Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Time Crunch

The holidays are always difficult in terms of things that need to be finished and the amount of time that we actually have to finish those tasks.  This fact--along with my devotion to NaNoWriMo and recent travels that Katelyn and I have undertaken--has contributed in a major way to the drop-off in posting activity here at "The Groom's Take".

Even though Katelyn and I work in two very different fields--she as an architectural intern at a local residential firm, me as an adjunct instructor at a private university--our jobs both come "to a head" around the holidays.  She's trying to finish drawings and details so that they can be sent out to a work site before the office closes down until after the New Year.  In the past few weeks, I was preparing my students for the submission of their end-of-semester work and then evaluating their overall semester performance to turn in their final grades.  In the midst of all that, I had to travel to Bangor to read end-of-semester portfolios from other teacher's students as well.

These "holiday circumstances" aside, however, the fact that Katelyn and I work in entirely-unrelated fields creates some difficulty in terms of time management for the relationship.

Our Wedding Photographer

T'was the night before Christmas Eve,
And through the apartment...

Who am I kidding?  I'm no poet.  I write prose.

Katelyn and I recently checked off another item from our wedding to-do list!  Hurrah!

We have our wedding photographer!


Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A Long Overdue Update

Wow; so the last update I posted to this blog was over a month ago, on November 8th.  Needless to say, it has been a busy time in my life, and not just with wedding planning--indeed, wedding planning has taken somewhat of a back seat lately.

Oh, by the way:


Sunday, November 8, 2009

National Novel Writing Month Word Count Widget [Update: 50,000 words!]

As many of you visitors know, I have entered this year's National Novel Writing Month at the suggestion of my lovely fiancée.  This challenge asks entrants to write a 50,000 word or more novel between November 1st and November 30th.  This challenge is also why I have not made any recent updates to this blog posting, even as Katelyn is beginning to send out contact information to potential photographers and caterers.

I know that some of you are trying to follow along with my progress, so I have included a word count widget that you all can check up on to see how my progress is going towards 50,000 words in a month's time.



Once that percentage hits 100% and I have successfully completed my goal of writing 50,000 words, I will return to updating this blog more regularly as I finish whatever remains of the novel to write.

Thanks for the understanding as the blog suffers somewhat in favor of my creative writing endeavor.  I look forward to meeting my goal and being able to write more wedding-related material in the near-future.

Update: As of November 14th, 2009, I have reached my goal of 50,000 words written for NaNoWriMo.  There's still more story to write, and much work to do in revision, addition, and subtraction, but I'm happy to have met my word count goal.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween 2009!

Since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and since Katelyn and I decided to get pumpkins to carve from a local farm, we sat down on Thursday night to carve our own designs for the holiday season.  I had suggested to Katelyn that she might want to do an engagement-related design, and since I'm a Mainer and had the taller pumpkin, I decided to do a lighthouse to fit the geographic theme.



Monday, October 26, 2009

Do-It-Ourselves Engagement Photos

Even with finally being able to lock in our wedding venue for next year, Katelyn and I have somehow managed to continue leading busy lives.  One of my friends had offered to shoot professional-quality photographs of us as a couple for our engagement photos, and we've yet to have a Saturday free to be able to meet up and get that taken care of.

Feeling the season slipping away and not wanting to stay inside on a beautiful October Sunday, Katelyn and I went back out to our "engagement rock" in Blue Hill Bay to see if we could set up her camera to take a picture of the two of us where I proposed to her just over two months ago.  The results, when you consider the difficulty of trying to take self-photos, weren't too shabby.



Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Meet My Wedding Party Part 3: Thomas (Tommy) Keschl, Best Man

And now, for my last member of my side of the wedding party, we turn to my best friend from college, and my best man at this crazy wedding business, Thomas Keschl.



Meet My Wedding Party Part 2: Nicholas (Nick) Parker, Groomsman

Now that you all have met Jake, it's time to introduce you to my other groomsman and the next-closest person to me in the wedding ceremony setup.  This groomsman is very near and dear to me, for he is my younger brother Nicholas Parker.



