My grandparents (on my mom’s side) were married on Wednesday, April 26, 1950 at All Souls Unitarian Church at 16th and Harvard NW. I’ve gone by that intersection a million times, but never gave much thought to it, not really knowing the significance of the spot until I recently saw some of their wedding/honeymoon pictures and albums.
So today mom and I took a trip over there specifically to walk around and check it out and take some pictures. It’s a really neat space inside, simple and elegant and bright, with an incredible pipe organ. Since their wedding was in the middle of the week, with only two of their friends as witnesses, we were wondering if they were wed inside the chapel itself, or maybe in a smaller side room? Or even outdoors? Mom is following up later with their historian to see if we can get any more info about it. Either way, it was interesting to be in the same space today, 63 years later, and imagine.
Yesterday evening we attended Liz and Ivan’s wedding at the Rusty Scupper in Baltimore. It was a beautiful evening for an outdoor ceremony overlooking the Inner Harbor. There was a quick downpour that occured right at the end of the service, but it made for a memorable start to the night, and no one melted, in fact it ushered in some nice cool weather for dancing on the porch at the end of the night.
Two years ago today we were getting married! Times flies when you’re having fun, as they say. It’s been an amazing two years. For some reason it feels much more recent than that, especially looking through all the photos just now. Last night we were discussing the fact that we’ve known each other for 8 years, almost a whole decade, and THAT is crazy.
So, I still haven’t edited our wedding video… Or even watched the footage for that matter. I should get on that. I’m sure there are some pretty funny memories on those tapes. Part of me is scared of putting the DV tapes in the video camera (old school style) and accidentally hitting the erase button, the other half of me is just lazy and hasn’t gotten around to it. I have a lot of half-edited projects sitting around as it is…
Anyways, we are having a pretty low-key celebration this year. The whole cotton (or modern, china) anniversary gift guide* for the 2nd year of marriage left me feeling uninspired and Matt asking if there were any t-shirts I wanted. Ro. Mance. Instead, Matt made me breakfast in bed this morning!! Now that is love. Love is also looking at our shared calendar on the iPad and noticing that Matt wrote “got married” on today’s date, with an alarm alert set for 15 minutes prior, no less. Awwww. He sure does make me laugh.
Tonight we are going to grill up some lamb kabobs, and I’m going to attempt to make baklava for dessert. I should have consulted Aunt Eileen for a recipe for this one, but it’s a last minute decision, so I hope this one is good. I find it helps to type “easy” in front of recipes, and there is always some version to be found on the internet for people like me who like to use minimal ingredients and the simplest directions possible.
Happy Anniversary, Matt! <3
*Can we discuss this webpage for a minute? This is hilarious, I don’t even know where to start. Who decides these things? Appliances at 4 years of marriage?? Are we talking like a new dishwasher or a coffee pot or what? Because if the dishwasher blows before we get to year 4, I’m not going to wait for a new one. I’m sure I just jinxed myself there. Next, silverware at 5 years? Are we eating with our hands up until then? Assuming we have perfectly good forks and knives already, isn’t that a little wasteful to just buy new ones? Ok, year 6 (we’re now “truly devoted” phew) your choice is candy… or iron. Either one, whatever works, Snickers Bar or a new crowbar. The next few years are acceptable I guess (except desk sets, that is weird), but then we get to year 16, where we’ve already run out of taditional gifts and your backup plan consists of “silver hollowware.” I’m sure I could type “hollowware” into Google and find out it actually is something specific, but I keep thinking of it as hollow vs solid. Like the choice you have to make at the CVS around Easter-time, do you spend the extra $1 on 4x as much chocolate or do you cheap out on the hollow bunny that will likely have it’s ear caved in by the time you get it home. Always go with the solid chocolate. So then, we’re still all out of ideas until year 20, where we are back to china again. Year 24, Musical Instruments. Not sure what we’re gonna do that year due to our lack of musical ability. Fastforward to year 32, “Conveyances,” I really like this concept. It’s been a damn long time, now give me some of your crap. Matt will be conveying all his bicycles to me that year, where will I put them all?? I better start thinking about that now… I like the ideas for the next several years, although I have no idea what Beryl is, I’m guessing some sort of random gemstone. At 42 years, we’re talking “Improved Real Estate.” I think this means you have to go clean out the gutters and repaint the house. For the 44th year, you get groceries. Groceries. What a genius idea, I’m going to get you something we already normally get in order to survive. I might step it up that year and get Peapod delivered. If you make it one more year though, you get sapphires. NOW! We are talking. Then, 46 and 47, “original poetry” and “books,” I really like these, I’ll look forward to those years. If you make it to 50, you have no choice, modern and traditional, it’s gotta be GOLD. Ahh I love things you can find on the Internet.
This past weekend we flew out to Houston, TX, along with my parents, for Tammy and Evan’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, including touches like Star Wars music, legos to play with, and a mac-and-cheese buffet. Ahhh-mazing! We were glad to be part of the celebration. Even though it was just a quick, 3-day trip, we packed in a lot of adventures and rediculous amounts of Tex-Mex food. Most of the pics we shot were on black-and-white film on the Pentax, so it’ll be awhile until I can post those, as I’m notoriously slow about sending them in to be developed. Here are some iPhone pic highlights for now :
Wandered around a bit in Discovery Park. It was pretty empty on a Friday afternoon, except for some school kids and dog walkers. I enjoyed these colorful cubic buildings.
