This is how I spent $7000 on a rockin' wedding*

A recent book states that people spend $28,000 on average on weddings in the United States. I find that horrifying and ridiculous. I understand that my wedding last Autumn to my beautiful, talented, and wonderful wife was special circumstances. However, due to popular demand amongst some friends and acquaintances, I will post some particulars as to how I spent $7000 in the 12th largest city in the United States and had every single one of my guests say: "That was the best wedding* I've ever been to."

1. Rented out a cheap but beautiful historic building (old movie house). It had been repurposed to have events. Their catering prices were very reasonable.
   
2. Dropped a few more bucks to have the second half of the wedding in the duck pin bowling alley on the third floor. Not just good times, great times.
   
3. Put our money where it was really important to entertain our friends: booze. Top-shelf, open bar.
   
4. The food was something all our but vegan friends could eat. For starters, a yummy Mediterranean salad and a yeast roll. Buffet-style chicken, potatoes, broccoli. We went light on the food, but again, all our friends drink so we went big on the booze.
5. We're both atheists. So there was no need to hire a religious overseer. We had her mom, who is religious, say a blessing. This made her Jesus/God-loving family and mother very happy. We were very pleased even if we aren't believers because she is beloved and got to be an active part of our ceremony. We approached the ceremony in empirical terms we could live with: a celebration of union, witnessed by the community that cared. Back before the church got into the marriage racket (in Europe about the 13th c.), this is how marriage was--pretty much common law. Say your vows, light a candle or something, have your mates say something nice in witness, get on with the food, cake, and dancing!
   
6. No slide show of pictures. Luckily, the people we have been friends with knew what we looked like as children, have seen us kiss a bazillion times, and all our vacation photos. No need to rehash. We decided that while this was nice and poignant at other weddings, it was a completely unnecessary expense for us.
   
7. The photographer was a very good amateur who was willing to do the photos at cost. And we ended up with candid and fun photos. Who really needs photos that look like they were staged at an Olan Mills? Now we have captured the fun everyone was having instead of looking like we had the hangers still in our dresses.
   
8. The dearly departed (my mommy, her grandpa) were there in spirit. The girls got together, went to Kinko's and had oversized portraits on simple foamcore mounts. Touching and wonderful. Thanks ladies!
   
9. Holding it in a single location also saved money and a ton of confusion for our guests. No church to rent, no figuring out how to get the reception hall.
10. Would you rather have 200 people who don't or barely give a crap about being there or 70 of your good friends and co-workers? Plan on about a 30% decline rate. So we invited 100, 70 showed. Magic. Everyone who was there really wanted to be there. "No children" made it super-smooth. Save the hassle: Adult Only Reception. In the evening. Let Mom and Dad find a sitter and have a good time together. The rest of your guests will appreciate the absence of screaming, crying, mess-making, and uncomfortable questions. Mom and Dad will appreciate the time away from responsibilities.
    
11. *Disclosure: this was a lesbian wedding. Therefore, we both bought custom-made bridesmaid dresses from the same designer in the same color but of different designs. MUCH cheaper than wedding dresses, and we looked bitchin'. We had one best man each, and one maid-of-honor each. The girls bought bridesmaid dresses that suited them, and we rented the boys' tuxes. Why have parties of 14? No one really wants to be in the wedding unless they are your very best friends.
12. Less people meant a smaller cake. Saved hundreds of dollars on a smaller yet gorgeous cake from a very well regarded bakery in town that has been doing this thing for 20+ years. (And doesn't discriminate against the gays. You know what local company I hope goes out of business or has a regime-change.)
    
13. One year of research into florists. I have been to too many weddings where the florist was an acquaintance of the mother of the bride/groom and the flowers, in a word, sucked. Spend about a year hitting the florists in town (it's a great way to woo your sweetie bringing home flowers about once a week). How many flowers do you need? We got corsages for the girls and boutonnières for the boys. Instead of beating our guests over the head with the fact they were at a lezzie wedding with hers and hers cake toppers (none of which even sorta looked like us), we had the florist put a floral cake topper on top and some extras around the side. Less guests meant less tables, so we had 7 centerpieces. We gave them away to guests on the way out. They looked like they were departing a bacchanalian festival of some Roman goddess (Ceres?) by wearing them as crowns. Awesome.
14. Don't over-decorate. Clean linens, tea lights, and a great florist who understands "big, colorful, and beautiful centerpieces" is really just fine. I assure you. Decor is not the focus.
    
15. Your guests, no matter what people say, don't really need gifts. Showing them a good time is better than some candy, tchotkes, etc.
    
16. Get a DJ who does it for a living at a real bar. We suggested some fun music but allowed him to use his gift of getting a room moving. Let go of controlling everything. Trust your professionals. A few miscues are OK. Your wedding won't be ruined if you're doing the rest of it right.
    
17. $3000 of the total was actually in estate planning. Due to the Defense of Marriage Act, I needed to make sure Cat was my medical power of attorney. That way she can make any medical decision necessary for my health and well-being should I fall into a state in which I am not able to make decisions for myself. Hell, having that stack of paperwork assures that no matter what bigots are working at the hospital she has the right to be there, in a worst-case-scenario, to hold my hand as I breathe my last breath. Also, it very clearly spells out how my estate is to be divided in the event of my passing and who specifically is NOT to be considered next-of-kin. The partnership (third document) spells out in no uncertain terms how we are to divide our estate in the event of dissolution of our partnership. We also had the lawyer draw up the professionally prepared legal documents that allowed us to go through the system and change our last names.
    

