thing' and was relieved to see equally daft pictures of blushing brides in bow bonnets).
Then Mr and I cut a St.Patrick's day themed cake and I gave the Americans poor travel advice for where to visit in the UK.
I was goofing around and stabbing the cake. The knife was Mr's parents' wedding cake knife, although they bought us our own for our wedding for a keepsake; Mr was delighted as it's something he had wanted (post wedding update: Mark forgot to bring the knife over to Scotland for the wedding, but I'm sure we'll use it one day!).
So there you go: Cross-cultural experiences are fun, and don't have be entirely traditional. Sure, the groom and the men of the family can join in - the groom might even don the brightly coloured 50s apron gift and run around outside with the pet bulldog. Matriarchal housewifey gifts can be shared and enjoyed by future husband too, especially when he loves baking. And isn't division of labour a sensible modern economic concept anyway? Check out this book on the matter!
On Saturday Mr and I went to play crazy golf (I won both games) and eat hot dogs and ice cream. It was very windy out on the crazy golf course, so I wore Mr's hoodie, and my hair went crazy golf windswept wild. When we got back to his place and entered through the garage door I heard "surprise!" and saw a room full of people taking photos of me that look like this:
Mr's mom and sister had arranged it all, a bridal shower just for me, and in the few hours we'd been out of the house they'd decorated and made a fab spread of food and a bowl of punch served in the in-laws' 1930s punch bowl.
They invited the aunts and uncles, including two who'd driven up from DC with their pooch just to spend a few hours at the party before driving back home again. I don't have any friends in PA (yet), but it was a lovely family affair nonetheless. I was handed a glass of punch (against the traditional I'd heard that bridal showers are dry affairs) and told to sit down and open gifts.
As a reserved British girl thrown into a loud Anglo-Saxon-American Bridal Shower environment, I happily did as I was bid. I remembered what the other blog post had said about it feeling a bit strange being the centre of attention and opening gifts, but Mr's sis was great at keeping things moving and handing me gifts. Traditionally bridal showers are slightly matriarchal events, held by women of the family exclusively for the bride to receive housewifely gifts to ensure she's well set up for becoming head of her household's domestic affairs. My Mr was there the whole time though, which I liked. It made it our shower - so when I opened the cereal bowls I could joke that these were for him to make me cereal every morning like he used to when we were at grad school. Later when I opened coffee mugs I told the story about how he made me cereal and coffee every morning, but one day threatened to stop making me coffee because I never drank it, and I had to admit that I don't like it black but was too shy to ask for milk.
This is me with our new slow cooker, asking with desperate perplexity "but what is four and a half quarts? what is a quart? I'm British, I don't understaaand" to which everyone laughed, but couldn't give me an answer in metric. Oh, the adventures I shall I have in Fahrenheit.
Lovely gin and tonic glasses from my sister-in-law-to-be. she got them while antiquing in Georgia.
I was the only Brit in the room, but for the rest of the family a bridal shower is a normal occasion, so I felt quite relaxed, even as my sister-in-law-to-be started putting together my 'bridal shower hat' (a phrase I must admit I googled afterwards to see if it really was a 'thing' and was relieved to see equally daft pictures of blushing brides in bow bonnets).
Then Mr and I cut a St.Patrick's day themed cake and I gave the Americans poor travel advice for where to visit in the UK.
I was goofing around and stabbing the cake. The knife was Mr's parents' wedding cake knife, although they bought us our own for our wedding for a keepsake; Mr was delighted as it's something he had wanted (post wedding update: Mark forgot to bring the knife over to Scotland for the wedding, but I'm sure we'll use it one day!).
So there you go: Cross-cultural experiences are fun, and don't have be entirely traditional. Sure, the groom and the men of the family can join in - the groom might even don the brightly coloured 50s apron gift and run around outside with the pet bulldog. Matriarchal housewifey gifts can be shared and enjoyed by future husband too, especially when he loves baking. And isn't division of labour a sensible modern economic concept anyway? Check out this book on the matter!
