Picking the Music, Part 1

Hello! I figure I'll start with a brief introduction: my name is Dan. I am the lucky guy that Katherine has decided to marry; for whatever reason, she hasn't quite yet realized the scope of her mistake, so we're still going through with this wedding thing. As it is, I tend to get referenced here quite often, usually while Katherine is emphasizing my uncommon skill in rejecting things.

I'll be writing here occasionally, though this is pretty clearly Katherine's ship. I am, however, attempting to overcome my aversion to hassle, and am doing my best to participate in this process. One of the components of the wedding that I am spearheading is the music. Katherine's tastes in music are not particularly well-defined, but she knows that I do take music somewhat seriously.

Our initial plan was to rent some sound equipment and set up a laptop with a playlist. We would then enlist the help of one of our many technologically-savvy friends to monitor the set-up during the reception (I expected to have a few volunteers for this eminently-enjoyable role).

I'll offer a snippet of the wedding playlist I had begun to prepare:

Sing, Sing Sing - Benny Goodman
Keep the Customer Satisfied - Simon & Garfunkel
Cell Block Tango - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Susan Misner, Deidre Goodwin, Denise Faye, Ekaterina Chtchelkanova, Myá Harrison, & "Chicago" Cast
Give the Girl a Kiss - Bruce Springsteen
All My Loving - The Beatles
You and I - Wilco
Ever the Same - Rob Thomas
Quarter to Three (live) - Bruce Springsteen
The Sweet Escape - Gwen Stefani
Daydream - The Lovin' Spoonful
Summertime - Marcheeba & Hubert Laws
Build Me Up Buttercup - The Foundations
I'll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
Hung Up On You - Fountains of Wayne

This is a pretty eclectic mix, I would say, of some upbeat rockers, some older songs, and some romantic, slower pieces. I would also point your attention to the hints of jazz and R&B in some of the music.

The situation changed, though, so now, we need to find a live music act for the wedding. The fun of preparing an interesting playlist that Katherine would approve has been replaced by the fun of finding a live music act that fulfills various requirements, some of which seem to contradict each other. There probably is no fully-rational way to make this work, so intuition and feel will have to do. I'll start with a few bands/musicians that I like a lot:

- Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band: As far as I can tell, Springsteen is the best live performer of his generation, and probably the generation after his. I love his earlier albums; "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle" is probably my all-time favorite album, and I revere both "Born to Run" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" as well. During the mid-70s, Springsteen's career trajectory was still largely unsettled. He didn't become a full-on "rocker" until the late-70s, mainly with Darkness. His music prior to that was a mix of folk, jazz, and R&B, with his shows moving around those themes (listen to Kitty's Back from 1978 and you'll see what I mean). I am also from New Jersey, and we are contractually obligated to like at least one of Bon Jovi or Springsteen.
- The Band: "Music from Big Pink" taught me the value of musicians who know how to play their instruments. The Band played behind Bob Dylan when he moved from acoustic to electric, and that move would NOT have worked without a band as good as "The Band." Their sound has significant folk undertones, and they were good performers on a variety of different instruments. (How can you not love the mandolins floating around that album? Just wonderful.)
- Wilco: Wilco is one of the only modern bands I listen to consistently. They have a good mix of keyboards, guitars, subdued percussion, etc. Impossible Germany is one of my favorites that they do. It showcases some great guitar work towards the end, and also has a bit of an improvisational feel.
- Pink Floyd: Extended themes, slow pacing, prominent guitars. All good things.

I am looking for a band that incorporates components of these sounds: the long musical interludes, the improvisational feel, the intra-band chemistry that allows musicians to play off of each other. I also want something largely accessible--I don't want the septuagenarians at the wedding completely alienated by the sound.

Katherine wants something that, in her words, "her mother will judge impressive enough for her guests." She is also looking for dancing, and I think she would prefer a female vocalist. (Her stipulations are rather minimal, which is good for me here, but they are also somewhat prohibitive. Perhaps it is better this way; I get some additional guidance.)

Generally, these lowest-common denominator decisions, like airline food, lead to horrifyingly bad things--in other words, people can hate them together. I am determined to avoid this fate, though.

Enter the Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout. This is a band that Katherine and I saw live at 55 Bar down on Christopher Street in Manhattan. They were joined by an exceptional female vocalist--Leah Siegel--who really added something. The band had a lead guitarist, a bass guitar, a keyboardist (who played what sounded more like a Hammond organ than a piano, but both sounds are good), drums, and a saxophone. The interplay was excellent, and the music was quite good. We like this instrument combination.

