Wedding Week: The Celebration!

In case you missed it, yesterday's wedding blog was over at the MTV Books Blog. It was all about the music, which as you know is one of the most important things to me, so it was a pretty fun blog and there are crazy dancing pictures.

Today I just want to pay tribute to all of our loved ones who came out to the wedding. Seeing all of my out of town friends and family was a huge highlight of the wedding for me. The only thing that sucked was not having enough to time to spend with each person.

So this little photo montage of memories might be more for me and my friends than anyone else, but hey I hope everyone enjoys the pictures.

First up, the bachelorette party, which took place at a wine shop in my town called House Red. My lovely maid of honor Katie knows the owner and hooked us up with a private party there. I intentionally had this two days before the wedding so some of my out of town girlies could make it.

Like Jenny and Eryn:

I meet these two online back in 2001 or 2002 on a music messageboard, though since they both have great senses of humor, they kept telling everyone that they'd responded to an ad I put on Craigslist for friends. Jenny lives in St. Louis and Eryn lives in Denver. So we only see each other once a year or so. Eryn and I travel to Seattle together a lot and Jenny came on our original trip out there in 2004. As you can see we have a lot of fun together:

Yes, that is a penis straw. Katie knew I didn't want the typical, tacky bachelorette party, but she did get everyone penis straws in their otherwise classy favor bags. She also insisted I wear the tiara and sash, though I made Eryn wear the shot glass as you see above. Here's a better pic of my outfit and the Betsey Johnson dress that was too short to wear for my wedding:

Also in town early was my dear friend and former roommate Tai, the woman who married us. She's on my left and my maid of honor and bff Katie is on my right:

I also had fun with my in town friends who I don't see nearly enough. Like Jme, who also used to work at the Beacon. You can tell she was a bartender cause she's good at putting up with drunk people while being sober. She's pregnant so she couldn't really join in the wine drinking:

Amber and Katie live in Chicago, but I don't see them nearly enough. We lived together in LA for a semester and I wish we could hang out as often as we did then. Here's a nice picture of us:

And this is more like we normally are:

Then there is my friend Jenny. I guess I actually do see her often because we have a weekly writing group together and she lives a couple blocks away from me. But still she is always fun to hang with:


Eryn took this really cool picture of the group through a wine glass:

And here's a nice group photo. Yay for fun bachelorette party!

The night before the wedding we got our out of town family and friends together for dinner in order to spend more time with them. I got to catch up a little bit with my cousin (a couple times removed or something) Amanda, who I haven't seen since she was two years old:

I also saw my cousin Nathan, pictured here with my mom. Hadn't seen him in way too long either:

And here my uncle Stevie tries to get my aunt Pam to drink Sake. Again it's been way too long since I've seen them:

Here are my brothers. My half-brother Evan was falling asleep, so my brother Dan was chilling with him:

Jenny, Eryn and I have a tradition of drinking Midori Sours whenever we are together. It took the bartender so long to make these we thought they were making the Midori from scratch. Eryn looks a little displeased by this:


At the wedding I got to see more out of town folks like my cousin Becca:

Like my darling friend Anna and her boyfriend Adam arrived from LA and then the LA crew of me, Anna, Amber, and Katie was complete:

Here's another good shot of me and Amanda:

Jenny's husband Jim got to town and the made a smashing couple:

And here's a good bride and her mama shot:

One of my high school bffs Thea and her husband Justin came and Thea and Katie got to catch up:

The Columbia Crew Amber, Anna, Katie, Jenny and Aaron. Jenny and Aaron are my writing group:

Katie, Aaron and I used to work in the Fiction Dept at Columbia together. Good times.

And here is Kathy, I used to work with her at UIC. Now Katie has my job there. Look out College of Nursing. This is your support staff!

Here is Kathy's boyfriend Joe. Nice hair! He runs a barbershop you know.

My Girls. I'm sad I don't have a solo shot with my new sis-in-law Kelly. Hopefully the professional photographer got one:

Scott's boys:

And here were are with our best friends, my maid of honor Katie and Scott's best man, Chris:

They both made toasts to us and so did my dad:

Chris threatened that his toast would be 13 pages long, but he kept it short and sweet. He also actually got nervous and spilled his champagne:

Katie's speech was awesome. She made reference to the first time we hung out at my house when my dad referred to her as "that weird girl" probably because she was 14 and I was 15 and we were all hyped up on sugar and coffee, getting ready to go hang out with boys we liked we were screaming the words "BUTT!" and "FIRE!" ala Beavis and Butthead:

But I think the coolest part was seeing my friends who didn't know each other until that weekend become friends. Like here is Eryn bonding with Katie and Tai, but don't ask me what the hell they are doing:

And here is Eryn with Mario and Jose:

I could post a million more pictures but I'll stop for now and conclude wedding week tomorrow!

