Braces (or Putting Your Suspenders On)

Meanwhile, the men are off in another room getting all fancied up.  I am in cell phone contact with Andy to time when the photographer is switching between the two rooms.  All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

Jason and Dan are wearing the socks Elise gave the men at her wedding.

As Dan says, "sock garters get you laid twice."

The crabby cuff links I gave Chris as a wedding gift.

Chris maintains that this is the worst haircut he has ever had.

This is what happens when you get your hair cut at supercuts all the time, but Chris refuses to spend any money on getting his hair cut.

He has actually not gotten his hair cut anywhere since our wedding.

I have been cutting my husband's hair for this entire first year of marriage.

Our best man, Andy.

Patrick and Brendan, looking super excited.

My dad helping my brother with his buttons.

Tim and Chris being adorable.

Rehearsal Dinner

Some of the ladies and I went to get our nails done, and some of the men folk went off to do whatever.  One needed a new vest because the other one was too small, and I think the rest went to Dave & Buster's to hang out with some kids who were there having a bar mitzvah party.  We actually ran into my high school music teacher, Mr. Ezell, at the nail place.  He was getting a manicure.  Love love love my small town ridiculousness.

I go back to the suite we have for our wedding night.  I was going to share it with my sister the night before the wedding, the same as we did for her and Jason's.  I spent an absurdly long time in the large bathtub shaving my legs, listening to music, and just chilling out.  Then downstairs to dinner!
All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

MomMom and PopPop

Married over 65 years

Still Cranky

My darling Cynthia with Chris

Chris' Uncle Bill with his two boys

Chris cutting into his groom's cake.  

His mother got it in Maryland and traveled the whole way with it on her lap in the car.

Elise & Jason

By the end of the night we had drank like 23 bottles of red wine

The one bottle of white that someone opened was still half full

I may have finished it

Just like old times

Chris pouring us all glasses of wine

My mother really loves to snuggle

My brother doesn't really

This looks so much like old times at RPI it's not even funny

Laughing so hard we're crying

Fancy Nancy and Bruce

The boys checking out the cake

Awkward Bruce hugs are my favorite

He seriously is adorable, he doesn't know where to put his hands

Doesn't know how much he should be hugging me

In my head I hear his internal dialogue going like this

"This is my son's fiancee, I really shouldn't be pressed up against her boobs.

She's kissing my cheek... WTF?"

Wedding Drama 3:  Besides my flipout about the nativity scene, which was entirely pre-wedding week, the rehearsal dinner was by far the biggest problem of the weekend.  The Viana is a Feng Shui crazy place, so their restaurant's menu is Asian/Italian Fusion.  They are so snooty and expensive there it really is ridiculous.  I don't think we would have chosen it, except they were willing to give me a really cheap rate on the rooms.  $99 a night for wedding guests is ridiculously hard to beat on Long Island.  Chris' Mom thought that every other hotel we brought her to was "in the projects," so we tried to up our game a bit, as they were the ones paying.  When they came to visit pre-wedding they stayed at the Holiday Inn by my house.  It was over $150 a night and they didn't sleep at all because they were too near the train.  Sorry guys, it's Long Island, we're in Queens, trains come by.  I can practically see the train station from my bedroom window at my parent's house, that's just how it is.  She even still thought the Viana was ghetto because there was a gas station across the street and we were even in like Garden City... anyway!

