The Past Year: Grad School and a Feminist Job

Does anyone else feel guilty about abandoning online spaces? This disused blog is one of two such digital creations that I ignore—including my erstwhile LiveJournal, which I’m scared to look for. Oh, the angst.

If it were a crime to ignore your digital creations, we’d all be serving time. I think it’s probably a good thing that real life gets in the way.

Even though it’s been more than a year, I do think it’s useful to stop by here to give a little update on the Moulton Belecs since, surprisingly, some distant friends do check in here. Again, I’m not sure what to do with this space now that we’re not documenting our contrarian wedding planning. I think if we have kids, I’ll probably do a lot of writing about how horrifying and gross pregnancy and childrearing is (or seems to be), since women are typically under a social gag rule—even among their closest friends and relatives—about the downsides of compulsory heterosexuality and reproduction.

But those blog topics are mere speculation at this point, because I’m not sure what the future holds for our careers, location or multiplication. But since it’s been a while, let me catch you up on our lives since I had that delicious, free salt bagel in May of 2010.

Two major life shifts began last year: I started grad school and a new job. In the same week.

After my three-year tenure at the enviro magazine Trout, I applied for an editing job at a women’s issues nonprofit on a whim. During the painful graduate school application process, I decided I wanted to move into a career that aligned more precisely with my interests: film criticism and feminism. Because I’m an inexplicably fortunate person, I was well on my way by late summer to do just that when I started an MA program in women’s studies and film and somehow landed the editing and writing job at a major feminist organization.

Embarking on these new endeavors was scary. I had to give up an awesome workplace and boss at Trout Unlimited, and starting a new school journey was an intimidating prospect, especially since I knew I’d still be working. But luckily, I’m still in good touch with my old boss and TU friends, I made great friends at GW, I survived the insane reading and academic blowhards in my first two semesters, and my new job (well, not that new anymore) convinced me that I would enjoy sticking with a career in the publishing world. Before that, I was planning to leave editing behind for teaching or academia. But being busier and working with copy that’s more relevant to my political passions has made all the difference.

So from August to May, that’s basically all you need to know about the life of HB—work, school and tears. But life as I knew it couldn’t have worked without Eric’s help. Not a lot has changed for him since last year. He’s still a brilliant teacher, still jamming in a funky band, still a skinny runner, still bearded and still my total rock. The only thing that has changed is that he probably has a thicker skin for my stress-induced breakdowns near finals time and has definitely sharpened his cooking skills since he was kind enough to pick up my domestic slack.

And now you’re up to date on Talls and Smalls. We’re so happy to be enjoying summer (well, he will be in two days), and we’re looking forward to volcanic adventures in Hawaii in late July. Until then, look for us

• on our futon watching Battlestar Galactica as research for my thesis,

• harvesting the mighty bounty of my garden,

• reading Entertainment Weekly cover to cover,

• avoiding watching season five of The Wire because we don’t want it to end,

• rocking out with Dimestore,

• brunching or drinking with my favorite feminists

• writing feminist film reviews and

• maybe, just maybe, running a race or two.

Peppy Life Update: Courtesy of a Free Salt Bagel

Happy bike to work day, DC!

What can I say? The weather is beautiful. I'm spending this weekend cheese-making with my best friend. My partner is a dreamy rock star. I saw the first fireflies of the season last night. I'm starting a Master's program at GW this fall. My bro Shade made a surprise DC visit this week. I have a trip booked to Tempe for this July.

And I was the proud recipient of a free salt bagel this morning.

Mopey Life Update

Oh party people, how I have neglected updating you on the lives of the Belecs. I admit, the infrequency is exacerbated by my disdain for online journaling of the let's-document-my-every-move variety. You don't need to know every detail of our daily lives, and you don't want to know. This blog started as an issue-based medium to show off our thwarting of the wedding industry and to justify to our traditional families why we eschewed certain sexist or just plain ridiculous wedding practices. But now that the wedding is over, we've stepped off the soap box and we're clearly unsure of what we want this space to be.

We'll figure it out. But until then, I guess we'll write occasional updates so you know generally where we're headed in life, career and love. On second thought, life and career are up in the air, but at least we've got love figured out, and I'm thankful for that.

Seeing that my last update was before I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, I'm happy to report that I successfully finished, and I'm tentatively planning on running MCM again this year. Check out my finisher's page or see some photos my adoring fans took.

After MCM, I had a jam-packed few months of studying for the GRE, taking the GRE, taking an honors women's studies class, completing grad school applications, going on a business trip, finishing up the winter issue of Trout, planning a surprise visit to Arizona and travelling after Christmas. After all that, I was happy to sit back and wait for news from grad schools to tell us what my academic future held.

But alas, my droogs, the rejections have been rolling in. It's hard not to be pessimistic about the four schools I haven't heard from, because two were big stretches anyway (New York University and the University of California-Los Angeles). The rejection from the local University of Maryland--what I considered my safety school--was an especially crushing blow. My only hopes now, however vague, are George Washington and the University of Texas-Austin. For now, I'm working under the assumption that those, too, will be rejections, and I'm marking my calendar for next year's round of applications. I've been in a sizable funk because of this unexpected academic setback, but like a professor reminded me last week, even Jean-Paul Sartre failed his philosophy exam the first time he took it.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm having trouble pulling myself out of mope-ville. This really sucks. But when I find myself here, again, in the doldrums, I just start to feel guilty about what yuppie problems I have. That's right, I'm healthy, employed and married to a wonderful partner, and I'm edging toward depression because I might not be able to break into academia. I admit it.