They don't, however, seem to do weddings. They were also a tad too loud for my "don't alienate the septuagenarians" requirement.

I spent a good deal of time surfing through websites trying to find a similar sound, and I have at least one lead. The band is called BD Lenz (the band name is eponymous with the lead guitarist's name, I believe), and they are playing at the Salt Creek Grille in Princeton, NJ on Friday, September 3 (apparently as a fully instrumental group). They are also playing at a place called Yo y Papa in Morristown, NJ on Friday, September 18, and claim to have a female vocalist lined up for that one. (Katherine will be out of town for that event, unfortunately.)

Katherine and I will probably be going down to Princeton to see them on the 3rd, and I may go out to Morristown to see them on the 17th with a FlipCam, depending on how the first viewing goes. (We may just pick them on the spot then, or we may eliminate them from consideration.)

Here's an excellent cover of "Superstition" by BD Lenz:

Highlights from conversations with my parents tonight

Me: So, do you want to invite any of your friends?
Mom: No. Too much hassle*.

Me: So, do you want to invite any of your friends?
Dad: No. Too much hassle*.
Me: What about your friend _____ that Mom mentioned?
Dad: Give me the date and I'll call her and see if she and her husband can come. If they can't then there's no point in inviting them.
Me: That doesn't make any sense, that's what RSVPing is for!
Dad: By the way, I can't guarantee anyone except for myself, your uncles like to make last minute changes often.

later
Mom: Oh yeah, that's the Chinese way of doing things. The invitation itself is just a formality.

*Just to be clear, I think the desire to avoid hassle bit of these conversations is more our family's general introverted/anti-social tendency rather than general Chinese culture.

Another invitations round-up

Free templates at download & print by Anna Skye, via 2000 Dollar Wedding.

Loved the color scheme and font usage/placement in my girl Angie's invites, as designed by her husband-in-7-days (!) Josh:

I really like how the broken line border looks like stitches in Delphine Press' Hibiscus design, via Oh So Beautiful Paper.

Also a fan of the fun and bright yellow and blue color scheme

One way to incorporate the fabric/stitching/DIY feel to the paper goods might be sewing an outline around something, using bright embroidery thread. Once we get our engagement photos back, I'll take a look at them and see if we could convert one into a suitable save-the-date postcard, jazzed up a little.

I just like the look of this vintage airmail inspired set, even though it wouldn't really fit for us:

My mother used to get letters from her friends/relatives in China with that airmail border. Not so much anymore, though.

Map-lined envelopes! Too much work (if I'm going to spend that kind of effort, I'd go all out with the map envelopes, but I know that I'd at least appreciate this detail if I were to ever receive one myself.

Again with the graphic design using type, via the haystack needle.

It is a nice contrast to have the hand-lettered portion.

They included the menu with their invitations, which is something Dan wants to do, to make clear what the food will be like upfront.

Speaking of the food, our caterer came up with a delicious sounding prosecco bar! It'll include: sliced strawberries, mango puree, fresh orange juice, herbed simple syrup, and lemon twists, bitters and sugar cubes for the prosecco version of this champagne cocktail. I'm pretty excited, though I do still have to taste prosecco first, heh.

Back to invitations: this set came in a sweet little seersucker pocket (via Oh So Beautiful Paper).

I think the pocket then also fit inside the envelope. Probably too fussy for utility gained overall (I guess the idea is that envelopes are easily torn up and this would help keeps all the little bits of paper together better?).

And for the last item, I could see this tutorial on making your own fabric tape (costs $8 for the sticker machine to get started, then about $0.25/ft thereafter) coming in handy because the color blue I'm looking at has been hard to find, so it might be easier to find fabric that's the right color and then make things using that.

Boy clothes

Dan usually gets items from the following categories as gifts from his relatives: B&N gift card, DVDs, B&N gift card, books, electronic equipment, B&N gift card, more books...you get the idea. Once in awhile there are some Gap gift cards thrown in there too and clearly that's what I get the most excited about. All his best pieces of casual wear have come from those gift cards (and were then stolen by his sisters...I haven't forgotten that grey zip-up hoodie with elbow patches, nor the BC hoodie I bought him, no sirree).

Sadly, with the apartment move around last holiday season, that kind of gift card wasn't in the mix, but my friend Amy's suggested that we go on a trip to Uniqlo to get some good, cheap basics for him. The problem is that he's just so tall and skinny and angular. So far my experimentation has determined that he looks best when basically dressed like an old man. This isn't just because of how I like vintage, but because it expresses his true inner self of a crabby old man (Dennis the Menace's neighbor, but with very strong social filters).  For example, he's got a great "flat cap" from Old Navy that was the best style for price deal ever ($3!).