It is a really small restaurant, like it barely has a full kitchen, much of the food is made ahead of time as far as we could tell.  We ate there for dinner twice, and neither times was it particularly speedy, but the food was good, and we couldn't beat the convenience of not having to take the grandparents anywhere else in the car with wheelchairs, etc., so we had the dinner there.  The sales person at the Viana had changed like 3 times over the course of when we booked things to when they actually occurred.  The first woman was a complete pain in my ass, the second guy was great, but he didn't last long, then the third person ended up being their assistant who had actually be there all along and had dated one of my friends from high school.  Anyway, I went back and forth with them for a really long time about the menu.  It was an expensive place and I wanted to make sure everything worked out okay if I was going to be spending that much of my in-laws' money.  Their menu is Asian fusion.  Asian usually includes nuts.  My co-matron of honor, my cousin Jaclyn, is deathly allergic to nuts.  I had to be very careful to make sure things went to plan.  We were only using the Italian dishes off the menu, there were to be no nuts anywhere near our food.  Jaclyn wasn't even going to eat any of the food at the dinner, that would have been far too risky, she was going to be bringing her own food, but just had to be able to safely breathe the air in the dining room.  

The hotel guy had even talked to me in person earlier that day to make double sure that my cousin was still coming and that she wouldn't be eating anything.  I said yes, but still NO NUTS.  When we sit down to dinner our first course, a caesar salad is sitting at each place setting.  There are nuts on top.  Not only are there nuts on top, but it's not even a real caesar dressing, it's a nut based caesar dressing, like sesame or something along those lines.  Thankfully, Jaclyn hasn't arrived yet, but my best friend Libby's wife is also allergic to nuts, not to Jaclyn's extent, but enough to be very harmful.  I run over to him and all but smack the salad out of his hands.  I am PISSED.  The chef is literally right in front of me because they have no real kitchen, just a buffet window type thing, and I try to calmly explain what the problem is.  He says no one told him about the nuts, and that's just how their caesar salad always is.  So I run over to the hotel guy.  He says oh my fucking god wtf, basically, and I hurry to call Jaclyn, hopefully catching her before she gets there.  I ask her if she can even come to dinner now that there were nuts in the room.  She says she should be fine as long as they're not peanuts.  What kind of nuts are they?  Peanuts.  She is in the parking lot in the car with her husband and baby.  She can't come inside.  My matron of honor who was supposed to be giving a toast at dinner has to turn her car around and drive back home.  I cry.  We try to laugh it off, but my boss and his wife, who were not invited to dinner but were staying there that night are having a cocktail at the bar and are seeing me lose my shit.  I am horrifically embarrassed, and sad, AND mad.  Angie, who knows Jaclyn and my sister already from having photographed them for other occasions understands.  Takes a photo of the offending salad and sends it to Jaclyn.  We try to laugh about it.  Dinner goes on, and it is pretty damn good, but still.  The hotel guy comes up to me after, holding a copy of the menu we had agreed on.  He is so flustered trying to save his ass that he points to the salad description and tries to tell me that it says cashews.  I'm about to tell him that even if it did say cashews, that would have been passable, but they are peanuts, when I take a closer look at the menu.  It says croutons.  Idiot.  

When I return from our honeymoon I try to get some recourse from the hotel people.  They take off the two meals that our guests were unable to come and eat, but that's it.  My mother-in-law is pissed and lists off a bunch of other things that went wrong, trying to give me some ammunition to fight with them about.  It just makes me feel worse that the dinner was so sucky, that things were cold, and they spilled meat juice all over her dress.  I could have lived my life without hearing those important details.  I get sick of arguing with them on the phone.  I stop trying.  Life goes on.

Jaclyn understands that it's not my fault, but I'm still sad about it.  I try to get her to give her toast at the actual reception.  She refuses, but gives me the paper copy to keep.  All in all, still an enjoyable evening, but still quite the disaster.

Wedding Rehearsal

So we packed up our car and drove to my homeland, Long Island.  For the rehearsal dinner, hair/makeup, and wedding hotel we chose the Viana in Westbury, NY.  It is definitely beautiful, definitely small and classy, definitely expensive, but it suited our needs well and the sales manager had slept with one of my friends from High School, so we went with it.  Everyone piles into town and we meet at the church for our rehearsal.
Photos one and five stolen off of Kristen's facebook, the others by Angie Gaul at Milestone Images.

