I Think I'm Learning Japanese, I Really Think So: A Guide to Reading Our Wedding Invitations

Katelyn and I will be mailing out our wedding invitations in the upcoming week, so we wanted to get a head-start on putting some necessary information online.

As part of the theme for our wedding invitations, Katelyn and I decided to incorporate apples and apple trees—which all of you will be able to see in person at Clark’s Cove Farm, which is a working apple orchard—as well as Japanese characters, since I’ve been to Japan on three occasions and hope to share the experience of visiting overseas with Katelyn once we are married.

Because our "wedding webpage" on http://www.theknot.com/ would not allow me to post Japanese writing for readability, I have put this information here on the blog.

Of course, the Japanese language in written form is not something that is easy to understand; I took two years of Japanese classes in college and still have trouble reading the language sometimes. With this in mind, we’ve put together this guide to reading the Japanese on our invitations so that you can understand them.

Designing Our Own Wedding Bands Part 1

One of the single most annoying advertising campaigns I have ever been subjected to in my life has to be the horrifically stupid "He went to Jared's!" engagement ring commercials that have swamped television sets across America over the past few years.  The phrase itself is grating to the point of frustration.

As the months have passed and Katelyn and I find ourselves getting closer and closer to the big day, we've begun to think about exactly what we're going to do for our wedding bands.  The diamond engagement ring was "easy" enough, since I presented Katelyn with the Jabel heirloom ring passed down from my late paternal grandmother, but both Katelyn and myself knew that we wanted our wedding bands to be something personal from our own experience together.  After a quick perusal of the typical wedding stores at the mall--even going to Jared's in Portland, Maine for kicks--we decided that the wedding bands would have much more meaning to both of us if we had something designed ourselves.

After some online searching, Katelyn turned up a ring style known as "Mobius rings," which feature a twisted ring pattern.  She even went so far as to order a cheap sterling silver version of the ring to see how it would look when paired with her engagement ring:

Places to Stay if You're Coming from Away #1: Cod Cove Inn in Edgecomb, Maine

As was documented early in our wedding planning, the decision of where to host the Cooper-Parker wedding extravaganza of October 2010 was a difficult one to make, chiefly because Katelyn is from Michigan and her family is spread out across a good swath of the country while my family is almost entirely located in Maine.  Because of our decision to get married in Maine, we've had to consider--at each step of our planning--how we can best accomodate our guests who will be coming from a distance to celebrate our wedding.

To that end, we have been researching various lodging options in the general Boothbay/Damariscotta region to provide our guests with options for where to stay while in the area for our wedding.  The proprietors of the Cod Cove Inn in Edgecomb, Maine where kind enough to invite Katelyn and I down to see their inn back in January (back when there was still snow on the ground, even).

Our Wedding Caterer

Before touching on the topic of this blog posting, I'm aware that it has been far too long since my last entry about this wedding and this has been the result of a number of things, but I can't really make any excuses for it.  With the holidays, getting back to teaching, and finally having nice weather again, I just haven't been able to bring myself to sit down and write anything wedding-related until now.  I hope to make up for it, beginning today.

So when I last left you, faithful reader, Katelyn and I had settled on a photographer for our wedding and were getting ready to start looking at catering services.  I am happy to announce that we have settled on a catering service; though in reality the decision was made nearly a month ago.

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!

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:

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

"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.

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!