4 posts tagged “road trip”
Yeah so, wow, I managed to finally book the time for the wedding at the registry office. The wedding date is now officially Friday 20.07.2007. Scary huh. :P
And there are some good news as well. Apparently, since Stu's registered in Finland and has a finnish social security number, he doesn't have to get a marriage license from the consulate after all. Whee. No standing on one foot with hand on the bible action to be had after all. :D So that's one thing to wipe off the list. All we need to do is to take our passports with us a few months before the actual wedding in order to obtain the certificate of non-impediment. Easy peasy.
Another piece of good news is the fact that Johanna agreed to take some (casual) pictures at the actual wedding and that Chris Weeks agreed to take our 'official' wedding portraits when we get to L.A. on our road trip (oh and yes, we decided we'll do the road trip in October). Even though it's apparently Fashion Week there just at that particular time he said he'd make time for it somehow. How cool is that. :D Hello diet! :P
So those were the positives. The biggest negative at the moment is the fact that we just can't find a venue that would suit us/we could afford/wasn't already booked... It's starting to get really stressful actually and we're already getting into arguments over what each of us wants or doesn't want. Uhh. I had this great idea about possibly having the reception at our favourite Thai restaurant, but when we went to talk to them today it became clear that they weren't ready to give us the whole space (without other customers) even for just a limited amount of time. And especially the other half of us is adamant that we should have a completely private venue. Which is easier said than done, since our wedding party is going to be so small... not many places are willing to close for that amount of people on a friday night. So yes... still waiting for an epiphany on that front.
- Marianne
Get Marriage Licenses
So here's how it'll go for Stu.
He needs to get an Impediments for Marriage certificate with an Apostelle stamp from the British Consulate. He'll need to phone up before hand and book a time. He'll need to take both of our passports and cash with him. Then he'll have to fill in some forms and swear with his hand on the bible that he hasn't been married before (is that a crime?). After the visit an announcement of our marriage plans will be placed on the noticeboard at the consulate. In three weeks time he can go pick up his marriage license - he'll need to book a time for this as well.
Instructions from someone who's already been through it. :P I'm glad we won't get married in a church as it'll get even more confusing then.
I think I'll just get one from the registry office.
Book the ceremony at the registry office (or somewhere else?)
The original date was 20.07.2007. Then we changed our mind to 07.07.07. And now I'm thinking of going back to the original again (which pleases me more) and pushing the road trip to October. It's still quite warm in most of the middle parts of America then isn't it? We'll have to make our mind up about the date this weekend really.
Also need to think about in what language we should do the ceremony.
Research and book a venue
We have some possibilities in our mind and hopefully we can go look at some of these places this weekend. Especially if the date would be 07/07 I think we'd need to book fast as that Saturday is going to be in high demand... It's tricky trying to find a venue for a very small amount of people that would still be somewhat festive.
Book catering
Let's get a venue first. Hopefully we could get catering in the same deal.
Transportation & accomodation
How to get all the English people (and us!) to the venue and where to accomodate them.
Guest list
By far the trickiest and most stress-inducing one of the lot so far. We want to (and need to) keep it small, original goal was 20 guests tops. But what with Stu's big immediate family and my two sets of parents + brothers there wasn't really any room for friends. And I'd like to have my closest/oldest friends there... but god damn is it difficult to decide where to draw the line. Who's closer than who? And if you invite that one will the other get offended? Ack. We just have to try to keep our feet on the ground though, every extra head costs money we don't have. Also, quite a handy tip from my mother: 'Remember to include yourselves in the headcount for catering and venue'. :| Well damn. I suppose mother's do know some things best...
Clothes
Stu wants a suit. My 'dress' depends completely on the amount of weight I manage to shed by next summer. :| I know I don't want a traditional wedding dress though. But something gorgeous obviously.
Rings
Have to find a wedding band for me, Stu's ring needs to be engraved with the wedding date.
Photographer/s
I've got an idea. Will let you know later if it's feesible.
Invites
Something simple. I've got plans for utilising the skills of the maid of honour here.
Gift(list)
Well, after living together for seven years we certainly don't need anything. Apart from money towards the road trip. Have to think of an eloquent way to ask for some...
Paperwork
Need to change my name on a whole lot of different things, starting from my passport and driver's license. Pushing the honeymoon to October would make things a lot easier on figuring out these things as well... (my passport runs out in October and when going to the US it needs to be valid for 6 months after the trip, which would mean I'd need to get a new passport twice next summer if we were to leave instantly after the wedding...)
The first stage of planning our road trip was to buy this book on USA. There were so many different ones, with varying levels of confusement-inducing approaches to choose from. This one seemed the most straightforward and helpful, with practical maps and information.
What we know at this stage is that we have three weeks of holiday in July to do our trip in. We want to start from Portland, OR (where Stu's uncle lives) and finish in New York. Must see places on the way are L.A., San Francisco, Las Vegas, Colorado and St Louis. We're still not entirely sure if three weeks will be enough time for this trip, but it should be feesible, and it's the longest I can take off work in one go (usually I'm only allowed two weeks in a row tops).
What we don't yet know is how to finance the trip, what paperwork we need to do, who to fly with and where to, how to rent a car in Portland and drop it off in NY...etc. So there's a lot to find out in the next 10 months.
- Marianne
So after we went public with the engagement there we got a lot of lovely reactions from people. My mum to Stu: 'You're brave'. My dad to Stu: 'That heat must have made you crazy', which, after a stern look from me got changed to 'I mean it made you come to your senses!'. :P I think on the whole everyone seemed to be very pleased though and we got a lot of gorgeous cards (all of which I'm going to save, I'm starting a scrapbook soon!) - thank you for those. <3
While in England we got treated to a celebratory dinner by Stu's parents. Which was very nice indeed. The whole importance of what happened really hits you when you see how it affects the people around you. I've always felt very welcomed by Stu's family, but it's still a different feeling thinking that I'll be actually officially 'one of them', by name and all. A nice feeling. I can only hope I'll live up to it! :P
Right after getting engaged we were quite adamant that we wanted to have wedding ceremony 'just for us'. As we're planning a roadtrip across the US next summer, one idea was to go and get hitched in Las Vegas. The classic kitch option. :D But in the end we came to the conclusion that we couldn't, and wouldn't want to, exclude our nearest and dearest from the day. So, what's most likely to happen is a small (and I mean small) ceremony in Finland after which we'll leave for our 'honeymoon' roadtrip. Provided of course that we can afford both... Not having family there on the day would just somehow seem wrong, especially after all the support we've received.
- Marianne