Meet My Wedding Party Part 1: Jacob (Jake) Hayes, Groomsman

As part of a new series of post here at The Groom's Take, I would like to take some time to introduce my wedding party (the best man and groomsmen) so that there is a bit of a light shined upon the three men who will be standing next to me as I get married to the love of my life.  Those of you who know me and have been around me in Maine for the last seven years or so are probably well-acquainted with these men, but there's a whole other side of this wedding (namely, Katelyn's relatives) who will be meeting my side of the wedding party for the first time on the day of the ceremony.

With all of that said, we're working from the outside-in in terms of geography of how we'll be standing for the ceremony.  It's time to meet one of my groomsmen and a very dear friend, Jacob Hayes!


Monday, October 19, 2009

The Bachelor Party Brainstorm -- Idea #1: New England Patriots Game

One of the more controversial aspects of wedding planning, in terms of the actual lead-up to the wedding itself, is probably the bachelor/bachelorette party.  As pop culture and Hollywood movies have shown us over the years, a bachelor or bachelorette party is not a success until the groom-to-be has nearly cheated on his bride-to-be with a stripper as a result of drinking more alcohol than he would even dare to consume on any other given day.  The setting, more often than not, is that desert oasis of Las Vegas, and sometimes the groomsmen just leave the groom-to-be somewhere and go off to have their own party (thanks for the nightmare, The Hangover).

This past weekend, my best man and one of my groomsmen (identities will be revealed in profile posts coming soon) visited Katelyn and me and the conversation turned to football, as it was the weekend and I pick the winners of NFL games in an ESPN.com group with my best man.  In an insant, I had a brainstorm about how my own bachelor party could avoid the clichés of every other bachelor party that has happened in history.  Yes, I know, I am denying my best man and two groomsmen the pleasure of surprising me with a bachelor party idea; but I am pretty sure that everyone will be on board with this one.



Click below to read about my first bachelor party idea: a New England Patriots game!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Wedding-Related Information: Damariscotta Pumpkinfest & Regatta

Since so many people (even our Maine guests) are not located in the general area of Walpole, Maine, a lot of people will be making a bit of a drive (or, more often, flight) to the area for our wedding.  Thankfully, if you decide to get to the area ahead of the wedding, you can rest assured that you won't be lacking entertainment.  Unbeknownst to Katelyn and me, the nearby town of Damariscotta, Maine holds an annual Pumpkinfest & Regatta, with events typically beginning the weekend before Columbus Day weekend and wrapping up on Columbus Day itself.  Since our wedding is taking place on Columbus Day weekend in 2010, the Damariscotta Pumpkinfest & Regatta will be in full swing, so check out this post for a better idea of what you can expect if you come to the area looking for something to do.


Note: The images in the post were not taken by me; they come from the photo gallery at http://www.damariscottapumpkinfest.com/pumpkinfestGallery.html.  If the photo owners object to my use of these images, please contact me and I will remove them.  Thanks!

Wedding-Related Information: MaineFoliage.com

Now that Katelyn and I have put our venue and date in place for this wedding, I'm going to be providing a lot of informational posts for our guests to get a sense of what they're in for when they get to Walpole, Maine for our wedding.

One of the reasons that Katelyn and I decided to have our wedding in October 2010 (aside from the primary one of wanting to have a year to plan the thing) is because the both of us love the autumn season and Maine gets very pretty (though it also starts getting very cold) in the fall.

Thankfully, for our purposes, the state of Maine understands the tourist appeal of fall foliage and runs MaineFoliage.com to give a weekly run-down of the change in leaf color and the % of leaf drop in seven different zones of the state.  They have been providing this service since 2003, and Katelyn and I both researched the trends of leaf coloration for our proposed wedding weekend heading back through the years.  The data for Zone 1, which is where Clark's Cove Farm in Walpole, Maine is located, can be found by clicking the link below.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

"Groom" (or its rough equivalent) Across Languages

While my college major may have been English with a concentration in Creative Writing, and while I may be a teacher of English (though more specifically, a teacher of argumentative writing), one of my interests has always been picking up other languages.  Growing up, my grandparents on my mother's side spoke French around the house (though usually only to complain about my brother's behavior and my own behavior, or about the condition of our house in terms of cleanliness) and I actually attended a bilingual preschool where the instructor was fluent in both English and French and taught students in both.