Women Who Rock Wednesday: Kathy Charles!

Today I'm taking a break from the wedding blogging to welcome you back to Women Who Rock Wednesday! (Well, sorta. I've posted a blog about my wedding music and mix CD wedding favor over at the MTV Books blog.) Two weeks ago Sara Zarr visited us and offered up a copy of her book Story of a Girl to one lucky winner and that person is... Kari from blogger! I'll be sending you an email for your address.

I'm really psyched about today's guest, Aussie author Kathy Charles. Her book, Hollywood Ending, was the first book I ever got to blurb and I loved it. Here's what I said about it:

"Hollywood Ending is dark and disturbing the way really, really good books should be. Kathy Charles captures the grime beneath the glitter in Los Angeles and even more importantly she find the heart of what it means to be human, to be a teenager trying to understand both life and death. The friendship that forms between teenage Hilda and elderly Hank is unique and genuine. I'd recommend this book to anyone fascinated by the darker side of Hollywood or just looking for a compelling page turner that lends fresh and honest perspective to the human condition."

The book came out in Australia at the beginning of last month, which, I know leaves a lot of my readers (aside from the lucky Aussies!) wondering how they can get their hands on this incredibly unique tale.... Well, the thing I'm most excited to share about Kathy Charles is that she's about to be my publishing sister!!!! Hollywood Ending is going to be released in the US by MTV Books next summer! Yep, my editor Jen Heddle has awesome taste.

So to give you a little preview of the awesomeness that is Hollywood Ending, let's meet Kathy Charles!

Q: I adored your book, Hollywood Ending. I honestly don't think my blurb does it justice. I had a hard time finding words to describe it with because it was such a unique reading experience, from the subject matter to the very genuine relationship between the characters, especially Hilda and Hank. So I'm going to make you sum it up (mean of me, I know!) and tell my readers the gist of what it is about.

Kathy: Thanks Stephanie! I love your books too, as you know, and was thrilled when you agreed to give me a blurb. Woot!

Oh right, the book. ‘Hollywood Ending’ is the story of Hilda Swann, a teenager living in Los Angeles who is obsessed with celebrity death. Hilda and her best friend Benji spend their summer trawling the sites of Los Angeles where famous people died, people like John Belushi, River Phoenix and Marilyn Monroe. One day they knock on the door of an apartment where a famous silent movie star committed suicide, and inside they find Hank, a cantankerous old man. As Hilda and Hank form an unlikely friendship Benji slips further and further into the darkness of his death obsession, and things are further complicated by the arrival of Jake, a neighbour of Hank’s who is a screenwriter and isn’t all that he seems. Hilda soon discovers that Hank is hiding a terrible secret, but Hilda has secrets of her own, and in the end everything threatens to spiral out of control. ‘Hollywood Ending’ has been called many things: a dark comedy, a horror story, a love letter to Los Angeles. It’s also been compared to the TV show ‘Six Feet Under’, a comparison I love as it’s one of my favourite shows.

Q: Now let's talk inspirations and research. Where did the idea behind your book come from? Do you have a fascination with dead celebrities? And there is a death hag community out there, which surely you tapped for research. Can you talk a little bit about that? And purely because I loved them so much as characters, can you talk a little about your inspiration for Hilda and Hank and their relationship? It's rare to find a YA book with a teen relating so closely to an elderly person and it was one of the things I loved most about Hollywood Ending.

Kathy: There’s an online community of people obsessed with celebrity death who call themselves ‘Death Hags’. They congregate on a forum at www.findadeath.com which is the official website for Dearly Departed Tours, a tour bus service in Hollywood that takes you to the sites where famous people died. I don’t think you particularly need to be a morbid individual to be interested in celebrity death. You only need to look at the sort of media coverage that surrounded the passing of Heath Ledger, David Carradine and Michael Jackson to see that the whole world is interested in celebrities who die in strange, mysterious ways.

