Pocket Sized Pastor*

And why? Because I have one from here sitting in my fiancee’s fridge waiting to be eaten. Eaten by me that is. This, of course, leads me to this wonderful creations : The cupcake tower.

Yes I am raiding MarthStewart.com.

It’s a good idea for a wedding cake. Cupcakes are small, cheap, and – depending on your guestlist – it’s entirely possible for everyone to get one and plan it so that very few leftovers are left. But this isn’t exactly a great idea for a wedding if you’re expecting over 250 people (and yes I am expecting that much – my fiancee and I are THOSE PEOPLE who have to select the final option on wedding size when it comes to online forms). And this won’t work for people who either can’t eat sugar or who aren’t cake people – which, sadly, is a large chunk of the people at our church who will be invited to the wedding. Which leads me to the idea of a dessert/cake buffet.

So what should the buffet have?

Doughnuts?

Meringues?

Mini Angel Food Cakes?

Mini Lemon Tarts?

Pies?

And then maybe display them like this.

Hmm. And since this is going to be a ‘light’ reception, and will consist mostly of standing-room only, by keeping the dishes to mini/hand held desserts, it’ll make it easy for people to not only eat, but also to keep it varied enough to accommodate all the different eating styles of people that will be in attendance. I had though, for awhile, that I would want a cake buffet but that’s not feasible because, if you don’t have chairs and tables, who’s going to be able to eat a piece of cake? But everyone will be able to ingest a small mini tart or cookie or the like.

Huh. I just came up with a pretty good idea. /me pats self on the back.

There’s two kinds of wedding photography: cheesy and uber-cheesy.

For some reason, everyone tends to be under the impression that their wedding celebration is the most unique thing since sliced bread. No one else in the world has ever been married before, or at least that’s the implication of their wedding planning. Even grooms and brides who try to totally “rebel” against the wedding industry with their weddings being at city hall and their reception consisting of a bucket of chicken are still playing into the uniqueness game. And this spills over into wedding photography. Every photographer has a look, a style, a desire to whitewash their subjects to the point where Casper looks more defined than they do. Every photographer also enjoys coming up with unique “poses” that they then inflict on every one of their clients. From hugging a tree, to showing off their garter, every photographer has the same general style of unique poses. It’s kinda obnoxious really and these poses are anything but unique. What we need is a revolution in wedding photography poses, where the idea of “different” really means different.

I’m glad McSweenys is starting to fight that good fight.

Bride and groom sitting in a makeshift raft. Both looking like scared Cubans defecting to America.

Groom as a used-car salesman and bride in the market for a fuel-efficient, reliable Japanese-made compact with decent trunk space. Groom is making the hard sell on a Suzuki SX4 Crossover. Bride is inspecting it, touching the instrument panel, showing interest. Groom explaining to bride features like the rear-glass demister, and making sure she knows that the heated outside mirrors are only available on the touring-package model.

Bride is crying. Groom is sitting at a table. In front of him on the table are lines of pure Columbian cocaine, a razorblade, and a tightly rolled $20 bill. Groom is wearing only an undershirt, boxer shorts, and socks, which have holes in them. Wedding rings are off‚Äîeverything was sold a long time ago to buy blow. (Stubble and lesions to be added via Photoshop.) Bride is a broken shell of a woman and is tugging on groom’s arm, begging him to stop.

Tall, dark, and handsome best man behind a bush with the bride, getting it on. Hands are all over each other. Bride’s expensive hairdo ruined by passionate foreplay. The two appear to have a history together, or pent-up desire for each other that could never be expressed because of the groom’s feelings. Groom peering angrily through bush with expression that says, “My new wife is cheating on me on our wedding day with my best man and I don’t care for it.”

I might have to do that Cuban one.

[Via Manolobrides.com]

Or at least everyone you think might actually pay attention to you.

It’s strange but this rather strange and vain filled post about shopping for an engagement ring made me realize that all of us males, for some strange reason, are bred with a specific competitiveness to not just keep up with the Jones – we want to blow them out of the water. It’s like we were never satified with merely beating our brother at Battleship – we had to do it without losing a ship and while robbing the Monopoly bank at the same time. Where that Wedding Bee poster talks about her fiancee’s connoisseurship, it’s really less about being a Or at least everyone you think might actually pay attention to you.