Of course, once I got into public school at Farwell Elementary in Lewiston, the opportunity to be bilingual was pretty much gone.  True, my third grade class had a visiting Japanese teacher (Mamiko-sensei, though how I remember that name is a mystery to me) who came in to teach us some fragments of Japanese language and culture sporadically over the year, but there was no foreign language to go with the standards of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Before I get any further, I must warn you that this is going to be a very nerdy and linguistically-focused posting.  If you've no interest in the nuances of language or my propensity to gush about language in general, you might not want to click the link below.  There are some pretty funny and interesting bits to this post though, so those brave enough to proceed will be rewarded.


Monday, October 12, 2009

Our Wedding Venue

Time passed since the start of the Cooper-Parker wedding venue search: 38 days.
Mileage to nearest venue from Blue Hill (Alamoosook Lakeside Inn in Orland, ME): 16.4 miles.
Mileage to furthest venue from Blue Hill (Dockside Guest Quartes in York, ME): 180 miles.
Busiest venue search day: Saturday, September 26th -- visited 5 venues.
Most frequent iPod artists in car: Jason Mraz, Tom Petty, Lonely Island, Black Eyed Peas, and Lady Gaga.
Number of energy drinks consumed: Too many to remember.
Number of refueling stops: See above.
Number of headaches: See above.

Finally deciding where to celebrate our love and marriage on Saturday, October 9th, 2010: Priceless.



Note: This post features many images, so please allow some time to load when you click the link below.

The Guest List Boogie

Call me crazy, but just a matter of days (maybe only one day, my memory is fuzzy) after getting engaged to Katelyn, I had already begun thinking about my list of people to invite.  Now, this might be a little out of sequence according to most wedding planning suggestions, as in essence I was making a guest plan well before I knew what sort of number we would be able to accomodate at our venue.  Now that we're close to having that venue in place, it seems particularly important to talk about it here; even though I know many of you are waiting with baited breath for that venue announcement.

The issue of a guest list began to really hit home when I found that, upon first thoughts, I was already at around 80 potential guests; on my side of the family alone.  Katelyn's mother had begun a list as well, with a number coming out in the 60-70 guest range, even before Katelyn considered college friends and non-family-members to invite.  The guest list; it is an important and complicated dance.



(Final) Venue Search #14: The 1812 Farm of Seacoast Maine in Bristol, ME

A venue search that began with our visit to Greystone Manor in Cape Neddick, Maine over Labor Day weekend 2009 finally came to a close yesterday, October 11th, 2009.  Katelyn and I woke up bright and early, braving the morning chill of a mid-October day, and struck out on the road to meet up with my parents at the final venue we intended to visit in our wedding venue search.

The venue search finally concludes with our visit to The 1812 Farm of Seacoast Maine in Bristol, Maine.  Join us for the last venue search write-up!



A Clarification: The Purpose of this Blog

When I first began putting entries into this blog, I had no idea how long I was actually going to stick with it.  I've set up multiple blogs in the past, and none of them ever got beyond an opening introductory statement of who I was and what I was going to write about, although I never actually got to the point of doing that extra writing.  I knew that there was a better chance than before that I actually would write, seeing as wedding planning is a difficult thing and requires a lot of thought and analysis, but I never imagined I would have over 25 posts in under two months of writing.

The main purpose of this blog, initially, was to collect my thoughts as we go through the wedding planning process and also to share my experiences planning the wedding with Katelyn since she has no family out here in Maine and I don't have family right on-hand in Blue Hill.  Along the way, the blog began to grow out into reporting on the venues we went to and providing that information in one place for people who might currently be trying to plan a wedding of their own in Maine or who may one day need a source of information about where they might go for their own future ceremony and reception.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Venue Search #13: Point Sebago Resort in Casco, ME

For the last stop on our Sunday venue tour, Katelyn and I drove an extra hour beyond Cliffside Lodge to go visit Point Sebago Resort in Casco, Maine.  Katelyn had called and left a message a few days before we planned to go out on our visits, and we hadn't heard back from them.  We assumed, much with other locations, that we would be able to see the venue anyway, regardless of whether or not we had a planned visit set up.

