night cheese

We bought a house. It was exactly like House Hunters. 

Just kidding. It was actually the worst and House Hunters is nonsense that needs to be launched into space. 

First of all: how does everyone do this? It took us six months of living with my parents to save up to buy a home in our budget to have enough left over to renovate, furnish and decorate without going into debt. And we were so lucky to have my parents around to give us that luxury. Really: how does everyone do this? And how do the 22 year-olds on House Hunters have an $800,000 budget? Who are you? And don’t you have to buy clothing and food? And after all that, how is your couch from Restoration Hardware? No wonder the Buzzfeed has to write garbage like “21 signs you’re doing better than you think you are.” Because the kids on House Hunters qualify to borrow eight hundred thousand American dollars. 

I digress. We embarked on our epic real estate journey in November, as soon as we got back from our honeymoon. It was an arduous three weeks of 3-showings-a-day-paced searching to find the perfect little house in the perfect little neighborhood. As we were putting together our offer on the cute little ranch (over asking price, to absolutely ensure we’d get it), we had that terrible moment where we realized that the Zillow mortgage estimates all renters look at longingly (GOD, mortgages are like HALF OF WHAT I’M PAYING) don’t actually include taxes or anything relevant and EXCUSE ME, WHAT IS OUR MONTHLY PAYMENT MA’AM? HOW DOES ANYONE DO THIS? 

That night, my husband sat on the floor and drank until I forced him to Docusign our offer and assured him we would be okay. Probably okay. But our couch would be from IKEA. And no more dinners at Houston’s until we win the lottery. 

The next day, we learned we’d been outbid in cash. 

This would be the first of five homes we lost in exactly this way between November and February. 

There was no counter-offering. There were no negotiations. No, good sir Scott Brothers: you are liars. Every single home in our price range – no matter the condition – was in a multiple offer situation within hours of hitting MLS. 

There was the cookie cutter classic Dallas McMansion in the great suburban school district. 

 Then there was the larger Dallas McMansion in the other great suburban school district. 

Then came an amazing 3-bedroom in the way-too-nice neighborhood that had been flipped in a ridiculously extravagant manner, followed by the 4-bedroom ranch that had been flipped quite cheaply and beige-ly. 

Then there was sick house in the crappy neighborhood with the child predator living three doors down. Lost ‘em all. 

Evenings were swallowed up by obsessive scouting. Lunch hours were lost to listings that hit at 11 am. Our Saturdays were completely consumed – and after a long day of scouting, pulling neighborhood comps would immediately knock us out of the running for some of our favorites because they were priced WAY over market value and a cash bidder was right there to make the deal. Homes would hit the market at 7 pm and would be gone before noon the next morning. 

The pace of the house hunt became all-consuming – and we looked at more than 100 homes over the 3.5 months of searching. We were over it -- and fully prepared to move into the dumpster behind the Taco Bell. 

Then, one day in late January, our agent called us and said there was a sweet little ranch in a neighborhood we hadn’t considered that might go on the market. Unless we’d like to see it first. 

  It had been loved. It had fun colors in the bedrooms. A flipper hadn’t gutted it to the studs and rebuilt it blandly, beige-ly, cheaply – it had been renovated piece by piece over the years, each owner’s personality left in every corner of the home. It had some history and soul. And it had five bedrooms, which meant I could make one of them a closet and set one of them aside just for Aaron to play video games until it becomes a nursery and he's forced to become an adult. Big yard. It felt like Kansas City, and it had been so beautifully maintained – a sweet newlywed couple lived there and were now pregnant with their second child. They'd done all the unsexy stuff like replacing windows and air conditioning and water heaters; all we needed to do was some cosmetic updates (new wood floors; knock out some walls; new granite; retile showers). It looked so strikingly similar to the very first house we fell in love with and had tried to buy when we'd first gotten married. Finally, it had a wine fridge. I had to have it.   

Here are the things that were REALLY important to us about our wedding: 1) Good food, and lots of it. 2) No somber vibes. and 3) Our guests had a snack or a drank in their hands from the moment they walked in the door for the ceremony until they waddled onto the shuttle at the end of the eve.

And we were VERY, very particular about the theme for the wedding: Friday night fabulous. We chose a contemporary, semi-industrial floral studio as our venue; it was white, white, white, with touches of bamboo and Miami-chic clubby touches. We wanted NOTHING to do with mason jars, rustic DIY ANYTHING, distressed wood, brick, chalkboards, mason jars, straws, succulents, etc etc etc. I wanted modern, clean, fancy, fun. With pops of purple. Obviously.

