Pocket Sized Pastor*

One thing that I tend to notice when it comes to wedding coverage is that the groom gets shafted when it comes to the “exercise” part of wedding planning. When I got to Barnes and Nobles, I do not see a book telling a groom to get fit on their wedding day. I do not see spreadsheets or website categories on wedding boards telling grooms to get in shape. The groom, it seems, is perfect the way he is. There’s never a groom who seems to think to himself that he should tone up, exercise, get in shape before his wedding day. And if there are, they’re pretty quiet about it. I don’t see blog posts about how much weight they’ve lost, which detox diet they’re trying, or how many miles they’ve run. And there’s no community rooting him on. He’s almost a silent, solitary individual, striving towards a goal of his own design. It’s very stoic.

And I find it to be a little ridiculous.

With less than 80 days left, I feel it’s probably time I announce my fitness goal to the world (the fact that I’ve become bad at this whole “blogging” thing is besides the point). The number 100 is in my mind. No, I’m not going to lose 100 pounds (if I did, I’d be near my birth weight). I’m not going to run 100 laps or run 100 miles since I find running to be very boring. No, my fitness goal is that I want to be able to do 100 pushups before my big day.

That picture above is me at a PP party late last year. A PP party is a Pushup and Poker party where people compete in pushups and poker. I won the pushup part (but lost a side bet later in the evening). I got my butt kicked in the poker part. I pulled off 53 pushups back then which was good considering that, when I got engaged, I could only do around 30. Last week, before a week of illness, I pushed that total to 73 which means I have around 70 days to increase that total by 27. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that. My pushup routine involves maxing out 3 days a week, followed by 2 – 4 other sets of 20-30 pushups each. It’s not the greatest system I’m sure but it seems to work. When my health is good, I seem to be able to push my total up 5-10 pushups every 2 weeks. So, as long as all the winter colds pass me by, I should be ok. However, the last two weeks have been rather brutal. I’ve been reduced to sitting on my couch and watching Doctor Who episodes. I’ve enjoyed it but it’s done nothing to further my goal.

I hope there are other grooms out there who don’t let only the ladies have all the fun when it comes to exercising or reaching fitness goals before the big day. And if you’re going to find yourself honeymooning in a place where you’re gonna have to take your shirt off, why wouldn’t you have one of these goals?

Okay, okay, I won’t look!

88 days to go and then I will finally be able to see what that dress – the dress that’s hanging in the middle of her bedroom – actually looks like.

Holy crap, only 100 days till the big day. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Time to freak out.

If you’re interested in reading what the my lovely financee has to say about our wedding, check out katethebride.blogspot.com. She’s much better at keeping the internet updated with our wedding related shenanigans.

A lot can happen in two months. I should have blog about.

Two weeks ago, the countdown clock for the wedding finally began to click. Four months until the big day. And now, on Christmas Eve, there’s only 3.5 weeks until I say I do. It would be nice to be able to say that I’m freaking out about it but I’m not. It would be nice if I could say that there was some big wedding drama that I could report but I can’t. In fact, the wedding planning has so far been going TOO smoothly. And since I stopped reading most wedding blogs due to a crimp in my schedule, I don’t really have enough wedding trends to complain about. It’s not as if things haven’t been happening – things are rolling along on schedule – but I have no real desire to complain about current wedding trends. For an opinionated fellow, this is a sign that there’s something wrong with me. Or maybe I’m just too excited for my own day that every other wedding in the world is being completely blacked out at the moment. That’s probably it.

So, in these last two months, things have been happening. A friend of my fiancee’s married in Massachusetts which means I should share those photos soon. My fiancee’s blog was picked up by The Knot. We’re currently in Florida, visiting her family and people are still wishing us congratulations on our engagement that happened a year ago. We’re gathering addresses to send out wedding invites, our wedding website is active, and we finished our registries (and added a new one). We’ve started discussing our ceremony and found our officiate (since our church is between pastors at the moment). Oh. And I keep eating my body weight in pie. I love this time of year.