We stopped on the side of the road because of this particularly beautiful sight between Cliffside Lodge and Point Sebago Resort.  It's a good thing we did, because it's the only good that came out of our drive.


Venue Search #12: Cliffside Lodge in Poland Spring, ME

Our second stop on last Sunday's venue search brought us to Poland Spring, Maine; yes, the home of the famous bottled water company.  After navigating a couple of rural back roads, the signs for Camp North Star led us to the Cliffside Lodge, which is part of the camp grounds but is also used to host wedding parties.

Join us in looking at one of the more interesting venues we've found in the state, the Cliffside Lodge in Poland Spring, Maine.




Venue Search #11: Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast in Hallowell, ME

After a long delay, it is time for me to do some reporting on the venue we visited last Sunday (October 4th, 2009).  This time around we decided to make some calls in advance to the three places we wanted to visit (Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast, Cliffside Lodge, and Point Sebage Resort).  We were able to get in touch with Maple Hill Farm, and we actually set a time to meet with them as our first stop on the venue search.

Check out our pictures and reaction to Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast in Hallowell, Maine.



Wednesday, October 7, 2009

My New Family

Judging from the title, I'm sure many of you would expect this post to be about the Cooper Family, who I will be grateful to have as in-laws once Katelyn and I are married next October.  However, many of the members of Katelyn's family live far from Maine, and while I will see them on holidays and other important dates, there is a more readily-apparent addition to my family unit now that I have been living with Katelyn in Blue Hill for the past month and a half: her cats, Teagan and Gabriel.




Tuesday, October 6, 2009

From Our Kitchen to Yours: Moreau Family Crèpes

Now, I may not be as famous as Julia Child and I'm certainly not as popular as Julie Powell and her blog about working through Child's cookbook, and there's no real chance that I'll be able to parlay this blog into a feature-length movie where I'm portrayed by Amy Adams (that'd be somethin'), but I do have a family recipe to share.  Growing up in a Franco-American family (my mom's side), my grandmother (or Mèmère, as we called her) Normande Moreau used to make home-made crèpes for me almost every day of the week.  It certainly didn't help me keep a slim figure growing up, but I will always remember those days in her kitchen/dining room, waiting for a plate of crèpes and syrup.

Since I moved in with Katelyn shortly after getting engaged, I have been trying to be an equal contributor since she has the "bread-winning" job and I'm doing a job that, while it helps me build my résumé, does not provide the kind of income I would like.  One of my contributions has come in the form of introducing Katelyn to these crèpes, which have now replaced pancakes on her list of favorite breakfast-y foods.  Join us in our kitchen for the evening as we make "Moreau Family Crèpes" together.



Monday, October 5, 2009

Venue Voting Results

When I decided to post a poll to this blog asking people which venues they liked the most from our venue search and reporting so far, I was putting myself out there.  What I mean was, I was taking the chance that nobody would vote and I would feel as though I'm writing this blog only for myself.  Although this wouldn't be the worst thing (at least the blog gives me an opportunity to write on a regular basis), it does make me feel better now that I know people are actively reading what I write and are interested enough to weigh in on the decisions Katelyn and I face for our October 2010 wedding.

Here are the final poll results:

Friday, October 2, 2009

More Venues to (Possibly) Consider

As Katelyn and I continue to try and narrow down where we're going to stage this whole wedding deal, we're still left with a few more places on our list to consider as we enter the home stretch and face the reality of needing to lock in a venue before all of the good weekends in October 2010 are locked up.

Some of these venues have already been discussed here while some simply fell off our radar when we went searching and weren't ever mentioned.  Also, unlike my prior lists, we actually do have pricing information for most of these venue locations.  In any case, here are some venues still on the table that we might need to go visit in person to consider on our overall list.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Audience Participation: Venue Voting Time!

