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Unpopular Library Opinions

Instead of working this afternoon, I researched this rant for you...enjoy! And get a fucking public library card. BPL eCard

Opinion 1) Throwing away books is not bad

Fact: libraries throw books in the trash. We try to sell them, donate them, give them away for free, and then we recycle as many of them as we can afford (yes, this costs money), and we throw out the rest. Deal with it. Because this outrages some people (especially geek culture) libraries have to use all these code words like “weeding” and “refreshing” collection. Bottom line: if you want the latest George R.R. Martin we have to throw out the old books that you don’t check out any more.

Alternatively, don’t read the latest bestseller, may I recommend The Sheik by E.M. Hull (1919)? A bestselling book that “crystallized erotic fantasies of the Middle East…around images of the desert, the slave market, the houri and the harem” (1). Sounds like a real page turner that’ll be good for your blood pressure

Opinion 2) Having a lot of books does not make you a smarter or better person

There are studies (2) that show a correlation between books in the home a children’s academic success. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Wrong. The causation relationship here is about money. Kids who grow up in households with more money tend to do better in school and those same households tend to have more of everything in them, including books (I’m not arguing that money is the only path to academic success or that school is a measure of intelligence).

The average carbon footprint for a single book is 7.5kg (3). Say you buy 44 books in a year, that’s the same as a flight from Boston to San Francisco, more if the books you’re reading are bigger. That’s a lot of dead tree you’re hording in your house. Also, if you hadn’t bought those books, you could have donated that money to charity AND made more use of your public library (which could then argue for more funding). Or you could have just saved those dollars, which is probably a good thing for your retirement and the long-term economic health of the country. According to a Book Riot survey (4), their readers (who we can assume read a lot), spend an adjusted average of $625 per year on books. If a 35-year-old person stopped doing that and saved that amount in a good savings account instead they’d have over $58,000 by age 65 (5).

3) There is more to life than books. There is more to Libraries than books

Maybe someday in the future when we’ve stopped being racist, sexist, transphobic, and ableist, we can devote ourselves to other causes. This would be mine: Libraries do not equal books. Libraries do SO much more than provide you with reading material. I hate it when folks say to me “Oh I love libraries” and then are shocked to learn their library offers something as basic as DVDs. The exclusive association of libraries with books is bad because it emphasizes the physical nature of the library. But you can use your library without going in person.

Anyone with a Boston Public Library has access to Overdrive (ebooks and audiobooks) and Hoopla (audiobooks, comic books, music). And FYI: EVERYONE who lives, works, attends school or owns property in the state of Massachusetts can get a BPL eCard online, for free, no questions asked RIGHT NOW (https://www.bpl.org/ecard/). So go do it! Use your goddamn library and stop spending so many resources on books that you don’t have time to read or don’t spark job. If you get a book from the library and you love, buy a copy for yourself. Don’t love it? Return it and get a different one. And while you’re at it, download the Hamilton sound track, a Wonder Woman comic book, and eat a scone in your library’s cafe while learning a new language and waiting for your free class on how to write a good cover letter. Ask a librarian to look up your local congress critter’s phone number and call and tell them how awesome public libraries are. Don’t tell them you love books, tell them you use your public library every week and mean it.

(1)  Garland, Sarah. "Ornamentalism: desire, disavowal, and displacement in EM hull’s The Sheik." Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers: From Charlotte Temple to The Da Vinci Code (2012): 197. NB: my libraries copy of this book has never been checked out.

(2)  Carroll, Julia M., et al. “Literacy Interest, Home Literacy Environment and Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschoolers.” Journal of Research in Reading, no. 1, 2019, p. 150.

(3)  Ritch, Emma. "The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle." The Environmental Impact of Amazon’s Kindle The Environmental Impact of Amazon’s Kindle (2009): PDF.

(4)  Schinsky, Rebecca Joines. “What’s Your Annual Book Budget?: Poll Results.” BOOK RIOT, 11 June 2014, https://bookriot.com/2014/06/11/book-budget-poll-results/.

