Pocket Sized Pastor*

Celebrity Wedding News

If you didn’t know, I pay attention to the world of celebrity gossip more than a my cat takes naps and since it’s summer, that means weddings are everywhere. Only two real celebrity worthy weddings to note right now though.

Last Saturday, Mark Wahlberg married his baby mama in a small ceremony in Beverely Hills. The bride wore a white, strapless dress Marchesa dress and the groom kept it classy with your standard tuxedo with shiny shoes. I think I like the bride’s hair here – the wavy and down look goes well with the dress but I couldn’t help but think that a little bolero or some small sleeves would work better with her frame. I could be biased though since, well, my lack of love for strapless dresses is well known. I also think Mr Wahlberg could have stepped it up a notch with his style choices – would it kill him to have a pocket square? Either way, after 3 kids, they finally tied the knot. Good for them.

Also, Milla Jovovich set her wedding date to marry director Paul Anderson for August 22nd. I learned she and her fiance had been engaged for six years which, well, is a lonnnnng engagement. I was about to go “whaa??” and then I realized that this will be Milla’s third marriage and that her first marriage took place a dozen years ago when she was only 16 (and also means she’s only slightly older than me). I think taking a long engagement when you’re approaching marriage number 3 is probably appropriate for some couples and considering my love for The Fifth Element, Milla Jovovich can do no wrong in my eyes.

DIY Menus

I don’t hate the idea of DIY Menus for your wedding. In fact, I’ve been wrestling in my head with how to use food labeling during the reception as a way to decorate the reception hall. My fiancee’s mother was very keen on the idea of keeping the fellowship hall at our church very plain and simple – let the wooden floors, the nave above the hall, and the people attending the reception be all the decoration we really need. I like that idea but I do feel the hall needs more especially since we’re serving a light dessert reception and candy buffet. With a lot of older members at our church, sugar free desserts and candy are a must and those need to be labeled as such. My recent googling of vintage wedding signs and my recent web design projects has also gotten my brain tied to the idea of fonts as visual cues of awesomeness. I’m not quite sure how to label the food at our reception (and I do refuse to use the phrase “love is sweet” at my candy buffet) but hopefully I’ll figure it out soon. I have nothing but time currently.

Wonder Woman and Superman get married

It’s like the end of Kingdom Come became a reality but I’m not sure how I feel about Spider-man showing up at a DC Comics wedding. Either way, I’ve noticed that the costumed guests, bride, and groom, did a good job with the, um, bulge problem the comes with wearing superhero spandex. And, yes, I do have personal experience with that and no, I can’t tell you why I have that experience. If I did, I would ruin my secret identity and put my loved ones at risk. *cue dramatic music here*

I hate weddings : 10 things to make me love a wedding

My fiancee and I have actually met the guy who runs IHateWeddings.com and so when my fiancee blogged about his recent post, I knew I had to share it here. I agree with everything on his list of how to make him love a wedding. It barrels down to being thoughtful of your guests. I think most couples planning weddings should think about that more than they do and this goes across all wedding budgets, traditions, and ideas. To be completely honest, I prefer larger weddings than smaller ones. I like weddings at churches and places of worship rather than at the courthouse or a restaurant. There are plenty of people who aren’t like that however and I respect that (for some reason, a lot of my social circle enjoys using the “weddings are so expensive for guests so we’re just getting married at the courthouse” as justification for their real reasoning being “we just want to get married at the courthouse”). But any wedding ceremony which is an honest reflection of the couple and their guests is fine by me. And I’m sure someone is gonna connect at my wedding because I’m pretty fabulous, my fiancee is pretty fabulous, and since we’re a fabulous couple, we have some fabulous friends. If my wedding doesn’t increase the amount of awesomeoness in the world by at least 4%, I will be disappointed.

Alberto Cutie’s Wedding is in People En Espanol

Of course is it. There are even honeymoon shots too. The Roman Catholic Priest marrying a woman and renouncing his orders is an old story. It’s happened in the past, it happened to this famous latino tv personality, and it’ll happen in the future. I don’t fault the priest for falling in love – I’m Lutheran after all – what I fault the priest for is being a complete patz. He always “knew” he was going to get married? The wedding was the wedding of his childhood dreams even though he didn’t think about the priesthood until he was a teenager? It was his teenage self that really twisted him away from his “true roots” which was to be a married man? Please. I’ve heard excuses like this before but I’ll never buy them but it does reveal why his personality is perfect for tv and while he’ll be back before you know it.

A Katamari Wedding

I’ve never played the game but my roommate has so I had to share this Katamari wedding with her. Her first response was “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and then was followed with a “What? They only did the head pieces? Why not the whole body suits they wear in the game? Argh!” This just goes to show you that if you’re going to go all out, you need to go all out. Doing only the headpieces doesn’t cut it in the modern world.

