I Love you, but I don't think so, Part I

As any married couple knows, numerous decisions need to be made when planning your wedding and I think everyone righfully tries to add their own spin on things to make the big day extra special so it encompasses a little bit of their personality. We’ve been working on a little bag of tricks of our own and as it turns out, all these ideas are not deemed acceptable by society. Some of my rejected ideas can be seen below.


Do we really need invitations to resemble a trapper keeper complete with scratch and sniff stickers? My vote is to wrap all of our invitations in candy bars a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be distributed throughout the continental US. Even our families would not be guaranteed an invite! Of course, the ceremony would probably end up being filled with 10 year olds and resemble a Chuck E Cheese birthday party, but who else would have an animatronic band led by a giant rat?

We attended Bethany’s college friend Holly’s wedding over July 4th weekend and she and her husband Matt came up with the cool idea of providing a cookbook of their favorite recipes to everyone in attendance. This gift made be jealous and I couldn’t steal it so I proposed providing a copy of the Karma Sutra cookbook to all of our guests. What better way to celebrate the unity and love of a couple than by providing ideas for people after six hours of intense drinking. Ride ‘em reverse cowgirl!!!

I feel the wedding party introduction at the reception should be a fun procedure and I have seen some creative presentations here. Unfortunately, my idea of using the Family Feud theme song and having all the pairs leaping to their feet out of quirky positions from the darkness has been rejected. I would like to start an email campaign for all those who want to see me come into the light holding a fishing pole attached to Bethany’s dress.


Initially, I found all these ideas to be exciting, unique, and welcomed by all of our guests. I quickly learned I’m a freshman in this whole wedding process and I need to pick up by game, get serious, and educate myself on what will be acceptable for this occasion. Lesson one: Don’t trust what these internet order brides tell you over email because they are just trying to get into the country.

The Running Man

It isn’t often my coolness comes into question, but last week a flicker of doubt required me to prove I can sit at the cafeteria’s best lunch table. At a moment like this I flip up my collar, put on my sunglasses, add a swagger to my step, and whip out my laptop to demonstrate the super sweet Excel program I wrote to monitor the budget for our wedding. Multiple spreadsheets, interactive formulas, and if/then statements are just some of the exciting features getting me to the table where Dungeons and Dragons remains an exciting Friday night. Ladies, please try not to email me all at once because it may trigger my chronic nosebleeds.


My overstated introduction describes how I collected data, plugged in some numbers, and came to the realization weddings really do cost an eye popping amount of money. In the last few years, I’ve talked with people planning their own “big day”, but the figures did not register as a reality until I sat down to look at how our plans related to the available funds. Our families have prepared for this day and we plan on contributing ourselves, but we’re not comfortable demanding our parents provide us with an open checkbook so we can have a one-day anything goes party. I have heard talk of it’s the most special day of your lives and you should do whatever it takes, but the accountant bug in me has problems creating debt and preventing us from making important financial decisions in the coming years because we had to have live peacocks in attendance.


I have come up with the perfect solution to the problem and it come from the whimsical mind of Jennifer Wilbanks. I am going to become the Runaway Groom creating a national mass manhunt after I vanish on a jog to our thirteenth wedding shower by hopping on a bus headed for Des Moines, Iowa. When my family releases a creepy file photo of me which elicits no sympathy because everyone can look into my enormous, glassy eyes and clearly tell no one is home, I will call from my final destination of Eugene, Oregon claiming the Keebler Elves kidnapped me only to change my story immediately after it appears on CNN to say I have personal problems having nothing to do with my impending marriage and I will need $500,000 to tell the story how I scammed America into thinking I had been kidnapped so I could get money to pay for my wedding. Oh yeah, and an interview with Katie Couric wouldn’t hurt either.

If that doesn’t work, I guess Bethany can always convert to Scientology and pretend to be engaged to Tom Cruise.

Moving on Down…Stairs that is

We apologize for the blackout in postings, but Bethany and I have spent the past week packing our belongings and enlisting our friends and family to help us move into our new apartment. As most of you know I lived in my current home for the past six years and have shared some good times with my roommates and friends throughout my mid to late twenties, but now it’s time to move on…to the first floor of my two unit house. After a brief search throughout the Boston area and some fortunate circumstances involving the current couple deciding to break their lease and buy a condo, Bethany and I decided to jump at the opportunity to stay at my current address. The apartment offers a yard, driveway, plenty of storage space, and landlords I already had a great relationship with. We both technically do not have to move until the end of July, but since we both never have enough energy for the rest of the month after the annual July 14th Bastille Day celebration (Vive Gérard Depardieu) we decided to kick things off three weeks early.

The weather proved to be cool last Saturday and we could not have asked for a better day to start the process. My roommate and longtime friend, Nick, also would be moving out to the new condo he recently purchased with his girlfriend, Katie, but the potential stories for the double move turned out to be pretty slim. I think the highlight for the day involved Nick, Brendan, my brother Chris, and myself running a couple of truckloads over from Bethany’s place and Nick decided we needed to challenge ourselves by lowering her bookcases off of the second story deck to see if a ground team could deliver them to safety. Of course Team Dork prevailed and we decided to celebrate by having Flavor Ice Brendan opened by hacking off all of our tops with a meat cleaver. By the end of the day we were all exhausted, but most of our heavy lifting had been completed on the first day and we felt pretty good about ourselves going into day two.