I think #17, even though married straight couples can get all these benefits and more for the grand total of $18 and a blood test in this state, was well worth it. No Terry Schiavo BS because we have clearly defined living wills. No estranged cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. coming out of the woodwork like vultures because of a will technicality: the lawyer we use specializes in CYA for LGBT couples in this state. No question as to whom is making medical decisions. A prenuptial in the event things don't work out.

My advice to a lot of the straight couples I know is this: If, while you are still in love with your sweetie, you both cannot plan for the end before you begin, maybe you shouldn't start at all.

To my LGBT brothers and sisters: For the love of all that is beautiful, get your documents in order. If you are over the age of 18, there is no excuse to not visit a lawyer, at the bare minimum, to get your will and living will in order. Even if it means you have to travel 300 miles to the nearest town to CYA and your partner's A. Get one who is reputable and specializes in LGBT family law. The wolves are always at the door. Don't find out the hard way.

Report from GenCon 2007

So Sis is out at GenCon today. Rock on. Having a great time trying to look at other stuff than just the Cthulu doll T (of T&J fame) has been harping on for weeks. She's out at lunch today with the group that's going to True Dungeon tonight at 6:30PM. They are at a local branch of a nationwide chain of "family-style Italian" restaurants. She just called in this report:

So the boys are in the bathroom and are taking forever. S___ comes back from the bathroom to report that his hands are still wet and needs a napkin two wipe them because there was something weird going on on the bathroom. Well, of course us girls want to know what it was cause very rarely do weird things go on in the women's room [alcohol-fueled debauchery on the weekends downtown is de riguer-Ed.].

S___ says there was a guy in there, standing in front of the hand dryer (the unit was not on), his pants around his ankles, holding his junk. Just standing there. Obviously, S___ couldn't dry his hands. We debated for a minute what he could possibly be doing, but then J___ came back to the table.

J___ confirmed that he saw the same thing. However, exiting after S____ allowed him to realize the guy was standing there taking a dump in the wastebasket located right next to, you guessed it, the hand dryer. He couldn't wait for S____ and J___ to finish in the stalls and used the waste can instead.

We kept chatting about it even when the guy came and sat down at the table next to us. J___was sure that if we didn't shut up he was going to get beat up.

I asked if the guy was wearing a suit, 'cause that would have been priceless. Sis confirmed that it was just some dude in business-casual Dockers and a polo. He was a cube-dweller wearing an employee badge of one of the larger financial presences in downtown. Classy.

And I had to listen to all the rednecks talk about "all them weirdos" coming into town on Thursday. To all of you afraid of "weirdos" from GenCon, I say: Don't worry so much. We apparently already have plenty of our own.

TSA Heavy Petting Zoo

According to the Star (TSA checks IndyGo bus passengers), everyone was getting a little feel up from the TSA yesterday downtown. Awesome. I'm glad my homie, MJ, talked me into going to the Art Museum yesterday. My other plan was to get a hip flask of Old Grandad and just ride the bus to the end of the line and back all yesterday afternoon for fun. If that'd happened, I wouldn't be posting this until maybe next week. Or whenever Sis and Cat could make bail.

Political sites such as dailyKOS want to know WTF? Is this some new conspiracy?

While I am the first one to admit that from a few federal predictors that make me uneasy (such as doing away with habeas corpus October 16, 2006, the end of the 4th and 5th amendments over the last two weeks, and the fact W owns a 900,000 acre ranch in Paraguay), this is Indianapolis. What goes on in Indianapolis, stays in your mind like a sore you keep tonguing in your mouth. Then it makes you want to curl up in a ball in a fetal position and cry for everything bad that's ever happened to these people. Seriously, think Norman Rockwell paintings of Thorazined mental patients-without the advantage of Thorazine. But I digress...

There was actually something waaay less sinister going on here:

• God knows that our public transit system is so worthless that there are really only three types of IndyGo riders: People who have never learned to drive a car, the poor, and the mentally ill. With the price of gas gone up, even middle-class folks are starting to ride their bikes but still refuse to ride IndyGo. These folks are used to being bullied around. It's going to take two hours to get anywhere you could walk in a half hour but due to the humidity that's jamming the sweat back into our pores, they'll wait. They aren't in a hurry anyway. I'm sure most of them were like, 'Play along with our national mall security guards and my ride won't be held up any longer than necessary.'
• The gentle and docile (compared to other cities of comparable size and demographics) people of Indy are less likely to start screaming for the ACLU the second agents start digging around behind their testes for C4. With the way things used to run with the IPD, let's just say that the IndyGo demographic is used to that kind of treatment. Go to Chicago or New York or some culturally sensitive place where people will listen to you when you complain. Unless you have the money to destroy some one's career, no one cares.
• This is just another win-win situation in the partnership between local and federal government: if feds find...whatever it is they're looking for..., they get to be heroes for saving us. YAY! Local government gets off the hook for having to fix our crappy public transit by saying, "SEE! This is what the terrorists and evildoers want! To bomb us back to the stone age. Via city bus. So there's no point in fixing the public transit. They're just going to break it anyway. It's just going to be a waste of your tax dollars."
• Training exercise for the TSA. I was watching ABC the other night/morning and happened to catch a clip where the FBI was giving an explosives demonstration here earlier this week. Federal agencies are having their national convention here this week. That's just me putting two and two together. Obviously, they aren't going to advertise this all over the news. Funny thing, the news. You really have to read a lot between the lines anymore to get a real picture of what goes on.

Like I said, not really too freaked out about it. Just another training exercise for the coming totalitarianism. No real or immediate threats to our little burg.

If you are really worried, make sure your passport is up to snuff, do whatever you can to clean up your criminal record, and figure out a way to spend Novemberish-2008 through Marchish-2009 in a foreign country. Be prepared to stay in other foreign countries for longer if necessary. Good luck!