So that's what I'm kind of looking for for his wedding attire. Isn't it a bit weird that it's far easier to get him something that he would wear again? And in fact, I've been pressuring him for a really long time to get a properly tailored suit for the wedding so he'll have a well-fitting suit to wear for a change (see "tall and skinny and angular"). He's got a light gray one that's pretty nice, actually, though still just way too much fabric in the abdominal area.

Here are some ideas I've come across that I quite like:

I love how slimly fitting this suit is, and I like the pinstripes. He's also got nice old man shoes. (A Cup of Jo)

Suspenders make my heart go aflutter. I think I also like the higher waist of the pants.

Jazz Age dance party at Governors Island (The Sartorialist)

Suspenders and Chucks! Maybe red Chucks, to match my dress. (Brooklyn Bride)

I do also like vests over nice shirts (academichic)

Engagement photo inspiration

Summer seems be slipping by, spent mostly hiding indoors from the heat and humidity, but I've gotten a chance to slow down a bit and spend some time just staring off into the distance with this vacation of volunteering at an organic farm in Princeton. I met with our caterer today and feel re-energized about getting on with all this planning business. Things are feeling good.

A destination wedding in Iceland, via Cup of Jo. 

Lesson being, it'll still be awesome even if it's rainy and cloudy out.

I have some homework from our photographer, since our engagement photo shoot is coming up relatively soon (Saturday 9/11, the one weekend day she isn't booked this fall) and she's on top of her stuff. She's asked me for 5 inspiration images to convey the look and feel of what we want, since some people like more prop heavy and themed photos, versus arty and fashiony, or romantic, etc.

I need to talk to Dan about what he might have in mind, of course, but so far I'm just thinking along the lines of "fun, with a sense of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously." No sappy photos of us looking longingly into each others' eyes. No couches in fields, or things that are weird and contrived.

In terms of images, I've already posted this set of engagement photos that I love to pieces. One prop idea is to use Scrabble tiles to spell out the date and location, kind of like in this set from Brooklyn Bride and to underline the nerd thing. I think this idea of drawing out your own chalk backdrop is adorable:

But this falls into contrived since we are not artists and also, would just be too much hassle (Dan's heart rate just slowed down without him knowing why). Kelly's engagement shoots last 1.5 hours and she says that usually means enough time for 1 outfit change and maybe 2 locations. I want greenery and the NYC skyline, so I'd like to hit Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken and then I also wanted to get a bit of feel of Hoboken, so perhaps the old waiting terminal in the train station and some of the streets? As an aside, did you know that Cake Boss is in Hoboken? I know when the shop is open because there's an inevitable long line of people waiting outside. Sometimes they have to go all the way down the block and wrap around, or go across the street past the CVS.

Anyway, from Kelly's own portfolio, I like the following sets:

• Meridian Hill Park: THAT BUBBLES PHOTO. Sigh. Anyway, just also overall a joyful feeling.
• Capitol Hill and Eastern Market: her excited smile in the first one, and then the one with The Onion with an article titled "Jilted Hasbro CEO Laughs Coldly As Scrabble Destroys Another Relationship." Brilliant of them.
• Georgetown DC with Vespa: vintagey feel on a Vespa and a.. tandem bike? without feeling like we're trying too hard. We don't have either a vintage bike (well, mine's from the 80s so I guess it's vintage, but it's not cute vintage) nor a Vespa, though.
• National Zoo: playful feeling
• Union Station DC and U Street: for the mix of picnic/park and urban area settings

I was going to write, "how does one pick just 5?!?" but I'm sure Dan will be able to whittle it down quite a bit.

Any other sets that people love?

Rilke and Rumi quotes

I just finished reading This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness and found it  pretty thought provoking. Sure, I spent of lot of thinking what the author was keeping inside her own head ("you're being such a pushover!" etc.) but it was interesting for it. It is a rather powerful idea that you can choose to responsible for your own happiness by not making it dependent on things that are outside your control.

And it's almost inspiring, in a way, that she valued her relationship with her husband (or at least, who he was truly when he wasn't depressed about his lack of career success) and their children to work in the way she chose to hold it together. She's not some passive woman who just couldn't bear the thought of being alone or anything. You can read her initial essay, "Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear" for a primer.