(5)  Using the Bankrate investment calculator, estimating an annual return on investment of 6.5%. https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/investment-goal-calculator.aspx

[collegecate]

Night before the wedding

It's a good idea, I've always thought, to have a monologue in your back pocket, just in case. Mine is the speech Juliet gives the night before her wedding to Paris; she grapples with whether or not to take Friar Lawrence's portion and fake her own death. I picked it because I had to memorize a certain number of lines from the play in high school and it was a speech neither of the two film versions then available (Zeffirelli and Luhrmann) included, so my performance was not unduly influenced by something I'd seen on screen. But it's a tragic monologue because it's a wedding the speaker does not want to happen.

Juliet has made the classic mistake of trying to get married before the end of her play. That almost never ends well. Cordelia tries to get married first thing in Lear and ends of dead. Hero is framed for non-virginity the night before her wedding and gets left at the alter (fortunately, as a minor character in a comedy she survives, but she still has to marry Claudio, the douche who abandoned her). Juliet is involved in two marriages and dies twice, coincidence?

But on the eve of her first wedding night with Romeo, before she knows about the murder and strife, she has some better words:

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, And bring in cloudy night immediately... O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess'd it...so tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them.

Tomorrow...I'm getting married! 

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Post-Rehearsal/Dinner

Having never gotten married before I wasn't sure exactly what should happen at the rehearsal. However, I think we managed pretty well, clarified many things we didn't know we had questions about, and fixed at least one mistake. So: we rehearsed in an actual church, which is the closest my wedding is going to get to religion. The church had stairs which I failed to warn people about, but it ended up being OK. It was also cold as balls out and my in-laws are from Florida. 

The church sanctuary was a little different from the room where I'm getting married in that it had two aisles and the Lyman will only have one. We established walking order and who will hold the rings and about where folks will stand. There was also the fun figuring out how the readings will work (both readers will come up together and and hold the mic for each other). Also figured out how we're doing our unity ritual, more or less (we need a table or a chair to put the thing on). We also discovered that Jason and I had miscommunicated about what song I wanted to walk down the aisle to (I want "I love Rock and Roll" and he thought I asked for "Bad Reputation") and that is now fixed. Questions were asked and answered. Some people took pictures. 

The dinner afterwards was also fun. The restaurant had an elevator so the problematic stairs situation there was resolved. The bar area was pretty loud and the space we were in was only just barely big enough for us which was uncomfortable for some folks who decided to go home instead. But that aside, it was a great time. I'd never eaten there before but the food was tasty (if a bit cold, the kitchen seemed a bit overwhelmed). Their cocktails were lovely and inventive. And the bill at the end of the night less than half what places were quoting me for food and drink minimums. In some ways, it was a perfect experience. People ordered what they wanted and left when they needed to. No wrangling over the bill or throwing cash on the table. Jason and I regularly got up and sat at the other end of the table to see the folks down there (good practice I'm told).

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Get ready for spreadsheets

I used many spreadsheets throughout my planning process and I found them quite helpful. Frequently, in my life, I find myself creating a document and 9 times out of 10, if I make a Word-style document I end up wishing I'd made a spreadsheet. So here are my reviews of the most useful spreadsheets to have. I started out with a Google-made spreadsheet (no longer seems to be available online, or at least not the version I have) for some of my initial planning, but I found that most of it was in a format I didn't like. The best parts were the guest list and seating chart tabs. These I used and am still using extensively. But their vendor comparison pages were kinda lame and lacked the sort of detailed info I would want. 

So I made my own vendor comparison sheet. in this same category, a friend shared her photographer comparison sheet which was helpful in determining what categories to include. My homebrew sheet worked well for comparing venues, caterers, bakers, and hair and makeup. I used the sheet to track details about the vendor including location and price as well as my contact with them (when I'd called, when we were meeting etc). That meant a vertical column for each vendor and the categories down the lefthand side. That works well for sets with fewer than a dozen choices, but for photographers, there were just so many options that I had to use a different style and it ended up not being as useful. I made a page for florists, but I ended up not going with any of the folks I initially contacted. I was so sure I was going to do a DIY option for awhile (though that never made it into a spreadsheet). But I ended up just calling the woman I initially went with, liking her and not doing any more research.

For my final spreadsheet, the one I'm using now. I started with an Offbeat Bride template. They have many templates, but I was most interested in their day-of timeline...and then I added from there. The sheet I'm working off of now has five tabs: timeline, contact list (wedding party, parents, volunteers, vendors), stuff that needs transporting, a far too detailed transportation plan, and a final page with some info that didn't fit on another sheet. I've shared this workbook with the whole wedding party, my venue coordinator and the caterer and I think it will go a long way toward making sure stuff that needs to happen actually does happen. It took me a bit longer than I would have liked to get it together, but I'm quite pleased with the result. 

