Wedding Gifts: Eating, Smiling, Crying

Mr. Octo and I were, in a word, overwhelmed by our wedding gifts. Our guests were incredibly generous and thoughtful, and we were really quite humbled by the kindness they showed to us. Mr. Octo was not at all familiar with the concept of a bridal shower before our engagement, and after our bridal shower in my hometown, I still remember how he looked at the pile of presents and said, "I just can't believe that people did all this for us." So, we have a lot to be grateful for.

However, there were a few wedding gifts that really stood out in how special they were. Want to see?

My friend Bonnie and I have been pals since our Teach for America days. She is well aware that two of my most crippling vices in life are beer and cheese. She is also an avid Weddingbee reader. She and her husband Richie combined their knowledge of two of my favorite foods and my post about our honeymoon destinations to order this:



a spread of Vermont cheeses and a selection of local craft beers chilling in the fridge of our suite when we arrived in Burlington, VT. OMG, you guys. Mr. Octo and I filled up the in-room double Jacuzzi, cracked two Magic Hats, ate way more Brie and crackers than I'm comfortable admitting to you, and watched cable TV (we don't have cable at home because we are two broke-ass mofos). To us, it was the most luxurious, decadent thing EVER.

Next, we have the gift that makes me grin every time I look at it. Mr. Octo's friend from high school, Laura, is an artist. Her wedding gift to us?


LOL at Mr. O looking like a creepy lurker as he holds the painting. He didn't realize he'd be in the photo.

A matted and framed watercolor painting of our ceremony site, Heinz Chapel. She painted this herself! I can't believe I even know someone this talented!

If you need a refresher on just how accurate her artwork is in its details, here is a comparison with a photo of Heinz Chapel taken from roughly the same angle. I can't find my camera charger, or I'd take even more close-up shots. The likeness is so impressive.


(Source.)



You should have heard Mr. Octo and I gasp in unison when we unwrapped this painting. I am so touched that she put so much time and effort into creating this gorgeous memento of our wedding for us. What an amazing gift. I mean, seriously, LOOK at that PAINTING! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

Finally, the big gift. The gift which caused Mr. Octo and I to share a good, long cry when we opened it two days before the wedding, and which will probably make me cry as I write about it.

When MIL Octopus passed away, FIL Octopus kept her wedding band. Unbeknownst to us, he had plans for it. FIL Octo worked with a local jeweler to have his wedding band united with MIL Octo's, into the shape of a cross. He then had a white gold heart laid over the cross, as well as an aquamarine, MIL Octopus's birthstone (as well as the stone in my engagement ring). Their names are engraved on the back.


The cross sitting on my bouquet (Corey Ann Photography).

Then, he gave it to us as our wedding gift, with a note that read, simply, "God's greatest gift is love." (Also: yep, crying.)


With our rings (Corey Ann Photography).

I normally think of myself as a pretty good writer, but in this instance, words fail me. I tried, but I can't describe how it felt to be given a gift of such intimacy and magnitude. You'll have to use your imaginations. All I can say is that Mr. Octo and I will absolutely treasure this gift, above all others, for the rest of our lives.

Have you been given any particularly meaningful or thoughtful wedding gifts?

What To Do About My Wedding Band?

You might remember that Mom and Dad Octopus gave me an awesome graduation gift when I got my master's degree: a gift certificate to a jeweler in my hometown who does beautiful work, with the intent that I could put it toward a custom-made wedding band. It was a really thoughtful and special gift, and I was so excited to use it.

After some research, I found myself really drawn to rings with an open, delicate, scrolling design. These are the inspiration pictures I brought to the jeweler:


(Source.)


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After two weeks or so, you might also remember that the jeweler got back to me with five sample sketches depicting his ideas for my ring:


Based on the sketches, I thought we were clearly on the same wavelength about how I'd like the ring to look. I asked him to go ahead and create the design of #1, with the tulip-style flowers of #5.

The only other consultation we had about the ring took place about two weeks before the wedding. The jeweler has a reputation for taking quite a while to complete his pieces, so when I was in town and stopped by to check on the ring, I wasn't surprised when he only had the wax mold to show me. It was hard to see much detail in the wax mold, but you could tell there was a scrolling, open pattern, and he reassured me that much of the detail could only be finalized when he was actually working with the metal. I approved the design and went on my merry way.