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
International paperwork part two arrives!
Mr got an email three hours ago:
"Your UK visa has been issued."
Another thing off the checklist then: UK entry clearance for groom - check! It's certainly good to know that the groom will be allowed in the country to go to his own party.
I'm incredibly impressed with how quickly UKBA dealt with his application, but know that the bit that comes afterwards won't be so easy.
But for now, invitations are out, and visa is approved. Let's get this party started.
"Your UK visa has been issued."
Another thing off the checklist then: UK entry clearance for groom - check! It's certainly good to know that the groom will be allowed in the country to go to his own party.
I'm incredibly impressed with how quickly UKBA dealt with his application, but know that the bit that comes afterwards won't be so easy.
But for now, invitations are out, and visa is approved. Let's get this party started.
Friday, 4 March 2011
International paperwork part one arrives!
Sometimes I put my facebook status as nothing more than a list of places where I need to be for work and/or pleasure, because I seem to do a very lot of travelling. The past week or so I didn't even bother because I couldn't even keep track. In just one day I went from the Highlands of Scotland down to London and then to the central belt of Scotland. The next day I was back in the Highlands, and then the next day I was in Edinburgh, and so it went on, until I found myself on a bus home from a day and a bit in Glasgow on my eighth day of travelling on the trot, and decided that I'd done quite enough travelling for February, thankyouverymuch. It was the 28th, so it wasn't like I could do much more that month, anyway!
At the same time I received an email from an equally busy-at-work Mr to say that the US Postal Service website was saying that there had been an attempted delivery of the invitations he'd sent me. There hadn't, so something was fishy. I randomly entered the USPS tracking code into Royal Mail and Parcel Force and discovered that they were in a random depot two hours away from me. Long story short, it was all fine: I had to pay the customs charges online and they arrived two days later having travelled far enough themselves via Philly, Chicago and various places in the UK (no travelling required on my part, bonus).
I quite like them and Mr quite likes them. The lusciousness of the paper doesn't come through in this picture, and I'm grateful to Mr for letting me design them in my quirky, spontaneous, non-pro way. All I have to do now is address and send them, and in a stupid way my staring at this box feels like sitting on the edge of a precipice; once I send them out this event is really and truly happening…
…as long as Mr's visa arrives on time. He received a promising email from UKBA to say they received it all and it's usually processed in a couple of weeks.
So I want to get these invitations done tonight, even though it's late on Friday and I'm going to Glasgow early tomorrow, Edinburgh later in the week, followed by Perth (Scotland, not Australia) and then trying to make it for an early flight the next day headed to "My Mr, USA", via France, or Holland, I can't even remember right now.
P.S for info, the fonts I used were downloaded free from dafont.com:
http://www.dafont.com/deco-caps.font and
http://www.dafont.com/little-lord-fontler.font
At the same time I received an email from an equally busy-at-work Mr to say that the US Postal Service website was saying that there had been an attempted delivery of the invitations he'd sent me. There hadn't, so something was fishy. I randomly entered the USPS tracking code into Royal Mail and Parcel Force and discovered that they were in a random depot two hours away from me. Long story short, it was all fine: I had to pay the customs charges online and they arrived two days later having travelled far enough themselves via Philly, Chicago and various places in the UK (no travelling required on my part, bonus).
I quite like them and Mr quite likes them. The lusciousness of the paper doesn't come through in this picture, and I'm grateful to Mr for letting me design them in my quirky, spontaneous, non-pro way. All I have to do now is address and send them, and in a stupid way my staring at this box feels like sitting on the edge of a precipice; once I send them out this event is really and truly happening…
…as long as Mr's visa arrives on time. He received a promising email from UKBA to say they received it all and it's usually processed in a couple of weeks.
So I want to get these invitations done tonight, even though it's late on Friday and I'm going to Glasgow early tomorrow, Edinburgh later in the week, followed by Perth (Scotland, not Australia) and then trying to make it for an early flight the next day headed to "My Mr, USA", via France, or Holland, I can't even remember right now.