I also used my fair share of lists. I had a google doc I was using as a month-by-month checklist for awhile until it seemed that there was too much clutter. Then I made a new list a few weeks ago that only had the important stuff on it with no deadlines. I found that I constantly had to move the done stuff off or away so I could focus on the stuff that still needed doing. Finally, for the very nitty-gritty details: scheduling hair and makeup appointments the morning of the wedding, I had to use google calendar with different colors for each person.

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Ceremony Planning

I just have to say, I have the best officiant. I say this having been to some lovely weddings, including one that my housemate officiated. But Viv is the best. First of all, she did all the research herself and got her one-day license before we'd even really thought about how that would work. She told us more or less what we had to do to get our license, researched ceremony outlines, traditions, Shakespeare quotes...so many things. Planning the ceremony is one of the things that I knew had to happen but I figured could wait until later. Well, it's later now and I'm glad we've already planned most of it. Basically the only thing left is writing vows. But I know basically what's going to happen during the 30-40 minutes of the actually getting-married part. There will be music and ushers. Friends will do readings and Viv will say nice things. We will enact rituals and say vows and sign things and be married. Neither of us has strong religious ties so we're making a lot of stuff up, but someone suggested a really cool ritual that neatly solves a problem I only vaguely knew I had: it lets some of the guests who aren't in the wedding party participate. I went to a wedding that had a "ring warming" where guests pass the wedding rings around before the vows, but it felt a bit too new-age for me personally (it was great for my friends and really suited them).  I think this new idea really suits us; I won't spoil it here, but it'll be in the debrief. 

[collegecate]

Going to City Hall

In Massachusetts, you can file you Intent to Marry form between 60 and 3 days before your wedding Jason and I did it 16 days before our wedding day. You can go to any city in Massachusetts and it works anywhere in the state. i picked Medford partly because its close, cheaper than Somerville, less nightmarish than Boston city hall, and out of a sense of history. Like I said, it doesn't matter where i get the license, but I live in Medford and I like the idea of leaving historical clues for future generations. Obviously, things are different these days and my paper form with become digital relatively quickly and then it won’t matter where it's held, but as the woman in the clerk's office was filling out our form, I was struck by the significance of creating an historical document. 

I've done some minor genealogical research on my family and for some of them, especially the women, the marriage record is the most significant document I have about them. It lets me track their change in name, and the location tells me (about) where they were living. I learn their age. Barring some sort of dystopic future that I in no way wish on my descendants, people of the future will be able to learn a lot about me. But this record is still significant in a way that all my personal papers and digital fingerprint are not. Because it is a fact about my life that the state wanted to know about and my society values enough to record. a future person will see that I filed my intent to marry on October 27th and that the clerk wrote the day of the wedding in the margin. I asked that they include the III after my dad’s name because there were three men with that name and I wanted to make it easier to say this one was my dad. Jason was able to list the name of the man who raised him rather than his biological father as his parent. There are records that show his mother remarried of course, but this shows intent and human emotion, which is hard to capture with a form.

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Newspapers

At long last the newspapers are done! This ended up being a real headache but the results look really good. We got them from the Newspaper Club which is a UK company. They let you design and print these really cool papers on newsprint. They give you very convenient InDesign templates and lots of advice about photo editing. And these are things I have experience with and can do...but they take time. I also took on the role of journalist and decided to write the "stories" for the paper. This was foolish idea. I outsourced a very small part of the writing...but that had its own drawbacks. (People were actually reasonably prompt about getting me copy, I just stressed over it.) 

There wasn't really anything too complicated about making the paper, there were just a lot of little tasks and I couldn't get enough of a handle on what needed to be done to delegate (which is the story of this wedding in general). I knew that that final details would take a few days to finish so I set myself an artificially early deadline. But they took even longer than I expected; there were many edits and I had to replace some pictures, oh and I was doing most of this at work so I had to pause and do work-stuff a lot. I ended up not being able to submit the final draft until after end of business on Friday. I'd hoped to send it on Thursday, and then earlier on Friday, but I kept getting held up with other things. In fairness, I still had plenty of time, but I was sort of holding out the possibility of being able to reorder in case I made a mistake (like if I ordered the paper and it turned out I did it wrong and all the pictures looked terrible, I could make changes and reorder). So I was dissatisfied that I didn't order them faster...but they just arrived on Thursday (only 4 business days after ordering) and they look great. 

