Should we have kids?

January 28, 2007 at 8:55 pm (Family)

When we met our priest, his first question was: “Do you plan to have kids? The Church encourages its couples to procreate.” Oh sure, we said, fearing the man wouldn’t marry us if we said no. But the truth is, we’re both kind of scared.

jaclyn and marisol

Jaclyn fears she’ll die giving birth, and I’m afraid of watching the whole process….those are the physical and perhaps, mental concerns.

 

The main reason, however, for our “parental fear” is we don’t want children like us.

 

Can you imagine the punishment God has in store for me?

 

“Peter, before we consider Fred for Heaven, can you recite his childhood sins? The list is so long, I forget,” God says.

 

“My Lord, Fred committed many sins before the age of 14: He burned down a trailer, spat in his teacher’s face, tortured his little brother and cousins, constantly picked on the only kid fatter than him, stuck chewing gum under the church pews and took a poo in his English teacher’s driveway. Then there’s college….” Well, let’s just say I was in a fraternity. And that fraternity is no longer on campus.

 

As for Jaclyn, she’s no Kentucky queen. She was a hellion as a little girl. Her mom says Jaclyn didn’t smile until she was six months old and would give dirty looks to any stranger who come close to the carriage. Every February Jaclyn used go into her “black period,” where she emitted a “stay away from me” attitude. Her dad nicknamed her “balckula.” Then in college, she lived like a rock star.

These days, we’re both good, tax-paying citizens. But we both admit, we wouldn’t want us as children. For now, we have Jaclyn’s niece (pictured above with Jaclyn and pictured below with her father) to cj_marisol_louisville.jpgspoil. And when we’re all together, I do feel a genuine warmness and want nothing more than to have children. 

Marisol is as precious as the day is long and is the best behaved child I’ve ever seen.

Somehow, I doubt our kids will be that good.

They’ll probably be planting cherry bombs in toilets….just like their daddy.    

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Wedding Guest Fun

January 26, 2007 at 10:36 am (Friends and Guests, Wedding Reception, Wedding planning)

One of the cool things about holding our wedding on Memorial Day weekend is the 5-day festival, Abby Road on the River.  As you may be able to guess by the title, it is a Beatles tribute festival – the biggest in the country in fact.  I have never been but it looks like a good time for those of you who may want to stick around town for a few days. 

For those of you who can’t get enough Baseball even after the reception, the Louisville Bats are playing all weekend.  Minor League, yes, but for $8 a seat it is a good time.

And for the more history minded, The Frazier International History Museum(formerly the Historical Arms Museum if that gives you an idea of the topic) is an awesome time.  It is near and dear to us because it was one of the first things we did when Fred moved to Louisville and we immediately signed up for a dual membership.   

More suggestions to follow.

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Booze

January 25, 2007 at 8:37 am (Wedding planning)

I have some terribly bad news. I think I’m allergic to alcohol. The last few times I’ve had a single beer, just one, my head pounded. And last night, I had three sips of some fine,
Kentucky bourbon and now my head is throbbing. Please pray for me…. So I can consumer vast quantities of beer at the wedding reception, honeymoon and throughout life. I can’t imagine watching sports without beer…. I might get bored.

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Photographers — Updated

January 24, 2007 at 1:11 pm (Engagement, The Ceremony, Wedding planning)

Editor’s note: We have selected nfocusimages.com. The photographer won because “I look at wedding photos as telling the story,” he said. It didn’t hurt he had shot for Sports Illustrated either.

At GettingMarried.WordPress.com, we care about your opinion. Our readers are the reason we’re really getting married. Shoot, Jaclyn hates Fred’s stupid jokes. And Fred, well, he’s just happy somebody at least pretends to like him. Which brings us to the topic at hand: Photographers. We need somebody who can make Fred look pretty and hide Jaclyn’s “crap, I can’t believe I just married him” frown.

So take a look at these sites and let us know what you think.

www.allenjones.com

www.katiewoodring.comIf you have a photographer you’d like to nominate, feel free to. Oh, and please…. vote responsibly

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More on Orlando

January 23, 2007 at 10:12 pm (Family, Food, Holidays)

I had to share just a couple of things.

Epcot was fantastic – it has always been my favorite. The park was almost empty, we got to feast in the World Showcase, take a test space flight, be crash test dummies, tear up at the American Adventure, and see some amazing fireworks.  Fred, being the charmer that he is, even managed to get us into a restricted viewing area.

 ”Hey,” the guard blocking the fence to the waterway said, “this is a special restricted viewing area”

“But I’m special,” Fred said bating his big blue eyes at her.