The second day would not only be a moving day for Bethany and myself because both of our parents would be coming to see the apartment and since her parents live in Hotlanta (because her mom is a backup dancer for Ludacris) this would also be the face to face kickoff meeting for the wedding. My parents arrived first and I requested my dad’s assistance in moving my desk which would be my final two person project and almost turned into our final mission as father and son when my dad failed to pay attention to my repeated warnings not to continue walking down the stairs because he would very shortly have the entire weight of the desk tumbling towards him because I had no room to walk. Sure enough, he made that next step, yelled, and I eventually caught up to the desk after it has slid three steps. Fortunately, this project went smoothly down the next flight of stairs and we touched down in our new apartment to find Bethany’s parents had arrived.

Our next item on the agenda concerned our new dining room table Bethany’s Uncle Bob made for her parents as his wedding gift to them. This piece has been in my basement the last couple of years and I hoped to have it put together before everyone arrived as one of those small family surprises which makes everyone feel good, but I could not slide the piece connecting the two legs together through the hole on either side and felt breaking this table would have the exact opposite effect I was trying to accomplish. I’m happy I waited, but Bethany’s father had no problems giving the go ahead to whack away and because my hammer ended up in a toolbox Nick took to his new place, he wrapped a brick in a towel and began pounding away at the wood as my dad and I held one of the legs. This story now starts to get amusing because after about ten whacks he managed to break the brick in half and after borrowing a hammer from my roommate Becky, he somehow managed to snap that in two after a few whacks. Now let me slow down and recap what just happened. In a span of three minutes my future father in law managed to destroy a brick AND a hammer with his bare hands. This kind of made me feel like I didn’t know my friend Clark Kent was Superman so when he did impossible things very quickly I felt maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me and chose not to speak up. He then made things more interesting by finishing the hammering job with a dead tree log and he managed to control his super human strength to not break the weakest substance of the three. Coincidence? I think not. I have seen this man eat a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream in 27 seconds flat and can only conclude he must be a super hero who caters to the upper class while deriving all his strength from Pinot Noir.

To close things out, after showing our parents the site of our reception we had an enjoyable dinner and her parents helped us out over the next four days in getting our apartment squared away. This included several trips to every Crate and Pottery Hut Sonoma in the greater Boston area by Bethany and her mom to find several exciting new accessories to our apartment. This made every day I returned home from work like Christmas except Santa was Carson Kressley.

Have a great week and stay tuned for more activity this week

Extra, Extra Eat All About It

Last week I completed a wonderful book called Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl about the author’s true stories with The New York Times as it’s restaurant critic during the 1990’s. Reichl’s story turns out to be a fun read based on her down to earth manner and her attempts to fool the restaurants she visits by developing several elaborate disguises and personalities. Her description of meals had my mouth watering for elaborate fish dishes on my way to work at eight in the morning while her quirky tales made me laugh aloud on a few occasions. Reichl, currently the editor of Gourmet, relishes the donut off the street cart as much as she enjoys a high-end eatery, yet she refuses to bow to political pressure and honestly critiques the establishments surviving on reputation as they send out embarrassing presentations from their kitchens. The only “flaw” to the book comes from the recipes and reviews uniquely placed within the unfolding memoir, which broke my pace for the first fifty pages before I eventually grew accustomed to the format. I highly recommend this book to everyone especially those who have restaurant experience or enjoy a luxurious night out. I know several people reading this live or have lived in the New York area and I would be intrigued to hear their thoughts on this book.

In addition, if this subject interests you I strongly recommend Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain which proves to be one of my favorite books and I find the chapter where he describes the day in the life of the restaurant to be the most accurate and vivid testimonials I have ever read.

In homage to the above review I would like to include a simple and delicious mussels recipe hailing from my roots in Rhode Island. At our BBQ two weeks ago we went through three servings and I think we could have downed a few more. First, buy yourself as many mussels as you would like to eat and fire up your grill. Throw the mussels on the grill and at the one-minute mark begin pulling them off while making sure they have al opened. Any mussels not opened should be thrown in the trash or given to the jerk hitting on your wife because these little guys had already moved on to the big ocean in the sky and can give you flashbacks to your 21st birthday. After removing the mussels from the heat, they are ready to be eaten and if you do not like shellfish I still recommend this process because the normal gooiness will no longer be a factor for you.

If you still find yourself waiting with bated breath for my special sauce recipe you’re in luck and I do recommend preparing it before cooking the mussels. Cut up one clove of garlic and a matching amount of a shallot to heat in a frying pan with half a stick of butter. Once the butter melts add a quarter of a cup of white wine into the mixture, add some salt and pepper after reducing for forty five seconds, and pour on the mussels to enjoy a wonderful meal. Feel free to substitute onion for the shallots and add your own spices to enhance to your personal taste. Bon apetitit.


D