Date Posted: June 17th, 2010
The Wedding Party (Click for full size)
Aaron and I are the ones in the center in case you couldn’t guess. 
I made my dress and the dresses for the two ladies on the left. And by made I mean I could have done just about all of it myself, but due to time constraints I sought out a lot of help from my friends.
Not sure I’d make the same decisions if I were doing it all over again. On the one hand I’m happy that the dresses were pretty historically accurate and they turned out well. On the other hand it was a hell of a lot of work for people who don’t do reenactment. Chances are I would have made mine myself and then either ordered the rest from a Renaissance festival clothing website or made them a lot simpler. Such is life. I hadn’t intended to do more than mine in the first place and then things happened and I ended up making them. :-/
So, things I learned.
Our Community is Pretty Awesome
I have a great group of friends that really came through for us for our event. I think the only people involved with the wedding that we didn’t know intimately were the caterer (who just supplied the food; no staff) and the site person. Everything else was done by someone I’m either on a first name basis with or is family. 
I’d talked a while back about how modern secular weddings are missing something, and I realized something about my wedding. It may not have had the religious aspect, but we definitely tapped into an old tradition… the tradition of everyone in the village working together to make the wedding day(s) happen. That was really special. And happy.
Sometime in the coming weeks we’re going to have a Thank You party for everyone who helped out with the wedding. There’s a pretty good chance Aaron and I will get weepy at that.
Detachment? Have I talked about that here?
Detachment is a pretty good policy in general, but it’s especially important in anything where your friends are helping you out with stuff. It’s one thing to yell at a stranger because something they did didn’t meet your expectations… you’re not going to hang out with them after the contract is up. With friends, you really shouldn’t yell at them for not helping you the way you want them to. For one thing it’s mean to yell at anyone. For another, they’re helping you! Yelling at someone for volunteering their time does not win you anything except grief. Plus, chances are whatever your vision was wasn’t that important anyway.
Also it’s hard to have a complete vision of everything. Better to give people the space to be creative. The more detached you are from your vision, the more surprised and happy you’ll be by what you end up with. For instance, I had no idea what I wanted from the flowers. Giving my friend the freedom to do what she wanted meant I got pleasantly surprised and I didn’t have to spend time explaining what I wanted.
So yeah, yay detatchment!
I like running events
Not that I was actually running this one. We had people on site in charge of making sure things got done, but I think I’d like being in charge of such things too. We’re thinking of having an anniversary dinner dance next year with more dancing a fewer funny costumes. Methinks that’d be a lot of fun, and a lot less work to plan.
It’s nice to be officially married
Aaron and I signed the papers in September, but we didn’t publicly change our status until after the June wedding. We’d been in limbo for 3/4 of a year and by the end it was really annoying. We didn’t know how to introduce ourselves to new people. We didn’t know whether or not we should let people know we signed the papers. Etc. It was weird. I have more thoughts on this that deserve their own post. Suffice it to say, I’m happy to be able to call Aaron my husband now.
I like kayaking
We went kayaking on our honeymoon. I could see myself doing more of that. There’s a club in Ann Arbor I might join. I’m wary because I already have a busy schedule, but I’ve been feeling like my “likes being in nature” side doesn’t get enough attention.
Will probably keep doing one of those things I’d thought about quitting
In the last check-in I’d said I was planning to give up some positions I have. I’ve decided to hold off on doing that for one of them. I’m excited about where that one is going and the person I had in mind for the job I think won’t be that interested in the new direction.
Still a few more wedding thoughts
I have about three posts in my heading related to our wedding and marriage in general. Hopefully after that I’ll be done with this topic.
That’s about it for me right now.
Tags:
Family, Leadership, Meta, Relationships.
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11:14 pm | No Comments »
Date Posted: May 14th, 2010
So my new favorite blog is Havi Brooks’ Fluent Self. (My favorite because she explores ways to break through mental blocks about mindful business and marketing, things I’m dealing with right now.) She does a weekly check-in as a form of therapy and a way to let readers get to know her better, and I’ve decided to go ahead and try it too. Basically in the Check-in I go through what I’m working on, how I’m doing on it, and any insights I’ve gotten (or may have gotten). Here’s what I’ve been working on/dealing with this week:
Wedding
Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:
- I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
- I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
- I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
- *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
- It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
- It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.
Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. Yay!
Guilt
I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.
Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:
- I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
- I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
- Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
- Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
- Figure out why I broke it.
- If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
- If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
- Then I do whatever I can to fix it.
So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.
Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.
So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).
Tags:
Character-Development, Emotional Health, Family, Leadership.
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4:26 pm | No Comments »