It’s strange but this rather strange and vain filled post about shopping for an engagement ring made me realize that all of us males, for some strange reason, are bred with a specific competitiveness to not just keep up with the Jones – we want to blow them out of the water. It’s like we were never satified with merely beating our brother at Battleship – we had to do it without losing a ship and while robbing the Monopoly bank at the same time. Where that Wedding Bee poster talks about her fiancee’s connoisseurship, it’s really less about being a connoisseur but more a competitive nature where even external praise is stiffled unless the ring passes some sort of bizzare internal scorecard that doesn’t reflect reality. It doesn’t matter if the ring is eye clean – what matters is that this fellow knows that under any specific otherworldly measurement, the ring passes with flying colors. I doubt they’ll ever run in the circles where that ring will be socially inspective at a party by a Jeweler but, in this guy’s mind, if that ever happened, if the jeweler ever hesitated in praise, this fiancee has failed. This is a perfectionism that lives in a faux world of confidence – and it’s one that, for some reason, all guys share. And if they don’t, they’re lying and merely living their life as a reaction against this quasi perfection. A guy living in sweatpants knows that he’s living in sweat pants and he might try to pretend that he doesn’t care about how he looks. But he knows, and he’s aware, and he knows when he’s somehow outclassed by another individual.

Which leads me to weddings and why, for some reason, the wedding culture in the US cares so much about this fake internal competitive scorecard rather than striving for an eye-clean wedding. Does stiving for perfection let vendors charge more? Yes. Does striving for “connoisseurship” lead to inflated egos? Yes. Is all of this, in general, rather bogus and unhealthy? Yes.

It’s hard to not look at wedding magazines, blogs, and communities and not realize that we all strive to rob the bank while playing Scrabble. We care less about the game that is being played and more about dominating every game that’s ever been played. It reminds me of a story about some villages where the laws were recently changed so that families would stop indebiting themselves to the point of ruin to throw a week long festival for the marriage of their sons and daughters. If they try to throw a huge party, they could go to jail. Even in places where the families lived on extremely low incomes, they had to one up their neighbors. The concept of eye-clean doesn’t exist. Go big or die trying. This works when you’re in a war but when you’re just getting married? Yeah, the logic doesn’t work so much.

So the trick is to stay eye-clean. It doesn’t mean you can’t aim for good – it means that you stop trying to aim for only perfection. And to do that, takes a certain amount of self-knowledge, research, and focus. The couple in that Wedding Bee post wasted months doing ineffective research in the search of “perfection”. She didn’t look at enough real diamonds to understand, until much later, what her choosen cut needs to be “perfect” and the fiancee let his connoisseurship blind himself to develop ineffective standards that damaged their definition of eye-clean. Did they end up with the right diamond for her? Yes. But could they have done it smarter and more effective? I think so. And my evidence for that is that if they had, she wouldn’t have admitted in “horror” of almost settling for a diamond “from a chain retail store”. Or blame her fiancee for having the audacity to have her help pick the ring.

And why does keeping things eye-clean matter to me when I already have the ring? Well, like that guy, I also consider myself a connoisseur of certain things – and that’s tasty cakes. And trying to figure out how to successfully feed 250 people on our budget while making the desserts spectacular even though I know I won’t get to taste any of them because I’ll be too busy walking the floor and saying hi to my guests, is probably the thing that’s taking up my mind at the moment. Honeymoon? Photographer? That means nothing to me until I get the food exactly right. But I gotta keep it eye clean. Eye clean, eye clean, eye clean. If I don’t, I’ll go mad. but more a competitive nature where even external praise is stiffled unless the ring passes some sort of bizzare internal scorecard that doesn’t reflect reality. It doesn’t matter if the ring is eye clean – what matters is that this fellow knows that under any specific otherworldly measurement, the ring passes with flying colors. I doubt they’ll ever run in the circles where that ring will be socially inspective at a party by a Jeweler but, in this guy’s mind, if that ever happened, if the jeweler ever hesitated in praise, this fiancee has failed. This is a perfectionism that lives in a faux world of confidence – and it’s one that, for some reason, all guys share. And if they don’t, they’re lying and merely living their life as a reaction against this quasi perfection. A guy living in sweatpants knows that he’s living in sweat pants and he might try to pretend that he doesn’t care about how he looks. But he knows, and he’s aware, and he knows when he’s somehow outclassed by another individual.

