Summary: As of October 26, 2014, about 3:30pm, Sarah and I have been married for 10 years. It has been a lovely decade. Finally, though, we got around to celebrating our marriage all those autumn years ago. The Stars Are Right was a mix of a dance party and a vow renewal ceremony, and a lot of fun. Some pictures and some descriptions.
The Stars Are [Finally] Right: Sarah and Doug's 10th Anniversary Celebration, Explanation and Write-Up
BLOT: (01 Nov 2014 - 02:12:46 PM)
The Stars Are [Finally] Right: Sarah and Doug's 10th Anniversary Celebration, Explanation and Write-Up
The Prologue
Way-back machine time: October 24, 2004. About 3:30pm or so, give or take an hour, Sarah and I were wed at the Huntsville courthouse for the price of a license along with some tack-on fees—including a fair amount to a domestic disturbance fee, apparently to offset any future costs of us having one of those. I would guess the whole shebang was about $65, but my memory is crap around such numbers. Becca and Jonathan (my nephew) were with us as witnesses. It was quick and sweet. Afterward, we went and ate at Dragon Garden, now defunct and relocated to China House, with a few friends.
We often talked about having a real wedding for our 10th anniversary. Then we kind of dropped it. Last year, though, while on our New Orleans trip, the idea came to me, quite strongly: next year (being this year), we would do something for our 10th. And I eventually brought it up to Sarah, and she agreed. And, well, here we are. Let us get into the planning stages.
The Planning
To give an idea about how hard it is to plan such a thing neatly, I figured I'd share some of the process. At first, the idea was simple: pick a place (technically a success), have everything happen there (got changed), invite 20-30 family members and a couple of friends (essentially got changed), have some food and dancing (happened), try to have it nearish Montgomery or Birmingham so that my family had a better chance at making it (big time change), and keep it under $1000 (we failed fairly hard, but not as hard as we could have1). We would have vow renewals blended in with a 10th anniversary wedding party. Something simple, kind of normal, and largely for the family and for Sarah to have some pomp thrown her way (changed changed and changed...).
The first bit of weird crept in when, earlier this year, I made an offhanded comment about how the groom's party should wear Plague Doctor outfits and the bride's party should make reference to kitsunes or fox demons, and we could have the whole thing at Sloss Furnace. To my surprise, Sarah was somewhat receptive (she later rescinded the Plague Doctor outfit at the ceremony). While none of those turned out as expected—for instance, Sloss was out because Halloween is a big time of the year for them—that comment did end up impacting our day in one particular way: we were paying for it, so why not pay for something that was as much about us as about our wedding?
We eventually contacted the Von Braun Astronomical Society and asked them for use of their planetarium space. Neither of us wanted to have a religious ceremony, and so I started to work out the basic script for one based on science and something like "cosmic humanism". Based on the realization that the handful of our family that was going to be coming up wouldn't really be into drinking/partying, I came up with the idea to split our day into two: a cozy sort of vow renewal ceremony followed by a longer, less cozy anniversary party. The VBAS solved the former, the latter ended up being at Straight to Ale Brewery. Rather than an officiant, we asked Jason to read from the script I wrote, and he agreed. And then we went through a few months of DIY wedding, with Sarah's dress being altered by a friend, her costume being made largely by hand, my mask being largely made by hand, with me making the invites, and so forth. And since this is going on long, suffice it to say that there were ups and downs and fights over the silliest things and budgets were shattered and people had to cancel on us and now let us jump to the day of...2
The Stars Are Right, The Vow Renewal Ceremony
Man, now that I am getting to it, it feels kind of like a blur to try and sum up. It was a long day. I was awake by 6am, and by awake I mean that I was done pretending to sleep. I managed only something like 15-minute bursts of sleep the night before. I was running on adrenaline that I did not have, but having a goal and a focus was enough to keep me going, even as a few delays clicked in and I had to get a bit grouchy. Heh.
