13 posts tagged “groomzilla”

Boy, almost a week has gone by since I last posted.

We've spent some more time looking at rental houses, but have had little luck. It's definitely a stressful time.  However, we should be figuring out our Hawaii lodgings and our wedding night hotel this week, my sister is most likely going to house-sit for part of our honeymoon, and it's sunny outside. So that's something.

I went to see Anathallo last night at Atlas Clothing, and I was a bit disappointed. The music was great, and the openers were decent. But a few things led to it not being as fun a night as I'd like:

• At a venue where there's no bar or anything to do except mill around (an all-ages venue), the opening band wasn't even scheduled to play until 30 minutes after doors opened. The band I came to see didn't start until 10. I didn't expect this. I'll know this the next time I bother going to Atlas Clothing to see a band. Way to make a show unnecessarily late on a "school night."


• The lighting sucks in Atlas clothing for photos. There's no spotlight on the stage, so the whole place is equally dim. Even my shots with flash were blurry. I usually do much better at actual clubs.


• One of Anathallo's fans is that obnoxious guy who wants to sing along with every song. Even the quiet songs with someone singing solo! He sang louder than the guy in the band! I should have told him off, but the band is so positive and there were so many kids* present, I felt like I should chill.

Don't tell me what happened on Veronica Mars because I'm watching the tape tonight.

* Most of the audience looked like they were 12. But that's only because I'm in denial of my true age. They were probably 20-somethings.

We likely have our officiant, which is just great to get done. I was a little wary because she's worked at an "Evangelical Lutheran" church (the "evangelical" part made me think she was very fundamentalist and nothing like me or Elizabeth). So that's done.

We still have a lot to do (I need to check the checklist), and we're going to have to finish up a few key things soon before we can relax again.

In other news, the other day, I found that a guy took one of the photos from my Flickr photostream and posted it in his own. He also did it with someone else's photo, which I noticed and commented about. I'm sort of hoping for a contrite reply, at least. The thing is, the photo he stole is sort of blurry and not that great!

Something else on Flickr that is mildly annoying, but mostly fun, to watch is one admin's power trip in the Flower Close-ups pool. She sets up all these rules for posting (good) and for discussion threads (uh), and then she uses a discussion thread ("Admins discussions") as a personal blog (what?). Or at least she used to do the latter. I guess maybe she's figured out that no one cares. None of the other admins post in the thread.

The funny thing is that most of her photos, er, aren't that exciting. I guess I should be one to talk.

The latest release of uTorrent caused me to stop being able to download stuff, which usually isn't a problem because I really don't download much TV or anything. However, I missed the latest episode of the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon, and I hadn't been able to download it. (Dude, it featured the formation of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, plus Matter-Eater Lad and Tyroc appeared!)

Despite my fears at messing up my router or Internet connection, about 10 minutes' work set up port forwarding and I was able to download the show right away. Yay Internets!

So things are starting to come together for the wedding, except for the hundred or so things left on the checklist:

Venues: Both done, reserved, deposited for. We need to find a rehearsal dinner site, but then I have to pick my wedding party, too...

Photographer: We found this woman on Craiglist who is trying to get into the lucrative wedding market (she usually does portraits), and she's giving us a great deal. Her rates were reasonable and she's giving us a Craigslist discount. I think between her photos and those of all our friends, we'll do OK. (Taking a cue from itsolivia, we're going to set up a group photo pool on Flickr for guests to share their photos.)

Wedding dress: Apparently it's amazing, and I can't wait to see it (six months from Sunday)!

Save-the-date cards: Ordered and on their way.

Web site: Already made (or version 1.1 anyway); URL will be shared with potential guests first.

Now for the stuff that we need to worry about address soon:

Food: We're saving on other parts of the wedding, so we'll probably spend the bulk of our money on the food and drink. We need to start testing caterers and call the few restaurants that we know cater and see what they can do for us.

Music: I refuse to spend hundreds of dollars for your typical wedding DJ, who will force us all to do the Macarena. I either need to find someone cool who would be willing to play songs that we like for not too much money (I don't know too many DJs personally), or we need to get a laptop, load it with iTunes and massive numbers of songs, and make some playlists. I'm leaning toward the latter, but maybe we can come up with a solution for the former.

Wedding party: I have a pretty small group of close male friends, and one of them is going to be living in Africa by the time the wedding comes along. No matter what, I can't put them all up there with me because someone has to be in the seats. I'm trying to figure out what to do; should I go with one Best Man, two groomsmen? Three groomsmen? This is one of those things that's stressful because you have to rank your friends. Elizabeth is waiting for me to decide on numbers so she can form her party.

Lodging: Thanks to fisticuffs for her tip on putting wedding guest lodging up for bid from various hotels in the area. A number of them don't seem to feel my maximum price means anything, but some have been good. A surprising number see my e-mail as "smohundro@", see "Steve Mohundro" on the form I filled out, and they still address the e-mail to "Mr. Muhundro". I don't use "smohundro" because "smuhundro" was already taken! Geez.

Wedding bands: I guess we need to work on those at some point.

Honeymoon: We have enough frequent flier miles for at least one of us to fly free, and we have a few ideas of places to go. Alaska? Hawaii? Mexico? Thailand? We need to give it a little more thought.

I suppose I could just keep all this checklisty stuff on theknot.com, but that site depresses me a little. And it's completely geared toward a bride doing the planning and the groom keeping completely out of the picture. You can't even have two separate logins/passwords for a couple's account!