Life After Wedding: The Baby Questions

Disclaimer: Before anybody assumes anything, we are NOT expecting, we are NOT trying, and I am NOT implying anything by posting an entry about babies.

Everyone has said quite accurately that as soon as you get engaged the most asked question is, "Have you set a date?" and that as soon as you get married that turns into, "When are you having babies?"

IT'S TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY TRUE.

Interestingly enough, it hasn't bothered me the same way that the wedding questions did. It's actually surprising to me how much it hasn't bothered me. I think that may be because I viewed my wedding as a party forced upon me by a patriarchal institution, and having babies is my biological privilege as a woman. There is a difference, in my mind, between what is given to me by nature and what is forced upon me by society. (Side note: what I DO mind is the implication that you must be married in order to have babies. Or that you can't be married without the desire to have babies. That's just silly.)

Anyway, as I said in my disclaimer, babies are not in our immediate future, but there have been a plethora of new babies in my life from various friends and coworkers. And so from time to time my friends and coworkers will post sites that I will peruse at my leisure. I came across this site, Let's Panic About Babies!, which is hilarious. I found myself wandering into the What Kind of New Mother Stereotype Are You quiz, and I think that eventually, this will be me:

Reluctant mom

Motto: That baby's here somewhere.
Characteristics: Calls baby "Dude"; doesn’t want to nurse, because hasn't she done enough?
Can be found: Performing Google searches for "mother who doesn’t lose identity just because of some kid."
Warning signs that this might be you: What's your baby's name? Quick! No looking at the birth certificate!

Hilario. Though admittedly, for only a select group of people with like-minded senses of humor.

Life After Wedding: Etiquette and My Biggest Annoyance to Date...

...being called Mrs. DudesFirstName DudesLastName.

I HAVE MY OWN FIRST NAME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I took his last name only.

A lot of people say that Ms. Manners would allow others to address me in the manner which I do not prefer, however etiquette has been and always will be about respect. I concede that up until very recently Mrs. DudesFirstName DudesLastName was an acceptable method of addressing the wife, but times have changed and there's nothing more disrespectful, in my opinion, than to do away with the wife's first name. And yes, I totally know that Mrs. means "wife of" and that technically the above is correct, but I have never and will never like Mrs., and showing respect means honoring the salutation that people prefer.

Men don't have to declare their marital status using their Mister honorific, why should women?

My preference is Ms. MyFirstName MyLastName, and of course, as of a couple of weeks ago, MyLastName = DudesLastName.


By the way, one of my friends who got married last month got her DJ to announce them as Mr. HisFirstName HisLastName and Ms. HerFirstName HisLastName. A lot of the relatives were confused, but you can bet that my peers and I smiled with glee.

Found on the Web: 50% Off One Item Promo Code at Jo Ann

Promo code TTF170A will get you 50% off one regularly priced item.

I would get this maybe? Though now, I have no more use for it. It would be 50% off the regular price so it's not THAT much off the sale price, but still.

Adventures in Name Changing, Part 3

Today I went to the DMV to try to get my last name changed on my license, my second attempt. My first attempt was last week when I came on a Friday (yay summer half day Fridays!) and the line was 4 hours long, according to the information desk. Today, it was half that, 2 hours long. I considered going into the line and then sense kicked in. I have a job. I can't just take off 2 hours.

The lady in front of me was doing the same thing. We got to chatting while waiting for the information desk. She went straight into the line. When she saw me leaving she waved and said, "You're not staying?" I said, "I can't do two hours, I'll try earlier tomorrow morning."

A few things to note.

I made the decision to change my name. I'm not happy about it, just like I wasn't happy when my original plan of 30 people wedding in a restaurant ballooned into 115 people. However, I am an adult, and I made this decision for the good of my family. This does NOT mean that I'm happy or excited about it. (Yep, if you were looking for ponies and unicorns, you'd better move on to another blog.)

I thought about the lady in front of me in line, and I envied her. And I envied all the other women in the world who were excited about changing their name. My name is part of my identity and I'm having a lot of trouble letting go of it.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a believer in gender roles. Aside from the obvious biological tasks that must be done by males and females, I don't believe in general social gender statements of "this is what men/women are like so deal with it." And then I thought about all the other things that women are expected to do, things I know my friends and family have done, just because that's what women do. Even the task of planning the wedding by default falls into the woman's hands (not speaking for same-sex couples, obviously).

Just think for a moment. How many times have you said, "I'm going to leave work for a half an hour to check out my venue/make a few vendor calls/look at a florist"? And now, think about how many times your man has said that. If he does half of it and you do the other half, then you are a lucky lucky woman. For me, it was about 10 percent him, and that was with some nagging because I was overwhelmed. By far I don't see the men in my office leave work for any little errand, because they have their WIVES to do it.