With a whole ten venues visited now in our search for a place to have our October 2010 wedding, I would like to ask for a little bit of audience participation. 

You've all seen the ten venue search blog posts that I have put up on The Groom's Take, and you've seen my opinion as well as some glimpses of Katelyn's opinion on each place. 

Now I want to know what you all think.  Please vote in the poll on the left side of the blog to give Katelyn and me a sense of how you all feel as you look at the places we have visited.  The vote will remain open until next Wednesday afternoon.

Feel free to leave some comments about why you voted for the venues you liked as well; that's even more useful to us as we try to make our decision.

Note: The text below the choices that is hard to read (and can't be changed, unfortunately) says that you may select multiple answers, so feel free to choose as many or as few venues as you like.  Of course, narrowing it down to one is the most useful, but Katelyn and I both know how hard it is to do that.

Also, apparently the polls application through Blogger isn't very stable.  If it isn't showing up for you, try refreshing the page.  If that doesn't work, you may have to come back later to vote.

Venue Search #10: Linekin Bay Resort in Boothbay Harbor, ME

And here we are, the final venue to discuss from our marathon of venue visits this past weekend.  Just a little ways up the Maine coast from Bailey Island lies Boothbay Harbor, Maine, another popular destination for my family growing up.  At least once every summer, my family would go up to Boothbay Harbor, go shopping in the town's stores, and go on a seal cruise out into the harbor and the ocean to see the seals sunbathing out on the rocks.  Boothbay Harbor was the site of my parent's honeymoon (they got married in Lewiston at St. Joseph's church and had their reception at Lost Valley in Auburn), so there's a bit of a family history involved with this location as well.

Once again, I got to see a new side of an old destination through our visit to the Linekin Bay Resort in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.



Venue Search #9: The Driftwood Inn on Bailey Island, ME

This venue search post needs to be prefaced by a short family history.

My grandmother on my father's side, Eleanor Parker, was killed in an automobile accident less than a mile from her home in Lewiston in January 1984.  The driver of the other car, who survived, was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol when he hit her car as she was driving from work.  She was cremated and her ashes were spread in the ocean off of Land's End on Bailey Island, ME.

Growing up, Bailey Island was a popular destination for my family.  If it was a slow weekend, sometimes we would just drive out to the ocean there and fly a kite, or shop in the gift shop at the end of the road.  For my brother and me, it was the only way to connect with a grandmother we never got to meet.

This past Sunday, a rainy September Sunday, Katelyn and I made the familiar drive (to me, anyway) to visit The Driftwood Inn on Bailey Island, Maine.



Venue Search #8: On the Marsh Restaurant in Kennebunk, ME

There is a problem with visiting venues that you do not have pricing information on, and that problem is that you might just fall in love with a venue that is far outside of your price range.  Of course, at the end of the afternoon last Saturday when we had just left the worst venue of our visits that day (Ocean Woods Resort), all Katelyn and I wanted was to visit a venue that we could potentially see ourselves having a wedding at.

We fell in love with On the Marsh Restaurant in Kennebunk, Maine.  It is far outside our price range.




Venue Search #7: Spring Hill in South Berwick, ME

After "crashing" weddings at the Dockside Guest Quarters and Clay Hill Farm, we moved much further inland from coastal Maine to the town of South Berwick.  My mom, Joan Parker, had found and suggested this venue to Katelyn and me and she had actually gone through the trouble of contacting the owner in advance to let him know that we were coming.  While we weren't aware of the venue's hours (not opening until 5:30PM; we showed up at noon), we were able to meet up with my mom's contact and get a quick tour of the venue.

This is a venue in our price range, so read on for more thoughts on Spring Hill in South Berwick, Maine.



Venue Search #6: Dockside Guest Quarters in York, ME

As I mentioned in the last post about venue outtakes from the weekend, checking out potential venues on a Saturday in September has its drawbacks; chief among them, of course, being that many venues are being used to host a wedding ceremony.  This was the case when we arrived at the first venue of the weekend, the Dockside Guest Quarters in York, Maine.  However, we were able to check out the reception building and get a quick glimpse of how the wedding ceremony was set up on the grounds while the ceremony was happening.




Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Venue Search Outtakes #1: Places that don't fit our wedding.

Well, as you readers know, this past weekend Katelyn and I went to southern Maine for two reasons; to visit my parents in Lewiston, and to see in person as many of the venues as we'd been looking at online as we possibly could in the span of two days.  I adopted a tactic that may or may not have been the best way to go about looking at places, and that tactic was (for the most part) not letting places know that we were showing up to see their venues.  My thinking was that if we could see the venue as it normally is (not all made up by the staff for our scheduled visit) we'd have a better idea of what to expect, and also that the behavior of somebody startled by our visit would be a good indication of how they would behave if we had our wedding at their venue and something went wrong in the planning for whatever reason.

Of course, the thing I forgot to take into account was that it was a Saturday in peak September wedding season, and so many of the places we ended up visiting actually had weddings going on when we arrived.

Regardless, we were able to see most of the venues we'd set out to see, and we were at least able to get a sense of whether or not a venue would be something we can consider for our own wedding.  This post is a wrap-up and reflection upon the places that would not work out for us.  That way, with this business out of the way, I can move along to places that we did like and are better suited for us.

Note: There won't be any pictures in this post because we really didn't photograph places that we knew wouldn't work for us.  I will, however, include the website links in case you are interested in visiting the venue sites.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Wedding Venue Weekend (September 26th & 27th, 2009) Preview

Katelyn and I finally got a free weekend to visit my parents in southern Maine, and we took advantage of the opportunity to visit a bunch of the venues we've been looking at through their websites.  Since we ended up visiting almost ten venues (!) over the two days, there's a lot to go over and I'll need a little bit of time to post pictures and reactions in the next few days.

In the meantime, I figured I would post the venues we visited in terms of our level of interest in them, along with some website links for all of you readers to check them out based on how they promote themselves.  Hopefully I'll be able to cover most of the venues in individual posts before the weekend.

One final note before I start listing the venues; all of the venues have been added to our Google Map of potential venues, and the color key has been updated to reflect our feelings after visiting many of the locations.


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Groom as Venue-Caller Round 2

Not as much of a story lead-in this time around, just another set of venues that I've personally contacted to try and glean more information from as Katelyn and I look ahead to a weekend of venue-shopping in the general southern Maine area.  As you might be able to tell from our potential venue map that I posted earlier today, we're definitely building up more and more of a list to pick from so that we can be sure, when we finally make a decision, that we exhausted as many options as possible before deciding on the place that is right for us.

As per usual, click the link below to check out the new information on contacted venues.
 

Potential Wedding Venues Map

Using Google Maps' fancy map-making tool, I have just put together a map of the venues that Katelyn and I have visited, are planning on visiting, and have already ruled out in our venue search.  Hopefully this will help us in our travel plans as well as give our out-of-state guests the opportunity to see the scope of our search and make the best plans for traveling into the area.

Click the link below the map to view the map on a bigger scale.


View Potential Wedding Venues Map in a larger map.

For those who don't click to view the larger map, here is the map key:

  • Red locations are locations we're favorably considering.
  • Yellow locations are possible choices that we have visited.
  • Green locations are places we haven't visited yet.
  • Light Blue locations are places we've visited and have mild interest in.
  • Blue locations are venues that are not well-suited to us or do not have openings and won't be considered in our decision.
New locations will be added to the map as we find them and visit them, so be sure to check back to this post or the map in the future for the most up-to-date information.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

House-Groom-to-Be

There is one major aspect of my relationship with Katelyn that is a concern to me as things are right now, and that is the fact that I do not make anywhere near as much money as Katelyn does through my work.  As a person who went through high school and college always working and always having enough money to take care of things, this is a new position for me to be in, and it is a somewhat embarrassing position to be in as Katelyn's fiancé and supposed provider.  I wonder how people feel when they look at this relationship from the outside, because from a traditional standpoint (and a gender-biased standpoint), the man is supposed to be the main provider for his family.  I know that Katelyn's family loves and accepts me, but I still fear sometimes that an outsider might view my current relationship with Katelyn as parasitic because while I contribute love and happiness, I am unable to contribute financially.