But there is some hope, my droogs. If I don't have any options but to stay in DC and work, that's what I'll do. Eric and I will move to an apartment that isn't so craptacular and we'll probably get a dog. I'll re-apply to grad programs next fall and keep taking classes at my local community college, where I received a small women's studies scholarship to do so. I'll take Spanish immersion classes to fulfill my longtime goal of learning another language. (No, mom, Latin doesn't count. Sorry.)

Aside from having to deal with my drama, Eric is doing very well. He's on a new fitness kick and plans to ride a full century this year (hopefully with me in tow). He biked a metric century with his dad last summer. He's also really digging his new band, Dimestore, and I have to say they could really go places. If we ended up leaving DC--like I said, a diminishing possibility at this point--I'd be sad that he had to leave the band. They play locally and often, and their sound is much more Eric's and my style than his previous bands were. They're worth checking out.

Don't Stop Me Now

After 17 weeks of training for the Marine Corps Marathon, I'm so glad to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have only one more absurdly long run left before race day (one more 20 miler) before we start tapering. I'm holding up pretty well, and I'll be proudly sporting my yellow DC Road Runners shirt (they call it a singlet), so keep an eye out for me.

I've gotten a lot faster, and my long runs have gone well despite a few nagging knee and hip pains. I don't know that I'll ever do another marathon--training has basically taken over my life since June--but I can't say for sure. I have an addictive personality and I tend to revel in doing things most people find painful and otherwise impossible. I'm addicted to being a badass. It was this tendency that led Elizabeth and me to train, in the weeks before senior prom, with countless vanity curls to hopefully be more muscular than our dates. Did we succeed? I'll have to post pictures and let you decide.

If I haven't seen you in a while, or if you doubt my reputation as a "badass mufu," then I not-so-humbly present you with this evidence, inspired by my scrappy ways and created by KB. Thanks, KB! I'd love to do a moon marathon someday.

And send me fast, uninjured vibes on October 25! If you're in DC, get in touch with me or one of my head cheerleaders (Elizabeth and Eric) to join in the hollering.

By Jove, We've Done It!

The past few months have been nutso for Talls and Smalls, so much so that I've forgotten to write about a huge development. It came about so fast, we haven't had much time to celebrate the victory ourselves, to be honest.

WE, TALLS AND SMALLS OF THE D.C. SUBURBS, A MERE 10 MONTHS AFTER RESOLVING TO DO SO, HAVE PAID OFF OUR STUDENT LOANS.

I don't mean to get all dramatic on you, but this has been the subject of 80 percent of financial conversations since we decided to "do the damn thing" and pay off 12 years' worth of student loans early. We were never really sure how early we could make it work--although the amount varied, we dedicated hundreds a month to eat away at the balance. With a lot of tough budgeting and sacrificing gift money to the cause, I'm thrilled to say that we took care of the debt in less than a year, faster than either of us thought we could do it.

Now that the loan is taken care of, we can't wait for the first few paychecks where the money we put away is money we eventually keep--even if it's in savings or investments. At least it's not going down the black hole at Citibank. Now I'm thinking of getting rid of our only remaining debt--my training-wheeled $500 limit credit card. Let's get all old-school with this money-handling.

Always Coming Back Home to You

The past few months have been a blur. Talls is now out of school and tenured as a Montgomery County teacher. He's spending his first day off in a blur of sleep, food and Pixar.

Meanwhile, I'm in quarter-life crisis mode, fighting off mad homesickness and boredom. What I need to do is write out my goals and stick to them. I've made it harder on myself by joining the DC Road Runners and beginning a marathon training program, which has basically taken over my non-work life, but I'm at least enjoying a chiseled exterior.

Hokay, so, back to the goals.

Study for GRE
Take GRE by August
Enroll for Montgomery College women's studies class
Practice Spanish
Run my marathon, simultaneously kicking ass
Get serious about my feminist blog
Apply for various grad programs at UMD, GW, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, ASU, U of A
Get serious grad school funding lined up
Pay off student loans by October
Start a house-savings plan
Start an investment plan


All doable, I just need to get my shit together, and read the signs until decision time comes. I have to admit that after five years in DC, I'm starting to feel the pull to spend some time closer to my family. It's a hard thing to explain, but I think that some people need to spend some time independent and have room to fuck up and prove themselves. I feel I've done that, come into my own and had the five best years of my life in the meantime. But maybe it's time to go home, back West. Atmosphere knows what I'm saying. Check out the secret track after "Always Coming Back Home to You" starting around the 4:30 mark. Check out the opening track, too, because it's also awesome.




Some excerpts:

Roam if you must, but come home once you've seen enough
If you know this is where you want to raise your kids
If you can drink tap water and drink the air (Well, not literally something you should do in Tempe)
If you're not gonna leave because that's where you're from

She Stole My Karma

Seeing Kings of Leon last Friday was the kick-off for a frenzy of a weekend for Talls and Smalls. We were pumped to see the Kings after we missed their Constitution Hall show last November. My trout buddy Chris introduced me to the Kings this fall, and they're my favorite new obsession, but I'm not the only one. They blew up this fall thanks to their good looks and lusty singles like "Sex On Fire."

They played all of my favorites, including "Charmer."



Saturday, we spent the day as local celebrities at Run Amuck, a 5K mud run, which we and 13 friends ran in costume as members of the Mario Kart pack. Eric and I were Toad and Toadette, complete with spotted hats (our bike helmets with shower caps stretched over them). Eric had the good luck to run into one of his students and her parents in full costume. Luckily, she's a good kid whose mom wrote to Eric the first week of school about how much her daughter loves his class. What can I say, Talls has it goin' on.

We wore cardboard cars and made quite a splash, literally through the mud and figuratively by the awesome reaction everywhere we went. Kids and adults wanted to take pictures with us and of us. Talls and I concluded that we've never been cooler in our lives.