Which leads me to weddings and why, for some reason, the wedding culture in the US cares so much about this fake internal competitive scorecard rather than striving for an eye-clean wedding. Does stiving for perfection let vendors charge more? Yes. Does striving for “connoisseurship” lead to inflated egos? Yes. Is all of this, in general, rather bogus and unhealthy? Yes.

It’s hard to not look at wedding magazines, blogs, and communities and not realize that we all strive to rob the bank while playing Scrabble. We care less about the game that is being played and more about dominating every game that’s ever been played. It reminds me of a story about some villages where the laws were recently changed so that families would stop indebiting themselves to the point of ruin to throw a week long festival for the marriage of their sons and daughters. If they try to throw a huge party, they could go to jail. Even in places where the families lived on extremely low incomes, they had to one up their neighbors. The concept of eye-clean doesn’t exist. Go big or die trying. This works when you’re in a war but when you’re just getting married? Yeah, the logic doesn’t work so much.

So the trick is to stay eye-clean. It doesn’t mean you can’t aim for good – it means that you stop trying to aim for only perfection. And to do that, takes a certain amount of self-knowledge, research, and focus. The couple in that Wedding Bee post wasted months doing ineffective research in the search of “perfection”. She didn’t look at enough real diamonds to understand, until much later, what her choosen cut needs to be “perfect” and the fiancee let his connoisseurship blind himself to develop ineffective standards that damaged their definition of eye-clean. Did they end up with the right diamond for her? Yes. But could they have done it smarter and more effective? I think so. And my evidence for that is that if they had, she wouldn’t have admitted in “horror” of almost settling for a diamond “from a chain retail store”. Or blame her fiancee for having the audacity to have her help pick the ring.

And why does keeping things eye-clean matter to me when I already have the ring? Well, like that guy, I also consider myself a connoisseur of certain things – and that’s tasty cakes. And trying to figure out how to successfully feed 250 people on our budget while making the desserts spectacular even though I know I won’t get to taste any of them because I’ll be too busy walking the floor and saying hi to my guests, is probably the thing that’s taking up my mind at the moment. Honeymoon? Photographer? That means nothing to me until I get the food exactly right. But I gotta keep it eye clean. Eye clean, eye clean, eye clean. If I don’t, I’ll go mad.

Last night, I decided to get serious about what I’m going to wear on my wedding day. I know that it’s 14 months away but it’s never too early to nail down your outfit. Plus, it was the second day of the Barney Warehouse Sale and I wanted to get some on sale. Suits for 50% off? I’m there.

I’ve decided that I’m going to wear a suit at my wedding rather than a tux. For one, I hate having to return it after I’m married and not because I love tuxedos so much – I just hate having to go back to the store without a car. Also I love to shop so any excuse to buy new clothes is something I’m down with. A brand new, high end suit, that I’ll be able to wear for a long long time? YES!

However, I’m a weird size – a size that is popular in Europe and Japan but is not so popular in the US. I’m built with a thin build and I’m bottom heavy which means I’ve got some thick thighs, small shoulders, a flat stomach, and little bulk in my torso. I’m not weak, I have a gym membership (that I haven’t used in four months eep!), but I’m just not a big guy. Shirts only fit me if they’re extra-smalls with a narrow cut. It makes clothes shopping hard but I’m just doing my part to keep the average US BMI low.

So I hit up the sale to fine a large selection of suits in 36 S. Burberry, Michael Kors, John Varvatos, and more. My fiancee was with me and I tried a few on. My problem with suits (and I have 3 of them) is that the jacket tends to be a little long and the shoulders a little big. I’m cut like a european, not an American and my experience suit shopping reflects that. Even the Italian suits I bought are originally designed for big men. A salesmen took a look at what I was wearing, tried to help me find a European designer in the bunch (alas, they didn’t have one) and told me that I was probably out of luck. However, Barneys does make tailor made suits and he told me that I could stop by the 6th floor any time and I could easily get a Burberry suit for $895. And considering any suit I buy off the rack would require close to 100 dollars in alterations, that price is not that bad at all. But is it okay to wear a suit that costs more than my bride’s dress on our wedding day? You’ll be amazed but that’s never covered in the bridal/groom guides is it? It’s like the possibility that the groom would want to look spectacular and wear something designer never crossed their minds. So here I am, bucking the trends. It’s what an Engaged Groom is suppose to do.

