Author Archive

Making Babies: Getting Knocked Up

Posted on April 20th, 2011 by Mandy. 8 Comments

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

I wrote a little while ago that my spouse and I are starting the process of figuring out how to have kids. Mostly, I talked about how we weren’t really fully informed enough to make any decisions, and instead were in a place where we needed to plan out how we were going to start collecting information.

This weekend, we took the Dykes Planning Tykes course that I mentioned in that earlier post. I was SO excited! I think I’ve been looking forward to this forever. But was incredibly nervous, too. This course was kind of the marker for when it was going to be time to actually start making decisions and plans. This weekend was supposed to be the gateway into a whole phase of life for us. That’s pretty heavy stuff!

And the weekend did not disappoint. It was amazing. While I was expecting to get a whole bunch of information, I didn’t anticipate the emotional work that would be involved. It was more than just getting facts and asking questions – we talked a lot about our concerns, our excitement, our struggles. Everyone was very open and honest, and I am deeply grateful for what everyone shared with one another. By the end of the weekend, we felt intimately close with this group that were strangers only days before. I guess that’s what happens when you lock yourselves in a room and talk about tracking your ovulation cycle…

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5 Takes: Turning Dreams Into Goals

Posted on March 30th, 2011 by Mandy. 1 Comment

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

Before we got married, we dreamed about the many things that we wanted for ourselves a individuals and as a couple. We would talk into the wee hours of the morning, dreaming of all the things we wanted to do and be.

But when we got married, something changed about our dreaming. I can’t quite define it. A sense of urgency, maybe? Or maybe the opposite – maybe it was relaxation? Being more optimistic? More realistic? Maybe it was just all these things combined. But whatever it was, it was different.

What happened was that dreams took on a different meaning. You see, dreams about the future were just that – about the FUTURE. And in so many ways, marriage is the beginning of your future. So, for us, dreams couldn’t just live in that “over there” space anymore. If we wanted them to happen, it was time to turn them into GOALS!

I say that as if we have some sort of air-tight method for turning your dreams into goals with strategic plans for them to be achieved. Well unfortunately , we don’t. I’ve just definitely noticed a change in our behavior around, and attitude towards, the things we think and say we want to have for ourselves as a family. We’ve become better about being able to identify when we’re just mulling over an interesting idea, or when it’s something that is important enough for us to want to fully investigate and invest our time and energy in. We’re learning how to carve out space, time, and energy for us as a couple to incorporate goal-setting, and the working towards goals, into our new married life.

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5 Takes: Gender Roles in Our Wedding and Marriage

Posted on March 14th, 2011 by Mandy. 2 Comments

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

Does this look like a traditional bride and groom? In many ways it is... but in many ways it's not.

image by Kelly Prizel Photography

As a couple, on the surface, we very much fit the gender role binary. I am femme (though I  like to refer to myself as “relaxed femme” – girly but pretty low-maintenance). Bek’s gender identity is what, for now, I will call “in process” (currently somewhere within the masculine-identified genderqueer vicinity). And we are both really happy playing into the societally assigned roles that are paired with masculinity and femininity.

Let me be clear – the reason we like it is because it is a choice. Our very own, very personal, very queer choice.

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Ring Regret: Part One

Posted on February 14th, 2011 by Mandy. 6 Comments

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

I have a weird relationship with my wedding rings. Actually, my weirdness is just with one of them (there are two total). I have struggled, as many others have, with how my queerness and my queer marriage jives with the elements of traditional marriage like engagement and wedding rings.

Leaving City Hall after we got hitched - showing off that I am indeed a married woman! That's supposed to be my sassy "What?!" face...

We didn’t have an engagement, really. We decide to get married and then just did it nine days later. In those nine days, we bought rings for us to exchange at the wedding – two simple bands that didn’t match each other but that we picked because they suited us individually. We did have a conversation beforehand about whether or not we wanted rings, and decided that we did because it was a cultural symbol that we liked and we felt comfortable with what we knew to be the origins of the tradition – something about the circle being an unending thing, and the vein in the ring finger being a straight line to the heart (whether or not this is correct I can’t be 100% sure, but we like the idea). So we got wedding bands.

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Smart Ways to Save Money on Your Wedding

Posted on January 31st, 2011 by Mandy. 4 Comments

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

Find out why this wedding cost 20% less than it could have...

I (and my better half) were reflecting on our wedding planning recently, specifically the budgeting aspect. It’s not part of the process that I really blogged about when we were planning, except for one of my first blogs where I talked about the particular challenge of budgeting for a wedding in New York City. What Bek and I were reflecting on was whether or not we felt that anything from our wedding felt missing, or inadequate, or “cheap”, because of any of our cost cutting measures. And we both agreed that we thought we had done a good job of balancing the splurges and the saves, while satisfying everything we wanted and that we thought would make our guests feel like they had had a really special experience.

Everyone, no matter the size of their budget, wants to get the most bang for their buck. Maybe most of you are already aware of some of these, but I still thought it might be useful. Some of these things were stuff we hadn’t considered till we started talking to our vendors and really brainstorming together for ways to save money. So I put together some tips based on a few of the things we did to try to save as much as possible.

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What To Do When “The Honeymoon is Over”: Making A Marriage That Works

Posted on January 20th, 2011 by Mandy. 5 Comments

Mandy
Wedding Date: May 29th, 2010
Bio: I am currently in the process of of living happily-ever-after with my amazing spouse, Bek; brightening up our drudgery of grad school and non-profit administration by camping, traveling, drinking on the balcony, and planning the expansion of our family! Our recent projects have included throwing the best New York City wedding EVER.

Apparently, according to statistics, the highest rate of divorce is in the third year of marriage.

*Not a real fight!*

Eeeeep. We just started our third year last month! And you know what? Even though we don’t have any real problems in our relationship right now, I kind of understand why the third year is where things get tricky.

The high of getting married can only last so long, then it’s followed by the exciting new adventure that is being married. And then you just are married – it has a little less novelty, is a little less shiny, and things start to normalize a bit. It’s the “honeymoon is over” stage. It happens, and it’s pretty normal.

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