I’ve also always had a fascination with unlikely friendships. Hilda and Hank’s relationship was inspired by movies like ‘Harold & Maude’ and ‘Ghost World’ that feature teenagers who form strong bonds with people much older than they are. I was also inspired by the novella ‘Apt Pupil’ by Stephen King, which is about a teenage boy who forms a friendship with his elderly neighbour who, we discover, is hiding a terrible secret. I like the idea that people can connect on deep levels regardless of their age or background. I guess there’s a lot of me in Hilda, in her inquisitiveness and her interest in morbid subject matter. Hank was largely inspired by the writer Charles Bukowski, who lived life his own way and didn’t take shit from anyone.

Q: Tell us a bit about your path to publication. Had you always wanted to be a writer? Who were some of the authors that inspired you or the other people/or things that made you want to tell stories. (Since it is Women Who Rock Weds we love to hear about the women who rocked your world, but obviously we're happy to hear about the guys too!)

Kathy: I always knew I wanted to contribute something creative to the world but I had no idea what form that would take. I tried directing short films and found I wasn’t very good at it, so about five years ago I decided to try writing a novel. In terms of writers who have influenced me, some of my favourites are Stephen King, Bret Easton Ellis, Steve Martin, Clive Barker and James Ellroy. True crime books are also a huge inspiration, especially ‘Helter Skelter’ by Vincent Bugliosi, ‘The Night Stalker’ by Philip Carlo and anything by John Gilmore. I also read a lot of celebrity bios.

Movies and TV shows influence my work even more than the books I read. I love anything that is dark, quirky and offbeat. My favourite filmmaker is David Lynch, and my favourite TV shows are Six Feet Under (obviously!), Californication, Entourage and Dexter.

The women who inspire me are people like Annette Bening, Diablo Cody, Sheryl Crow and Drew Barrymore. They are creative, graceful and independent, as well as knowing how to have fun and enjoy their chosen career paths. Then of course there’s my Mom- the greatest inspiration of all!

Q: You paint such a great picture of Los Angeles. I lived out there for a semester in school and the book made me miss it. I know you are an Aussie writer, so I'm curious, what is your relationship with Los Angeles?

Kathy: My aunt lives in Los Angeles so from the time I was sixteen I travelled back and forth every year from Australia to stay with her. Being a movie buff I fell in love with the place immediately. I actually planned to move there but the longer I stayed the more I realised I preferred just being a visitor. Day to day living in Los Angeles is hard: everyone is really competitive and there’s a lot of focus on wealth and materialism. But I still dream of one day having a cottage in Laurel Canyon or a beach house in Malibu. Maybe one day.

Q: Obviously many parties and readings and other celebrations of Hollywood Ending is at the top of your to-do list, but for the readers that have or are about to eagerly gobble up Hollywood Ending want to know... what's next???

Kathy: I’m just finishing up a new manuscript about serial killer art, then after that, I don’t know. I’d like to write in a different medium, perhaps a screenplay or a TV series. I really admire people like Diablo Cody (Juno, United States of Tara) who are able to expand their careers to include film, TV and books. I don’t strictly see myself as a novelist, so I’m eager to try new things. I also get bored easily.

Q: I have two questions that I always ask my Women Who Rock, the first is a two-parter. What was the first album you bought and the first concert you attended? Be honest, we don't judge, we like to see the roots of our women who rock!

Kathy: The first concert I ever went to was Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ Tour when I was eight years old. I was a massive MJ fan and the experience was really overwhelming- the crowds, the excitement, the fact that I was actually in the same vicinity as Michael Jackson. The first album I ever purchased was Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Heaven on Earth’. The single ‘Heaven Is A Place on Earth’ was number one at the time, and that’s pretty much the only song I listened to on the album. The first single I ever bought was way cooler – Ray Parker Junior’s ‘Ghostbusters.’

Q: Tell us about your biggest rock star moment, perhaps it's a moment of real success in your career, a time when you met someone super cool and had that Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" moment, or just a time where you felt like you got the rock star treatment. I get a huge variety of answers for the questions, so it's pretty much whatever "rock star moment" means to you!

Kathy: My aunt used to work in the music industry and has lots of friends who are roadies, so I’ve been lucky enough to go backstage at a whole heap of gigs like Rod Stewart, Meatloaf and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. I’m not much of a night owl though so I normally just eat the free food then want to go to sleep, which isn’t exactly rock star behaviour. I fell asleep backstage at a Def Leppard concert when I was eleven years old. Imagine the stuff I missed seeing!

