Volcanic Ash = Sad Face

I'll get this out of the way, it is really sad that there was a volcanic eruption and ash it bad for the lungs and not good for air travel. No one is happy that there is ash-air abound. I am sorry if you are stuck in ash-land. No, not Ashland, Oregon where the Shakespeare Festival is held(thanks, elementary school!), but ash-land. Note hyphen.

So back to being selfish.

Ash is stopping flights and that's making it hard to get certain flowers. Why do I know this? It's because I'm still going through post-wedding-depression and keep up with this stuff even after over 2 years of being married. Mr. GB forgives me, or rather, doesn't know I'm still doing this and would probably be horrified if he knew. Thankfully, he doesn't read my blog because he says I'm horribly cryptic and when I was traveling Europe with my landlord before we were dating, he read it and felt miserable. I'm glad I cut that off early. This is also why I can tell you really embarrassing stories about him. Because he doesn't know.


When I build my time machine, I'm going to go back in time and take this bouquet from Mrs. Cowboy Boot and then go further back in time to my wedding. It's a complicated plan, but it just might work...

So what do you do when your dream flowers are unavailable? You do what I did and just let it go. My favorite flowers are dahlias, peonies, and ranunculus. Basically, I like petals and I dislike seeing the... pollen parts. My floral terminology is WIN. I got married in October. Put those together and you have about as sad a face, but not quite, as you get with volcanic ash.

One thing I did, and sometimes this wasn't the best thing... but we won't get into that, is trust my vendors completely. When talking to my floral designer, and just sending her a couple of photos and really very little direction, I let her know that I was fully aware that my favorites were unavailable in October. I didn't push it, I figured that if she could magically make them appear, she would, so it was fine if she couldn't. I'd just check her off of my list of potential emergency magicians. Granted, I had the most awesome floral designer on the planet (not biased at all) but I generally feel that if you're hiring someone, you must love what they have done and you're not blindly picking people out of the phone book.


I'm still in awe of my bouquet and how in comparison, I look like crap. No really, that thing outshone me 100 times over.

The first time I saw my bouquet it was sitting in a plastic bucket, on the ground, outside the back door of the cottage. Talk about presentation. You know if you see your bouquet in such a flattering way and you still love it, it's perfect and going to be so much more awesome when it's not in a crappy bucket.

Moral of this story: don't worry if your flowers are not going to be available - whether that be due to poor timing (geez, you SHOULD have planned your wedding around seasonal blooms!!!) or flight-stopping-ash. Have a little faith, things will be ok. And really, you should be worrying about other things - like boob slippage and falling on your face at a roller skating rink one week before the wedding and being covered in bruises.

Why I'm a jerk-face

I'm laying it all out on the table. I've changed my engagement ring setting TWICE. Yea, that's right. I'm an insensitive, unsentimental jerk-face. Not a jerk, a jerk-face.

I know there are people who have the perfect ring, their dream ring, or it is just the best ring ever because it's their engagement ring. But what do you do when you don't like your ring, or maybe you just want to change it?


honey, I know I said I wanted cartier... but this is not what I had in mind.

I'm one of those people. I'm like the ocean - ever moving/changing and if you wanna be on it, you gotta roll with it. If you don't, I will swallow you whole and no one will ever see you again until your bloated body floats somewhere downstream. Me, master of imagery. Am I attached to my ring? Well, technically, yes. It doesn't come off because I have giant, mannish knuckles from years of martial arts and cracking them while drawing. Sexy! Kidding aside, I do love my ring as it is now.

There are people out there that would be really pissed if you didn't love your ring, get offended, take it as an attack of their love for you that you didn't instantly melt when you got it. Mr. GB is not one of them. While he IS sensitive and romantic, unlike me, and gets googly eyed and lovey-dovey at weddings and nearly cried at our wedding (which I mocked him for), he still agrees with my ring changing policy.

Here is my theory on the ring and why I'm so willing to change it.