Andy and Elise

At the altar with Deacon Rich

Patrick and Cynthia

Dan and Jaclyn

Jim and Morgan

Jim Scott

PC Men in the Choir Loft

My beautiful church

Dadoo

This go pretty well except I forget what order the bridal party is supposed to go in and end up having to search through my email on my phone to find a pdf of the program so I can tell them what to do.  My lovely Folk Group friends take time out of their day to serve as our musicians, and some of the boys from my a cappella group do me the grand favor of lending me their voices for the psalm.  As we go through the wedding saga, I'm going to label the wedding dramas, because really, everyone loves to hear about the things that went wrong.  These are in no way big problems.  We had a wonderful, beautiful, memorable day.  Only little hiccups happened along the way, largely thanks to our photographer Angie who knew when to herd the masses and when to kap a bitch.

Wedding Drama 1:  We were getting married two weeks after Christmas.  We had always wanted a winter wedding because we really hate to be hot, and there was no way we were doing spring or summer.  We chose the winter break because we knew at least one of us would be in grad school and wouldn't be able to miss class.  My church, St. Raymond's in East Rockaway, NY, is beautiful at Christmas.  The wreaths and trees are lovely, BUT, I hate poinsettias   I was hoping that some of them would have died off by then, but they hadn't.  I asked the deacon and pastor to let me move them for the ceremony and them move them back, but they wouldn't hear of it, not even after I tried to convinced them that Jaclyn was allergic to them, which is true, but not to the extent I was making it out to be.  The poinsettias stayed, they didn't look bad, I didn't fuss, and life went on.

Wedding Drama 2:  Our new church pastor put up this gigantic nativity scene the Christmas before.  As I It was about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide (see picture above), had straw all over it, and had spotlights lighting it up with their wires taped down to the floor in front of the altar.  I hated it.  I seriously BEGGED the church to let me move it off the altar.  It was seriously huge, we couldn't stand in front of it at all.  My mom and I had noticed it the year before and had already been worked up about how it would look for the wedding.  I don't know what it was about this nativity scene, I guess I just thought it was ugly and gigantic and was getting straw all over the floor, but that added with poinsettias just made me snap.  I am not proud of it.  This was by far my biggest bitch moment of the entire wedding proceedings.  I begged Deacon Tom, my mother begged him, I explained that half my family was Jewish and having the wedding in a Catholic church at Christmas was already a sacrifice for them and I didn't want to shove it in their faces.  I actually CRIED.  In the Deacon's office with my mom and my fiance there, discussing our ceremony.  Something broke in me and the floodgates opened.  I was sobbing over this stupid fucking nativity scene.  The nativity scene stayed, life went on, the world continued to turn, but I seriously flipped a shit over that one.  My apologies to the church for being a total crybaby psycho.

Our photographer Angie came to the entire rehearsal the day before the wedding to check out the lighting and such, so I even have awesome pictures of the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner... coming up!

A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie - Engaged Couple #3

Chris and I are sitting on the couch last night waiting for dinner to be ready and planning a trip to go see Jim in Philadelphia next weekend.  (I can't wait!!!) 

Chris is, of course, spoiling his dinner by eating some pretzels. 

I tell him to put them away because dinner is almost ready. 

He rolls up the bag with such force that the air pops the bottom open and covers him and the couch in bits of pretzels. 

I can't stop laughing at him. 

He looks at me and just says "help."

I try to pick up a few pieces before realizing just how many pretzel bits are covering the grandma couch.

I say, "You're like five years old.  Good luck, get the vacuum."

<3 Julibean

I am anticipating my first letter from pen pal Morgan this afternoon.  I was so excited that I wrote her a seven page letter.  I probably should have waited to read hers first.  I may have defeated the purpose here.