Kathy and her book just sound damn cool, don't they? And maybe you aren't in Australia (or you are but you haven't gotten the book yet for some reason) and you are chomping at the bit to read it right now... Well Kathy has been awesome enough to put a signed copy of Hollywood Ending up for grabs. One lucky commenter will win...

As usual this is how it works:

To enter just leave a comment about Kathy's interview. You can also get extra entries:
+1 for tweeting/blogging about today's interview/contest
+1 for tweeting/blogging about Kathy and her new book release Hollywood Ending

Note your extra entries in your comment along with an email address to contact you at. Then tune in a week from today because I'll announce the winner when I interview author Kathi Baron, author of Shattered!

Wedding Week: The Food!

Before I continue gushing about all the fun wedding details, I have a couple things I wanted to share.

First, I have two events coming up in the next week in Chicagoland and it would mean the world to me if you can come or spread the word about them.

This Saturday, October 17 at 2 pm I'm doing a reading/signing at the Borders in Oak Park (1144 Lake St.) It's the debut of Ballads of Suburbia, my Oak Park novel, in Oak Park, my hometown. So I'm both excited and totally nervous about it. I'm hoping for a good turnout and a lively discussion following the reading. But since it's a solo event those are harder to get people out to. So please, please come if you can or spread the word about it if you can't. There is full information on this Facebook event invitation.

I'm also reading as part of the Bookslut Reading Series on Tuesday, October 20 at 7:30 pm at Hopleaf in Chicago (5148 N. Clark Street, 2nd Floor). Mary Caponegro and Matthew Gavin Frank will also be reading and books will be available for sale (and signing!) courtesy of Barbara's Books. And here is the facebook invite for that one.

Lastly for those of you interested in taking a writing workshop from me. I'm teaching a special one-night class on Monday November 16th at the Story Studio in Chicago and all the details can be found here.

Then here are some fun things to listen to. YA Literature Review posted both a podcast interview with me and a podcast review of Ballads of Suburbia! It was the first interview I've ever done via Skype and it was loads of fun. So listen to the interview here and check out the Ballads review here.

Now, onto today's wedding details. Originally I planned to discuss both the food and the music here today, but then I realized I could split up those topics and talk about the music tomorrow over at the MTV Books blog, which seems like an appropriate place (since my MTV books are about music at least, I know MTV itself is not really associated with music anymore sadly).

One of things we received the most compliments on about the wedding (aside from the ceremony which I discussed here yesterday in case you missed it) was the food and I can't tell you how much that pleased me since, with the exception of cheese pizza for my pizza-loving husband, it was entirely vegan.

I did this for a few reasons. 1. Since I was 10 years old, I've gone out of my way to avoid causing animals to suffer. This started with not buying animal tested products, moved on to vegetarianism, then not buying leather, then complete veganism. I don't spend money on things that harm or kill animals. So why would I pay X-amount per person for dead animals just because it is customary to eat meat at weddings. My wedding, my money, that is not how I'm going to spend it. 2. I can't count how many weddings I've been to where my only options were salad at worst and some kind of pasta at best. I even had to bring my own food to one wedding. I was going to eat well at my own wedding, dammit and... 3. I was going to show the world (or at least my family and closest friends) that vegan/vegetarian food is delicious and comes in sooooo many other forms besides salad and pasta.

Vegan food for the wedding was definitely my number one priority and it worked out a lot more easily than I thought it would and was incredibly cost effective. We opted not to do the sit down dinner thing. Partially because of the cost, but largely because the sit down dinner part has always been the least fun part of weddings to me. I like the dancing, the mingling, the drinking and cavorting. I'm also a grazer. I love many small meals and I love love love appetizers. So that was what we planned to have. We decided our wedding would take place at 8pm, so it would be clear to people that they should eat beforehand (we also mentioned on the invite that the food would be appetizers).

The next issue was finding a place with vegan food options or a place that would let us cater in. We looked at one place with an attached restaurant that had lots of vegetarian food, but ultimately we chose Molly Malone's. Why chose an Irish pub that specializes in things like corned beef? Because when I emailed them and asked them about catering in, they said their chef would be happy to make us whatever we wanted. When we met with them, Brigid the event coordinator came armed with a ton of vegan appetizer recipes that she had researched and the chef truly was excited about experimenting with vegan cooking. (I've met my fair share of chefs who are just plain snobby about veganism, like food is nothing without meat and dairy). Brigid invited us to go through our own recipes and hers and to come back to her with about 7 choices. They would then cost things out and come up with the 5 dishes that fit our budget.

