Month: March 2010

If This is Just the Beginning, My Life’s Gonna Be Beautiful

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 / Velvet / 4 Comments

The fifth and final place we went to check out was up in good old Connecticut, the land of hedge funds and million dollar houses. After we left my parents non-million-dollar house, we stopped by the restaurant/hotel on the way out of town. This hotel was known by another name when I was in high school, and I always thought of it as a shithole. My mom said they renovated it, changed the name and it was supposedly gorgeous. It is also on the water.

X and I went in and I was instantly thrown back in time into all things Connecticut. Blonde hair, headbands, Range Rovers and Jaguars. When you leave Connecticut and spend many years traipsing around with rednecks in the south and then with gays in D.C., you forget that there are places like Connecticut on earth. Not a blade of grass in town is anything other than bright green, not a hair on any head is gray and unprocessed, not a forehead in sight unbotoxed. So at the restaurant, they bust out the book and showed us the “other weddings” that occurred here. I was scanning the pics to see if I went to high school with any of the people, so I missed half the stuff she said. But several magic words did register in my subconscious:

All Inclusive 5 hour package
Top Shelf Open Bar Included
$125 a person

No venue rental fee
Ceremony outside on the deck, under the trellis which will be covered with flowers by summer, saving us any money spent on flowers.
Oh, and the deck is on the water.
Available dates this summer! (The beauty of planning a wedding during a recession is that you can pretty much get any date you ask for.)
Eeeee!!!!

We walked around the room where the reception would be, and I tried to hide my happiness but I wanted to make out with every Tory Burch clone in sight. When we left, X said, “Well, they were nice.” Then I must have temporarily blacked out, but apparently X tells me that I started blubbering my case for wedding/near parents house/don’t have to buy flowers/on the water/ and topped that off with the heartwrenching “this is the town I grew up in and it would be really cool to get married here” and X was sold.

Apparently 4 hours in Connecticut was too long. You can take the girl out of Connecticut, but you can’t take the Connecticut out of the girl. I freaking subscribed to Town and Country Magazine when I got home. God. Damned. It.

My Head Keeps Spinning, I Go to Sleep and Keep Grinning

Monday, March 29, 2010 / Velvet / 10 Comments

We’ve had some serious progress over here in Velvet World the last few days.

Regarding the piece of shit doctor, we filed complaints with the Virginia Medical Board and HHS for HIPAA violations. I cannot wait until he gets those notices.

X and I had a busy 38 hours between Friday at 7 a.m. and Saturday at 9 p.m. We left DC and drove to NYC where we had meetings with Wedding Coordinators at 2:00, 3:00, 4:30 and 6:15. Up. Down. Across the city. All on foot. With Sammy and Thora. It was a feat, to say the least. Our base of operations, the W, where we were staying, was also conveniently our first stop.

2:00. W Hotel, Midtown. This happy little coordinator showed us around their conference rooms which were very…”conferency.” He told us we wouldn’t like our next stops on the tour from hell because they were “stuffy” and “basementy” respectively, but the W is sort of an odd hotel too. It seems more suited to business meetings anyway.

That is NOT X with the white gloves by the way.

3:00. Waldorf-Astoria. Apparently unless you have throngs of people, they won’t even discuss sharing their precious banquet space with you. You have to rent a suite. I was like, “wha???” But then I saw their suites. Holy crap. They are indeed gorgeous, but for $6000 a night, I would expect them to be gorgeous.

I wouldn’t expect them to also be so, gaudy, but well, whatever.

The funny part of that flea market furniture is that if you want it removed, you have to pay them. Please. You people should pay us for removing the ribbon candy couches and injecting a taste level into the place.

The idea of doing a ceremony in one room and eating in the other was pretty nice. It sort of summed up what we were thinking about for the day. Then we got the dogs and hoofed it up to Central Park South for our next appointment.

4:30. Ritz-Carlton. These people were the nicest to deal with pre-visit, and they even had bones for Sammy and Thora when we got there. I thought that was pretty nice. Then Sammy wouldn’t cooperate and he was attacking me for the bone I had in the little Ritz bag. I was trying to say how well behaved my dogs were and then one turns into Jabba the Hut and practically jumped into my arms to get the bone. So, the unfortunate part about the Ritz? Space in the basement. X said, “This doesn’t really do the ‘had my wedding at the Ritz on Central Park’ statement justice because the pictures will look like we were just about anywhere.” No windows, nada. Sad.

There’s Thora dreaming about her wedding.