Sunday hosted great weather for a rooftop goodbye to my friend and colleague Kate, who is off to Guatemala this week for Peace Corps work. It's such a cool opportunity, but I left feeling really down about the heaviness of growing up, moving on and moving apart. It's just depressing to face the fact that all of the people I want to see can't be in the same place.

F*** Bitches, Get Money

At a happy hour last night, Elizabeth admitted that in a recent run-in with an acquaintance , she responded to thusly to the question of what she'd been up to:

(shrug)

Fuck bitches, get money.

Although out of nowhere (and hilarious--I've resolved to give the same answer when the next unsuspecting person prompts me, unless it's my boss or my Nana) to my virgin ears, E took the response from a chart-topping hip-hop song. By the way, I love how the poster of this video--such as it is--censors "bitch" but not "fuck," the direct opposite of my headline instincts.

This incident is as good a segue as any to talk about money, honey. I've been increasingly interested in finance, inspired by several people: my dad, E, the woman behind Feminist Finance and a few authors.

Right around the time of our wedding, Eric and I started noticing how many houses were up for sale in our neighborhood. We started looking at houses once we were hitched, figuring that we should take advantage of the shitrendous market. We took a few months to look around, and ended up making offers on two different houses in Rockville, Md., before we decided to throw in the towel. It's funny, I remember our mortgage broker telling us in August of last year that we should buy a house quickly, because the market was going to turn around any day. Obviously, he wasn't the best fortune-teller.

So after two offers fell through, both because of shady sellers, Eric and I decided to do something that felt a little crazy. We put several thousand dollars of our savings toward student loans, and resolved to pay the rest of the debt off within a year.

But how did we become such debt Puritans?

Well, it started with years of indoctrination from my Dad, I'm sure, but I wasn't really paying attention until I was an adult. As he often does, my Dad asked for some bizarre favor as a gift for his birthday last year. He requested that all of his kids to listen to this quacky economy dude Dave Ramsey's audiobook. Eric and I listened, and although I disagreed with some disturbing points (God doesn't want you to have a Jaguar, dude), we did come away with some sound advice, some strategy and a plan to be completely without debt at 25-years-old.

You heard it here: I listened to my dad's advice. I have done that once or twice. Hi, Dad.

Basically, there are several steps you follow. The first few go something like this: Make a budget, start an emergency savings fund, pay off your debts one by one, starting with the smallest, including your house, and from there, invest a certain percentage of your income into retirement, college funds, Roth IRAs and the like.

We're obviously in the paying-off-debt phase, and the idea behind paying everything off would probably sound like a good idea to most people, but you'd be surprised what a radical step it feels like to put thousands of dollars against a debt that you usually pay off $60 at a time. The fact is, when you pay off your debt early (11 years ahead of schedule for us), you save lots of money in interest. It feels like we threw away all that money, because we didn't have anything tangible to show for its loss, but in reality, we had that much in debt to pay off eventually. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around at times.

If you can get past this dude's bizarre idea that God wants us to be rich, and the fact that he's a regular on Fox News, he has some reasonable advice and a pretty funny adjective that he uses for hard-core debt-payer-offers: gazelle-intense (as intense as a gazelle that's running from a cheetah).

So in addition to the big lump sum payment, we're basically paying as much as we can each month against the student loans, which were the biggest form of debt for us after minimal credit card bills and one side project. That means that we're paying three-quarters of a rent payment against the student loan every month, which is quite a chunk of change. As a result, we feel pretty cash poor for now, but we get really pumped up when we see the loan balance trickle. It gives me insane pleasure to do out the math to figure out when we'll have everything paid off (with some luck, maybe by the end of 2009).

Since we started this quest in September 2008, we have paid off over 65 percent of our debt. Every time we pass another incremental milestone, we get more inspired, and we've given ourselves at least one incentive to get to the end of the rainbow: We won't get a dog until we've seen this through.

So, no horribly spoiled devil-dogs like Ginger.



And no smelly-breath loving, either.



But when it's all over, we'll have a proper family band, like these peeps.

Viral Online Habits

In the days when I first moved to Virginia in 2004, I would often sit on Cindy's couch (Lisa and I rented rooms from a very awesome woman, who is still a great friend) with my laptop, bullshitting with my friends, who were spread all over the country at college--from Middletown, Conn. to Los Angeles, Calif. to Spokane, Wash. This was the dawn of the viral video days, the days of Schfifty-Five and the hilariously dumb answers to high-school test questions. I still need to study up, but this list is a good starting point to viral video history.







Viral video has become so pervasive that Current TV has a segment called Viral Video Film School, which covers internet how-tos, vlogging (video blogging), sexy tax advice and anything else that people take video of and post online.

Much as we still enjoy viral videos and sound clips, ridiculous, self-aggrandizing "quizzes" have also sadly endured in the present-day internet experience. Ten multiple-choice questions aren't going to make you any more similar to Bella Swan (Which Twilight Character Are You?) than you were five minutes ago, and they sure as shit won't make Colin Firth your partner (Which Celebrity Is Your Ideal Boyfriend?). It might, however, make me Paul McCartney (Which Beatle Are You?) circa 1979. I don't want to be the post-2000 McCartney, selling shitty albums at Starbucks. That McCartney I refer to as Mr. Jowls.