Ultimately we chose:

Vegan Black Bean Quesadillas (one of their recipes)

Guacamole

Vegan Pesto Pepperoni roll-ups (one of their recipes)

Sweet Potato Puffs (a recipe my friend Tai found)

and Pizza, the only thing they did with non-vegan cheese, but they did use vegetarian pepperoni and veggies as toppies, no meat!

I was so pleasantly surprised on my actual wedding day when I walked up to our buffet and found they'd added three other items!

Phyllo Triangles (dough stuffed with spinach and ricotta-like tofu blend, like spanakopita)

Vegan cheese & chive muffins

Tofu satay skewers (a recipe from a fancy vegan restaurant that Tai found)

Again, this just goes to show the difference it makes to go to a local business rather than a big hotel or banquet chain. The personal touches at Molly Malone's were just unbelievable!

Anyway, my Aunt Judy took a picture of the food, so you can drool over it. We had tons of leftovers. Everything but the black bean quesadillas and guac so I guess those were particularly popular. It was so good!

Probably the biggest food hit of the evening were our vegan cupcakes though. I discovered Vegan Bomb at a local craft fair this spring. I was on a hunt for vegan wedding cake and figured I'd go through one of the big vegan friendly restaurants or bakeries in Chicago, but then I ate a Strawberries & Cream cupcake by Vegan Bomb and I thought cupcakes.... cupcakes would be way more fun than cake. I got the Vegan Bomb info and set up a tasting with them so Scott could see how gloriously delicious their cupcakes were.

Vegan Bomb is a brand new business and they don't have a storefront at this point, so we met at a Starbucks and they brought us about a dozen cupcakes to try. Scott and I both agreed they were better than ANY cupcake we'd ever had, not just any vegan cupcake.

Plus the advantage to choosing cupcakes over wedding cake (besides cost, we spent hundreds less than we would have on a cake) was picking multiple flavors. We chose:

Coconut Lime (the type of cupcake we fed each other)

Strawberries and Cream

Chocolate Mint

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Cookies and Cream

and Chocolate Ganache, which was this chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting entirely covered with a thin, hard layer of chocolate and multi colored sprinkles. As Scott says, it takes just like a hostess cupcake.

Sadly I don't have any pictures of me and Scott feeding each other cupcakes yet, but here's some deliciousness for you to drool over.

My friend Anna shows the response of many guests to the cupcakes:

So, I'll leave you drooling and be back tomorrow with more fun wedding details and pictures and a new Women Who Rock Wednesday! But if you are in the Chicago area, know that you can order Vegan Bomb cupcakes at 773-558-6582. Trust me, you will want to get them for any occasion you are in need of a dessert for!

Wedding Week!

I've been collecting the wedding photos from my friends. Don't have the professional photos yet and once I do it will take a while to go through them I'm sure, so there will definitely be a big photo blog of those later this month, but I figured this week I'd do wedding week and spend each day (except Women Who Rock Wednesday of course) talking about an aspect of the wedding. So today my topic is the theme and the ceremony, tomorrow we'll talk food and music, Thursday will be about fun with friends and family (which will prolly have the most pics), and Friday about the honeymoon/wedding aftermath.

Before Scott and I even got engaged we talked about what kind of wedding we'd like to have and we both agreed that we weren't traditional people and we'd want to do something that would reflect who we actually are as individuals and as a couple. Initially I just wanted a very private ceremony--immediate family and our respective best friends only--in our living room and then a party. But after seeing everyone's excitement when we got engaged--particularly in Scott's family since he is the first of the nieces and nephews to get married-- we realized people would be disappointed if they didn't get to attend the ceremony. I have to admit it still felt weird to have such an intimate moment in front of so many people, but anyway I'm getting ahead of myself.