UK Quakers are going to start allowing gay marriages

The title pretty much says it all.

Divorce Dance

I didn’t link to the marriage wedding entrance that everyone else did. I will link to the divorce dance parody though.

Don’t punch your roommate at your wedding

I know that the urge to smack someone at your wedding is probably more prevalent than we’d like to believe (I do watch Bridezillas) but don’t be this guy. There’s no need to spend your wedding night in jail.

Some people rent tuxedos. Some people have the money to go out and buy a brand new designer tuxedo. Some people, ditching the tux tradition, go out and buy a suit. I, myself, had debated about getting a suit – a Burberry suit made-to-measure from Barneys – but, due to my continuing unemployment, I had to put that last idea on hold. Instead, I walk by my gym a week ago and noticed that the tuxedo rental store (which I always thought was sketchy and lame) was going out of business. They were closing the store and they had a sale. At first, I just noticed that shoes were on sale for $20 a pair but, come on, who wants to own shiny shoes? I wore the same kind of shoe when I was in 9th grade Marching Band and I hated them then and I hate them now. They’re childish. A few days later though, there was a sign written on scrap paper and pasted to the window. It said $90 gets you a tux, tie, vest, and shirt. Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.

In fact, I totally thought it was joke and that the place wasn’t going to have anything that I want that I waited to even tell my fiancee about the sale. She went to the store after the gym just to do a quick run through the store. The guy asked her what size of a tux she was looking for. She told them my size. The sales clerk (and old greek guy – this is Astoria after all) said “You’re such a big girl. How did you end up with such a little man?” Customer service, they don’t have it.

Anyways, we both went back the next day. I walked in, the guy looked at me and asked me what kind of tux I was looking for. I said simply a dark grey tux that fit me. I didn’t expect any contemporary styles – this isn’t the type of place you go for a cool look. They only stock Brandon Michael tuxedos and they all looked slightly old (which might be why they went out of business). 95% of the stock was black tuxedo. The sales clerk figured it would be tough to fine my size so he went towards the back and dug around. He came back with two tuxedos to try. One was a 36 and hung on me like a smock. The next was just labeled small. I tried it on and looked in the mirror. It fit. It really fit. So I bought it.

I own a tux

The pants fit around the waist (when they told them I was a 27 inch waist, they acted as if no pants were ever made to fit such a waist) but they’re way too long and have way too much fabric in the leg. I like a slim, skinny leg which, sadly, I can’t seem to find in standard suit pants but that’s something I can get a tailor to fix. The vest is black satin, the tie isn’t the skinny tie that I like (I can buy that separate) and the vest, while it fits, has to be pulled so tight that the straps in the back poke out and make it appear as if I could be an extra in Total Recall. And the shirt, while it fits around the neck perfectly (14/14.5 for the win), there is so much fabric in the shoulders and arms, it looks like I’m a pirate, or, even worse, that I’m pretending to be a pirate. I’m not that big of an internet dork. Ugh. Part of my suit/tux shopping dilemma is that I want the clothing to reflect on the truth of how I look – a small, thin, in shape d00d. You would think that would be easy to get in NYC but it’s really not. I probably should eat more chips.

Note to self: don’t wear a tuxedo on the hottest, most humid, and ugliest day of the year.

The tuxedo isn’t perfect though. I wish the jacket was just a little shorter in length which I might get tailored if possible. But considering the tuxedo rental I had in mine would cost around $200 (including tax), you can’t beat a $90 dollar tux. It’s perfect. It’s so perfect, my fiancee’s dad asked my fiancee to pick up a tuxedo for him which she did because she’s a good daughter.

So I have a tux, my fiancee has her dress, and we’ve got a cake stand. This wedding is really starting to come together.

I really have no idea why I love cake stands but I do. If I could, I’d put half a dozen around the house and I’d use them to store non-cake related things. An Iron Man statue, a place to put my keys, maybe even use one to display my award winning peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right before I eat them. I think cake stands are the perfect way to showcase anything that you own or are about to devour. I’m a giant sucker.

So I mentioned a few days ago that we picked out our wedding cake – i.e. the Sun from Costco. Well, to be honest, our plan is to serve Costco sheet cakes at our wedding but we’ll really cut a smaller cake that we would display with a lovely cake topper on it. But what cake stand would do? What cake stand says what I want to say at the wedding? Which cake stand is really me?

One that’s on sale apparently.

Birds on a Wire from Fishs Eddy

I love Fishs Eddy, I’ve mentioned them on this blog several times. They make perfect stuff. Late Sunday night, I went to their site and noticed they had a sale. The cake stand is usually at 32.50 but was on sale for 13.12. I convinced my fiancee to head into Manhattan and check it out (because I didn’t want to spend the 4.50 necessary to take the subway into town – what can I say? I don’t have a job and I’m cheap and my fiancee is way too nice to me). She called me up from the store and asked me how much did the cake stand should cost. I told her 13. She said it was listed for around 8 dollars. There were only two left and one was marked with the price on it. I told her to get it and she did.