I grew up with a mom who, when she signed her checks, wrote three names. When I was younger, I’d watch spend the time it took to write out the words. Now, unlike my father (or me for that matter), my mom has very good hand writing. You could actually read her signature. She spent time on every letter and it flowed together. At first, I thought nothing of the fact that she wrote three names when she signed her checks. I didn’t understand, or even know, that wives typically take their husband’s last name. I didn’t really know why they did that, what it meant, and why, in our society, that was the default behavior of couples. I did know that I didn’t know any other woman my mom’s age who wrote three names. I never asked her about it – I always figured it was just her thing.

Of course, as I got older, I started to learn what “default” in our society means. When it comes to marriage, women took their husband’s last name and it all harked to the idea that a woman left her family, her history, her tradition and joined another. At least, this was how it is done in the US and English speaking countries. And I understood that my mother had replaced her middle name with her maiden name and taken on my father’s last name as her family name but, and this always struck me, she never felt like my father’s last name trumped hers. Her last name wasn’t lost or replaced- it was merely moved and it was worthy of appearing along side of her chosen family name.

my future sister-in-law’s wedding

As I got older, I never had the desire for my future wife (whoever that ended up being) would take my last name. If she wanted to, that was her choice. If she didn’t, that’s fine too. If she wanted to hyphen it, great. It didn’t matter to me necessarily. I always felt that a name is merely a name – it’s who the name represents that matters. And, in fact, in the early stage of my relationship with my fiancee, I did mention my very opinion on this and mentioned that I could end up taking her last name. She was kinda thrilled about that idea, in fact, but that’s also because she’s very proud of not only her name, but also who carries that name – specifically herself, her family, etc. And her family name isn’t that popular and with only sisters in her family, there’s a risk that her last name would stop propagating (at least in the US) rather soon. She’d rather that continue and I think that’s a very good reason to want to keep her name.

So, great, I’d take her last name, life would be peachy. And since I live in a state where I’m allowed to change my name on my marriage license, there wouldn’t be any problems or hassle to get this done. We didn’t talk about it for a few years but, as I got older and the actual realization that I’m getting to the point where I could become a dad, I suddenely had second thoughts. Well, not necessarily second thoughts about me taking her last name. I had second thoughts on the name my kids were going to have.

And so I started thinking.

And thinking.

And pondering.

And then it hit me. My mother was always proud of her last name and she always included it in her signature. It was a part of her and belonged to her and it was worth writing. Now, I never received her last name but why didn’t I? Why is my name only three words long rather than four? In fact, who determines why we only get one last name anyways? I’m Mexican-American, dagnabit. Have you ever met a latino that didn’t have eight names? I thought not! Why shouldn’t my kids have the option of having 100 names?

And by ditching my last name, and not passing it on to my children, does that then disconnect them from my cultural heritage? Does our connection to the larger Mexican-American community disappear when their names contain no Mexican reference at all? Will they not realize where they come from and what that means? And will they, in a sense, be denied the inherent opportunity to embrace their heritage and to discover where they come from because I, as their father, made a conscious decision to deny them that? Will they end up suffering the same disconnect with society in general that I did growing up because my father made that very choice?

The name choice, in a sense, became less about me and more about giving it to the nameless future beings that, if God graces me, I’ll help bring into this world and raise. Part of parenthood, in my opinion at least, is giving them opportunities or at least chances to experience things in a different (and a better) way that I did. If my kids choose to embrace their ancestry, I want them to have that opportunity and owning my last name, and my fiancee’s, can be one way for them to do that. It doesn’t mean they have to but it’s there and ready for us and that’s something they should at least have, I think. Which, all in all, makes me realize that if my fiancee didn’t to keep her last name, I’d probably insist that our future kids still have it somewhere. It does mean that our kids will have four names, and, in our society, they might only end up ever using 3. But if that happens, that’ll be their choice.

So, in the end, our family name (legally) will be my fiancee’s last name. My middle name will expand from one name to two. Our kids will, hopefully, have two middles names as well with one being my “maiden” name. They won’t have two last names – this isn’t that great of an idea because then the order of the last names matters which means that my fiancee’s last name would have to be the first one in order but everyone in the US would assume that mine, which is 2nd, is our real last name and that’s not kosher – but they’ll have access to it. And in case they don’t end up being called Maria, Fernado, Jesus, Luis, Lucinda, Xavier or what not, at least they’ll have one name that’ll make applying for financial aid at college easier. Viva la acci√≥n afirmativa!