Pictures Galore

I realize I haven't written anything about the wedding weekend or the honeymoon yet. If I were to breakdown the reasoning for this, it'd probably be something like 45% work, 45% laziness, and 10% an inability to do either of them justice.

However, we just got our weddings pictures back (or at least, online), so I figured the least I could do would be to post all the pictures we have from the wedding and the 'moon.

The pictures from the wedding aren't available for linking to a slideshow, so instead I will just link to the online album. They are really great, and our photographer (plug! Charlie Gunter Photography!) did a great job on them.

The honeymoon pictures were taken by a decidedly less professional photographer (namely me), but we think they came out pretty well also. Check them out and enjoy below!

I Don't Know How To Put This Delicately, So I'll Just Say It

It's exactly midnight on Tuesday (Wednesday morning). Tonight is the last night Hilary and I (livers-in-sin that we are) will sleep in our bed together as an unmarried couple. Tomorrow we leave for Virginia Beach, and from there the wedding festivities begin to kick into high gear.

For those who are new to this blog, you may not know a couple key facts about me:

1)I once wrote a column saying you should never get married during football season.

2) I am getting married smack-dab in the middle of football season.

Oops!

When we chose our weekend, I tried to do it early enough so we wouldn't catch many of the big-time college football match ups. Turns out, that didn't work out so well. This weekend features not only a gigantic showdown between #1 USC and #3 Ohio State, but also tradition-rich Michigan-Notre Dame (though to be fair, both teams suck), as well as a nice SEC match-up between Georgia and South Carolina. Oh, and my alma-mater, Texas, is supposed to play Arkansas, a formerly huge rival from back in their days in the Southwest Conference.

I say supposed to, because according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman, Hurricane Ike may force the game to be postponed. Really?

I am having a tough time with this one. I know many people who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, and it is hard for me to make light of any situation involving the kind of damage and destruction made possible by the devastating power of these natural disasters. At the same time though...F#$K YEAH!

Do you mean to tell me that the only game I care about missing during my wedding weekend has a chance of being postponed to a later date? One which I will most likely have full access to a television???

God, thank you for this wonderful wedding present. Your thank-you note is in the mail.

I Hope We Have This Much Fun, At Least, You Know, Up Until The Tasering

Hilary and I have been to many, many fun weddings. We hope ours will be quite the shindig as well.

But maybe we shouldn't have this much fun.

"A former Chicago couple's wedding night was spent in separate jail cells after both bride and groom got shocked by a police Taser and arrested at their raucous reception...

...the story didn't end after the reception. Two nights later, the bride and groom were again arrested in Michigan -- and again shocked by a stun gun -- after struggling with police investigating a noise complaint, Sepic said. The groom was charged with pushing his new wife down during that incident, but the charge was later dropped as part of a plea bargain, Sepic said." (Photo by Kacper Skowron/For the Sun-Times)

I don't know. Get tased once, shame on you. Get tased twice in three days? I'm starting to think you might want to consider a different deterrant. Almost seems like they were starting to enjoy it.

Nevertheless, to put your fears to bed, we promise there will be no tasering at our wedding.*

• Newlyweds tasered, arrested at reception (via Boing Boing)

*Unless you give a toast consisting of a poem that doesn't rhyme. Then we can't be held responsible.

One Month To Go...

Today is August 13. It's 11:26 pm. At this time, one month from now, Hilary and I will be married. It doesn't seem real, mostly because it feels like we've been engaged since Nam.

Most of the big details are taken care of, now it's all about the small stuff. Seating arrangements, decorations, gift bags - these are the decisions that stand to ruin rule our lives the next 4 weeks.

Today our invitation responses were due back; we are still shy about 20% of our guest list (hey - send those suckers in!), but we have a pretty good idea of who is coming and who is not.

One thing I have learned from this process is that, with 100% certainty, I am the worst wedding guest ever. I was always late with response cards, I never booked my room until the last minute, and most of my wedding gifts were purchased several months after the fact (which, though apparently well within the rules of etiquette, is still pretty lame of me).

For everyone who's wedding I've been to over the past few years, please accept my deepest apologies. Feel free to buy us our wedding presents next August if it will make up for it at all.

Since I know what it's like to forget to send in response cards, I am posting a link to our email address on the right-hand side of the blog for anyone who needs to respond.

We are hitting the home stretch, and I know it will be here before we know it. And thank God.

Bachelor/Bachelorette Parties Recap

Hilary and I each had our respective flings this past weekend, and as you can probably imagine, they were slightly different in tone and content.