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Rehearsal Dinner Venue

Hallelujah! I have a rehearsal dinner venue. This has been nagging at me for awhile. I mentioned it not long ago but I'd made about zero progress on it and people were starting to get antsy. I was getting to the point where coming back to our house and eating pizza on the floor was sounding like a well thought-out plan. And then I made the error of contacting my mother. On the one hand, I am super grateful that I can go to her with problems and she will offer solutions, but she's also the person at this wedding most concerned with what is "traditional." And "traditionally" it's the groom's parents who handle the rehearsal dinner. So she wanted me to make extra special sure that she wasn't going to be stepping on anyone's toes if she took over organizing it (her idea was to go to Costco and buy a bunch of ready-made salads and eat that in a function room at the hotel). This led to me trying to explain what a pain it would be to get everyone from Medford out to Waltham and back....which got me thinking it might be easier to do the rehearsal at the function room at the hotel if we could get it...but we'd still need to find a way to get out there....anyway.

But, I had a few queries outstanding to some places and got a suggestion for another place to try so I decided to wait until the next day to make a decision. Previous attempts to book a restaurant reminded me that Davis Square on a Friday night is busy and it's not that unreasonable for places to require a minimum food and beverage purchase...I did think it was unreasonable to make that minimum $2000+. I called both places I hadn't gotten a quote from one gave me a number only slightly lower than previous inquiries. And the other place gave me a reservation. Just like that. For 20 people on a Friday night at 6:30. It may have helped that I didn't say the word "wedding" once but I don't think it made much of a difference because I told the other places I didn't need a private room, or passed h'orderves, or a special menu (they offered these things) we just wanted to order off the menu. So that's what we're going to do. And my mom doesn't have to worry and none of us have to clean up afterwards.

Of course, nothing’s perfect: there’s only one vegetarian entree and you have to go down a flight of stairs to enter the restaurant, and I’ve never actually eaten there but I think people will manage.

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Surprise party

Yesterday my coworkers surprised me with a "happy wedding" party. It was really nice of them and an almost total surprise. I was kinda wondering if they were going to do anything; we do birthdays and baby showers, but we didn't do anything for another coworker's recent marriage. Someone did let slip that they wouldn't be able to make it to my party...and I was like "what party?" But it was way fancier than I expected with sparkling juice and plastic champagne flutes. And my boss got me a classically ridiculous gag-gift with lots of confetti and puns. 

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Little Things

One of my fears about the wedding planning process is that there are all these little things that crop up at the last minute. And some of them are important and others aren't. And I worry that my defenses will be down and I'll just throw money at potential problems to make them go away. Here's my list of Little Things that still have to/probably will happen:

stuff to amuse children (aged 2-14)

emergency kits for bathrooms

are we getting a ketuba?

table numbers/signs

cards and gifts for helpers

what will the final catering cost be?...I basically have no idea at this point

what games will we have and who will orchestrate them?

need people to deliver and take away various things (cake stands, guest book, booze)

tips

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What I did for the Wedding today

Today was a wedding planning-packed day. I did many things, several with the assistance of Jason. Today we:

Filed our Intent to Marry at Medford City Hall

Picked out ties for Jason and the other people wearing ties

Dealt with way too much drama around the stupid wedding photo app that we impulse bought and the bachelor party

Finally finished editing the newspaper and set it to the printer

I got my eyebrows waxed

Jason is doing his bachelor party/gaming evening

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Seating Chart

I'm told this is a thing that some folks leave to the last minute, but I don't see how. I need to know who's seated where so I can make escort cards...which themselves take non-zero time so I can't imagine leaving them until say, the night before. I think that it might be a tad easier if you did a seating chart, but I prefer the individual cards. Either way, it's a puzzle: take about 75 people and sort them into 10 groups in three rooms. Make sure everyone knows at least one person (preferably more) at their table and doesn't hate anyone in the same room. 