But I digress. The inspiration of this entire post was, believe it or not The Most Useless Quiz Ever. This was one of my favorite viral internet quizzes from my internet-use infancy. The quiz is true to its name, and I really enjoy the results. My first quiz back in 2004 revealed that I was "the macaroni protest movement," which came along with an illustration of angry elbow noodles. I've clearly grown up a lot since then. As you can see, I'm now "the attack banana." Other known results: a heart-shaped armadillo and a ladybug languishing on a throw pillow. Good times.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Hello my droogies,

It's been forever since I blogged atcha. I attribute the lack of enthusiasm (on my part) to a general "I'm sick of obsessing about my freakin' wedding, as awesome as it was" and also a months-long depression about our living situation, which happily ended March 1.

After a disappointing house hunt, Eric and I decided to just move from Takoma to a nicer apartment, and use the down payment money to pay down our student loan debt (more on that later). Thinking that it would be great to commute without cars, I had the bright idea that we should move to Rockville (known to us now as Suckville), which is the suburb in Maryland where Eric teaches. Long story short, we had a few financially irritating run ins with a moving company, a gym, and someone who I hope gets hit by a car while riding my bike. The lifestyle change from walkable, dense city (Silver Spring/Takoma) to soccer-mom, suburban wasteland was really, really depressing for both of us, but I was most vocal about it. The move added a half-hour to my commuting time, made it impossible to bike to work, and made me feel really isolated from our friends and anything we wanted to do in DC.

So after a lot of thought, we decided to break our lease with our Suckville apartment (which was a fine place, but rather small and we had to pay utilities separately) and move back to the Silver Spring area. Eric brilliantly found an apartment complex that was running a rent special that basically paid for the cost of breaking our lease, and we moved in March 1. Eric has to drive to work now, but his commute is pretty short, and I've suggested he try to carpool with his friend and fellow MoCo teacher, Grant.

We're so pumped with our new place, we already have it all set up. We never got all the boxes unpacked at Suckville.

Soon my new bike will join Eric's on our bike wall. It just came in the mail today!


Those lanterns are from the dairy farm where my mother-in-law grew up in New York. Try not to be too jealous, Mom.


We, happily, have a lot more room in our Silver Spring place. Enough room for a proper music corner, which makes it easier to jam on our keyboard and guitar (for me) and any number of instruments for Mr. B.


And our favorite new addition, our turntable chills under the fellas. The player was a wedding gift from my big sisters. Now Eric and I jam to Arlo Guthrie, Jackson Browne and The Beatles on vinyl, among others.


More on our debt later, because I'm really proud of what we've done in the past year. I just felt like I should draft a post, because I've been doing it a lot at work. Check out the blog I started for our magazine and leave your feedback, if you know what I'm talking about. Fisheries science can be pretty wonky.

Love,
HB

Vendors: The Music

Husband here, blogging live from 2009!

Our first post of the year, and my first post in several months. As happened last year, once school started I fell right into an intractable school/band practice/recover routine that’s pretty hard to break out of for the time needed to write an interesting blog post. I recall that most of my more interesting posts last year were written between midnight and 1 a.m., but these days I spend that time dreading 6 a.m.

Things have been going well on my end. I’m having a really good year at school—whether sixth grade is that much easier than eighth, or whether one’s second year of teaching is that much better than the first, it’s certainly working for me. I’m tired a lot, but I’m much less worn out than last year and don’t feel as if I’m gasping for free time.

The wedding happened over six months ago, but it’s still fresh on our minds. We spent Christmas and New Year’s in sunny Arizona, not just for the holiday but for an awesome west- coast reception for Hannah’s friends and family who couldn’t make it out for the main event. It was a great time; I really feel like I’m part of the family now. My parents made it out, and everybody got along great.

So with all that in mind, it’s time to post my two cents on the two as-yet unexplored vendors from the wedding day: the music and the beer. First up: the music.

Wedding Music – St. Charles String Quartet

The music for the ceremony was always going to be a sticky wicket. Music is, of course, crucial to setting the mood at pretty much any occasion, but the thought of a giant pipe organ pumping the traditional wedding march as we walked down the aisle never really seemed appetizing. It’s not any big ballsy “anti-tradition” thing; the song and the sound of it never resonated with me. I mean it’s a MARCH. We might as well have used the Darth Vader march. That would have at least made shopping for my outfit easier.

The only acceptable use of a pipe organ in church:

Hannah and I were both after “pretty” music, but even that had its limitations. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” is one of the mainstays that I actually really enjoy; however I can’t quite get past the fact that Pachelbel apparently stole the chord progression from “Hook” by Blues Traveler. Plagiarist hack.

We figured we could hire a pianist from UMD on the cheap. Their accompanists are so good that we could have tossed them some sheet music half an hour beforehand and no one would have known the difference.

However, the idea-that-was-so-cool-that-we-figured-it-was-unattainable was a string quartet. Hannah and I had discovered string music in a big way since we became a couple; neither of us had been into it before, but the music of Nickel Creek in particular shaped a lot of our tastes over the next few years and resulted in the surprisingly high concentration of country-esque music for the day.

I never really thought we'd get it to happen. I always envisioned string groups playing events where tuxedos were mandatory and guests used caviar as a condiment. We started looking, hoping to get lucky, but we were prepared to be told that we'd need to spend thousands of dollars to even think about having a string group play our ceremony.

A simple google search brought me to Gig Masters, which allowed me to read reviews and look over prices for several string groups at once. I was able to send a request for a price quote to a bunch of them with one click. And soon enough, I heard back from St. Charles String Quartet.

Even though I was expecting not to be able to afford it, Neil of St. Charles String Quartet immediately got in touch with me with a quote that was very very reasonable--a few hundred dollars for an hour and a half of setup, rehearsal, entrance music and playing. Both Hannah and I were impressed with the clips and song lists on their website, which were stocked not only with classical standards but with arrangements of dozens of pop and rock songs--including a huge Beatles selection (check out their site to hear samples like "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters, too).