So Mom Octopus picked up the ring the Tuesday before the wedding, and when I called her to ask how it looked, she said, "it's beautiful. It looks quite a bit thicker than I expected, but it's beautiful."

The next night, my parents arrived in Pittsburgh from my hometown, and Mr. O and I from Boston. My mom showed me the wedding band, and my reaction was........surprise. She was right; the ring is beautiful. But she was also right that it was quite a bit thicker than what I had been expecting. I had expected, and wanted, a ring that had a definite dainty, lacy quality. Here's what the band looks like:





As I said before, it really is a beautiful ring. However, I also think it only marginally resembles the delicate floral patterns of the ring pictures I showed him, and I think the execution is far less intricate than the sketch led me to believe it would be. In my opinion, it just really doesn't look like what I asked for.

The other issue is that the wedding band looks drastically different in style from my engagement ring. I had never thought they would match exactly, because my plan was to switch my engagement ring to my right hand after we got married. I did, however, expect that the two rings would share a general aesthetic. I think my engagement ring has a delicate, feminine vibe, and I thought the dainty, floral, filigree look of the bands I had in mind would complement it nicely. Now, I feel like the wedding band looks awfully clunky compared to my engagement ring. I know I'd have them on two different hands, but I think they're so incongruous in style that I'm not really into that idea anymore.





Now, there's the question of where to go with this. At the time of the wedding, there was nothing we could do--I got the band Wednesday night, the wedding was Saturday afternoon, so that's the band I got married with. Mom Octopus could tell that I felt pretty lukewarm about how it turned out, and asked me what I wanted to do about it. I told her that I'd keep it, wear it for a while, and see if I warmed up to it.

I haven't, really. Whenever I look at it, I think, "it's a pretty ring, but....." Bottom line, it just isn't what I wanted. It's pretty, but I don't love it, and it's not what I wanted.

I don't know how to proceed, though! I haven't been back to my hometown since before the wedding, and the jeweler is not aware that I'm not really satisfied. I don't know how to bring it up to him, or if there even is any recourse here. I've never had a piece of jewelry custom-made before, so I don't know what happens if the customer doesn't love the final product. I approved the sketch and the wax mold, but I didn't see the end result until after it was paid for--how does that work? What do I do?

Oh, and speaking of paid for--the ring was not at all inexpensive. It cost a fair amount less than the Fay Cullen rings I showed him, but it was NOT cheap. Definitely not a price I'm comfortable paying for a "meh" end result, to be sure. Because of the money factor, I definitely feel like I should find a solution that makes me happier.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, Hive. How should I address this to the jeweler? What would you say to him? He's a really nice man, and I don't want to be confrontational, so keep that in mind. If there's no solution to be found there, what would you do? I feel pretty uncomfortable with trying to sell it on eBay or something; after all, I don't love the ring, but it is the ring I married Mr. Octo with!

What do you all think?

The Name Change Gray Area

I am a feminist--unabashedly, passionately so--and I had always planned on taking Mr. Octo's name when we got married. Here's why: I like the clear "family unit" connotation that having the same last name as your spouse offers, I like Mr. Octo's last name specifically, and I want to have the same last name as our future children. Additionally, our last names sound super dumb when hyphenated (they have the same final syllable, so they sound oddly similar and rhymey). Mr. Octo was not at all interested in taking a combined name or changing his own name, but repeatedly expressed that he didn't care what my choice was, and wanted me to do whatever felt right to me. So, I decided that I'd be changing my name.

Then we got married, and immediately, nearly everyone started referring to me as Mrs. HisName. Often, it was meant in a cute, pointed, "you're married now!" way, but sometimes it seemed to just be an assumed fact of life (ie, receiving cards or mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. HisName, from people I am certain I never told whether or not I actually wanted to be addressed as such). And, surprisingly, although changing my name to HisName had always been my plan, I found that I did not like the way it felt. At all.