Without divulging too many of the nitty-gritty details, I thought I'd give a little recap of each in traditional bachelor-party form: the haiku*. See if you can guess which is for which! (Ok, so some are fairly obvious)

Drinking and gambling.

I hope I drank enough to
offset my losses.

Lots of girlie stuff.
Not sure about pillow fights,
But I don't doubt it.

Here is a statement:
Golf in hundred degree temps
Is a hangover cure.

Hil got cute presents.
But I do not think that ring
Belongs where you think.

How many oyster
po-boys can Micah consume
in just one weekend?

Hilary really,
Really, really enjoy-ed
The scavenger hunt.

I speak for Hilary on this one - we both had amazing times over the weekend, and were happy to get to spend time with so many of our good friends. Thanks to all who made it out!

* May not actually be true

Next Up To The Plate...

This past weekend, our friends Miriam and Seth got married. It was a lot of fun, with the added bonus that they had the decency to get hitched here in Atlanta. Of all the weddings we've been to over the past few years, this is only the second that's been here in the ATL. It was very nice.

Now that it's over though, we are officially on the clock. That's right - we don't have a single other wedding on our schedule until Sept. 13 rolls around. It's a little scary.

It's not scary in the "I'm afraid of commitment and getting cold feet" kind of way (quite the contrary - Hilary and I are both ready to be married yesterday), but because for so long we've been attending everyone else's nuptials it's weird to think that it's finally our turn.

There's no turning back now - we are picking up our invitations this week and will be sending them out shortly.

It feels like we've been engaged forever, but I have a feeling the next 10 weeks are going to fly by.

Just me personally, here is my schedule for July: Celebrating the 4th in VA Beach with Hilary's family, then back to Jackson for an engagement party the next weekend, Chicago the next week for NHL meetings, and finally my bachelor party in New Orleans to close out the month. With that much traveling, I'm starting to feel like my father's son.

We are in pretty good shape, planning wise. All of the big ticket items are taken care of - we have a photographer, a videographer, a florist, a harpist, co-officiants, a wedding party, and a DJ.

Now, it's all about the details...

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

We are now 3 1/2 months and counting from the wedding, which means people are starting to make plans for travel to and from the Norfolk area (at least people who are more responsible than me - I generally wait until the last minute to do everything).

With that in mind, I thought now might be a good time to answer some questions we've been getting a lot lately.

For example...

Q: What is the best airport to fly into for the wedding?

A: There are two main airports to consider, Norfolk (ORF) and Newport News (PHF). Norfolk is where the wedding is, and the airport is fairly close to where the festivities will take place. Unfortunately (at least this is the case from Atlanta, but maybe - hopefully? - it's different elsewhere), it's also typically pretty expensive. Newport News is usually much cheaper - we often fly there roundtrip from Atlanta for 150 dollars - but requires about a 25-30 minute drive once you get there. So you can save money to fly there, but you'll then possibly need a rental car.

Q: Which airlines fly to which places?

A: I'll break this down by location:

Norfolk: Delta, Northwest, United, American, Southwest
Newport News: Delta, Airtran, United

Q: Do I need to rent a car?

A: Well, we hope not. We have chosen our wedding location to host every single event - the Friday night dinner, the ceremony and reception on Saturday night, and a Sunday brunch. Once you are at the hotel, you will have no need of a car. According to this taxicab site, it is roughly a $20-25 cab ride from Norfolk airport, so I think that is probably the way to go (and we will look into shuttle options as well). From Newport News, it may make more sense to go the rental car route, but we'll keep investigating on that front.

Any further questions? Feel free to email us at hilaryandmicah@gmail.com and we'll get back to you pronto!

We Interrupt This Wedding Blog For An Important Football Announcement

For everyone who is upset with me for, you know, that whole "Never get married on a football weekend - unless you are me" thing, I do have one bit of good news, at least for those guests who support the athletic departments from the Universities of Texas and Arkansas.

Part of the Texas TV schedule was announced today, and the Texas-Arkansas game that coincides with our wedding weekend has been set for a 3:30 ET kickoff.

Our nuptials are scheduled to begin around 8:15, so even allowing for several overtimes (unlikely to happen - Arkansas lost their top offensive weapons in Darren McFadden and Felix Jones and didn't have a passing game to begin with, plus they'll have an entirely new system with Bobby Petrino replacing Houston Nutt at the top), the game should still be over no later than 7:30. Plenty of time to get down to the cocktail hour and grab a bite, no sweat!

Now if only they don't have regional coverage that weekend...

