The big news around here is that my lovely oldest daughter is now officially engaged. Our son in law to be is a nice young man, also 23 - same age as Hannah, whom she met at college.
They don't know when they can get married but tentatively they'd like to marry in the fall before Hannah has to do her student teaching. I think she is more intimidated by that than getting married. She'd like to have a couple of months of married bliss under her belt before she begins 14 weeks of student teaching.
They don't have any money and at first that really bothered me and I kept talking about waiting a couple of years, however, I am growing soft for the following reasons:
1. They are young and in love and eager to start life together. There is a lot to be said for the energy and momentum that gives.
2. They both have common sense and are well educated. They can deal with obstacles. And the obstacles will be learning experiences that hopefully will bring them closer. Things might be a little rough now but I think things will smooth out as they grow.
3. We are in a position to help them out some, so we can jumpstart them a little financially. I am glad we are in that position.
When Rick and I got married we were older, closer to 30 than to 20. We'd both worked a while and were used to being independent. I didn't ask my dad to pay for our wedding since I was marrying a Jewish guy in a Unitarian Church. I thought that I didn't have the right to ask my dad to pay for everything. I didn't realize that hurt his feelings until later. I thought I was being noble! But we did everything on a tight budget. I wore my older sister's wedding dress. Rick asked a friend of his to doing the wedding photographs, we had another friend do the flowers (which were cheap, we only had potted chrysanthemums, the only flowers in season in November and then two bouquets, one for the bride and one for the bridesmaid. We only had one bridesmaid).
The way we chose our wedding date was pretty practical. We originally thought we'd get married in the spring but then we decided, why wait, so I started looking around for a place to have the reception. I discovered the cheapest places were rooms run by the parks. So I would call them up and ask if they had anything available. I called one place and they said no but then I called back a couple of weeks later and they had a cancellation for November 5th. I then hurriedly called the UU church and asked if we could get married on that day and they said, yes they had an opening. Voila!
We had our wedding in the afternoon and the reception was a 'tea.' We just served hors d'oeurves and cake with coffee or tea or sodas. We had champagne for the toast. The worst thing was the DJ we hired. I really wanted a live band but there was no way we could afford that. The DJ was terrible, he looked hung over and he was playing all the very music I didn't like. I went over in the middle of the reception and was like, why the heck are you playing this music??? The guy had forgotten my playlist that I had spent hours filling out! Grrr. I specifically wanted Motown, 1950s and big band stuff. He was playing 1980s top 40 drivel.
We had a very nice honeymoon staying at a couple of bed and breakfasts. We couldn't decide if we wanted to go to the beach or to the country, so we spent a couple days in Middleburg and then a couple days at Cape May.
Well I could babble on a good deal more. I never was a wedding kind of person. I liked the way I got married - kind of minimalist while still being fairly traditional about it. But I find I am excited about this and looking forward to all the planning. I didn't know I'd react this way!
Anyway, I am going to an all day writing seminar today, so I must be off to that.
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