My fiancee, last month, asked me to buy something for our wedding. While perusing the internet, she discovered ring dishes. Have you heard of ring dishes? At first I thought she said candy dishes but I was mistaken. I don’t wear much jewelry so the idea of having a dish to put your rings on never entered my mind. It makes complete sense though – where else would you put your rings when you’re not wearing them? So my fiancee gave me an assignment – find a ring dish where we could put our rings during the ceremony. There’s no need to have the wedding party hold them; we’ll keep are thin platinum bands in a little dish on the altar or the baptismal fount. Less fuss, no muss, and I get to pick the dish out. What could go wrong?

The problem with ring dishes (they can also be called ring keepers) is that most of them are incredibly cheesy. Having my wedding date on the dish doesn’t bother me – having some line such as “love never dies” engraved on the dish makes me kinda want to throw up in my mouth. I dislike the idea of having a Hallmark card on my dresser for the rest of my life. Don’t get me wrong – I like adorable and ridiculous things. The c word is part of my daily vocabulary. But even a sensitive fellow like myself can’t help but die a little inside every time he sees a Hallmark card engraved on a piece of pottery. So after countless pages on Etsy, I discovered that I’m not the only one who feels this way. In fact, there are some ring dishes that are exactly up my alley.

Bailey Bowls made these for me.

Aren’t they great?

I, of course, got these pre-approved by my fiancee before I ordered them but you can’t go wrong with little rabbits holding onto your rings. And what rabbit wouldn’t like holding onto two carrots? The bad jokes just write themselves.

Bridezillas Casting Call

Bridezillas is looking for more brides to act up on tv. I especially like the bit about “tell us why you’ll be a great bridezilla”. It’s taking pride in being a jerk. I know I should be against it but, well, it makes good tv as long as you can fast forward through the really obnoxious parts.

Disney’s Wedding Dress

There’s a new Disney wedding dress named Tiana after the princess in The Princess and the Frog. I really want to hate on Disney’s wedding dress line but I really can’t. They’ve taken the desire for some brides to be a “princess” on their big day and marketed something to that demographic. And the products that are offered are actually pretty good. Trendy but not too trendy, classic but not boring. They’re actually fairly legit. But where’s the line of tuxedos for grooms. I’d totally like to wear a suit of armor and ride a white horse into the chapel on my wedding day.

Chris Daughtry is, well, I dunno

While going through my celebrity blog feeds, I noticed a quote from Chris Daughtry : “The last thing I bought her was a really awesome diamond ring that should probably keep me out of trouble for the rest of my life.” At first glance, I thought that was pretty good engagement ring advice; buy an awesome ring now if you can afford it. Don’t be the typical guy and complain about it’s cost. But the more I thought about it, the more I realize that the quote is your typical guy behavior – it almost follows the Kobe Bryant method of resolving differences (i.e. the bigger the screw up, the bigger the carats). I know what Chris Daughtry said is probably a throw away comment, a joke, one of those unrealistic statements that are an exaggeration of reality, but it does illustrate an attitude that many men, and grooms, have. And that attitude is really not the best to have on your wedding day.

Luxury Bridal Underwear

La Perla will be unveiling a new line of luxury bridal underwear in November that is inspired by the 1920s. The underwear is going to be old fashion, modest, and expensive which means the hipster in you can go ahead and pick that up to feel special.

An ugly platinum wedding dress

This gown costs over $500,000 dollars and is ugly, ugly, ugly. It’s crap like this that gives the wedding industry, brides, designers, and our tasteless grooms, a bad name. I know that she gets to pick the dress but grooms, if you are involved in the bridal gown picking at any time, if you see something ugly, say that it’s ugly. Actually, be more tactful than that by picking another dress for your bride and emphasizing why it’s better – it shows off her figure more, make her look thinner than a rail, the amount of cleavage won’t scare your grandmother, etc etc – while, at the same time, thinking to yourself that her first pick was ugly. U G L Y.

White Wedding

Manolo for Brides basically explains how my bride thinks when it comes to our wedding day colors.