Carbon's Anniversary The Parting Of The Sensory - 2

Dear Shawn,

Happy 2 Monthiversary. Life is finally returning to normal (whatever that is) at home. The wedding feels like it was ages ago. People keep asking us how married life is. I feel like such a failure when I tell them it's the same. I feel like I'm supposed to say it's fabulous or it's amazing or it's better than I ever thought it could be. Don't get me wrong - being married to you is awesome. It's also the same. There are good things and bad things and at the end of the day the good outweighs the bad and I'm happy. Being married is challenging but (so far) no more challenging that just being in a relationship with you was. I'm happy that I found out about the majority of your quirks before we got married. The sock thing would have been a shock to my system if I was just finding out about it now. I honestly don't understand why you can't put your socks in the laundry basket every night but you don't understand why I love bands like the Arctic Monkeys and the Kooks so hey, we're even. I guess that's a big part of choosing to be together - not understanding wtf the other person is doing but loving them despite it.

We made our first grown-up purchase a few weeks ago. Ok, our condo was our first grown-up purchase but this was a close second. We bought a new kitchen table and couch. When we first started looking, we were looking at temporary-quality furniture. I'm glad we decided to go with the higher quality stuff. It makes me happy to think that we own furniture that will come with us when we move. If we can ever afford to move again. We don't actually have our kitchen table yet but I'm hoping it will show up before Thanksgiving.

This last month has been a bit tense for us. Purchasing the table made us both a bit cranky (talk about a lesson in compromise - our taste in furniture could not be further apart. Everything you liked was metal and glass and everything I liked was wooden and too "old looking.") We're also having a bit of difficulty planning our honeymoon (I still want to go to Ireland, you want to combine our honeymoon with your friend's wedding in Mexico. Seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that it's not a honeymoon if it includes family members?) Life is good though, even though you've made my head melt multiples times. You've also made my heart melt multiple times so I'd say we're coming out on top.


Love you, dude.

PS: Ireland is so much better than Mexico for a multitude of reasons, including - but not limited to - the beer and leprechauns. Think about it.

ABC 123 Baby You And Me Girl - Part 8

Wedding Recap A - D
Wedding Recap E - H
Wedding Recap I - K
Wedding Recap L
Wedding Recap M - O
Wedding Recap P - R
Wedding Recap S - U

Veil: I didn't wear a veil. I hate having hair flying around my face and I thought a veil would be sort of like that, only worse. I wanted to keep things simple.

Venue: I am so happy that we chose the Irish Pub. The event-planning people there kind of sucked, though they'd never done a wedding before so I can't be too critical. The servers and bartenders were fabulous.


Wedding jitters: All day I was on a bit of a high. I was jittery and a bit manic but I didn't start to feel nervous until five minutes before the ceremony started. Then? I felt like I might vomit. This is one of my favourite photos that Angella took. Turtle and one of my favourite aunts are both trying - unsuccessfully - to calm me down before we headed up to the patio for the ceremony.


Xcellence: (Hey, remember way back at 'E' when I did 'expressions' and I was all "at least I didn't put this under 'x' and make it 'xpressions' ... you would have permission to kick me in the shin if I did that."? If you know me in real life, you now have permission to kick me in the shin.)

My Mom is a beautiful lady but she always manages to look awkward and uncomfortable in photos. I love this photo of her.

I think Turtle looks gorgeous in the photo. I love how the sun is hitting her and making her glow.

This photo makes me laugh. It was taken as we walked back up the aisle after the ceremony and you can see how relieved we both are that the ceremony was over.

Cupcakes make me happy.

This is the Best Photo Sequence Ever. We decided to do a few cheesy wedding shots so Angella told us to look around the tree trunk at each other.


You can see why this guy cracks me up.

Yellow: Some of the centrepieces had yellow flowers. A lot of the flowers weren't yellow but I couldn't come up with another 'Y'. Don't judge.


Zee End: Yeah, I went there.

ABC 123 Baby You And Me Girl - Part 7

Wedding Recap A - D
Wedding Recap E - H
Wedding Recap I - K
Wedding Recap L
Wedding Recap M - O
Wedding Recap P - R

Siblings: My siblings were rockstars. Especially Turtle (I can say that because she's the only one of my siblings that knows about this blog.) They all put up with my craziness. They all stood up for me and Shawn. I love them.

Turtle, Westy, me and Bow

Speeches: The speeches surprised me. We didn't focus too much on them during the planning stage because we didn't want anyone to feel pressured.

Turtle and Bow both made very touching speeches.

Turtle won because she didn't cry while making her speech but she made me cry.

Shawn's brother made a sweet and (thankfully) non-scandalous speech.

My parents said a few words.


There was a lot of laughing during the speeches.




And a few tears.


Shawn and I were planning to say a few words, thanking everyone, but we didn't actually plan out what we were going to say. We made our speech after all the other speeches (and after the tequila shots. And double gin & tonics) so I was feeling a bit verklempt. All I managed to slur was "Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you to everyone who helped us plan. Thanks for not calling me crazy to my face." Yes, I am a classy one. It was fine though, I had written a small thank you note to our guests in our program so I didn't feel like too much of an ass.