I guess what rubbed me the wrong way was that it felt very sudden, and it felt like I had very little agency in the matter. I explained it to Mom Octopus by saying that with all the other emotional changes a marriage brings, the quickness with which my name was replaced was making me uncomfortable. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I thought a lot (and, sometimes, struggled a lot) about what my new roles and identity as "wife" and "married person" were going to mean, and how they were going to change me. The sense that I was now, literally, a different person because I was married didn't feel good. I was also uncomfortable with the assumptions people made about what I'd prefer to be called. I hadn't been especially forthcoming with my name-change plans one way or the other before the wedding, so it really surprised me when many, many, many people automatically started calling me by his last name, without asking me what I actually wanted. It quickly started to feel like my last name had been taken away from me, rather than something I purposefully and consciously chose to change.

I know I had sixteen months to get used to the idea that I'd have a new name after the wedding; it's not like my own plans were a surprise to me. Hey, what can I tell you? I felt how I felt. I thought that I'd be ready to go by a new name as soon as I got married, and then, it turned out that I wasn't. Mom Octopus advised me, "Do whatever you need to do. Take some time if you feel like it. There's no right answer. Just go with what feels right." Mr. Octo continued not to care about whether or not I kept or changed my name, and continued to encourage me to do whatever made me happy.

So, I decided to just sit on it for a while, and think, and do nothing. I took a few weeks to let my new marriage sink in (during which time I continued going by my maiden name), and planned to re-visit the issue when our day-to-day life had more or less gotten back to normal.

Now that the excitement and thrill of the wedding, as well as the stress and anxiety and general feeling of Something Huge Is About to Happen are all over, I've realized that I do still want to change my name. I still like the fact that sharing a last name is a social signifier for "married to each other." I still like his last name, and the way it sounds with my first name. I still like the idea of having a common name with our future children. I still don't like the way our names sound when hyphenated. I guess the issue was really that I wanted to feel more like I was in control of the process, and that my name would change when and how I decided it would.

So far, I'm taking the process slowly, and doing things when I feel ready to do them. I changed my name on Facebook (a big deal, haha!), and I've started using his last name in non-legally-binding situations (like making restaurant reservations or whatever). I will probably start introducing myself by my married name now, and signing non-legal correspondence with my married name. I will start the actual government-documentation process.......whenever. Soon-ish. I'm not in a rush, and I don't think it's a particularly big deal if I take some more transition time between socially becoming Mrs. HisName and making it legal. I'm also still deciding whether or not I want to scratch my current middle name and replace it with my maiden name.

I feel good about my name change now. I feel much more like it's happening on my terms and because of my personal choice, and not like it's something society at large assigned to me without my consent.

I never even planned on writing a name-change post, because I honestly felt like it was simply a matter of personal choice and personal business, so why would we discuss it? I'll do me, you do you, no need to analyze each other's choices. However, I decided to write this post because I realized that there's another aspect beyond, "which option did you pick for yourself?" In my own name-change process, I realized that the decision is often offered up as a black-or-white situation. You're EITHER on Team Change-Your-Name OR you're on Team Keep-Your-Name. But now I know that it doesn't have to be like that. You can also wait and see how it feels. You can also realize that you don't have to be ready to change your name at the exact same moment you get married. You can also change it whenever the eff you feel like it and not a moment before. You could also think you want to change your name, and then get married, and then realize that you don't want to change it after all, or vice versa. You could also change it in five years, or ten years, or when you have children, or whatever. I've always believed that changing your name is a choice, but now I also know that there are more choices than two.

What do you all think?

The Best $230 We Spent For Our Wedding

Mr. Octo's wedding day outfit was very nearly a disaster. We asked the men in our wedding party to wear black suits of their own choosing, with no other specifications. Easy, right? Well, not necessarily. We bought Mr. Octo's black suit months and months and months ago, in late January or early February. He actually needed a black suit for a different occasion, and we bought it off the rack at Macy's, on a big sale, at the very last minute (like, the day beforehand). At the time, I thought, "Great. Black suit, purchased. His wedding day outfit is taken care of!" Then, I proceeded not to think about it again until about four days before the wedding.

At the very last minute, I had a thought. We had bought that black suit in a huge hurry, he wore it once for a few hours, and then it hung in the closet for months. "Babe?" I said. "Why don't you try your wedding suit on? Just to make sure it looks good?"