This is what it means to be a House-Groom-to-Be.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Venue Search #5: Alamoosook Lakeside Inn in Orland, ME

After we were done at The Pilgrim's Inn in Deer Isle, Katelyn and I drove back inland to see a venue recommended by a friend of mine from college, the Alamoosook Lakeside Inn in Orland, Maine.  To my surprise, the venue isn't located very far from our current hometown of Blue Hill.  In fact, I pass the turn to go to this venue every Tuesday and Thursday on my commute between the apartment and work in Bangor.  While we found a sign on the door saying that the inn was closed for the day when we arrived, Katelyn and I took the opportunity to look around the grounds a little bit and see what kind of interest we might have in the venue.




Venue Search #4: The Pilgrim's Inn in Deer Isle, ME

While our weekend plans of going to southern Maine to look at potential wedding venues took a hit because of Katelyn needing to work this past Saturday, I was determined not to let a beautiful autumn Sunday in Maine go to waste.  We looked up a couple relatively-local venues online and decided to hit the road and see what we could find.  Our travels brought us first to Deer Isle, Maine, and a little inn by the sea called The Pilgrim's Inn.



Saturday, September 19, 2009

Groom as Venue-Caller

Earlier this week, I decided that I would take some stress off of Katelyn's shoulders and personally contact a number of venue locations that we'd been interested but hadn't been able to find more specific information about in terms of pricing, catering, and how many people they could accomodate.  The initial plan had been to narrow down a list of venues to visit in-person this weekend when we would head down to southern Maine to visit my parents, but Katelyn had to put in Saturday hours at her architectural firm and that trip has been postponed until next weekend.  Regardless, I thought I would share some of the names of places we've been contacting and my experience as a groom calling these places for information.

Venue Search #3: Lucerne Inn in Dedham, ME

After our adventure going to Clark's Cove Farm last Saturday, Katelyn and I headed in to Bangor to finally pick up her car from getting various repairs done and finally earning its Maine license plates.  It seemed particularly important to get her car, given my car's new feature of leaking radiator coolant.  Never ones to miss an opportunity to visit a potential wedding venue, we turned off Route 1A on our way to the big city to check out our third venue in person.

On Sunday, September 13th, 2009, Katelyn and I visited the majestic Lucerne Inn in the town of Dedham, Maine.




Venue Search #2: Clark's Cove Farm in Walpole, ME

It's been a couple days since my last contribution to "The Groom's Take", and part of this has been dealing with my job as an adjunct instructor and working with my students on their first drafts of the semester. Always a time of the year where stress and tensions are high and I need to be able to keep a level head to help them through it. Since it's the weekend now and I have some free time with my poor fiancée putting in extra hours at work (I'm cooking family recipe crèpes for supper tonight to make that up to her), I'm going to catch up with documenting the venues we visited last weekend. Now that Greystone Manor is no longer an option (see the update on that post for more information), these venues take on even greater importance.

On Saturday, September 12th, 2009, Katelyn and I drove my car (leaking radiator coolant all the way) to Clark's Cove Farm in Walpole, Maine.




Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Quick Note

Since I tend to be a little verbose in my posting, I've decided to shorten what you see of each entry on this main blog page.  If you're reading an entry on the main page and it seems to stop suddenly, chances are you're not finished with the full entry yet.  If you click the text that says "Click here for the rest of the entry..." at the bottom of that particular entry, it will take you to the rest of the posting and you can continue reading.  This will help out in the long run because the main blog page will look less cluttered but you can still read all of my long-winded entries.

Thanks!

Unintentional Title Reading

This is something that is probably only immediately apparent for a word-nerd like myself, but I did feel like a little bit of commentary could be useful on it, if only to appease my grammatically-focused brain.  Long story short: the origins of this blog post have little to do with planning weddings or my wedding in particular, and a lot more with my English-major-mind getting caught up on an unintentional reading of this blog's title.