P.S for info, the fonts I used were downloaded free from dafont.com:
http://www.dafont.com/deco-caps.font and
http://www.dafont.com/little-lord-fontler.font
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Waiting Game #1 (or international paperwork x 2)
Background: Mr and I are a transatlantic long-distance couple. I live in Scotland; he lives in the USA. We made the decision a long time ago that we would get married in the UK, and that I will eventually move to the USA. The wedding destination was ultimately my decision, and it was an incredibly hard decision to make. It means that the number of guests on his side will be smaller because fewer people can travel across to the UK and it also means that after the wedding we will be apart for longer as my spouse visa is being processed. It was not the cheapest and easiest option, but amongst all the choices, none of which were particularly cheap or easy, it was the one that allowed me to have a wedding in the UK with my family and friends (and especially my grandparents who are in their late 70s) and gain some great experience in my current job (which I feel I was lucky to get during this job market). Mr has been incredibly gracious and understanding, considering that this was not his first choice and it involves two visas instead of one.
Special Marriage Visit Visa: Anyone not from the UK but getting married in the UK needs to get a visa called the Special Visit Visa: Marriage in order to be able to get married (unless they are immigrating to the UK, that's a different visa. This is for visits of less than 6 months). So because Mr is from the USA, he needs this visa for us to be able to get married. He won't be allowed in the country without it and we won't be able to get a marriage licence without it.
Marriage license in Scotland: Anyone getting married in Scotland needs to go through the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). This must be done between 3 months and 15 days of the wedding: No more; no less. It states that anyone not from the UK must get a certificate of no impediment to register their marriage, but in the case of the USA this is not true; they are not available in the USA, and the GROS does not require them from US citizens (I called up and checked, in a mild panic). What they do need instead is a copy of the Special Visit Visa.
Waiting Game #1: Mr has sent off his visa application, so now we start waiting game number one, waiting for this to be processed and returned in enough time to then register the marriage. I've heard from my local MP and from our registrar (and from long extended grapevines) that couples can and do leave this too late, leaving them with a big expensive party and no wedding. We hope that we've time it correctly and that it'll all turn out fine, and the processing times on the UKBA website seem reasonable, but I can't help feeling nervous and very, very twitchy.
International paperwork part two: So the visa is one aspect of paperwork. Mr got the invites I designed (using a 30 day free trial of Adobe Illustrator) printed and I have heard that they are super. He was going to send them out, but instead sent them to me in a big box as most of the guests are in the UK. I want to get these invites sent out as soon as possible, but I'm waiting at the mercy of both our postal services for them, and it's likely they are delayed in customs while they stick a huge tax charge on for me to pay before I can get my mitts on them.
So we've checked a couple more things off the wedding checklist:
1. Visit visa application sent off.
2. Invites printed, guestlist drawn up (with most of our guest's addresses entered in a spreadsheet ready to be filled with RSVP and menu requests).
3. Accommodation and flights booked for Mr and his parents.
Special Marriage Visit Visa: Anyone not from the UK but getting married in the UK needs to get a visa called the Special Visit Visa: Marriage in order to be able to get married (unless they are immigrating to the UK, that's a different visa. This is for visits of less than 6 months). So because Mr is from the USA, he needs this visa for us to be able to get married. He won't be allowed in the country without it and we won't be able to get a marriage licence without it.
Marriage license in Scotland: Anyone getting married in Scotland needs to go through the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). This must be done between 3 months and 15 days of the wedding: No more; no less. It states that anyone not from the UK must get a certificate of no impediment to register their marriage, but in the case of the USA this is not true; they are not available in the USA, and the GROS does not require them from US citizens (I called up and checked, in a mild panic). What they do need instead is a copy of the Special Visit Visa.