We had planned on about 30-people, originally, and then with some extras added on and some cancellations—unfortunately most of my family was not able to make it—I think we hit that number precisely. Which is crazy. My one regret about the day is that I wasn't quite able to find room for a few more friends.3
Enough with worries and woes. On to the joy. The ceremony, as a I said, had elements of cosmicism, humanism, and nihilism. Sarah's bride's party were Alicia, Allison, Becca, and Katie. My groom's party were Jason, Niko, and Raymond. In a way, Jonathan, my nephew who was there at the original ceremony, was a there-in-spirit sort. The plan was to get everyone in, turn out the lights, bring up the stars—yep, our ceremony was in very low light with the planetarium star display rotating overhead—, and to let Schubert's second movement from
Then Jason read out from Sagan's reflections on the "Pale Blue Dot" and discussed galactic time versus human time—and how though a decade means nothing to the stars, we still stand in rebellion against the meaninglessness—and such. Sarah read out her vows, which brought several to tears as she talked about the downs and the ups of marriage and how she wanted to do everything she could to learn from the former to have more of the latter, and then I read out my poem "Et Cetera", about how I am a passenger in space and cannot possibly grasp all of reality nor even all of myself but that I can look to Sarah and known something of joy. Jason ended with a slightly cleaned up version of Vonnegut's "You got to be kind" quote, and that was that.
Oh, did I mention that Sarah and were wearing masks? Yes, in the dark, with the stars turning slowly over our heads...these masks:
We then made it back to the small pavilion in Monte Sano State Park, the one right near the entrance, by the wall, and had food. Chef Will catered with a mix of vegetarian southern classics and finger sandwiches and the trays got emptied. He was a hit. We hung out for couple of hours there, and then I had to go pretty much straight back home and get supplies and go on the final half, The Masque.
The Masque
There was a time, when I was tired and stressed in the planning stages of this thing, where I was convinced the Straight to Ale portion, aka "The Masque", was a mistake. It was going to add a lot of cost, make the day go on over twice as long, and we had a lot of people from the first portion who couldn't make the second portion, and I was just afraid that it would be lots of money for me to sit around and drink. Sarah stuck with it, though, and invited some friends and I invited some friends, and in the end I am glad that we kept it. It was five hours of getting to sit around and relax, and to dance some, and to listen to music, and to eat my version of sloppy joes, and to snack, and chat with people—some of whom I have not seen in a couple of years—and it was a great time had. The three hours of the more formal ceremony were nice, and beautiful, but the five hours at The Masque were soul-restoring. heh.
For real though, if we do something like this for our 15th, we are going straight to the brewery and the hula hooping and the costumes.
It would be hard for me to sum it up effectively, so let me just give a quick bullet point list of things that happened there, in no particular order:
- Laura and Brandon brought their two children, one willful, one sweet, and that was so lovely getting to talk to them again.
- I hugged the husband of one of Sarah's belly-dancing friends and I think I violated his personal bubble.
- I got to talk at length to a Catholic about scientists-as-villains and the fallacy of it, and we talked about stuff like the Big Bang and why she loved the theory but thought it was only part of the story.
- Hula Hooping...lots of hula hooping.
- Chef Will came back and set up a grill and made these wraps that were so amazing it is hard to explain how amazing they were, and had a line of people getting food through him with the biggest looks of joy on their face.
- I got to be Beer Fairy and hand out drink tickets.
- I got to try an IPA with peppers brewed in, and it was kind of neat.
- Sarah did the most amazing stomp-dance to "Kiss with a Fist" while holding a beer in one hand and singing along...and it is the best memory I have of the entire day.
Here are seven pictures of it...
To Conclude
I will be posting the vows and script tomorrow. [UPDATE! You can see the script here: "The script, vows, and poem from The Stars Are Right"] For now, though, it was fun, and I don't think I ever want to do that again because it literally took me three days to feel mostly human again. heh.
You are all very lovely, and we love you a bunch, and here are those lovely photos you want to flip through so much!
1: One placed tried to charge us $1000 for the cleaning fee, on top of space rental. Never use the W-word when renting a space. Make something up.
2: One day I may make some posts about my tips on how to cut out some flack and do some of the stuff we did without all the mistakes we made, as well as some tips on making your own invites and such...
3: Something that could have been a regret was that we did not investigate the space until the night before. Since we were going to having a ceremony in the dark, in what is a relatively tight space, it could have gone all sorts of wrong. It turned out beautifully, though, and I think part of that was the spastic energy brought on by figuring out last minute solutions.
OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: November 2014
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Written by Doug Bolden
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