People change. I happen to change more often and more drastically than average, but we all change. When Mr. GB met me, I wore crazy clothing from the independent fashion scene in Toronto, 6" platform boots from Japan, had a bevy of backless shirts and neon pink hair. (Yea, he still called me bland.) At some point I had over 20 piercings on my body. And that was after I started to dress like a normal person. I now wear a lot of Anthropologie and cardigans and don't have any more metal on my face. My style has changed drastically over the time I've known Mr. GB and I'm certain it will continue to change. Since all Korean women eventually go down this path, I'll have permed hair and be wearing a lot of St. John outfits very soon.

The ring may be a symbol of our love, but love isn't static. It changes and grows with you. Unless our relationship is exactly the same for the next 30 years, there is no reason for me to be forced to wear the same thing that entire time. No matter how meaningful, it is still jewelry. If instead of rings you received clothing for engagement, and I got an awesome bejeweled, puffy painted, acid washed jean engagement jacket in the early 90s, would I still want to wear it now? Well, probably, but you get the point. I really want a bedazzler and one of those laser school portrait backgrounds for photographic fun. But that's me.


hell. yes. should have had this at the wedding.

Mr. GB and I will love each other no matter how we change, whether that means senile, permed, wearing house dresses and shoving people out of the way to get on the train first so I can get a seat, he's going to still love me. He promised. There are people who don't agree and think I'm terrible, but that's fine. But changing my ring doesn't mean I no longer love Mr. GB, it just means I'm picky and bratty and he's willing to deal with it... I mean, um, that we love each other no matter what we're wearing.

Let's rewind.

Reading Wedding Bee always makes me really really friggin' guilty. Mostly because I know I'm still around and reading it and not saying anything. I'm going to attribute this to my life being so boring that only people who have absolutely nothing better to do would read it. I think between the choice of cleaning the litter box and reading about my day to day life, most people's cats would be very happy. You can use this as a threat if you want your SO to scoop poop "Don't MAKE me read her post aloud!".


ooo! treasure!!

I never shared my meeting Mr. GB story because it's boring. We went to college, I set him up with his last girl friend (we're all still friends), I moved to Japan, I came back, we got together. I didn't steal him, I didn't charm him, we just started hanging out when I moved back and it happened. In fact, I had never even considered the possibility of dating him - he was that ginger kid that would argue with me about Soul Calibur (grr!). He said I was 'out of his league' until he saw the kinds of people I dated and then figured I had no standards and to just go for it. Did I also mention that he thought I was BLAND? Yes, he used the word bland. All you guys out there who want to sweep a girl off her feet need to take a lesson from Mr. GB. He is obviously the pinnacle of romance.

And I never shared my proposal story because... well, he never proposed. *gasp* What?! Why!? Um... because as I've said I'm an anal control freak and I'd be damned if he picked a ring out for me that I had nothing to do with and I really really don't like surprises. And no, I would not have had enough tact to accept it as is and say that it was the thought and emotion behind the ring that counted. He knows better, so he had me make the decisions.

But how did we tell Mr. GB's family? We didn't, someone else did. The Fraud Prevention on his credit card called his father and said "hey, uh... we found this charge..." You see, the card he used was one he got in college that also had his parents' names on it. Uh... surprise?! Rather than being upset, his father was actually really happy... that he had such a great story to tell people about how he found out. We're just glad he didn't reverse the charge and opted to call Mr. GB first.

When my friends asked I told them "The best thing about this is I never have to date ever again." That's love! Well... at least it's honest. And isn't that the best thing about marriage? Finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is a completely secondary benefit to the fact that you will never have an awkward break up or that really uncomfortable first date ever again.

If I could go back in time, would I change things? Not at all. I'm not sure how many other people are as involved in the ring process, skipped a proposal, or if anyone's parents found out in a weird way, but it's very fitting for us seeing as we're both bizarre and nothing we do is conventional.
(Mr. GB claims that he was NOT weird until we started dating, that it was a necessary adaptation in order to survive.) Sure honey, you go on thinking that.