When I was originally setting up this blog, I had decided on the title Groom's-Eye-View.  It had a good ring to it, it had good internal rhyme, it was musical.  I had everything all set up and was poised to post my introductory blog posting and advertise on my Facebook page when I did a Google search to find that another Blogger user had already titled their blog A Groom's Eye View.  Crushed (not really, but it sounds more dramatic that way), I set about brainstorming a new title for the blog.  I knew that I wanted to include the word "groom" in the title, as this is one way I'm beginning to identify myself with all the wedding planning in the air, but I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to come up with for a title.  The first title had been perfect; I'd fallen in love with it.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Venue Search #1: Greystone Manor in Cape Neddick, ME

One of the "fun" things about getting engaged is that you then need to figure out where the hell you're going to have the wedding.  A number of considerations need to be made, ranging from how many people will be able to make it to the venue (particularly when you have a groom from Maine and a bride from Michigan) to how much money you can afford to put down.  Oh yeah, you need to make sure that it's the kind of place that will be memorable for years after the ceremony and suitable for the tastes of the couple too.

On Saturday, September 5th, 2009, Katelyn and I visited our first potential venue: Greystone Manor in Cape Neddick, ME.




The Proposal Story

Now that introductions have been made, I can move on to the event that has turned me into a Groom-to-Be.

On a few occasions during the summer of 2009, Katelyn and I had discussed the potential possibility of eventually getting married to one another.  On two separate occasions, we actually asked each other to marry (me first, her second), but without a ring or a sense of reality to these proposals, we just carried on as always.

As the month of August began approaching and our impending trip together to South Carolina got closer and closer, I began to think seriously about proposing with a real ring: my grandmother's engagement ring from my dad's side of the family.  I didn't want to propose while we were in South Carolina because we were down there for a wedding already: the marriage between Katelyn's cousin Ryan and his wife Cheryl.  I thought it would be tacky and vain to propose while we were on vacation for that purpose, so I waited.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

An Opening Statement

As with anything that has a beginning, introductions are necessary.  Your author for the beginning of this journey (and the rest of it, hopefully) is me, 25-year-old groom-to-be Brian Parker.   I am a native of Lewiston, Maine and twice a graduate of the University of Maine located in Orono, Maine (Bachelor of Arts in English 2006, Master of Arts in English 2008).  I am currently living in the small coastal town of Blue Hill, Maine and beginning my fourth year as an instructor of college English and my second year at Husson University in Bangor, Maine.

Since I am a groom-to-be, there is also a bride-to-be and a particular story behind that.  Defying my expectations of the online dating world, I met Katelyn Cooper (the future Mrs. Parker) through the services of Match.com, which I joined in December 2008.  Ms. Cooper is also a Masters Degree holder, though her field is architecture and she works for a firm here in Blue Hill.  Our first date required us both to drive over half-an-hour on back roads in a snowstorm to make it to the "midpoint town" of Ellsworth (halfway between my residence at the time in Old Town and her place in Blue Hill) for a Sunday brunch together.  Neither of us knew what to expect upon departure that cold and snowy January day, and I'm sure neither of us would've predicted that I would propose to her with my grandmother's heirloom engagement ring after she got out of work on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009.  The proposal story will be visited upon in a future posting, though most people acquainted with us have already heard it.  We are tentatively planning to get married sometime in October of 2010, though there really aren't any details in place beyond that at this time.

Growing up, I never really had a particular vision of what my dream wedding would entail.  As children, boys aren't really encouraged to consider those sorts of things anyway; after all, we all know that it is the bride's special day and we just kind of stand up there with her and say "I do" before getting a ring, right?  Not as far as Katelyn and I are concerned.  And that's part of what this blog is being born out of; a desire for a wedding where both bride and groom have equal input and where the day is recognized as something equally important for both parties.  This may be a radical idea, for certain, but as long as us grooms-to-be have websites like The Plunge to counter traditional bride-focused sites like The Knot, there is hope for the future.

Whether or not Katelyn decides to blog on her own or simply interjects with the occasional posting on this blog, the hope is to offer The Groom's Take on what it means to plan a wedding today.

Welcome to The Groom's Take; I look forward to hearing feedback as this project continues along.