We found what appeared to be some sort of plant-growing/gardening contest going on outside one of the office towers downtown. There was a garden area for each floor of the building, some of which were vibrantly alive, and other which were empty or had funny signs and not much growing. It’s an interesting way to liven up a sidewalk while inciting some friendly building rivalry for the workers. (looks like the engineering department needs help)
On our first night there, we had some dinner at the Flying Saucer brewery, and then Matt and I went out for a cocktail at a bar called Hearsay. It was a great, 3-story brick building with this beautiful lighting above. It felt like sitting under the stars. Sorta.
Evan and Tammy recommended that we try a little place called Taco’s-a-Go-Go. We took the light rail over there for breakfast and I think now tacos for breakfast might become a habit. After that, we wandered around the Museum district and visited the butterfly exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was pretty amazing actually, and as my mom pointed out, everyone inside the butterfly exhibit was walking around with a big smile on their faces like it was a magical wonderland. I didn’t manage to take any pics there, just one of the tacos.
Yet another pit stop for Mexican food, on another recommendation. There isn’t anywhere we won’t trek for it. Ninfa’s was grand. We ate in an outdoor courtyard and amused ourselves watching a family of about 30 people – probably 4 generations – trying to get seated, order, and then enjoy a Sunday lunch together.
This is what Matt created at the wedding reception. You’d never know he was an architecture student…
What’s the best part about having a pastry chef for a sister? Fresh wedding cake for our one-year anniversary! Jill decided to completely spoil us by recreating our exact wedding cake, purple funfetti and all, for our first anniversary. (For those keeping track, it’s actually a little bit past one year by now since we were married in May, but we had to schedule it for a time when we were both around to meet up of course). It was a nice treat to actually sit together and eat our wedding cake, since the piece that Matt fed me that night was such a blur that I really don’t remember if it even tasted good… though I’m sure it did. Thanks Jill!
“Make No Small Plans” is a quote by American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham. It is sometimes written as “make no little plans” but I’ve seen it both ways, with the full quote as “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” Either way, the words were attributed to Burnham following his death, so there is no actual proof that they were ever even uttered by him anyways. Regardless, I remember reading them around the time we were wedding planning and thought they were pretty fitting for us and the life we are planning.
I come from a long line of savers… …recyclers, reutilizationists, hoarders. Whatever you want to call it. These days it’s called “going green” or something, but long before that was in, my grandmother and my mother both had and have been known to cut up and reuse old wrapping paper, even it’s the size of a playing card. Or wipe off aluminum foil pieces and refold them for later use. Or save old scraps of wallpaper for us to wrap our textbooks in for elementary school.
So it should come as no surprise that I did this, but I couldn’t help it. I finally got around to cleaning out the 100+ wedding cards we received from our family and friends last month. And so I reread them all, since the first time doing so was a speedy blur, and then I reluctantly threw all this BEAUTIFUL paper into the recycling bin. I just have no room to keep hanging onto stuff like this iin this small apartment of ours.
But seriously, have you guys seen greeting cards these days??? They are nice enough to frame. Of course I love nice paper, so I’m biased, but still!!! So anyways all these cards–they sat in the recycling bin and I went about cleaning up the apartment.
And then.. I pulled them allllll back out and spent about an hour cutting them up into these PRETTY pieces and shapes and now look at all this cute new stationery I have!!!
I probably don’t have to buy any cards for the rest of the year, just going to paste some of these scraps together and write my own, new messages on my one-of-a-kind cards. If you know me well enough, you just may receive one sometime soon!
Mawwwwage. Maawwwage is wot bwings us togeder tooday.
woweeeee we did it! We’re hitched! HOORAY. It’s been a wild past two weeks, but we’re officially a Mr. and Mrs… I will say it’s really strange yet fun to add the words husband and wife to your vocabulary. Thank you to every one of our family and friends! Here are a few official yet unofficial pics from the day…. May 22 at the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.
Waiting to start the ceremony, we found this awesome smiley-man prop in the library/waiting area room of the museum. Props are awesome, as my friend Erin always says. Although we both really were that happy.
Cheesin’ for a moment! Inside the reception room (polaroid escort cards on the wall behind us…)
And so then we spent a wonderful two weeks in Gay Pareeeeeeeeeee! (At this point, you may have noticed, our blog was hijacked guest-written by the one and only JJ at savethetacos.org) We hope you enjoyed the brief injection of humor and politics and all things Sister Act, aka things people actually like to read about, as we will now attempt to return to regularly scheduled programming. ANYWAYS… here we are having a picnic on the Pont des Arts.
And obv. the Eiffel Tower too, what trip to Paris would be complete without it?
We both had our respective Bachelor/Bachelorette parties this weekend, his in Deep Creek, MD and mine in lovely downtown Annapolis, pictured. Good times were had by all, evidenced by the amount of napping we did on the couch yesterday. The guys spent Saturday going skeet shooting, and whatever else — I’m sure I’m not allowed to know about, much less write about on the blog. Meanwhile, the ladies had a windy kayaking adventure, followed by dinner, drinks, and dancing.
Well, March is ending and the lion weather is a-coming in. Forecasts for the next few days are sunny and 80s and finally Snowpocalypse is but a distant memory… It also means that our wedding is just 7 weeks away! So, I thought that we would give our readers a little preview today… and yes, we are tying the knot just slightly north of the District in our fair city of Baltimore, also known as Charm City, B’more, Bodymore, The City of Firsts, Ravenstown (ugh), and featuring mottoes such as “The Greatest City in America,” “Get in on It,” and “The City That Reads.” What could be more perfect! Anyways, Matt and I and our families have been busy getting all the details in order, including some decorations involving Polaroid photos like the one above.