Even more impressive was their willingness and ability to learn not one, not two, but THREE special requests specifically for our ceremony. Again, I was prepared to shell out extra dough to get them to accomodate us, but Neil and the gang had no problem arranging and learning the songs in time for our big day. They accomodated our every request--even allowing my bandmate Dave to record their music along with our ceremony.

I won't go too much into what songs we picked and why we picked them--that was covered in an earlier post. However, I do want to point out that, as much as I love Mark O'Connor's "Appalachia Waltz," I was worried that others wouldn't hear it the same way. However, when we were all scrambling in the minutes right before the ceremony and they began rehearsing, I watched my mother-in-law Tanya stop in her tracks and exclaim "wow, that sounds beautiful!" I knew we'd scored.

Being a gigging musician myself, I devoted a lot of mental energy to planning and envisioning the music for the ceremony. I was thrilled with how it turned out and how easy it was. I wish there had been more time to enjoy it; I would have loved to have been able to just sit there and hear them play, but maybe some day one of my other local friends will hire them and I'll have that pleasure. I certainly plan on recommending the St. Charles String Quartet whenever possible.

Reception Music – My iPod, among other components.

As I said in my song-requests post from a few months ago, the PA system was graciously provided by my bandmates in Lucky Day (we each bought the different components of the PA before a doing a short tour in 2007. I was a poor college student at the time; I believe that I purchased the cables).

Beyond that (admittedly very large) contribution, almost every other part of the "DJ station" was compiled from something in our apartment. I'm pretty sure that the only purchase I needed to make to get the thing up and running was a $5 cable.


I'm not sure how feasible it is just to rent the music equipment (speakers, stands, cables, and mixer), but if one could swing it, there's not a heck of a lot of reasons for paying for an actual DJ any more. For one thing, it's not really necessary, since music has gone digital. I was at my cousin Jessie's wedding in August, and their DJ was running more or less exactly what we used: an iTunes playlist. Granted, he was making up a lot of it on the fly, but in our case it wasn't too hard to acquire the music we wanted from various sources and throw it together into a pre-arranged playlist. Of course, it's impossible to predict exactly how the party will flow and when the various milestones (first dance, cake-cutting etc) are going to happen, but if you know anyone who can use a computer mouse, all you need to do is hit "pause" or drag the song you need to the position you want. It required almost no effort whatsoever. We even did DJ-like dedications ourselves, by using the simple Microsoft voice recorder. Then all we had to do was drag and drop the dedications in front of whatever song we wanted (like dedicating "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead to Hannah's sister Rachel, to thank her for introducing Hannah to the band so long ago, or like dedicating "Play that Funky Music" by Wild Cherry to my dad, since his life partially inspired the song).

For the most part, Juan and I split up "DJ" duties for the reception--that's right, I DJed my own wedding. It added up to about 60 seconds--tops--of volume control, hitting pause, clicking and dragging, and telling Juan how to do those things. I put Grant in charge of hitting the "play" button while we were biking over, and that was that.

The end result was that Hannah and I had complete, 100 percent, total control over the music that was played at our wedding. We made a deliberate effort to make sure that there were plenty of recognizable hit songs that everyone would enjoy, but we were able to balance that with some songs that were personal favorites--for both us and some guests. iTunes even has a crossfading feature that, like a real DJ, is able to segue from song to song so that the music never stops. I recall that the transition from "Walk this Way" to "Stronger" was particularly awesome.

Of course, the best part wasn't just that we got to play music we picked--it's that people enjoyed it! We got lots of compliments on the music, and have burned a couple of CDs with the whole playlist after a few requests. If you feel like checking out what was played at the wedding, I exported the playlists to spreadsheets and uploaded them to Google documents, linked below:

Dinner Playlist
Dance Playlist

I think that the fact that our wedding was so homegrown and showed so much of our personalities didn't just make it more satisfying for us, but for everyone else as well. Whether your musical poison is classical/string music (St. Charles String Quartet), classic rock (Journey), hip hop (Kanye West, The Roots), country (Gillian Welch, Randy Travis, and Lucinda Williams), progressive rock (Dream Theater, Procupine Tree), indie (Weakerthans, Andrew Bird, the Format), or even schizophrenic Casio-keyboard rant-rap (Wesley Willis), our wedding had something for you.

All this, and on a budget!

Traditions: The Rehearsal Dinner

Honestly, I can’t even remember the only rehearsal dinner that I’ve attended. Methinks I must have been at one for my Aunt Jana’s wedding way back in the day—also my only participation in a wedding, as flower girl—but I was about 4 years old, so I don’t recall if it was a fancy affair or not. What I do remember are my sister Rach's bangs, eegads.

I assume that, like all aspects of wedding madness, the rehearsal dinner is another potential stressball and money-suck for most people. Eric and I didn’t budget for a dinner, but when his parents offered to host a rehearsal dinner, we took them up on it, grateful to pass the buck to someone else. We agreed that the campground would be a great place for a casual dinner after the rehearsal. The campground didn’t really have any gazebos to rent, so Mel and Rick just rented an extra campsite and set up an event tent that they bought for the occasion, all while entertaining the evilest dogs west of the Mississippi.

The fellas set up the tent in the morning, whilst I picked flowers for all the peeps with E, my mom and Mel. After a short breakdown in Elizabeth’s apartment and a subsequent argument with Elizabeth about gun control (that’s how high tensions were), I started randomly honking at people in my truck to release some of the stress. Thank God for my peeps, who helped me forget my troubles by wholeheartedly contributing to the Bridezilla/Momra joke.