What Are The Vows Again? In Sickness? Yeah, We've Got That Covered

Though Hilary and I have been together for almost three years, only a year or so of that has been in the same city. As a result, we are still going through lots of new experiences together. We each have relatively strong immune systems, and thus far have managed to avoid being sick.

At least until last weekend. Hilary went out to dinner with a couple of her girlfriends, and her tummy starting hurting when she got home. She went to bed early, but couldn't sleep. Things weren't going well, and...well, watch this video if you want to get a sense for what the rest of Saturday night was like for her:



Yeah, she had a rough go of it, the poor baby. I felt so bad for her, but it seemed like there was nothing to do but wait it out. We figured it was food poisoning given her symptoms, and I put in a call to our doctor friend Rich to get his medical opinion (he agreed).

We hoped it would pass after a few hours, but ended up staying up most of the night as she began to experience intense abdominal pains that literally knocked her off her feet.

By Sunday morning they had gotten worse, to the point that I half expected this to happen. We decided it was time to visit the ER, just to make sure nothing more severe was going on.

Emory University hospital is just down the road from where we live, so we headed there hoping our early arrival would mean a quick in-and-out.

When we arrived in the ER, there were only three other people there waiting as well, which we took for a good sign. Yet one hour later, there we sat. Hilary's pain was still severe, so I went to the counter to find out what the hold up was. I anticipated we might have to wait, but I couldn't understand why no one in front of us was going in as well.

The woman at the counter apologized for the wait, and explained that the delay was caused by a large number of emergencies that had just come in.

Oooooh, so that's what it was. My bad, I guess I misunderstood the purpose of my visit to the GODDAMN EMERGENCY ROOM.

I began to make plans to take Hilary outside and run her over with our car so that she might qualify for the hospital's stringent emergency care standards, but finally a nurse came out to get her. They put her on an IV and took some blood and urine, but everything checked out ok and we went home three hours later after she started to feel a little better. The doctor agreed that it was most likely food poisoning, so we assumed the episode was over.

And so it was - until Tuesday. Not wanting Hilary to feel bad for making me take care of her, my excretory system took it upon itself to get in on the act. The next two days for me went something like this:



Good times! Fortunately, Hilary was very sweet and supportive, fixing me scrambled eggs and a piece of toast and letting me watch a little TV in bed before I went to sleep (it may seem like a small gesture, but that is a huge concession from her). I don't know if my sickness was related to hers, but the two happened so close together its hard to believe it was a coincidence.

It wasn't a real fun few day period for either of us, but it did give each of us a chance to polish up on our caretaking skills.

So, future kids, I think you're gonna be in good hands. Mommy will make you some food or caress your head if you start feeling ill, and daddy will take you to the ER if it gets worse.

He just may have to run you over with the family car first.

The Wedding Trailer

One thing Hilary and I have tried to do so far in planning this wedding is try to do things the way we want, even if it flies in the face of CWW (Conventional Wedding Wisdom). For those that know my father, you know he instilled in me a healthy skepticism of tradition; just because something is done a certain way doesn't mean it must be so.

It doesn't mean we are reinventing the wheel here - we're not parachuting into the ceremony or Superman-ing a ho during our first dance - we just want (like most couples) to make our event our own.

One thing we wanted to do was an email Save the Date (Note - we realize we are not the first to do this. Our friends Joey and Jenn did one as well, which we want to make sure to mention. To the best of our knowledge, they are the first to ever think to do this and should be credited as such. And we bring this up only because we want to, not because they reminded us repeatedly that they did it first).

The best part about doing an email was it allowed us to do something new - a movie trailer. Our friend Matt did a couple of these for his wedding back in November, and we thought they were hilarious. His company, Blue Blanket Productions, specializes in doing just this kind of thing (shameless plug - he also does trailers for bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, whatever you need!), and we thought it'd be a fun thing to add into the mix.

Hilary and I are thrilled with the way the trailer turned out, which is great, because our creative insights for the project didn't exactly mesh going in. If our feelings about it were a relationship health book, it's be entitled "Men Are From Mars Where They Understand Comedy, And Women Are From Venus Where Nothing Is Funny, With The Possible Exception Of The 1980's Film Girls Just Want To Have Fun".

Eventually we compromised my artistic vision, and to Hilary's credit, the final product is a happy medium of both of our styles. We hope you agree!

-- The Wedding Trailer
-- Blue Blanket Productions

All Of A Sudden, Wedding Planning Doesn't Seem That Hard

I am afraid of flying. Actually, that's not quite correct. I have no problem with flying, it's the fear of crashing that makes my pulse quicken when I get on an airplane. (People always respond to this by assuring me that car crashes are much more prevalent and should be a bigger concern than planes, which helps exactly 0.00% - there may be thousands more car crashes than plane crashes, but at least I have a good chance of surviving a car crash). It doesn't keep me from traveling by air, but my imagination tends to run wild at the slightest hint of turbulence.