Valentine's Day Weekend

After many last minute plans and decisions, I packed up the cake I had just decorated at my Wilton class and hit the road at around 10:30 p.m. I made it to Morgan’s in Philadelphia around 12:45 or 1 a.m. I dropped her friends and her off at the movie theater to see the Valentine’s Day movie and then curled up on her couch, read a little, and then went to sleep. In the morning we stopped for coffee, and I dropped Morgan off at her sister’s house in Baltimore. The snow there was terrible!!! The roads were covered in tall, bumpy ice. There was nowhere to put the snow, so people we’re trying in vain to dig their cars out. Some roads were just entirely closed because the plows hadn’t even reached there yet; it was just a 4 foot solid block of snow.

I got to Chris’ apartment around noon with my cake present in tow. I unlock the front door with my key and sitting on the front table is a huge bouquet of flowers! We had said no gifts!

Now is time for a little back story... Chris and I have been dating since November 2008 when we got together at a belated Halloween party. So we call it a little over two years at this point. Not once in that entire time had Chris ever bought me flowers. He would joke about it, say things like, “I almost got you some, but then I didn’t”, things like that. It became this big joke that we’ve been in love for two years and he’d never bought me flowers. During my fall semester and winter break of senior year at RPI, I had a humongous mental breakdown. Crying, hyperventilating, worrying, having panic attacks, just generally freaking out. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it, I seemed to be worrying about everything and nothing all at once and I couldn’t find a way to make it stop.

Chris was beyond perfect. He comforted me, quieted me, held me in his arms until I finally fell asleep, but something still wasn’t right. I began to think that maybe it was him; maybe our relationship is what had me so on edge. It could have been any number of things, senior year class load, LSAT prep, graduation uncertainty, trouble with roommates, a cappella group drama. Yet somehow, I blamed it on our relationship, convincing myself that once we broke it off, I would start to feel better. But he hung on, telling me countless times a day, it’s going to be alright, you don’t have to worry, I love you, and I know you love me, I’m not going anywhere. In a last ditch effort to convince me of his support, he came to my apartment with flowers. They were beautiful, a perfect symbol of his love for me, I put them in a plastic iced tea pitcher, jumped into his arms, and wrapped my legs around his waist. He was perfect.

Later the next day I think, I finally snapped. I couldn’t take what I was doing to him. Constantly pushing him away, doubting our relationship, doubting my love for him. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I let him go. I told him I needed to fix myself, and hopefully after some time, I’d figure things out and find my way back to him. But even that was too selfish. If I really cared enough about him, I had to let him go entirely. So he came back to me saying that it couldn’t be an indefinite period of time. If we were going to be apart, it had to be for real, so he could start to move on. So we were apart for two months.

It was the worst time of my life. Nothing has ever compared to the amount of emotional pain I was in. I was alone, miserable, panicking, depressed, not eating, not drinking anything, not getting out of bed, skipping classes, constantly sick, completely and irrevocably heartbroken. Nothing seemed to get better; parsing out the problems in my life was not as easy as I had hoped. I was hoping that if I removed one piece of my life at a time, I would be able to isolate the problem. I would never know that it wasn’t Chris until I removed him from my life. I walked around like a complete empty shell of my former self. Not laughing, not caring, crying nonstop all the time, I couldn’t breathe anymore, my parents were worried. I was looking for help at the counseling center, but nothing was really doing it for me, drugs they prescribed me didn’t seem to help. My friends told me not to call him, not to break down. I couldn’t stand it, I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t want to be without him anymore and still my friends said no, don’t call him, move on.

So I went on spring break without him, not having spoken one word to Chris in over a month. I cruised around the Caribbean, unable to get him off of my mind. No matter how many sunsets I saw, or margaritas I drank, it was still terrible without him. Then one day as I was walking to the astronomy class that I often skipped, determined to actually make it there for the first time in weeks, I saw him. I was un-showered, undone, wearing dirty sweatpants, greasy hair, and a stained sweatshirt. This is what my life had come to. And there he was, tall, handsome, and perfect. Slightly unshaven, blue tee shirt, jeans, new leather jacket, sunglasses, carrying the bag I had given him for Christmas. My heart stopped. I had been searching campus for his face for weeks, hoping to catch a glimpse. Remembering his class schedule, and hoping to cross him on his usual path. And there he was. Finally standing in front of me.