We had a very limited budget for our wedding so we had to weigh what was important to us. No meat and lots of booze were my main priorities. (Hey, I'm a vegan bartender, what do you expect?) More on the food tomorrow though, but I will say that doing a night time wedding with vegan appetizers definitely allowed us to spend money on the bar package we wanted (middle shelf liquor, beer and wine and a Prosecco toast as I like Prosecco better than cheap champagne). We also wanted complete control over the music (again more on that tomorrow), so that helped cut costs because iPod replaced DJ or band. Another thing that is very important to both of us is to support local, independent businesses. I wasn't interested in a generic banquet hall. We chose Molly Malone's because it was right in our town and we definitely got the personal touch because of it. The day before the wedding I was a wreck of nerves, but when I got to Molly Malone's to rehearse, Sandra the manager made all my fears go away. She was so on top of everything and I knew they would make sure everything went perfectly from the music to the food (which they did specially for me instead of their usual Irish pub fare). And I loved the feeling of being in a dark, cozy pub instead of in a cookie cutter hall of some sort.

I wasn't at all into the girly stuff like choosing colors. I honestly had no idea what to say when people kept asking me what my wedding colors were. I'd already decided that my two bridesmaids would simply be wearing black cocktail dresses so they truly could wear the dresses again. I thought the whole colors/invitation thing was going to be a huge freakin' headache... until I found out that a friend from high school, Leslie Hamer has a really cool design company called Unless Someone Like You and she specializes in wedding invitations, etc. This meant we could find some cool designs that suited our personalities and we'd be supporting a local artist. Double awesomeness.

So we went in to talk to Leslie. We told her about the interests that brought us together as a couple: punk rock, tattoos, and Sailor Jerry rum (Sailor Jerry being a classic tattoo artist). Quickly, all three of us were rolling up sleeves and lifting up shirts to show off our tattoos. (Not something that usually happens with her clients, Leslie said.) Leslie said she wanted to come up with a classic tattoo design for our invites. Our colors were kind of chosen by default through this: bright blues and reds seemed to fit to classic tattoo theme.

To express our love of music, we went with Leslie's record player scratch off save the dates in our official colors:

Next up came the invitation design. Leslie had a great idea immediately. The only thing that changed was the text on the banners. At first it had our names and the place, but we decided we wanted a phrase instead. I was thinking of true love, but Scott thought up "forever" and we decided it was perfect:

Here's how the finished invitations looked. We also had a couple reply cards made for our elderly relatives who may not be into email, but we did an email RSVP to keep it low budget. Leslie was detail oriented down the return address label on our envelopes. (You can click to enlarge for detail, but please note I blurred out Scott's last name as I'm trying to maintain some semblance of privacy with my new last name. This way I have a private identity, his identity is private and should we ever have kids theirs will be too.)

I cannot praise Leslie enough because her design work snowballed into the theme of our whole wedding! When we decided to do mix CDs as favors (again, details on that tomorrow), she created labels and found cool cases for us:

When I enlisted my friend Ashley to help me find cupcake toppers and toasting glasses, she stuck with our theme. (Note the photo of the glasses are from the etsy seller's site because it was so hard to get a picture of ours, but ours are engraved with our names and wedding date. Also I wish I could get a picture to do the birds justice. They are adorable, an early wedding gift from Ashley and Aaron.)

Then of course it was important that Scott and I both dress in our own personal style. I had no interest in the long white bridal dress with all the ruffles, poofy stuff and veil. I wanted something that reflected my personal style of mostly vintage and babydoll dresses. I think this one which I found at Macy's (a Jessica McClintock, probably meant to be a prom or homecoming dress) was just perfect, all ribbons and lace, totally my thing. I also kept my bangs blue for my something blue. My something new was the dress, something old was vintage rhinestone hair pins, and something borrowed was my friend Marcel's ring. He passed away last year and I'd borrowed the ring for much of high school. When I told his mother the story about it, she gave it to me, but I still consider it borrowed and it was really important to have it with me to feel like Marcel was there. I wore it on a satin ribbon which I felt went perfectly with my dress.

Here's a good view of the dress from the back:

As for those of you wondering what happened to that cute but too short Betsey Johnson dress I was considering.... Bachelorette Party!