Hilary is the same way, if not worse. She too will never pass on a plane flight because of her fears, but has a habit of nearly breaking my fingers with her death grip during takeoffs and landings.

We have flown together many times over the last three years, without incident, until this past Friday as we made our way back to Virginia Beach to do some serious wedding planning.

Though every flight from Atlanta to Newport News had been canceled during the day, our evening flight got out reasonably on time (reasonably on time being within 90 minutes of scheduled departure). The flight was mostly uneventful until it was time to make our descent.

The fog was thick, and getting thicker (and Leon's getting laaaaarger), and we couldn't see anything as we heard the landing gear go down. At this point we were tense, but we assumed everything was fine in the cockpit. Right as we were about to touch down though (or so it seemed), the plane suddenly pitched straight up in the air and we began to climb very quickly at a steep angle. Needless to say, I was contemplating needing a new pair of undershorts while Hilary's eyes were about to pop out of her skull, cartoon-style (see right).

Now, this maneuver may be well within the skill set of your average pilot, but we had never seen anything like it and were terrified. The plane continued to ascend till we leveled off above the clouds, and everyone on the plane just kinda looked around at each other, trying to get a handle on what just happened (Were we ok? Had we just narrowly averted disaster?). Finally, after about 10-15 minutes, the captain came on the intercom to explain that they couldn't see the runway so they had to bring the plane back up (oh good, for a moment I thought it might be something serious). He said this very calmly and rationally, which either meant that A) everything was fine and we had nothing to worry about, or B) he'd spent the last 13 minutes in a state of catatonic shock and had only recently been able to regain the ability to speak to finally tell us WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON!

The pilot made it out to be a routine matter and said we were going to go back around for another pass at it (yippee!). And so we did, and as we prepared to touch down again...the same thing happened. Again, not so fun.

This time, the pilot only waited 7-8 minutes to announce that this little exercise wasn't really working out as planned (ya think?), and as a result they were diverting us to Richmond. Fine. They could have re-routed us to Fallujah, and as long as we got to plant two feet on the ground, we'd have been quite content.

We finally landed in Richmond (hurray for Richmond!), and were bused over to Newport News, arriving only 3 hours after originally scheduled.

We ended up getting a lot done over the next two days. We hired a florist, a videographer, picked out invitations and a wedding band for Hilary, and did a tasting for the meal at the reception (my advice? Go for the chicken, it was scrumptious.). All in all a good weekend, a get-sh*t-done weekend, near-death experience (?) aside. We even got back on a plane to fly to Atlanta Sunday night, and I'm happy to report all was back to normal. And by normal of course I mean our flight was delayed by two hours.

But hey, at least we stuck the landing on the first try.

We Have A Venue!

First off, let me apologize for the gap in time between posts. I wrote a bunch of them, but the dog ate them. Then I dropped off a few at my local post office, and they got lost in the mail. I will try to be more diligent in the future; after all, this is more for our future daughters (you know, cause I guarantee we won't have a son) to read and I want them to have a detailed account of how Mom and I got together.

I think I covered the lead-up to the engagement in such greater detail because, frankly, it was much more interesting than planning a wedding will ever be.

This is mostly because getting engaged is fun, whereas planning a wedding is not. If getting engaged is like licking a delicious soft ice cream cone from Dairy Queen, then wedding planning is like finding out that cone in your hands is actually lard. The thing is, there is a great prize at the bottom of your cone of lard, and if you can just finish eating it, you'll be very happy with the result - even if you can't say you quite enjoyed the lard-licking.

It's not all bad, and future kids, your mom and I are getting along just fine. But there is a reason the first piece of advice everyone gives you when you first pop the question rhymes with "the Pope".

Anyhoo, the reason for this post in the first place is to give the good news. Finally, after much searching and several plot twists, we have found the place that we and our guests will be able to call home for the weekend of September 12-14, 2008.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present to you The Sheraton Waterside in Norfolk, VA - Norfolk's only waterfront hotel!

We are pretty happy about being there. There is a lot to do in the area, and most importantly to us, it provides us with the opportunity to have all our weddings events in one location. Certainly none of our guests are required to stay there, but for those that choose to do so, they won't need to leave the premises for any reason other than to enjoy the surrounding neighborhood.

We should have a hotel-specific website up soon, so people can make their weekend accommodations straight from here.

More to come soon, I promise!