Surprise: Shawn wrote the processional music. He also convinced his old band to play Summer of '69. It wasn't a puppy, but I was still happy. He's not an overly romantic person but sometimes he whips out the thoughtfulness and makes me forget about the pile of dirty socks sitting in front of the hamper.

Ties: I dislike solid-coloured ties. Shawn hates patterned ties. I did a poll and the stripey ties won (and I didn't even fix the results!) The Best Men wore stripey ties and Shawn wore a solid-coloured tie. That's called compromise, baby. See how good we are at being married?

Underwear: That would be my dad, showing off his lucky Irish boxers. Thanks, dad.


The end is in sight, peeps. I smell one more post until the wedding recap is finished. Finally. I'm not sure who is more excited - me or you?

ABC 123 Baby You And Me Girl - Part 6

Wedding Recap A - D
Wedding Recap E - H
Wedding Recap I - K
Wedding Recap L
Wedding Recap M - O

Photographs: We decided to do the photos before the wedding started. I really dislike being at a wedding and having it broken up by three hours of photographs. Also, we really didn't want to miss any of our own wedding. We decided to do the photos at Stanley Park because there are so many picturesque spots. I didn't count on the traffic jam we ended up getting stuck in though. This meant that we were a bit rushed, but we ended up with a lot of great shots. Also, it was freaking hot out and we probably wouldn't have lasted much longer in the sun anyway.

I was worried about the pictures because Shawn's Mom had requested that we stagger it so that she wouldn't be there at the same time as Shawn's Dad. We needed everyone to go at the same time though, because the park is so large and parking is difficult and it would be such a waste of time if someone got lost. Everything was fine though; Angella even got Shawn's Mom and Dad in a picture together. Granted they're not standing beside each other, but who cares? They're in the same photo and they're both smiling. No-one saw that one coming.

We did the photos with the parents first so they could leave and go back to the pub.

That's when things got fun. We headed out to the Rose Garden (which was surprisingly empty) and took some photos.


That's when we noticed the motorcycle cops. Good times were had by all.


Questions: I can't think of a "Q" category, so it will have to be "questions." If anyone has wedding-related questions, I'll answer them in the comments.

Rehearsal dinner: We didn't have one. We didn't have access to the pub. We didn't want to pay the commissioner a rehearsal fee. Shawn's parents couldn't handle being together in such a small group. I was fine having no rehearsal dinner - it meant that the night before the wedding Shawn and I had a nice, quiet dinner together. It would have been smart to have some sort of run-through though. We were pretty disorganized when it came to the actual ceremony. I'm not exaggerating when I say that we figured out the walking order in the stairwell, as the processional music was already playing. That was my true bridezilla moment. I was snappy and churlish and had to do some serious apologizing to my parents and Best Ladies after the ceremony was over.

ABC 123 Baby You And Me Girl - Part 5

Wedding Recap A-D
Wedding Recap E - H
Wedding Recap I - K
Wedding Recap L

Music: Shawn's area of expertise. During the before-the-ceremony-mingling period, he compiled a mix of traditional Irish music. It should be noted that I was completely against this ("who plays Irish music in an Irish pub? It's so obvious! And cheesy!") but it actually turned out well. The processional (? I always forget the name for the walky-down-the-aisle bit and I'm too lazy to look it up) music was a song that Shawn composed. For me. Because he is a sweetheart like that. That was actually part of the surprise.



After dinner, the dj played for a bit and then the bands played. Shawn played a set with his old band and then played some of his newer stuff with a few of his musician friends. The other part of my surprise was that he covered "Summer of '69" with his old band. The singer wouldn't sing it though, so Shawn sang. It was fabulous. I honestly don't even like that song that much but it always gets everyone out on the dance floor.



Our dj was really great - he didn't play any crap, even though there was one lady (a friend of Shawn's friend, so no-one is taking responsibility for her suckiness) who asked him to play "I Kissed a Girl" every ten minutes. Even though he told her that we had specifically asked him not to play that song. We hadn't, but I appreciated his lie.

Non-Traditional: I don't think our wedding strayed too far from what you could consider a traditional wedding. I don't even think that you could really define what a traditional wedding is, nowadays. However, I cannot think of an "n" subject, so you're getting a list of the non-traditional aspects of our wedding:

We got married on the roof-top balcony of an Irish Pub.





The reception was held in the pub.




Both of my parents walked me down the aisle. It was important to me to have both parents by my side.



I wore flowers in my hair instead of a veil.

We served non-traditional food like burgers and corn on the cob.

The Best Ladies wore different-coloured dresses.

We did the photographs before the ceremony.

Officers. Of the law: Photo props. Highlight of the afternoon (the wedding ceremony was technically in the evening, so I'm not heartless for saying that.)

We were in Stanley Park taking photos and we noticed some motorcycle cops looking at us.

We asked if they wanted to be in the pictures with us and they offered to position their bikes in front of the gardens and let us sit on them.

It was a riot.

We were laughing so hard the entire time.

One officer gave Shawn his ticket book and Shawn wrote me a ticket for "being too hot."

He then proceeded to put the ticket down the front of my dress. He's classy like that.