Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Our wedding bands

This weekend, The Gryphon and I had a chance to take care of some important things.

Saturday morning, we took the train into Center City and ate at the newest Marathon Grill, at 10th and Walnut.

They seated us in the upstairs loft, which is a nice, airy space with hard wood floors and brick and moss green couches for seating.

Then we walked the several blocks to our jeweler, Halloween, where jeweler Henri David had completed our wedding bands. We tried them on, and they both fit. We were very pleased with the workmanship. I look forward to wearing them: in fact, every once in a while I find myself taking it out of the box, slipping it on my finger and marveling at it.

The Gryphon paid him and thanked him. Henri offered to polish my engagement ring before the wedding, if I like. I told him I'd add it to our list.

With that happy feat accomplished, we stopped at home to drop off the rings and to let our doggie, Una, out before taking care of some other errands, non-wedding related.

First, we stopped by the consignment store where I sell clothes at a regular basis to pick up the items that haven't been sold so far. We also stopped at Blockbuster video, where we exchanged one of the videos I'd had mailed to me through Blockbuster.com for Ice Age 2.

Then we drove to the Cold Stone Creamery to order an ice cream cake for the big party we're throwing next weekend at the White Rabbit's house, a combined celebration for Independence Day and The Gryphon's 40th birthday. The ice cream cake is at The Gryphon's request.

I've had enough responses from the people we'd invited to guesstimate how many we'd need to serve. We had just a few too many for the medium rectangle sized cake, so we ordered one of those in chocolate and also a small round in strawberry.

With that taken care of, it was out to the Granite Run Mall to find The Gryphon new sneakers, which he hopes to break in before Otakon. While we were there, we bought tickets to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End. Then we went sneaker shopping.

The last couple times The Gryphon bought sneakers, he got all-white Reeboks, but he looked at some new colors and styles this time, too. He got a very nice pair with light and dark blue patches of color on it, which give it a up-to-date contemporary feel. Knowing that he wears them to work on casual Fridays, I believe it's a good look for the office, as well.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 was longer than we expected, but it didn't feel long. I truly enjoyed it. I thought it was a great summer film. It had everything from romance to adventure to humor to explosions. Even cute animals. And there were some very Pythonesque moments, which I especially enjoyed. It was a great ride, which is kind of ironic, seeing as how the movie franchise was based on a ride.

Then we went out to eat at the Iron Hill Brewery in Media.

Sunday, I woke up with a terrible migraine headache that I think was spurred by dehydration plus sleeping in too late (I can't sleep more than eight hours without painful consequences).

I know it was a migraine because I was nauseous and even threw up before eating breakfast, which made for some lovely patchy skin, as every time I throw up, I break blood vessels in my face. Consequently, I try to do so as infrequently as possible.

Afterwards, I did feel better, so we went to breakfast at our favorite diner. I was feeling a little better afterwards, well, at least not nauseous, so we got out our wedding invitations to put them together.

We came up with a nice assembly line. The Gryphon numbered the RSVP cards to indicate which person had received it (just in case they forget to write their names on it when they return them). He took the numbers from the Outlook Express file I'd created, containing all our guests' addresses, which he'd used to print labels.

Then he affixed the inner and outer envelope labels and the outer envelope stamp. I affixed the inner envelope stamp for the response cards and put everything together, including the invitation, response cards, hotel rate/directions insert and the reception card.

When we were done, we realized that we'd received a good number of extra RSVP cards. I think that Fabulous Stationery did that for us since we had a very customized response card that had a lot more information on it than they normally include. They probably wanted to assure that, if we ran into problems, we would have spare cards and wouldn't need to go through all the trouble of reordering.

I have to say, my experience with them was overall very positive, and I'd highly recommend them to anyone looking to do something a little different with their wedding invitations. (Or parties, personal note cards, and general stationery.)

Then I had some phone calls to make. I called Mom to get an address from her for the Pastor's oldest son, whom we consider a friend of the family. Even though he lives in Colorado, we'd like to invite him. After all, we're inviting The Pastor's youngest son, who lives in Central Pennsylvania.

My mom told me that she and my father, along with The Pastor, had just attended the United Church of Christ conference in Connecticut, where they got to hear presidential candidate Barack Obama, as well as cancer survivor Lynn Redgrave, speak. She was very impressed with both of them.

Then I called my dad to fill him in on our latest wedding expenses. He's going about 50-50 with us, so he told us he'd be sending another check.

After that, we both relaxed: The Gryphon took a nap while I took a hot bath, trying to soothe my aching head. But the headache truly dissolved after we ate out at J.B. Dawson's. I guess all I needed was a good meal.

More on Alyce's wedding planning:

Musings on Alyce's Wedding

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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