Women complain that we do too much, we get paid unequal amounts for the same amount of work. And it sucks and I don't disagree with that. But maybe, just maybe, we are in a hell of our own making. Because these little things, these random errands? They add up. People notice when you're not in the office, more than you might think. And I don't even want to talk about the impact to my career when it comes time for babies.

As for my personal name changing adventure, I'm going to try one more time, even earlier in the morning sometime this week. And if I can't get that done in the half hour to one hour slot I've assigned it then I'm going to take my hard-earned half day summer Friday and fucking wait.

Back from the Hiatus

We finally went on our honeymoon and are (sadly) back to reality. It was a fantastic and crazy hectic trip, and we don't regret a minute of it.

It was Dude's first trip out of the hemisphere, and he was splendid. I had my doubts, like when he wanted to go to dinner in shorts while we were in Italy and I had to tell him that Europeans don't really wear shorts. (To be perfectly fair, it was 90 degrees, the hottest May Italy has seen in 50 years, and he doesn't really have the option of wearing a skirt like yours truly.) I had to remind him a couple of times that when bumping into people to say "Mi scusi" or "Oprostite" (Italian and Croatian, respectively) instead of "Sorry." (Side note, that is my BIGGEST pet peeve about American tourists is that so many use basic phrases in English. There are only a few phrases everyone should know in the language of the country he or she is visiting - hello, sorry, thank you, good bye, and do you speak English. If saying any of those things, you should really say them in the language of the country you are in. You would expect foreign tourists to speak to you in English when you are in America and that courtesy should be extended. End side note.)

But Dude quickly caught on and was great company, and going on our whirlwind trip really gave us some great bonding moments and moments of insight into each other that we hadn't seen before, despite over six years together. We were out of our comfort zone for the entire trip, and while we had some stressful moments, we pulled through together. And Dude, the eternal optimist, came up with the catch phrase that saw us through, and will probably be used for quite some time during our marriage - "Great us."

Me: Shitty weather!
Dude: Great us!

Me: Stupid traffic!
Dude: Great us!

Great us, indeed.

Life After Wedding: Desperately Awaiting the Honeymoon

For a variety of reasons, Dude and I have not yet gone on our honeymoon. While I don't regret at all giving us a break between wedding and honeymoon (I really don't understand how people leave for two weeks following the crazy wedding stuff!), I do regret that we put over two months between them. We didn't really have a choice, but there you go.

Anyway, we leave really, really soon! I didn't realize it was so close until yesterday. Words cannot express how excited I am. For now our itinerary looks like:

Rome, then train to
Florence, then train to
Trieste, then be driven to
Porec, then drive around
the rest of Istria and Plitvice, then ferry to
Hvar, then ferry and drive to
Dubrovnik, then plane to
London, then home.

Whew! If we have time and energy we are going to try to see:
Austria and Slovenia (within driving distance of Trieste)
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro (within driving distance of Dubrovnik)

If we hit all these sites that will be 7, yes count them, 7 countries in one honeymoon.

So excited!!!

On Addressing Your Invitations or Save the Dates (or Anything for that Matter)

One of my friends is getting married and since she knows I was very budget conscious, she sometimes she asks me how I did certain things. This week we spoke about addressing her envelopes. I told her that I used labels, and she said that she wasn't going to do that because she thought it was impersonal.

First of all, I completely acknowledge that she has the right to her opinion and that her comment was not some passive-aggressive comment directed at me. It's her wedding and I support her.

However, I wish to address the general idea that the use of labels is "impersonal." I am not attacking my friend, or anyone else for that matter, but I've seen this comment a lot in the blogosphere and the wedding forums and I wish to give my opinion on the matter.

There is nothing more personal than being invited to someone's wedding. You could throw an intimate 10 person wedding or a 500 person wedding where the bride and groom only knew like 100 people there, it would still be personal. In either scenario, guests are still witness to the legal joining of two people in matrimony. They saw the ceremony, ate the food, mingled with the couple's friends and family... they will be in the wedding photography FOREVER.

So I reject this idea that the manner in which your invitations or save the dates actually matter. They may matter to you, and you may prefer the aesthetics of calligraphy and choose to pay for it. Or you may choose to hand address them yourselves. That's great, that's your choice, and your choice is more likely than not about the appearance of your envelopes than it is about personalization. But it's completely insulting to say that using labels is impersonal. It's not an appropriate excuse for a thinly veiled criticism. Just because somebody decided to print out a name and address instead of paying for a calligrapher or crippling his or her hand from writing it out does not mean that it wasn't meant especially for the recipient. The fact that guests are holding an invitation at all is what makes it personal.

And perhaps, in my case, using labels meant more people could be invited, or that I didn't drive myself crazy hand addressing 80 invitations.