6:15. Studio 54. People please. Is this not the bestest idea ever? I’m a disco freak, love all things late 70’s and loved hearing about Studio 54 then, and now. I’ve read the books, seen the movies, I’m officially obsessed. We used this as an excuse to tour the place, but knowing that it’s been converted into a theatre, we sort of knew we wouldn’t be able to make it work. When we found out that the price of renting the cool Studio 54 runs you $10,000 just to get in the door, we were about done. Though, we continued our mission. We saw the infamous mezzanine where the sex occurred, and the scandalous basement where the drug use took place. God I would have been in heaven. No wonder people were dying to get in and never wanted to leave.

Now:

Then:

Sniffles. Love Halston. Wondering if I should buy this vintage Halston Wedding Dress I spied online. Bah. Dresses are another post.

After, we went to have dinner with my brother and his ex-girlfriend bff. Then back to the hotel where we all promptly crashed. Some of us crashed faster than others.

“Yum. These Ritz Carlton Bones are the best.”

In the morning we went up to Connecticut. Yeah yeah, I know. But we had to pin them down once and for all. And we looked at a hotel in my hometown that also does weddings.

Guess what happened when we arrived at my parents house?

a) No one was home.
b) They barely spoke to us.
c) They talked to me but refused to engage with X.
d) They jumped out of the house and started talking to X and I like they hadn’t ignored emails or dodged phone calls and showed an interest in our wedding.

If you picked a, b, or c, you’re wrong. Can you believe it? Neither can I.

When I Wanted You To Share My Life, I Had No Doubt In My Mind

Monday, March 15, 2010 / Velvet / 23 Comments

Damn it. It was my Resolution to post more this year. Obviously I’m the suckage at that.

It’s been another two months of crazy. I’m trying to get a business off the ground, my dad was sick, my uncle died, I had to get rid of Speedracer and bought another, still unnamed vehicle that the fucking dealership cannot provide the title for – so I sit in limbo-non-registered land, X and I have been to California and back, as well as hell and back, I got strep throat, three colds and am on my second round of antibiotics, well, third if you count that monster antibiotic shot they gave me in the ass, and finally, X and I got engaged. Four times.

Yes. You read that right. Four times. We had a bit of difficulty pulling it off correctly.

The first time, X sort of hands me the ring but doesn’t say a whole lot. As I said to him, “I don’t need a skywriter, but you know, you have to ask the question.” He said he would do it over.

I waited patiently for several weeks, then months, and finally I started asking. “When am I getting the ring back? X? When am I getting the ring back? Do you still have it? Did you return it? No? Oh. Well when am I getting the ring back?” He finally said, “I planned on giving it to you last week when we were walking along the beach with the dogs.”

Me: Oh? Well, it was deserted out there. That would have been the perfect time. You know I love the beach. What stopped you?
X: Well, I was about to. Remember when I was pulling the shells out of my pocket?
Me: Yeah?
X: Well I was about to pull out the ring but then, “HELLO?” (at this point X imitated me on the phone, using the universally known “hand-as-telephone symbol” to indicate that yours truly had taken a call.)
Me: So I was only on the phone a couple minutes, couldn’t you have tried again?
X: Well, yes, except that do you remember when Thora took a dump and you picked it up and carried the poop bag with you because there was no garbage can?
Me: Yes?
X: And I kept telling you to get rid of the poop? Well that was because I wanted to give you the ring. But I wasn’t about to propose with you holding a bag of dog shit in your other hand.
Me: Okay. Well. I want it back.

I sort of thought X would wait until we were out at the beach again since that’s pretty much our sanctuary. But we went to dinner last week at our favorite restaurant and suddenly I was like a freaking bloodhound. I said, “Do you have the ring in your pocket?” He said no. I started to claw at his pockets and he told me that he didn’t have it with him. Then he said I looked sad. I said I wasn’t so much sad as I was upset that I was wrong about this. I just had the feeling that he had the ring. He said, “Let me show you what I have in my pockets.”

Out came the the ring. And the question.

I wish I could say that we were graceful about it, but truth be told, it wouldn’t be X and I if it wasn’t fumbled, awkward and had a “do over” called a few times.

X was talking to his “birth brother” (the one we haven’t met yet) as I guess you would call him, on the phone during the throes of Engagement-Gate-2010. X told him after the first engagement that went awry that he had to propose again and X’s brother said, “Oh? You too?” Apparently he too screwed up his proposal to his girlfriend.

Damn, it’s like, in his blood or something.

And ladies and gentlemen? This is officially no longer a dating blog! Yay!