Arriving fashionably late to the rehearsal, I found Eric had gallantly already started organizing our peeps. After a really good run through (what a relief), we piled into the cars and caravanned the three miles to the campground. On the drive over, the sky opened up and torrential rain dumped down on us all the way to the campground. My peeps and I hung out in my truck until my brother ran up with some garbage bags for us to fashion into ponchos. They didn’t help that much. But once we were out of the truck, all hands were on deck to put up the sides of the big tent to provide some crowded shelter for the early arrivals.

Like most summer storms in DC, this one just had to scream and cry hard for a few minutes and before it gave way to a cool, purple evening—perfect grilling weather. Mel and Rick's longtime family friend Mr. Wright manned the grill.

The Wright family were there in full force for wedding festivities. My mom said it best: We'd be very lucky if we all had friends like the Wrights. Look at the bike setup they had to help with our Just Married Bike Parade.

With some food and beer in our bellies, we started to mingle and dry off. The spread was great—salads, chips, burgers, veggie burgers, chicken and lots of sweets. As evening fell, lights came on in the tent (thanks to Eric’s sister Ramie’s decorating) and all of a sudden our picnic-style rehearsal dinner started looking like a very classy affair.

Eric’s parents put on a slideshow of pictures they put together for us, and after a while people started filtering back to their hotels, apartments and campsites. The women in my family started assembling the flowers for the big day, and Eric and I and all of our peeps were off to do last-minute preparations before popping half a Tylenol PM. We had a big day ahead of us.

Vendors: Photography

I’m tired of talking about my wedding. Are you tired of hearing about it? Although I’m sick of it, I feel like I need to give props to the people who helped us, and sing the praises of the vendors who went above and beyond. I hope my research, trial and error will help direct people planning similar events, especially in DC. Now, on to it. Let’s finally give my photographers their due. The only picture I have of all of them is from the disposable cameras.

I found Lara Swanson and her peeps at A Softer Image through an ad—where else—on the Offbeat Bride site. I halfheartedly looked through Craigslist ads for photographers, and found a lot of online portfolios filled with hokey-looking portraits. The most telling thing in ruling out these photographers was that the wedding pictures—as “journalistic” as they were in black and white, focusing on detail—looked nothing like the wedding I envisioned. I knew these nuptials looked like what I didn’t want (which, as we found out, can be its own theme-ish).

Thus, I count my blessings for seeing Lara’s ad on our underground site, touting photography in the DC area. Her contact info said she wasn’t above haggling, and she wasn’t kidding. Lara was always enthusiastic about the details that everyone else was giving us shit about—riding bikes in, that’s right, dresses—and I basically told her what I could afford, and she told me what she could do for that amount. We contracted for five hours, with an understanding that I could ask for more hours for a specific rate per hour. I did end up asking for two more hours, methinks to make sure Lara caught the cake-cutting. It was well worth the money.

Lara brought two other photographers and her husband, who is also a photographer. They caught so many classic shots, it’s impossible for me to name a favorite. But I have to say that some of the most memorable ones are the portraits, which were the pictures I was most scared about. People so often look awkward, cheesy or both in portraits—but I think the best photographers (like my good friend and peep Amanda) can make you look your best on film, and Lara and her team most definitely did that, as you can clearly see.




I knew after meeting Lara last November in Alexandria that she was the right one for the job. She was always in touch, always interested in our traditions and anti-traditions, and just good company in general. She studied marriage traditions in graduate school, and lauded our efforts to cut out the sexist traditions that we found offensive. I’ve never met someone who knew more about the meaning behind the traditions, and it was awesome to have that insight.

On the big day, Lara and her peeps didn’t just blend in to our festivities—they were a positive presence, interacting with our guests, strategizing about when the best photo ops would happen and complimenting our playlist. They told Eric and me that ours was one of their top five favorite weddings, which is a terrific thing to hear when you’ve spent months preparing for a hugely stressful event. We finally felt like we pulled it off, and the best compliment anyone can give us is that they had a great time.

As many of you know, the day after the wedding Lara already had a slideshow of pictures ready to view, set to a song that she had noticed was on our playlist (The Moldy Peaches “Anyone Else But You”), the quintessence of thoughtfulness.

After the insanity died down, I chose a few pictures for Lara to edit for us, including some antiquing (a certain number of edits was included in our package). I’ll let her work speak for itself here. We were thrilled with these.


And after reading Lara’s blog and seeing the amazing work she has done at births, I’m considering hiring her if Eric and I ever have little ones. I never thought that’s something that would appeal to me, but check out these incredible pictures. She also captured the same couple’s wedding.

We can’t say enough good things about our photography team, and we’re not the only ones. Everyone who comes into contact with Lara and her peeps fall in love with them. So if you have a life event that needs to be captured, give her a call. Or, just ask her to hang out with you.

Marathon Man and Woman

Eric and I ran our first half-marathon last month at the Baltimore Running Festival. Inspired by my coworker Gibbs on one of our glorious springtime lunch-runs through Teddy Roosevelt Island, Eric and I started training pretty soon after the wedding.





We had a running partner in Alli, and all three of us ran the half and did really well. Eric and I qualified for the National Marathon by running the Baltimore Half in under 2:30—a feat I was very skeptical about accomplishing in the weeks leading up to the race. But we did it, and it felt awesome. Alli also qualified, so she and I have decided to train for the National Marathon, which is in March here in DC. Eric will probably do the half at the same race.





Alli’s parents, Elizabeth and Brynne were good enough to come cheer us on in Baltimore. We three definitely took the cake for the best signage. Check it out.



We took several weeks off after Baltimore, but we’re back in training mode—Wednesday will be a seven-miler. Wish us luck!

To all the haters

Courtesy of Junebug and Callie.