Detail of the Birds

It’s perfect. A small 8 inch white cake will sit on top and a custom made cake topper will stand on the cake. It’s going to be great.

And it’s this one.

Well, except for the letter 2 and the Happy Birthday message. Our cake won’t have that but it will have a happy, smiling sun. Oh yes. Oh yes it will.

And it does come from Costco.

Today at church, my fiancee and I hosted the fellowship after service in honor of our beloved friend Amanda who is moving to Chicago next week. Since we needed to get supplies for this special day, we picked the hottest and most humid and downright icky day of the year to walk the twenty of so blocks to Costco. We met up with my roommate who decided that she needed to buy 20 chicken breasts, 20 lbs worth of strawberries, and enough black tea to fill up Boston Harbor. I brought along my fiancee’s busted granny cart and we all went shopping. I had a great time.

This is something people who have cars and who live in the suburbs don’t truly understand. When you live in a shoebox with a neighbor who is practices opera late at night and another neighbor who believes that the three foot by three foot piece of dirt in front of your house needs a cactus on it, Costco is a wonderful thing. Buying peanut butter in bulk is not something us New Yorkers get to do very much because our supermarkets are smaller than our apartments. Just being able to buy a gallon of milk can be quite a chore especially since our milk has a special sell by date – our milk goes bad before yours do. Ugh. It’s tough to be us.

We ordered the sun cake and got a vanilla cake with vanilla cheesecake mousse filling and cream cheese icing. That was the one flavor we had not tried from Costco yet. Our church likes to consider ourselves the party church and so that means we eat a lot of cake. No where did Jesus say that you can’t spread the Gospel in between bites of deliciously sweet pastry goodness. Our guest of honor did the initial cake cutting at the start of fellowship and we dished out the cake.

It was delicious.

So my fiancee and I decided that this will be one of our wedding cakes. We’ll order three more – one with a princess on it, another with a rainbow, and the last one with the balloons. I’m not sure they’ll fit on the cake stands I want from Fishs Eddy but I’m okay with that. At $16.99 a sheet cake, I’m more than okay with that.

Man. I am hungry.

Alternative wedding ideas

Wisebread.com has some alternative wedding ideas on how to save money on your big day. And by “alternative”, what it really is is an article about one bride and groom decided to do for their day and they want you to copy them. No real ring, by a used dress, wear crappy shoes, don’t register for gifts (which is fine for this couple because the bride is Chinese and money is given at weddings – not gifts), get married at city hall, don’t use a DJ but enlist the help of your friends, yadda yadda yadda. Basically, these are the same ideas I’ve heard a million times so there’s nothing new here. I’d really like to say that the real meat behind this story is saying it’s okay to have the wedding you want to have but I don’t think that’s it. Rather, it’s just reporting on his bride’s big day.

Get Married magazine

You’ve already seen the video and if you’re anything like us, your family members and friends have started to bug you and say you need to do something like that too. My bride responds perfectly to those people. A groom and bride can do what they want, however, what is with those guys suits? I think I just hate that color of suit or tux or whatever they’re wearing. I know it’s the summer but, come on, there’s very few people who can pull off that color. Also, I dislike the cut immensely – they look like squares to me. People watch that video and notice the dancing. I watch that video and I judge what the guys are wearing. That is why my wedding will not be a show.

Illustrated Invites

I like the idea of illustrated invites. If I was any sort of graphic designer, I might do something like this. The part I really like, however, is the “Declines with No Regret” option. Perfect.

Okay, I agree with the Knot. This is genius.

It reminds me of Harry Potter and the moving photographs. I know I know, I’m talking about Harry Potter and, at one point, I was very anti-Harry Potter. But times change and I grew up. So this photobooth idea is where a backdrop with fake photo frames surrounded by real family portraits so that every picture taken is like being part of the family. AWWWW. It makes the old grumpy punk in me get misty eye.

But this is when the old grumpy punk in me starts getting creative. I would allow only family portraits in my photobooth backdrop to be embarassing family photos. Pictures of me in glasses and awful 3rd grade hair? Check. The pictures of any of my family members drunk and in a pose ala Jon Gosselin’s new girlfriend? Check. Photos of my stylish aunts wearing shoulder pads bigger than the current linebackers of the Denver Broncos wear? Check. Muahahaha.

It’s amazing I’m not single, isn’t it?

I think a Marc Jacobs accessory would be awesome for my wedding day. Le sigh.