I must also give a shout out to my friend Jenny who did my makeup as well as the maid of honor's, the officiate's, and my mom's:

Scott's big thing was he wanted Adidas shoes, so he and all the groomsmen got them. He also decided at the last minute that he wanted to wear his hair in a mohawk, which of course I supported and thought it was extra awesome that his best friend decided to do the same. Here's the wedding party, we kept it small (L to R: Scott's sis Kelly, my bff Katie, me, Scott, Scott's bff Chris, my bro Dan):

It was the little touches that made the wedding extra special. Like my mom got all orchids (my favorite flower, one that Scott went out of his way to remember when we first started dating) for the bouquets and for bud vases spread around the place:

Last thing to discuss today but probably most important is the ceremony. Neither of us is religious. We're both atheist (though I am a practicing Nichiren Buddhist, but I consider that spirituality as opposed to religion... long story), so we decided we wanted a friend to marry us. We chose one of my dearest friends, Tai, who was my roommate at the time that Scott and I met, so she's known us longest as a couple. She's also atheist so that worked out (and we thank her for be ordained as a reverend online even though it goes against her beliefs) and we share the same politics, which is very important when wording a ceremony. For example, obviously she knew there would be no "obey" in the vows or "who gives this woman to this man" sexist jargon and she actually even changed "kiss the bride" to "you may kiss each other," pointing out that it was mutual as opposed to acting on the woman.

One of the biggest compliments I got about the wedding was how perfect the ceremony was, how it was unique and tailored to the two of us and it wasn't too long (I think approx 10 minutes). It honestly wasn't that hard to pull together. It took us three hours including going over it with Tai the night before to perfect the wording. We pulled from a book on wedding vows and rituals that my friend Amber lent me, a couple ceremonies that our friend Autumn (who is also an ordained online person) performed, a couple online resources and reworked stuff to suit us. I don't know why more people don't do that because it makes things much more personal. My cousin Becca and friend Amber also personalized their ceremonies and they were some of my favorites and my inspirations. Anyway I will share a bit of what we did.

Tai also has a huge musical collection so she found us the perfect procession music. The wedding party went down the aisle to "Untitled" by Ogurusu Norihide and I walked to an instrumental version of "Why Does My Head Hurt So" by Isobel Campbell. Here I am walking down the aisle with my dad (all the gorgeous black and white photography taken by my cousin Becca, btw):

Before our vows we did a unity candle ceremony because I love candles and light and think they are very symbolic. We combined a Wiccan candle ceremony (which spoke to individuality) and a non-denominational one and came up with this:

Stephanie and Scott, I would like you each to light a candle. These two candles are yourselves. Each of you is a whole and complete human being.

With these candles, we can see how to achieve a beautiful marriage. In your marriage, you will try to bring these lights, the symbols of yourselves, closer and closer to each other until they become one (we join our flames and hold them together)—one great torch of light, a radiant symbol of love, joy, peace, and harmony.

Yet it is vitally important to remember that there are always really two (we divide our flames) in a marriage, each with his or her own desires, dreams, and wishes. And these must be responded to with great love, compassion, and genuine tenderness.

Stephanie and Scott, I’d like you to remember when it was in your relationship that you first realized you were truly in love and wanted to spend the rest of your lives together. And holding that thought, together light the third candle without extinguishing the first two. Because in marriage you do not lose yourself; you add something new, a relationship, the capacity to merge into one another without losing sight of your individual self.

We know that it is the hope of your beloved, as it is the hope of each of us here, that you will continuously light this candle in love, so that there will always be light and joy and peace and harmony in your hearts and in your home.

We also wrote our own vows. Though um, we should have broken them down into smaller bits to repeat back after Tai because they got a bit unwieldy. They nearly brought both of us to tears, though I promised Tai I wouldn't cry because then she'd cry and the ceremony might end in disaster.

Anyway here are the vows as I spoke them, obviously Scott used my name and said husband instead of wife at the end:

Scott, I love you. I choose you as the person with whom I will spend my life. I vow to bring you happiness and celebrate the joys of life with you. I will trust you, respect you, and give you my heart for safekeeping. I promise to support your dreams and walk beside you offering courage, comfort and strength through the good and the bad. From this day forward I will be proud to be your wife and your best friend.

Here I am with Tai, who married us.

And I'll close for today with another one of my favorites from the ceremony that Becca took:

More tomorrow!

Title help for my WIP and a couple wedding pics

So I'm trying to come back to reality post wedding & honeymoon, albeit not trying very hard. I've been just kind of staring at the messy state of my house and my email inbox and wandering off to eat leftover wedding cupcakes, stare at new pots and pans, and daydream about husband. Next week I'll get productive again, I swear. And yes, productive will include blogs about and photos of the wedding. I have to organize those and wait for photos from the professional photographer. But for now I will share two of my favorite images. The first one taken by my cousin Becca and the second by our photographer, Brian Hacker.