Come, crush a cup of wine

The wine and champagne at our wedding was extremely well-traveled, my droogs. Although you know me to be a liberal of the bleeding-heart variety, when my Nana mentioned that her friend from the Arizona Republicans owned a local vineyard with good wine, I was all about using the connection. After some research, I found that the Chandler, Ariz. vineyard, Kokopelli, offered good variety (such as I know it, but to me Trader Joe's has plenty of wine variety. I'm a beer person, myself) at a better price than the Shenandoah vineyards I had been researching. Sourcing from Kokopelli meant that we were still purchasing from a small, locally-owned (local to Arizona, that is) business, plus we were getting a little West-coast representation in the mix.

But the best part about the choice was that it wasn't something I had to worry about after I made the initial decision of how many bottles of which wine and champagne to get, because my mom made all the arrangements and then trucked the boxes of wine over on my parents' cross-country drive to the big event. Thanks mom and dad!

After consulting Alli the chef, we decided that we'd buy four bottles of wine, two red and two white, plus one bottle of champagne, for each table. I sent my mom and Nana on the chore of all chores - to go to a tasting to decide which whites and reds to choose. We ended up with the merlot, the pinot grigio and the raspberry champagne, Imperial Kir. The Kokopelli people threw in some extra bottles (any comm major knows that it's all about who you know), and a specially decorated bottle of champagne for Eric and I to crack open on our first wedding anniversary.

If you were in attendance, you may have noticed this little one, Alison, whom I babysat all through college in Arlington, coming around to your table to collect corkscrews.

Just last night, Ali and her mom Sheree gave us this awesome trivet, which Ali and Sheree made using the Kokopelli corkscrews from our wedding day. Isn't that the coolest thing? So don't toss those special-event wine tops. Reuse them for a trivet or corkscrew bulletin board.

Even the wine snobs, who shall remain nameless, complimented us on the wine. Although I was afraid we'd run out of drinks, we had probably 10 or 12 bottles of wine left over, and Eric can tell you about what happened with all the leftover beer.

But one word of advice, my droogies, if you're planning a big ol' stressful party: put someone in charge of cutlery, plates and corkscrews. That's what we had the most trouble with at our party. The devil's in the details, and I think we handled the snags like pros, but it would have been nice to have a functioning corkscrew or five. Elizabeth heroically bought a few at the campsite's store, but they broke after a while. I have no idea where my mom found another one.

I'll let Eric elaborate on the beer, since he's the expert. But I have to give a little ink to the non-alcoholic drinks, including the Keystone and Coors that mysteriously appeared on the drink tables. I'm not naming names (Ramie). Hey, at least it wasn't diet soda. I swore to Eric that no diet Coke would pass that threshold, and to my knowledge none did. If you know otherwise, don't tell me. I'd like to keep that fantasy alive. I really hate NutraSweet and aspartame. That's all my mom's fault. Plus, I was hypnotized not to drink soda. Seriously. By this guy.

Anyway, we did have some drinks for the kids and non-drinkers in the crowd. Obviously, we had water. But we didn't want to buy a bunch of bottled-water, because of the litter and expense. We thought about getting a Water N Ice-style cooler (they have water stores at every corner in Tempe, but the only one in practically the whole DC area is in Bethesda). But we came up with a really good idea, if I do say so myself. We bought a Brita faucet filter, and just affixed it to the kitchen sink at the reception hall. That worked marvelously, because we were able to fill the water coolers, and use purified water to make other drinks.

Mom and Mel were in charge of the other drinks, and they looked awesome. My mom brought this awesome Western-style (at least I always associate it with backyard family pool parties in Tempe) drink dispenser for the lemonade. The mamas bought lemon juice concentrate - with some sugar already in it - at Costco, added water and ice and some sliced lemons. It looked very awesome, and tasted good on a hot June day. The mamas also made iced tea - with plain black tea bags - and put some ice water out in these really cute drink dispensers. I got to keep the yellow one.

Mel and Rick donated some leftover drinks from the rehearsal dinner, and I think it's safe to say that everyone's thirst was well-quenched. Some more than others, if you know what I mean.

Yesterday

Happy four-year kissaversary.

Vendors: The Food

Having started a slow journey onto the local-foods train last summer (thank you Barbara Kingsolver), I was determined to source everything for the wedding as locally as possible. In general, it's always better to support local businesses and buy things that haven' t had to travel across the globe or country to get to you, whether it's a sweater, an apple or a cup of milk.

But the cards are stacked against us, my droogies, and there were times I was willing to throw in the towel and just order food from Boston Market. Not that that wouldn't have been delicious (mmmm macaroni and sorta-cheese). But with a little research and a lot of help from friends and family, we ended up with the perfect mix of delicious, elegant and home-made food.


First things first. Upon arrival to the reception, guests found a beautiful cornucocpia of fruit, vegetables, nuts, crackers and dips courtesy of Gail's Vegetarian. I found Gail's by googling "vegetarian catering D.C." on a whim, after realizing that free-range meat was going to be far too expensive to manage. When I filled out an inquiry form through their web site, I received a prompt call from Gail herself, who talked me through their options. I credit Gail with talking some sense into me about structuring the reception. She was all about my laid-back approach to the day, but she helped me realize that people were going to have expectations no matter what, and that I needed to let them know what to expect, and give them some benchmarks.



After a lot of thought, Eric and I decided that since we wanted to source our own entrees, salads and bread but that we still wanted to book Gail's for the cornucopia. Gail was very cool and helpful with that, let us know what she needed from us the day of (a table and linens) and that was that.