We both said hi, unsure of what was going to happen. I don’t remember much of what else was said, but I hugged him and began to cry. It must have gone on for quite a while, because after some time it began to rain again and we moved the embrace into the hallway of the building I was supposed to be in class in. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if we should get back together, if it would be good for either of us. I didn’t know if he had moved on, maybe he didn’t want me anymore. Eventually we decided that it was senior year, our last few months of college, it would be a huge waste if we didn’t have fun together while we still could. So we did.

And slowly the pieces of my life fell back into place. I saw him for a night here, a night there, he invited me to a BBQ, his roommates were shocked to see me there. I could smile at him, have a nice time, and breathe deeply. And soon after that we were back together again. Me remorseful, him hurt, but both of us happy and thankful. After realizing what I had given up, and how it felt to have lost it, I know now that a love like Chris’ is very hard to come by. When I was literally pushing him, and yelling, telling him to please just let me break up with him, he stood his ground. He said this isn’t you, and I know it, and I know you love me, and that we belong together. It is something I will never give up or take for granted again as long as I live. I will marry this man, and I will become his wife in exactly 676 days, and I could not be happier.

So back to the point...the giving of flowers became a teasing and somewhat pained joke in our relationship. Chris would never buy me flowers again, because the one time he did, I broke up with him. They were like this bad omen of heartbreak for us. We also have a pretty bad track record for Valentine’s Day. The first one we spent together we had only been dating a few months, and decided to keep it small. I got him an alarm clock and a framed picture of us, probably a grand total of $25. He bought me this sexy, badass leather jacket. Not exactly an equal situation. The next Valentine’s Day we were in the midst of breaking up, and he didn’t get me anything because he saw it coming. Even though I had picked out the perfect cologne for him, I ended up choosing another one, which upon further inspection was terrible, and he hated it. Which made it better for him, because Chris said if he had liked it; it would have hurt way more. Thankfully when we were back together, for Chris’ birthday in April I got Macy’s to exchange this horrible smelling one small bottle of cologne that they didn’t even carry anymore and for which I didn’t have the receipt, for an entire gift set of the one I actually wanted him to have, with cologne, after shave, some lotion or something, and a really cute duffel bag. I win!
So it was for all of these reasons, and the fact that I told him not to spend any money (after all we are paying for a wedding and a new home this year), that I would never ever expect flowers. We aren’t even using them for our wedding really, he’s allergic, and they have this terrible connotation of, if I give you flowers you’re going to break up with me. So when I walked into the apartment and saw these on the table:





I almost cried. They were beautiful, a huge arrangement, the biggest amount of flowers I’d ever gotten from anyone. I could have done without the funny pink bear, but I knew that it just came with the flowers, and he wouldn’t have picked it out otherwise. I only have one stuffed animal I really love, and that is Quatchi! We spent the rest of the day relaxing together. We went to a belated birthday dinner with his parents and grandparents (MomMom’s birthday), had Becky, Andy, and Andrew over for dinner and a movie (I fell asleep on the couch as we watched the Hangover), and hit a few of the local bars with Amy and Cynthia. All in all a very enjoyable weekend!










I had Monday off from school as well for President’s Day so I left Chris’ early, picked up Morgan again in Baltimore, and drove back to Philly. While Morgan was in class I got to catch up with my good friend Jim. We had coffee and talked for hours. I love those times with Jim. It is so easy to talk with him about everything and anything; he is definitely one of my best friends from college, like a second brother to me. We met up with Morgan again for dinner, saw my godfather for an hour or so, and then I got back on the road.

Until next time,

Julibean <3