I did come home from my brief honeymoon to good news though. My agent is ready to send out the partial of my next book! However it was titled Anarchists, Soap Stars and Regulars, which she thinks is a little too unwieldy so I'm trying to figure out a new title this weekend. If you have any ideas please feel free to leave them in the comments.

As I explained in a blog last month the reason for the initial title was because the main character Zoë is a very political teenager whose former stepfather Pete taught her about punk rock and anarchy when she was ten. Pete was her real father figure. Zoe refers to her estranged real father as the Soap Star "because that’s what he was—although the “star” part was debatable. He’d never won a Daytime Emmy or even landed a leading role on a well-known show like General Hospital. He played a brooding vampire bar owner on Passion Creek, one of those cheesy half-hour soaps that combines daytime drama with the paranormal." And finally, Zoë's mother Ivy is a bartender (yes, finally my bartender book!), whose regulars teach both Ivy and Zoë a lot about life.

The basic premise of the book is that every time Ivy breaks things off with a man, she and Zoë flee like the end of a relationship is a natural disaster. At seventeen Zoë has already lived in eleven cities in five states. On Sunday, August 28, 2005, the same day that a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans is declared due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Katrina, Ivy announces that they are moving from Seattle to Chicago. At first, Zoë accepts her fate because everything in her life is messed up: her anarchist boyfriend Gabriel broke her heart for the second time and her best friend, a homeless punk who calls himself Bender, kissed her. But after seeing a poignant interview with an elderly woman who had to flee New Orleans because of the hurricane, Zoë decides she needs to fix her problems in Seattle and claim it as her home. So Zoë and Ivy make a go of staying in one place, working through their various relationship issues (Can Zoë become more than friends with Bender? How will it affect Ivy when her ex-husband the Soap Star comes to town?), and trying to grow up together (Ivy is an alcoholic and perpetual teenager herself). Added to the mix is Jake, the son of Ivy’s best friend Hanna, who has come to live with them and he's dealing with anger issues and possibly bipolar disorder.

Umm yeah that is all I'll say about it for now and that's probably too much already. It's very much in the early stages (I have 50 pages and a synopsis that will go to my editor at MTV in hopes she'll like it enough to give me a contract before I write the whole thing), but hopefully that's enough to inspire title suggestions? Lemme know your thoughts. In the meantime I'll be listening to music looking toward lyrics and song names like I did with IWBYJR. Ugh, I wish good titles could always just come to me like the title of Ballads did. That book was Ballads of Suburbia from the beginning. It was perfect and just stuck.

Anyway, quickly for those of you in the Oak Park area, there is a local author reading tomorrow, an event I am hoping to go to if I can slog through enough post-wedding work. Kathi Baron is celebrating the release of her book Shattered at Magic Tree Bookstore (141 N. Oak Park Ave in Oak Park, IL) from 1 to 3 pm tomorrow, Saturday, October 10. Go if you can! Shattered looks like a great book for music lovers (about a teen violinist who runs away after her father smashes her violin in a violent outburst) and I can't wait to read it. Kathi will be on the blog in a couple weeks for Women Who Rock Wednesday!

Okay more cohesive blog entries with wedding pictures next week, I promise!

The Luckiest Girl Alive

Before I get to the blog, I want to say welcome to the world Brixton Marcel Jirkovsky-Gual! I can't wait to meet you and congrats to your mom and dad, Polly and Chris, and your big sis, Unity! Yay for friends with beautiful babies I can play with.

So tomorrow is my wedding day and I just wanted to post quick and say I'm the luckiest girl alive. I've had to kiss a lot of frogs. I've put up with a lot of bullshit: alcoholics, junkies, two-timers, abusive a-holes, but now I have my prince. Seriously as I was sitting on the floor assembling wedding favors in the middle of the night on Tuesday, listening to the mix CD we made for our wedding, I realized that I never truly knew what love was before I met Scott. Love is someone who completes you, who balances you, who knows how to give and take. Someone who is supportive and believes in your dreams more than you do sometimes. Someone who makes you completely comfortable and makes you laugh harder than you've ever laughed. Someone who is both lover and best friend. And Scott is all of those things. He is my perfect match.

No matter what happens, if my writing career tanks or doesn't become what I want it to be, I will always have my heart and that is the most important thing.

I love you, Scott. Thanks for all you've given me so far and I look forward to the rest of my life with you.