So, as guests began filing in around 4:15, they were greeted by a cute welcome sign that was not a chalkboard, and they were handed a glass of champers. Sitting in a chair and staring at an empty altar is THE WORST, so we had our ushers encourage people to mix and mingle and have a bevvie while we blasted some of our favorite music and ate snacks in the back. After agonizing over a string quartet, pianist, acoustic guitarist, jazz trio and, yes, drumline, we're so glad we just used the awesome soundsystem to blast our favorite songs. It was 'Heartlines' by Florence & The Machine; 'Without You' by Usher + David Guetta, 'I Choose You' by Sara Barielles, 'Girls' by The 1975, 'Love On Top' by Beyonce.

I can say, without a doubt, that the most powerful moment of my whole entire 28 years came at about 5pm as we were lined up in the cocktail space preparing to do the processional down the aisle. I was in the very back of the line with my daddy, and right in front of me was the love of my life and all the people we both love most in the whole world. Just on the other side of the wall were more than a hundred people who have supported Aaron and I for 6 years and were happy to see us tie the knot. I told my planner that Wild Cub's 'Thunder Clatter' was the last song I wanted to hear before I was a wifey - and as we waited for the ceremony to start, it was BLASTING like we were in da club. I was dancing all by myself, everyone was smiling and laughing, they were setting up a cheese plate next to me. It was the best feeling I have ever felt.

--

Aaron and the wedding party processional walked down to Justin Timberlake's 'Mirrors.'

I walked down to Beyonce's 'XO.' I kept the doors closed until :35, and the double doors opened at the 'your heart is glowing...' part. Drama.

My favorite part of the ceremony was when my dad brought me to the end of the aisle. Instead of asking the traditional 'who gives this woman away,' our officiant asked for a show of support from everyone in the room and the whole place exploded in cheers and applause. It was the best.

We wrote our own vows completely independently of each other, which is why Aaron's was the sweetest poem, ('I will love you when you're gone / off training for another marathon...') and mine were like, 'I promise to be your financial and legal partner.' Our officiant put together a perfect, lighthearted and personal ceremony based on the relationship we've built with him over our 6 months of working with him on marriage prep.

--

We recessed to Beyonce's 'End of Time' and shuffled everyone into a cocktail area where they were bombarded with snacks.

We boarded a little trolley with the wedding party and took some pretty pictures.

6.5 years ago, I started talking to a boy right here in this very space. At the end of October, we got married in Kansas City, Missouri - on the eve of Game 3 of the World Series.

Here is how the best day of our lives unfolded.

We got ready at the Raphael, a fabulous, elegant hotel right on the Country Club Plaza. Aaron was in a suite with his groomsmen and my bridesmen; I was in cute flowered robie-robes -- that I can proudly say were the only Pinteresty-nonsense purchase of my whole wedding -- with my mama, bridesmaids and Aaron's groomslady. We listened to 90's jams, drank Rosa Regale (a nod to many a Banfi dinner at Cornell), and had our hair/lashes/tranny faces put on. After a fabulous, intimate rehearsal dinner and an indoor/outdoor cocktail party with glowy firepits and 700 glasses of wine and a sequined dress, I was on a high from seeing so many of my favorite people, pumped about the next day -- and hadn't slept a wink the night before. So, 81 pounds of makeup were in order.

We all looked amazing. I looked glorious. I even clipped in a weave. I will never look that good again.

A couple hours before go-time, my Lady of Honor returned from a pilgrimage to the male suite with the news that they were eating chicken wings and farting and also she was given a little blue Tiffany bag. Inside, there were pearls and a note from my sweet groom. I cried. It was the only time I cried all day. (Aaron, however, cried for the duration of the morning, afternoon and evening.)

When my beauties were dressed and my dress had successfully zipped, I was left alone with my bouquet and my thoughts as I waited for my dad to arrive for our first look. While I'd like to report that when he finally arrived he said something kind and sentimental, he actually said, "Thank you, Neiman Marcus!" because the dress was MAGICAL and Neimans gave us the deal of the century.

And then it was time for my first look with Aaron. Which was emotional. And I will never, ever forget it. He cried. I danced. I demanded we practice our first number in my dress so that he didn't step on it and pull it down in front of 140 of our nearest and dearest.