Anyway, she mentions some quotes from Rilke and Rumi that they included in their ceremony, that resonated with me:

Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life, is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

From Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

Honeymoon ideas

I'll be taking the first week of August off from work to go volunteer on an organic farm in Princeton through World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms-US (http://www.wwoofusa.org/) with my friend Amy. The deal is you pay for a membership to access a directory of organic farms that you can then contact and sort out the times to visit them and work for around 5-6 hours/day in return for food and lodging. Here's the description of the farm we'll be visiting in Princeton:

Farm consists of 61 acres total, vegetable and fruit production in raised beds on approximately 5 acres (biointensive planting) woods, streams and pasture lands. We have three flocks of chickens which move over land in "mobile homes", two goats now and cows are planned for. We have a CSA and market at the farm, deliver produce to area health food store and restaurants during growing season June through October. Our egg co-op goes through the year, as does animal care. Interns and volunteers participate in all aspects of work, sowing in greenhouse from February, transplanting, weeding, trellising, harvesting, etc. Marketing, compost making throughout year.

We did it once before on a trip to Europe the summer after sophomore year, when I was having my mid-college crisis and was determined to collect up interesting activities not for the purpose of resume-building. It was a wonderful time, it was around 5 weeks total.

The first half was at a vineyard in the south of France with the most adorable British-Canadian-Indian family ever, and the food was a revelation. I still think about them often, even though Amy's the one who's actually kept in touch with them. The kids must be all grown up by now.

Then, for the second half, we went to this poultry farm in southern England, which was more of a hobby for a doctor couple, but that was pretty great too. We worked with their recalcitrant donkeys, mucked out the chicken and turkey coops, fed the ducks/geese, collected eggs, etc. We also went on a day trip to Brighton beach (of Pride & Prejudice fame to us) with the very cute French boy who was also staying with the family at that time. I would really like to make a photobook of that whole trip from Amy's photos. Mine were mostly ruined by the X-ray machines at the airport, tear.

Anyway, I think that that would be an easy and cheap way to have an unusual honeymoon if you're both into that sort of thing. Dan would be disaster, what with basically being allergic to nature and all, so currently we've been talking about...Alaska! This started from my mom wanting to go on an Alaskan cruise but I'm undecided on whether I want our honeymoon to be a family trip. Leaning toward 'no' right now, though it could be awesome.

Then Dan mentioned that the Tuesday after the wedding is the annual Midnight Sun Baseball Game, which is around 6/21 each year in Fairbanks, Alaska, and starts at 10:30pm, through midnight and ending around 2am.

With Fairbanks a mere 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the sun is just beginning to set in the north as the game gets under way and, at its conclusion some three hours later, the sun begins to rise again - also in the north. 

It sounds pretty awesome even to a non-sports person such as myself. So, what I'm thinking right now is flying out to Fairbanks on Monday or Tuesday (flights are cheaper in the week and we'll have Sunday to recover from the wedding festivities), catching this ball game, then renting a car and driving to or taking the train to Denali National Park & Preserve, going on the bus tours, maybe doing some biking, then proceeding on toward Anchorage and getting on a 7-day cruise that ends in Vancouver. These cruises seem to usually depart on Saturday, so then once that's over, we could spend the weekend in Vancouver and fly back on Monday or Tuesday (we'll have Monday off for July 4th).

It'd be a pretty big vacation, overall, but each component is a little cheaper than I thought it would be, so maybe I can talk Dan into it. We'll see. It's not just the money but the using of vacation days as well. I just did some calculations of how much vacation I've got now plus how much I'll accrue by mid-June of next year, minus the 5 days for the week with Amy in Princeton (where I also hope to do some scouting of local vendors for flowers and such...fingers crossed!), minus ~15 days for one week before the wedding and two weeks of honeymoon after, and I think I've got about 5 days left after all that. My mom is thinking about a Caribbean cruise in December with her and my dad, I have to think about whether I can squeeze that in as well. Vacation is the best! :)

Some other relevant links:

• I'd love to go on a hot air balloon ride some time in life
• renting a house seems like it'd be a great way to get homey in a new location. I'm all about the homey.
• Oyster hotel reviews with real photos (meaning non-hotel hired stylist and pro photographer) from notmartha. 

Funny she mentions a MetaFilter thread in that same post about sleeping in the airport, Amy and I slept in the airport on our way back to Paris and she's got at least one good photo of me sprawled out on a sleeping bag next to our luggage cart. Also, her flight in to Paris was delayed so we missed our original train and had to take an overnight one that then dropped us off at a remote bus stop at 5am where we had to wait for an hour before the next connection came by. Filed under, things it's better for my mother not to know too many details about :)