She looked at him and said, “are you sure?”  He bobbed his head up and down and she let us in for some fabulous front row viewing.

We stayed at The Swan and when we got back from Epcot, we had received a split of champagne with a congratulations card from the front desk.  Actually,  Mr. and Mrs. Padino were the ones they were congratulating, but since they weren’t staying in the room with us, we decided to indulge in the concierge’s mistake.

My brother’s graduation was a graduation.  All I can say is great chefs do not make great orators.  Or speech writers.  My niece fell asleep and drooled on my pant leg.  It was adorable.  My brother graduated Summa Cum Laude – not that we were surprised.  Fred would sell Thurman for a bite of his veal Marsala.  We had a lovely celebration dinner for CJ at Le Coq au Vin with down home French cooking and wine, then Fred and I enjoyed a romantic walk along the 1930’s style boardwalk.

On the last day we went to the Magic Kingdom.  Space and Thunder mountain were great as always, the new Fantasia ride was a sensory blast, and the updated Pirates of the Caribbean and Hall of Presidents was awesome.  But the pinnacle of the day was the Carousel of Progress - we have been singing “It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” for the past two days.  Fred did get a little freaked out by “It’s a Small World,” but it is a little creepy-psychedelic if you are over 13 and sober.

I have always said Disney is a great vacation because you can totally immerse yourself in the experience (this is also why I love Vegas too).  Case and point – we did not talk about the wedding once!

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Orlando

January 22, 2007 at 9:23 am (Family)

We just returned from Disney World. What a blast!

When I was in college, I had a chance to work at Disney. After being there for the first time, something tells me that I probably would not have met Jaclyn… if you know what I mean.

Anyway, her brother graduated from Le Cordon Bleu, the world’s top culinary school. It was a fun family adventure. More on that later.

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Wedding Guests

January 17, 2007 at 10:33 am (Already divorced, Family, Wedding Invitations, Wedding Reception, Wedding planning)

This is a touchy subject.

Weddings are supposed to be about celebrating the day with the friends and family you care about.  In actuality, it is about the spending the day with the people you can afford.  More specifically, the amount of people the bride’s parents can afford (at least in our case).  In fact, they aren’t even people, they are “heads.”

We initially had a list of about 250 people.  We are now down to 134. We plan on 125 but would rather have 100.  I want to be able to greet all of our guests but also to have time having fun myself.  If you spend 1 minute with each person, you have already spent half the reception saying hello!

So ensued the battle of “my guests are more important than yours.” 

“Jaclyn, you haven’t even known most of these people for more than five years.  They aren’t important.  I can share a memory with every person on my list.  I bet you can’t do that.”

 

“Well Fredrick, the people I’m inviting I see regularly or talk to frequently.  Your list has things like ‘7 unaccounted for co-workers.”   If you can’t name the person, they aren’t relevant enough to invite. And if we are getting into the memory game, there are a ton of people I was close with in middle school I can share some great bonding moments about.”

“Baby, if I invite one person from my family I have to invite all of them.  I need my fraternity brothers there. I have to invite my entire unit – we saved each other’s lives in Iraq —that’s way more important than loading boxes at Best Buy or your hospital people.”

So what it comes down to is he has 78 people he is inviting and I get 56 (I put the priests and RCIA directors in my list).  He is right about never having been to war with my friends or bonding in a “house” 10 years ago, so instead of saying “you get 60 and I get 60,” I caved.  In actuality, there is not that much difference in numbers. Fred thinks we should have a second-wave invite list but I think that is a little insulting – ”Hey man, now that a few from our A-list can’t come, we can invite you now.” Talk about making someone feel like a silver medal!

We are going to try to make our two sides fit together though.  We are setting up singles from Louisville with singles from out-of-town so no one has to worry about finding a date for the wedding. 

I know we would both be ecstatic if our wedding spawned a few more weddings.

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24

January 16, 2007 at 12:37 am (Already divorced, Engagement, Wedding planning)

24 

Dear Jaclyn,

With all of our dear friends reading this, I beg you. Please start watching 24 with me. I can’t take all the action and suspense by myself. Today, I had to call Rick just to talk about it. I tried talking to the cats, but all they want to do is play with the fake mouse.

You know how we bonded over Star Trek? Well, we can do the same with 24. Except instead of rooting for the Federation, we’ll be cheering for Jack Bauer as he faces impossible odds to save the United States once again. If it helps, Alexander Siddig — who plays a defected bad guy and is now Jack’s ally (Jack also had to kill a good friend to save this former terrorist’s life) — was on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
 

Anyway, I know you’ve been really moody lately, so I thought I stood better odds asking you in public like this rather than asking at home. Also, I’d appreciate it if I could watch football this Sunday, too.