The first seated course was bread. Baked goods are probably the easist foods to source locally, because all you have to do is find a...bakery, duh. We've enjoyed bread from Takoma Kitchens at our year-round Takoma Park farmer's market since we moved there, so that was an easy call. Eric dropped by their shop on Riggs & East-West Highway in Hyattsville to order and pay in advance (cash only), and Grant picked up the goods the day before the wedding. We decided to have three types of bread at every table: asiago, sun-dried tomato and sourdough for my dad (a.k.a. Tim "taste buds are my enemy" Moulton).


Our bread dip was inspired by the free bread that Mama Lucia's (more on them in a few) serves at their restaurants. I picked up a megaton of olive oil from Costco, and Eric picked up some garlic, red pepper and local parmesean cheese for the dip-making. Elizabeth and my droogs made the dip the day before, and let the chopped garlic infuse. The cheese went in right before it was served - in shallow pie-tins from the 99 cent store all the way up Georgia Avenue.

Mine and Eric's peeps were in rare form during the bread and salad prep. They heated the bread in the oven and served it up like pros. Elizabeth was our sous chef for the day, managing the kitchen goings-on.

E's skills were never more apparent than in the salad-prep department. As previously blogged about, I sourced the salad greens and vegetables from our CSA farmer, Allan Balleitt. Using 4 ounces as the standard serving size for salads, E and I multiplied it out to get rough poundage of greens versus veggies. Allan gave me 12 pounds of salad greens, and 2 pounds each of cucumbers, pea shoots, radishes and peas - all grown, in Allan's words "biodynamically, without chemicals, GMOs, etc." Not to mention local. The salad stuff travelled only a hundred or so miles to get to your bellies, all for under $2 per serving.

So we have some produce. That's all well and good, but there's still work to do. Eric and his peeps picked up the schtuff from the farm on Friday, and delivered it in CSA-borrowed coolers from Farmer Allan to E's and Alli's place. While I picked up my dress from the vintage-cleaners (yes, the day before the wedding - hey, that's just how I roll), my peeps got started on making the dip and making a red-wine vinegrette from red-wine vinegar, olive oil, cheese, garlic and some spices. We had to jet to the rehearsal festivities, but my peeps and I were right back at E's apartment later that night to wash all 20 pounds of salad stuff, which was harrowing and messy, let me tell you.

I should also mention that during this wet nightmare of greens-washing, E heroically coordinated with a co-worker of ours, who delivered a voucher for a serious discount at the UMD Marriott, where Eric and I were going to stay the night of the wedding. Thanks to E and fellow TUer Big Dave, that effort was victorious and would have surely fallen through the gaping holes in my brain, so focused was I on getting through this damn thing rather than planning what I was going to do after it was over.

Suffice it to say, after a half-hourish of making seemingly no dent in the huge fucking cooler of salad greens, we got a lot less meticulous about picking only the best leaves. We called it a night at around 11:45 p.m.

Flash forward to the morning of the wedding. KB and E set to work in the kitchen, chopping and assembling the 20 pounds of salad while Amanda helped me out in the ballroom. It looked beautiful, especially the pea shoots and the mandoline-sliced radishes. Mel and my mom bought some ranch dressing for the non-adventurous types (ahem, again, old "no tastebuds" Moulton) and Mel donated some leftover dressings from the rehearsal dinner. Bravo to my peeps who worked tirelessly in the kitchen, and who served all of our guests, and to Grant, who served while being "so damn cute," according to Mel.

The salads were served on the buffet, along with the entrees, which were various types of pasta, delivered from Mama Lucia's . Eric and I have spent many a special occasion at this place. So after we dismissed a few ethnic food options (Eric's never had a taco in his whole life, if you can believe that), we decided to go with the catering menu at our favorite Italian place.

I emailed the catering director Sandra, and chose five entrees and split servings down evenly among those. We chose their ravioli rose (a huge hit, there was nothing left for leftovers, much to my chagrin), spaghetti with meatballs on the side, fettucine alfredo, eggplant parmigiana and lasagna (with meat). I set up everything with Sandra well in advance, including one special order of gluten-free pasta, which the owner made himself. It tasted awesome (I tried a bite) and he made double the amount I requested, just in case we needed more.

People seemed to enjoy the pasta, and it made for some really awesome leftovers. For any event you're planning, I highly recommend going for the catering menu at one of your favorite restaurants. It's usually way cheaper than going through a catering company, and you'll get food you know you'll enjoy. For our low-key affair, this was a great option, especially because we preferred buffet-style serving to the more formal (and more expensive) hiring of a wait staff. In general, we didn't want any strangers at the wedding and we wanted to keep things as personal as possible. Mission accomplished.

And now, the part my nephew Ollie couldn't wait for: the cake. Alli the chef got us in touch with her friend Sam, a pastry chef who worked with Alli at Hook. Sam makes cakes for weddings and parties in addition to teaching at L'Academie de Cuisine. Eric coordinated with Sam via email to set up a tasting. I was blown away by how awesome her cake was, because I'm generally not a cake person at all. In fact, I suggested having brownies or cheesecake instead of a traditional cake, but Eric really wanted one and, as it turned out, we had a vintage, family cake-topper at our disposal, so why not use it?



At the tasting, we decided that to serve about 85 people we needed three tiers. Eric made the final call - the bottom and top layers would be chocolate cake with strawberry and vanilla filling, and the middle layer would be vanilla cake with strawberry and chocolate filling. Sam includes set-up in her overall fee, so she came sometime in the morning to set up the cake, which was a buttercream-frosted, lisanthus and snapdragon sugar-flower clad dream topped with my Nana's cake-topper, used at her wedding, my parents' and both my aunts' weddings.



Looking back at the pictures, Ollie is surreptitiously, but patiently, ever-present and waiting in every single cake photo. I don't blame him one bit.