We took formal family photos; I had a snack and took a selfie, and we headed to the venue. Oh, and it was 80 degrees.

Repeat: I got the dress.

It is my actual dream dress.

I am so excited. It has been a JOURNEY. And I had been so hesitant to pull the trigger on a bunch of pretty good ones, and I'm thrilled I waited. We started shopping for a dress in mid-February, and I made the grave mistake of trying on a designer WAY out of my price range, "just for fun," and yada yada. And I fell in love. Which is exactly why everyone tells you not to do that ever. I briefly toyed with the idea of cutting the guest list down to five or surprising everyone with an amazing dress but then oops surprise also there is no food here for anyone because we had no money for it, but decided to move on.

And every other dress I tried on after those gowns were meh. I kept saying for so long that I didn't care at all about the dress, and kept wondering why I didn't cry or whatever when I put on these gowns. We were getting down to the wire (we're 6 months out from the date now), so it was time to roll. I know that nobody is ever going to remember my dress. I probably won't remember my dress either. A white dress is a white dress, Aaron won't care what I'm wearing as long as I show up. But THIS DRESS.

A girlfriend of mine made a miracle happen yesterday and I walked away with the dress of my dreams and did not have to fork over the down payment on a house.

It also has a VERY DRAMATIC EXPLOSION ELEMENT involved. The designer describes it as such: "Not only is the effect flattering – the bride’s waist looks so sleek and tiny – but it also creates this very dramatic explosion element – a degradé – on the bottom." Sleek and tiny. Explosion element. Sold.

Excerpt from The Wedding is Just a Snapshot, by Sarah Bumbarger on A Practical Wedding:

"The dress isn’t the only thing you won’t have a shot at again. Only once will you have the opportunity to get 150 of your friends and family in one large ballroom, walk down the aisle with your father, have a first dance, cut some white cake. Maybe you don’t even want these things that you can only have once. But there’s still the voice telling you to do them, so that you don’t later regret not having done them.

Sometime during the wedding planning, these symbols take on outsized importance. It seems they must be perfect, not just because we can only do them once, but also because they should be the faithful representation of your relationship, of what is important to you and your partner—personally, spiritually, aesthetically, and otherwise. These static symbols should be a faithful representation, not just for now, but for always. Because the marriage is forever, right?

Yesterday, my mother told me that I shouldn't talk to anyone except my planner about wedding planning because nobody actually cares.

I will blog about it instead. 

A fun thing is that we have a date! A real one. 10.24.14. In Kansas City. It's going down, you're yelling timber.

A lot went into picking this date. We wanted to do the damn thing in KC around the time the leaves were turning yellow and gold and red and beautiful -- a week short of 6 years from our first date -- but we knew the time-change situation on Nov. 1st would have the sun going down at like 5:00 so we had to shift up a bit. These are the actual things I have had to consider in 2014.

After a full month of being wedding-planninglessly engaged, I started calling venues we were interested in and I guess I was supposed to book them when I was 16 because there were no reasonable Saturdays available until late 2015. Hi, who are all these people getting married on my day? Rude. Move. We have been dating longer; you can get in the back of the line.

All of this was too much to handle and I ignored the whole situation for a while before realizing there were 6 other days in each week on which I could eat cake in a wedding dress.

We found the venue we wanted last weekend, received a magical sign from the universe that it was meant to be, and locked down a full-service wedding planner and now this is all her problem.

The vibe for the wedding is Industrial-Chic, Urban-Elegant, or whatever the Pinterest Board title for 'pretty things next to exposed brick' is supposed to be. The venue is kind of hipster, and my LENGTHY list of hail naw items that I gave to our planner is going to ensure this thing doesn't spin out into a weird bohemian creepfest with mason jars and stupid photobooth props.

Our cocktail hour is a Wine & Cheez-It hour, where we trap people in a room with fancy bowls of our favorite junk snacks while a slideshow of Eva pictures plays on loop. We are completely serious about half of this -- I'll let you guess which half. 

1. Rustic chic.

2. Vintage-inspired.

3. Mr. and Mrs. Aaron [Sn]acker.

4. "Nuzzle each other a little," as it relates to posing for photographs.

5. "Eat, drink and be married."

6. "She said yes." No, the news is that we are engaged, not that he decided to ask a question. There is no reason to hate that, but I do.

7. Nonsense acronyms (MOH, etc).