Sincerely,
Fred
Your fiancé

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Honeymoon and Wedding Registry

January 13, 2007 at 9:44 pm (Gift Registry, Honeymoon, Wedding planning)

The plans have been made! 

We are spending 4 nights at Ti Kaye Village in an ocean front cottage with a plunge pool then four nights at Discovery at Marigot Bayin a Bayview Room.   We are planning on snorkeling, a rain-forest hike, visiting the drive-through volcano and bathing in the mineral bath, a piton climb, sailing, dining at some of the local hot spots, and tour of some local sights including the Friday Night Fish Fry.  I figure we will get to half of that.  Maybe.

Now onto a delicate matter: gifts. 

Since we are older, we already have most household necessities, save for some organizational items for Fred’s which he wants to write off on his taxes (by the way, Fred is already turning the living room into his office -there is nothing like walking into your house and tripping over piles of magazines and source material).  Seeing as how Honeymoon registries are the popular thing these days, I figured this would be a good option for us.  People can get us different activities, meals, upgrades, or souvineers and we can snap a picture to use as a Thank You note. Since we already booked the travel, we didn’t need a registry that mandated you use their agents or charged a set-up fee. Here are the ones that are under consideration:

The Honeymoon Free website with registry page, samples of gift’s for St. Lucia, service charge to guest is based on amount of gift ($0-$500 is 8.85%, $501 – $750 is 7.85%, etc) and money is sent 5 business days before the wedding.

Honeymoon Wishes Free website with registry page, samples of gifts in St. Lucia with photos,  3% transaction fee plus a 7% service charges that can be charged to us or the giver, money is sent a few days before the wedding.

Traveler’s Joy Registry page (looks sharp), 7.5% service charge deducted from total gift when we withdraw the money, can withdraw funds anytime.

These are a ton of them out there, but these three seem to pop up at the top of Google searches and look reputable.  The fees seem high, but only slightly more than sales tax and there is no gift wrapping involved.  I suppose we will register with someplace more traditional for those who are not Internet savvy or just want to hand us something tangible.

One note of contention between us was inserting registry information in the invitation.  I always thought it was poor etiquette and a bit tacky (travel all the way here and give me something) but Fred noted that every invite he gets has it one there.  The deciding factor is that we are mailing out the invitations Monday and have not picked a registry yet. 

So much for shameless yet blameless solicitation.

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Supporting your spouse’s big decision

January 11, 2007 at 8:54 am (Engagement, Wedding planning, married)

This past week, Jaclyn proved why she’ll be an excellent wife. She’s been extremely supportive during a difficult time.

 

For a couple months now, I’ve been toying with the idea of going out on my own and finally, I decided to do it. When I turned in my resignation letter, my employer was surprised and disappointed to say the least. They were even more disappointed when I said my byline would appear in our biggest competitor’s magazine.

 

That said, I will miss my old employer. I’ll especially miss all the women in our editorial department and how I constantly made fun of them. “
Tracy, your pants don’t match today. … Val, could you wear any more lotion? … . B.J., you owe me lunch for standing me up … . Shawna, you farted again, gross!” I followed every statement with a loud pitch “huuuuummmmmmmmm.”  

As much as I enjoyed my coworkers, I really wanted to freelance. I can potentially earn more money, be my own boss and cover a broader scope of industries. So I started FredWrite.com, which will be live soon. Many people said I was a fool for leaving a steady job for the vast and scary world of freelancing. But I’m the type of person who loves proving people wrong. Even still, this was a big decision and I needed Jaclyn’s blessing to move forward.

 

During the decision-making process, Jaclyn was constantly asking me questions.

 

“Will you be able to make enough money to cover the bills?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

 

“Are you sure you want to go out on your own?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re not doing this because you’re mad about something at work, are you?”

 

“No, I just want to go out on my own.”

 

“Are you sure you can pay your bills?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Positive? Because I can cover you for a couple months, but that’s it.”

 

“Positive, dear.”

 

“How many clients do you have lined up?”

 

“Three.”

 

“Get one more, just to be safe,” she said. “And then you can give your resignation.”

 

Jaclyn wasn’t just saying, “whatever you want to do, baby.” She asked hard questions and made sure I was making the right decision. And that’s a characteristic of a good relationship — being supportive, but realistic and practical.

 

Although she and I are goofy as the day is long, we can be serious. I guess, that’s a good thing since life isn’t just a big joke. Sometimes even big dork vomits need to straighten up and make crucial decisions. That’s why I’m glad I’ll always have Jaclyn around.

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