Waiting Game #1: Mr has sent off his visa application, so now we start waiting game number one, waiting for this to be processed and returned in enough time to then register the marriage. I've heard from my local MP and from our registrar (and from long extended grapevines) that couples can and do leave this too late, leaving them with a big expensive party and no wedding. We hope that we've time it correctly and that it'll all turn out fine, and the processing times on the UKBA website seem reasonable, but I can't help feeling nervous and very, very twitchy.
International paperwork part two: So the visa is one aspect of paperwork. Mr got the invites I designed (using a 30 day free trial of Adobe Illustrator) printed and I have heard that they are super. He was going to send them out, but instead sent them to me in a big box as most of the guests are in the UK. I want to get these invites sent out as soon as possible, but I'm waiting at the mercy of both our postal services for them, and it's likely they are delayed in customs while they stick a huge tax charge on for me to pay before I can get my mitts on them.
So we've checked a couple more things off the wedding checklist:
1. Visit visa application sent off.
2. Invites printed, guestlist drawn up (with most of our guest's addresses entered in a spreadsheet ready to be filled with RSVP and menu requests).
3. Accommodation and flights booked for Mr and his parents.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
The LOLsome adventures of Bobby Billybog
Coming up with a registry is just one of the many troublesome things about arranging a wedding across an ocean, what with the currencies, the multiple addresses and the where to send things, and the very far away prospect of one day getting things shipped to the USA. That's a whole lot of price and hassle I'm not thinking about right now.
I was convinced that we couldn't have a 'normal' registry of actual physical gifts because of these factors, but Mark, and OBB showed me otherwise. Mark has had his heart set on good wedding china, and we'd already spent an afternoon walking around the King of Prussia mall eyeing up crockery and testing the weight of spoons in our hands, pretending to be the normal kind of couple who'd do this on a regular Sunday afternoon and not the kind of couple that only gets to spend Sunday afternoon together three times a year.
A couple of weekends ago I lounged on the sofa with the cat, my mum was cutting fabric for my dress (squee!) and listening to the football, while Mark and I surfed shopping websites together on Skype and picked our favourite china. It felt almost like a normal lazy afternoon, a long-distance tableau of domestic bliss!
So this month I had to do a lot of travelling to the Highlands for work - the kinds of places without phone reception or even ATMs. During a spell of signal on my phone I saw an email from Macy's in my gmail and guessed Mark had registered for the china. In the past week I got 4 or 5 more emails from Macy's, all vaguely spammy "Woohoo! Wedding Registry! Get Spendy! Look at this DEAL!" kinds of emails, which I tend to ignore but not delete for a while.
After I'd come back from business travel, and Mark had returned from his own business trip to Atlanta, we actually got a chance to chat on Skype and Mark told me that I had to 'activate' our registry (he got to have fun with the barcode bleeper all by his lonesome, not fair!). I found one of the emails from Macy's and loaded up the 'make a registry page' and after it tried to sell me Gold Reward Stars or something, AND a Macy's card, I finally set up a registry but it had nothing in it.
Mark realised then that I'd started a new registry, not activated HIS one, so I tried to delete it, and when it wouldn't let me, I changed all the details to fake details, including the wedding date, made it private, and changed the account to an old email address. Yeah, I'd opened the "selling you the Gold Reward Stars" email and not the "activate your account" email by accident. Boob. But then the real 'activation' wouldn't work; first Mark couldn't find our special code and had to rummage round his paperwork, and then the computer was all confused because now I had two registries, kind of.
Mark gave in and called Macy's to explain and asked them to delete the one I made by accident, but because I'd changed some of the details, they couldn't find it in the system. The Macy's lady asked what the name of the couple was. It was still in my name, but the 'husband' was different. While still on the phone to Macy's, Mark asked me over webcam what I changed it to, exactly.
Me: Umm, Bobby Billybog.
Mark: You're kidding me? Um, ma'am, it's uh, Bobby Billybog.
I burst into fits of giggles and Mark was staring at me over Skype as he was trying to be serious to the Macy's lady. She asked to clarify all the details of mine and Bobby Billybog's wedding, for security purposes I imagine.
Mark: What address did you put, Gill?