At the walk-through with the venue coordinator and the caterer, they sold me on the idea of serving dinner in three different rooms. We were going to have to seat people in at least two rooms because the ballroom only holds 60 (+me and Jason). So that would mean 15-25 people in a side room regardless. I was trying to find a way to divide folks without making the people in the side room feel spurned. But with three rooms, it's a bit more fair. And there are more options for separating groups of people. I could put all the children in one room, for example. Or put game-playing people in one place. Or more easily separate people who used to be divorced/can't stand one another. 

So I made two different versions of the seating chart. Each had a different way of handling family seating and friend seating. After consulting with Jason, I combined family option A with friend version B and we have our seating chart complete. I picked my table names (based on Shakespeare plays) and assigned them to the various rooms. I decided to focus on comedies that people have heard of with the addition of a few romantic tragedies (Romeo & Juliet, Antony & Cleopatra) and then filled out the list with lesser-known comedies like The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

For the escort cards, a recently married friend suggested including a visual element as well as a number; people at her wedding found that very helpful. However, I don’t have the artistic talent to draw something for each table or the time to commission something. BUT, a couple of coworkers had a great suggestion: color-code the cards by room. Each of the rooms is painted a different color so there’s a built in color scheme to use. And once folks are in the right room, there will be a maximum of four tables to scan for the right name. I think I’ll need a sign to explain the different rooms since I’m not sure I can fit the directions on the “tickets” but I’m pretty happy with this solution. As with many graphic design projects, I started making it in Photoshop and am now regretting not using InDesign. But I think it will be OK; the folks at Emerson Print & Copy are miracle workers. 

[collegecate]

Bridesmaid Dress Saga

Brief intro: 

I've been very loose about what I call the folks who will be standing up with me and Jason on our wedding day. I'm leaning toward attendants, but I still call the thing that most of them are wearing a bridesmaid dress...so I'll just leave it at that for now. 

My would-be maid-of-honor had to back out at the last minute. I'm not angry, just sad that my good friend won't get to be at my wedding. Yes, we tried to find a solution, to no avail. 

Ok, that said we can move on the the story of The Dress. Basically, of the six people asked to be attendants, five are women and agreed to wear the dress. I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the dress, as you may recall from a previous post. I decided that I couldn't justify asking my friends to spend over $100 on a dress they'd wear once. eShakti seemed the way to go. So I stalked their site religiously until something I liked came up and hit the "go" button. Everyone bought the dress and it was great...except for a few things. The original design of this dress is sleeveless, and the fabric is a bit stiff, but it's going to be cold so several folks got sleeves added anyway. One individual found that the sleeves were so tight she couldn't move, so sent it back with intent to reorder without the sleeves. BUT, by the time she reordered, it had disappeared from the site. 

Enter maid-of-honor: she can no longer make it to the wedding BUT did buy the dress...in a larger size than the one now needed. She normally lives on the west coast but is out of town BUT was able to ask the person subletting her apartment to mail the dress to me so it can be altered in time for the wedding. As of this post, the dress has arrived and will be altered this week and all will be well.

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What I did for the wedding today...

Today I...

Waited in vain for the caterer to call me about booze. He’s missed the agreed upon window but perhaps will call later? I sent an email.

Wore my wedding shoes around the house to break them in.

Re-wrote the front-page story for the wedding newspaper.

Composed email to wedding guests with Important Logistics. 

Checked and double-checked my seating chart assignments

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Friday List!

I feel like there are a number of things left hanging from earlier posts, this is my attempt to provide closure on any unexplained parts. 

DJ: we finally have a DJ! He signed a piece of paper and accepted a check! Now I get to be mad if he doesn't show up! It only took three LARPs to do it (this is the place he can most reliably be found). Apparently we have to decide on actual music now or something, but at least there is a person to provide it.

Photographer: after making monthly payments for a year, we have completely paid off the photographer! There will be two photographers and I think one videographer. 

Cake: We went with Treat Cupcake Bar and are going to have a tiny cake to cut (still need to procure an instrument to do this with). It will have peacocks on it. Some of the cupcakes will also be shaped like peacocks, some will have badgers on them. Others will be purple or green, all will be delicious. People with allergies will be able to eat.

Food: Our caterer can handle all the things including sourcing decent local coffee, bagels, and all the booze. We're going to have a separate coffee bar with it's own bartender who can make fancy drinks and add booze to them. Vegetarians will have food; people with complex allergies will be put in touch with the caterer and fed one way or another. We will have signature cocktails, which will likely be renamed versions of a Revolver (bourbon, coffee flavor, orange bitters) and a French 75 (gin, prosecco, elderlfower/lemon). Ironic that both of those are named for guns (the French 75 is a reference to piece of WWI field artillery) so we'll need to give them new pro-gun control names. 

