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.


To come up with The Groom's Take, I combined my desire to use the word "groom" with my status as a movie nut (and the subject of a blog I'm working on but don't have enough to publish quite yet) and the multiple meanings of the word "take".  Here's a bit of a rundown on the meanings we could work out of the title:

The Groom's Take: The point of view of a groom in terms of reacting to wedding planning.

The Groom's Take: The groom's opportunity to shine as a star with a perfect performance of vows at the wedding or to wither under the harsh spotlight of attention; no re-takes here though.

The Groom's Take: The groom and what they come out of a wedding with; headaches, long days and nights looking through venues and vendors, uncharacteristic squabbles with their loved one, but one day of pure, unadultered happiness and the beginning of the rest of their lives together.

Any of these particular interpretations could work for the purposes of this blog, but the unintentional title reading that sparked this whole post was revealed when I choose the web URL for this blog: http://thegroomstake.blogspot.com/.  Read in one breath, you get "groomstake"; in my head, it sounds reminiscent of "mistake", except referring to grooms in particular.  This, in turn, led me to thinking about all of the cliché sayings we have in American society about grooms and their business of getting married.

For example, how much of a mistake it is, for what the groom is giving up.  We might as well just say, "Oh dude, you're getting married?  What a groomstake!"

Or perhaps, upon starting a stupid argument over whether Uncle Tony and Cousin Vera (theoretical names for the sake of example) can sit that close together.  "You bugged your fiancée about that?  That's a bush-league groomstake."

I'd posit the example of kissing a stripper at the bachelor party as being a "groomstake", but it doesn't really fit; chances are, once you do that, you don't have to worry about being a groom at all anymore.  It'll just be a "mistake"; the biggest one of your life.

Part of my desire to keep this blog is to document the planning process Katelyn and I go through as we work ever closer to our wedding day (which still doesn't have a finite date set yet, but we're hoping soon).  Another part of this blog is to help keep myself sane in the process, to help myself remember why I'm getting married to Katelyn in the first place.  I will never second-guess my decision to propose to her--the love I have for her is the love you don't fall out of--but there will come a day when we're both frazzled and maybe we'll end up arguing over what color we want our wedding cupcakes to be.

When that day comes, I won't make the "groomstake" of forgetting why I fell in love with her to begin with.  I will stop arguing over nonsense and kiss that girl.