He obliged, and as he stepped into the living room to show me, I felt incredibly dismayed. The suit was way, way too big. Given how rushed the initial purchase was, I guess we just weren't too discriminating beyond, "Suit? Black? Great, here's the credit card!" and neither of us paid much attention to how poorly it fit him. The seam of the shoulders hung way past where his natural shoulder actually was. The waist of the coat barely even touched his actual waist; it looked ridiculously boxy. He was practically swimming in the pants. Fabric ballooned out around his legs, and was saggy because of all the excess, too. It wasn't the MOST disastrous suit ever, but it was totally, totally unflattering. To use a favorite word of my BFF, Oprah, it was a schlumpadinka suit. That was four days before we needed to leave for Pittsburgh.

(Also, I realize I sound like a complete failure of a bride for totally forgetting to make sure my groom had a nice outfit for our wedding day. I think my brain was just loaded to the brim, and once I checked off "purchase Mr. O's black suit" from my mental list, it was GONE. Permanently.)

I had no idea what the best solution was. I hated the idea that Mr. Octo would be looking shlubby and ill-fitted on our wedding day (and forever in our pictures!), but it was Saturday night, and we left for the airport Wednesday afternoon. We could go shopping for a new suit, but at that point, anything we could afford to buy would probably not be a whole lot better. In desperation, I Googled "[Octo neighborhood] tailor," and stumbled across Jack. His tailoring service maintained a 4.5 star Yelp rating after 97 reviews, and most of the reviews noted that Jack's particular specialty was custom-fitting men's suits that had been purchased off-rack. Even though we would need the suit turned around with basically superheroic speed, I figured it was worth a shot. On Monday morning, Mr. Octo and I rolled into his nondescript little shop.

We explained our situation to Jack (whose normal turn-around time is two weeks), and he agreed to fit Mr. Octo's suit within 48 hours. He didn't even charge us a rush fee, saying, "it's for your wedding, and this is my job. I just like to make people happy." Jack doesn't play around, and informed us that while he always recommends that off-the-rack department store suits be brought in for a fitting (because large mass-produced garments just can't possibly fit every man's body type nicely), Mr. Octo's suit fit so poorly that if we had more time, he would have encouraged us to write that suit off as a lost cause and find an off-rack suit that fit better to begin with. Again: TOTAL bride-fail in the groom-outfitting department. So embarrassing.

Anyway, Jack shortened the sleeves of Mr. Octo's coat, detached and reattached the shoulders to fit his natural shoulder line, brought in the waist, shortened the pants' hemline, and trimmed the fit in the thighs. It was a major tailoring job. The total came to $210 (the Yelp reviews warned us that Jack's craftsmanship was not inexpensive, so we were prepared to spend that much), and Jack tried to offer us a first-time customer discount. We insisted on paying full price, and also tried to tip him $40, which he wouldn't accept. After some cajoling from us, he did take a $20 tip, but told us to use the other $20 for something wedding-related.

Overall, it was an unusually pleasant customer service experience, with great end results.


I wish I took a 'before' picture so you could see just how much better the suit fits now (Corey Ann Photography).

So, ladies: Get his suit fitted. Get. His. Suit. Fitted. GET HIS SUUUIIITTT FITTEDDDD. I can't emphasize it enough. Even if you buy a suit that fits pretty well to begin with, a custom fitting will make it look like a million bucks. GET HIS SUIT FITTED!

Did you narrowly avoid any big problems before your wedding?

A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words: What Our Wedding Felt Like

Guess whaaaat? The flash drive of Octopus pro pics is in! (Our photographer blew my mind, she was so fast!) I'm not quite ready to do full-blown recaps yet, because phew, the Bees before me were not kidding, they're a kind of intimidating and enormous task. I've also got a few other posts I'd like to put out there before I segue into recaps, since they'll be my final posts (sob!).

However, since Corey Ann did such a great job of capturing the love, joy, excitement, and all the other emotions of our wedding day, I thought it might be fun to pick out some of the photos that I think convey those feelings most strongly, and show them in sequence. So, without further ado, what our wedding day felt like: a story in pictures!













































































All photos are credited to Corey Ann Photography.

Do ya feel it? :) What are your hopes for what your wedding day feels like?