Flowers: I realize that I should have done a whole post about the flower situation since I've done a 180 since the last time I posted about it. Long story short: I'm not doing my own flower arrangements. I ended up picking a florist nearly at random from the Knot and I loved her. She's a bit of a geek, did a really cool installation at the MFA as part of Art in Bloom, and is generally awesome. She's going to do tiny bud vases and loose blossoms on all the tables and just going to strew flower bits around. I will have a big, organic bouquet with peacock feathers and fiddleheads and hydrangeas. I have a bunch of these cool lighted books for each of the table since I hear it's a good idea to incorporate light into your centerpieces. And this way we don't have to fuss about with bird cages or lanterns or piles of loose books with moss growing out of them (as cool as that would be).  Clothes: we have them! Jason's suit is at home, my dress will be collected in a few weeks. I have shoes, final accessories will be decided once my mother arrives with the family jewels. (We frequently do this thing where we bring several options to an event and decide who looks best in what.) Jason has a shirt but needs cufflinks, a tie, and handkerchief. I need a purse (probably) and something warm to wear over the dress. I'm not going to get some fancy fake fur, no matter how pretty, because it's just not practical. 

Other rando details: the escort cards are going to be like theatre tickets to different Shakespeare plays. The programs will be newspaper made by Newspaper Club. I'm still working on both of these projects. Apparently I need to have a place for people to put cards so I'm going to use this big hollow book with a peacock on it left over from a friend's wedding last year. I already have a guest book made out of a scrabble board and tiles. 

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Rehearsal Dinner

At least one list of wedding to-dos claims I was supposed to vet multiple rehearsal dinner venues and send out invitations back in May. As it stands...I know what day the rehearsal is going to happen. Originally, I had hoped to be able to rehearse on the Friday morning before the wedding, but apparently there's another wedding happening at our venue that day. So the only day we could use the actual location is Thursday morning...which doesn't really work for anyone but me and Jason. So the good news is we can rehearsal any time we want! Bad news is we have to find a place to do it. My library opens late on Friday (because it's a holiday) and closes early on Saturday...but it's looking like Friday night might be the best time so I need to find a location too. And a location for the dinner. I'm currently investigating, of all things, churches as a possible venue. I'd prefer something like a library meeting room, but those tend to be smaller and, again because the Friday before the wedding is a holiday, they're mostly closed. The micro cinema at the Davis Square theatre is another option. It costs money, but not a ton and not more than some of the other places I'm looking at. The dinner doesn't have to be near the rehearsal site, but it'd be nice if people didn't have to shlep too much. So if I end up in a Somerville church basement, chances are we'll have dinner in Somerville, or at least on the red line.

[collegecate]

Wedding Week Fun

In some books (fictional and otherwise) about weddings there is mention of "wedding week" which I assumed was the hectic lead-up to the wedding and/or an attempt to extend the one-day affair. So I basically thought it would either hectic or only for people who were doing an extended party, like activities for out of town guests, a large rehearsal dinner, bridesmaid luncheon, day-after brunch etc. But I'm just getting married and having a rehearsal dinner and two events do not constitute a weekend of activities. I figured the rest of the time could be a bit free-form and things that needed to happen would and no pressure on exactly when. 

Well I should have realized that was foolish. Because weddings are times when families gather and particularly for families that are geographically distant it's an opportunity not to be missed. Also, my parents and in-laws have never met in person. So: my in-laws want to do a gathering of all their relatives, hopefully for a dinner with me and Jason. They and my parents would also like to share a meal with us prior to the wedding, perhaps dinner. And we're theoretically going to have a rehearsal dinner as well. Are you keeping track? That's up to three dinners before the wedding (which is a Sunday), so that would mean planned dinners Thur-Sat...except several key players won't be in town until Friday or Saturday. So that means we have to push some of those to other meals, like lunch of Friday or Saturday brunch. And it means having to pick a time (and location) for the rehearsal ASAP.

So I think we're going to get the parents together for the first possible meal that they're all here for on Friday, rehearse that night, and let people do whatever they want on Saturday. For all I know, my family is going to want to do something as a group too and just hasn't told me yet.