A commenter brought up a good point a few posts ago – he mentioned that us grooms-to-be tend to not have any focus when it comes to the Bridal Industry. We’re told where we have to stand, what kind of suit or tux we’re suppose to wear, and we’re also told what “entertainment bar” we’re suppose to go to on our Bachelor party but we’re ignored when it comes to the nitty gritty of the actual wedding process. The current trendy advice given to grooms-to-be is to look at the wedding day “things”, find one or two that you like, and take those over from your bride-to-be. If you like to take pictures, find the photographer. If you like to eat cake, pick the cake. Then, once you’re done with your little bit, go ahead and pat yourself on the back while your bride showers you with love, affection, and thanks for helping her out in one small way. After that, you go play a round of golf or fire up the video games and let your bride stress out over escort cards.

Sure, there are plenty of brides-to-be who, when it comes to the wedding, want complete control. They’re stressing themselves out because they’re managing every aspect of their weddings. They’re even taught that they SHOULD be this way. I’m not here to argue what’s right or wrong about that – in the end, society teaches us a lot of things and gives us a lot of social and cultural baggage that can be either good or bad – but why, through the entire wedding day process, are grooms given the advice to merely only take care of one thing? Why, on our wedding day, are we patted on the back for taking a very minor role in its planning? That’s like patting us on the back for taking out the trash or cleaning up after ourselves. Why cheer something we should be doing anyways?

So I’ve thought about ways for a groom, for myself, to help my fiancee through the wedding day planning thingamajig. I consider myself engaged in it – though I sometimes feel I could be doing more. This entire blog is devoted to me trying to figure out weddings and what my bride and I are going to have at our big day. I’ve looked at my own wedding planning and seen how grooms-to-be react to their own wedding planning, and I think I’ve come up with an easy trick on how to help the process go as smoothly as possible. Besides not being the idiot who drags his feet and acts like getting married or having a wedding is the worse thing in the world, the one trick is to merely never say “I don’t care” even if you really “don’t care” about something.

It doesn’t mean you have to care as much as other people about chair covers or the food or whether you have napkin rings at your reception. If it doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter to you and there’s nothing wrong with that. But saying “I don’t care” when your bride-to-be asks you your opinion is the dumbest thing in the world you could possibly say. Why? Because if your bride-to-be is asking you a question or is pointing something out to you, she obviously does care about it to some degree. It matters to her. You might not think it’s important but it’s obviously been brought up. Saying “I don’t care” does not typically mean that you don’t care – it is one of those phrases that implies that the other person shouldn’t care either. And when your bride is asking for your opinion, saying “I don’t care” is almost like saying “This is unimportant. Why do you care?” and I have never seen anyone, when confronted with that way of thinking, ever not get more stressed out, angry, or upset than they were before.

So how do you not say “I don’t care”? You can’t merely substitute another phrase for it. Rather, you have to engage in what’s going on a little more. If your bride asks your opinion on red tablecloths or white for the Guest Book table and you don’t have the foggiest feeling either way about which one to pick, actually pick one and give a reason why. “I like the red one because it matches my college colors” or “I like the white one because it reminds me of ice cream”. And if she decides later to go with a purple one, that’s okay. You weren’t emotionally invested in it to begin with so if the decision changes later, it’s no skin off your back.

But, and I can already hear you grooms saying this, “if she’s not going to follow my opinion, than why should she ask in the first place?” That’s a valid point and I know a million grooms who have felt this way at one point but I’m going to break it down for you right now and say that you need to man up and stop being a child. Being listened to does not mean being followed. Stating an opinion about something you don’t care about doesn’t mean that you get to care about that opinion later. If you actually did care, you’d be more insistent on the decision making process and you’d make sure that the purple polka dotted tablecloth would be ready to go on your wedding day. If you care, say it. If you don’t, state a preference anyways because when you do that, what you’re really doing is telling your bride (or your wedding planner or whoever) that you value them and their spending the time and effort to think about something that you aren’t thinking about. And then you can go back to watching the Denver Broncos lose 10 games this season and realize that you really should have made that tablecloth blue and orange. Ah well. When you renew your vows, you can do that then.

Desperate Brides

At least one of them have sleeves though I can’t really say I like the show. [faded youth]

Lupe Vélez Mantilla Gallery

Lovely. [tex[t]-mex]

Lingerie Shower Invitations

Women running around in their underwear, drinking champagne, and singing. Cable TV doesn’t necessarily lie to me now, does it? [bridal buzz]

Escort Cards

I still have no idea what Escort cards are, why they’re used, and what purpose they serve, but I like the ones with the knights and horses on them. [wedding bee]

I Do Temporary Tattoos

Silly and fun, temporary tattoos are the way to go. But I warn you, based on my recent personal experience with blue cupcakes that used too much blue food coloring, just be careful. It’s unnerving seeing things that are blue and green that shouldn’t be blue and green. [manolo brides]