Me: I can't remember. The zip code was the same. I don't know. It was something silly, like Silly Nanny Street (Family Guy reference).
Mark: Oh god...
The Macy's lady actually asked if that's where he lived. I'm not sure she quite understood what was going on. Mark even tried to explain to the poor lady that I was cracking up over webcam at him having to say silly things over the phone to a stranger.
So that's how I broke our registry and laughed myself daft at my future husband (a serious upstanding bloke who graduated from Military School) saying his 'name' was Bobby Billybog to Macy's while he was not laughing at all.
It's also how I have earned myself a new nickname from my serious upstanding future husband... Gilly Billybog. I know I totally deserve it
I was convinced that we couldn't have a 'normal' registry of actual physical gifts because of these factors, but Mark, and OBB showed me otherwise. Mark has had his heart set on good wedding china, and we'd already spent an afternoon walking around the King of Prussia mall eyeing up crockery and testing the weight of spoons in our hands, pretending to be the normal kind of couple who'd do this on a regular Sunday afternoon and not the kind of couple that only gets to spend Sunday afternoon together three times a year.
A couple of weekends ago I lounged on the sofa with the cat, my mum was cutting fabric for my dress (squee!) and listening to the football, while Mark and I surfed shopping websites together on Skype and picked our favourite china. It felt almost like a normal lazy afternoon, a long-distance tableau of domestic bliss!
So this month I had to do a lot of travelling to the Highlands for work - the kinds of places without phone reception or even ATMs. During a spell of signal on my phone I saw an email from Macy's in my gmail and guessed Mark had registered for the china. In the past week I got 4 or 5 more emails from Macy's, all vaguely spammy "Woohoo! Wedding Registry! Get Spendy! Look at this DEAL!" kinds of emails, which I tend to ignore but not delete for a while.
After I'd come back from business travel, and Mark had returned from his own business trip to Atlanta, we actually got a chance to chat on Skype and Mark told me that I had to 'activate' our registry (he got to have fun with the barcode bleeper all by his lonesome, not fair!). I found one of the emails from Macy's and loaded up the 'make a registry page' and after it tried to sell me Gold Reward Stars or something, AND a Macy's card, I finally set up a registry but it had nothing in it.
Mark realised then that I'd started a new registry, not activated HIS one, so I tried to delete it, and when it wouldn't let me, I changed all the details to fake details, including the wedding date, made it private, and changed the account to an old email address. Yeah, I'd opened the "selling you the Gold Reward Stars" email and not the "activate your account" email by accident. Boob. But then the real 'activation' wouldn't work; first Mark couldn't find our special code and had to rummage round his paperwork, and then the computer was all confused because now I had two registries, kind of.
Mark gave in and called Macy's to explain and asked them to delete the one I made by accident, but because I'd changed some of the details, they couldn't find it in the system. The Macy's lady asked what the name of the couple was. It was still in my name, but the 'husband' was different. While still on the phone to Macy's, Mark asked me over webcam what I changed it to, exactly.
Me: Umm, Bobby Billybog.
Mark: You're kidding me? Um, ma'am, it's uh, Bobby Billybog.
I burst into fits of giggles and Mark was staring at me over Skype as he was trying to be serious to the Macy's lady. She asked to clarify all the details of mine and Bobby Billybog's wedding, for security purposes I imagine.
Mark: What address did you put, Gill?
Me: I can't remember. The zip code was the same. I don't know. It was something silly, like Silly Nanny Street (Family Guy reference).
Mark: Oh god...
The Macy's lady actually asked if that's where he lived. I'm not sure she quite understood what was going on. Mark even tried to explain to the poor lady that I was cracking up over webcam at him having to say silly things over the phone to a stranger.
So that's how I broke our registry and laughed myself daft at my future husband (a serious upstanding bloke who graduated from Military School) saying his 'name' was Bobby Billybog to Macy's while he was not laughing at all.
It's also how I have earned myself a new nickname from my serious upstanding future husband... Gilly Billybog. I know I totally deserve it
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