The (mostly) conscious groom

After reading Little Spoon's excellent post about being a Conscious Bride, I thought I'd share the negative emotions I've felt surrounding the process of coming together for life. Many of the things she described going through don't seem like they apply to me. I've lived away from my family for about half my life now, and all of my friends are similarly coupled and supportive, so I haven't felt a pull away from any of them.

However, there are other things that I'm dealing with that she's less likely to face. Having been married before, I'm ultimately concerned about making another life-long commitment. Though the marriage itself was cordial and good, my ex-wife and I ended up growing apart, in large part due to the evolution of my own beliefs and how those would impact the ways in which we would raise children. Thus, one of my worries is that somehow, one of us will change substantially enough to make history repeat itself. However, the fact that we've both grown through early adulthood makes me less concerned of that happening.

Another potential issue is that I had only really started to be a part of the singles scene before meeting Little Spoon. But it's not that I'm afraid we're rushing into things; I crammed a lot of dating into those few months, so I feel relatively confident that I've had enough experience to know she's right for me. No, it's that I'd had a few months of going grocery shopping, making my own dinners, doing my own laundry, and taking care of my own finances. The mortgage is in my name, as are all the utility bills. I took some time to ensure I could be emotionally self-sufficient, that I could rely on myself (leaning on friends and parents as needed).

In short, I made the transition to my life, not our life. The repercussions of joining our lives together - both financial and emotional - are scary. Already, Little Spoon has taken on some of the chores I'd gotten used to doing myself (and loathing more than occasionally). Nevertheless, there are still some times when I miss feeling totally self-sufficient. Earlier this week, I made dinner for myself largely because I wanted to convince myself I could still do it. However, it made me appreciate Little Spoon's efforts that way all the more. The prospect of entering into interdependency again is scary, mostly because I'm anxious about the huge life change that will be represented (through which I've already lived once) if things don't work out in the end.

Basically, my negative emotions are those that stem from a loss realized, from being once bitten and twice shy. I don't feel like I'm grieving; instead, I feel afraid. It's a different set of emotions. Hers are fueled by actual losses and coping with them, whereas mine are fueled by the fear of loss.

Do any of you have different sets of negative emotions about being married than your spouse-to-be? Have you talked about them with each other?

The Conscious Bride

Confession: I've been working on this blog post for about two weeks now. I finished the book a while back, but just haven't found the time and the words to describe how good it is and why and what. You get the idea. Brace yourself for a lengthy post.

I've been feeling less like my normal self since the holidays. I'm not sure if it's because of the awful weather we've been having or I've simply allowed myself to become overwhelmed. I'm not sure, but what I can tell you is that I've begun the necessary grieving process. More on that later.

I first heard of the book The Conscious Bride at the Unabridged Bride workshop. Encouraged by Liza Hippler of Maiden to Married, I checked this book out at the library a few weeks ago and I am so glad that I did!

You can also check out the author's website Conscious Weddings; there are a lot of good articles there as well as recommended reading and excerpts from The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner (which I now own.)

Just a few days after starting to read this book, I found myself completely immersed in it, thinking about it and longing for the next time I could pick it up. Every bride should read this book. It has helped to refocus how I am viewing and experiencing our engagement journey.

We'll just start in the beginning ... a life-time commitment is scary, right? I was the girl who told people that I would never get married or have kids. Looking back, it was clearly a defense mechanism to shield me from getting too hurt when I went through guys like blue jeans just trying to find one that fit. Or, maybe because I was from a small town and that's just "what people do" that I continued fighting it through my early twenties.

Regardless, it's a leap that is both exciting and scary. The book talks about the reality of the emotional roller-coaster that being engaged and then married puts you through. People expect you to just glow and gush, but I didn't feel that way everyday. The fact is, I was freaked out for the first few weeks of our engagement. People kept asking me about it and I had to fake my excitement because that's what they expect, right?

Like many brides, I was denying myself feelings of anxiety and grief. I felt bad. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Why am I feeling this way?

Because I am going through a transition ... a rite of passage and the death of my former self and former life. Whoa! Say what? Think about it ... what changed for you socially, habitually, spiritually or emotionally after you became involved in your relationship? How did you feel after the proposal?

Separation has never been my strong suit. I hate losing touch with friends, even the ones who probably weren't all that good for me, but since becoming engaged, I've held my close friends closer and disengaged from other relationships I used to invest a great deal of time in. I've found that I enjoy visiting my family more now than ever ... and I believe it is because I now recognize the separation that must take place in order to commit my life to Big Spoon.

The book doesn't encourage you to drop everyone and become isolated for your future husband. What it does do is explain that these feelings are normal and that although separating from your past self is necessary, everyone you love and the good parts of you come along too.

Being 27 and having lived on my own for quite some time, the separation with family is not as difficult as separating with my single-self. My identity is changing. No really. I'm changing my last name, are you? That is the most concrete incorporation of your new self, but there are so many other subtle ways in which one changes.

Grieving your former self is important and I believe that it is why I've been so blue lately. I finally gave myself permission to grieve, to slow down and to think. I've been moody and probably hard to live with, but letting go of 27 years takes some work. I'm happy to do it. I'm more excited about the next 27 years than I have been about anything in my entire life! 

I'll bring this entry to a close and just say this: being aware that some negative feelings are natural and not feeling guilty or confused is a big step toward sanity. Being conscious of the fact that all this planning will end in your marriage to your spouse and remembering that this journey - from engagement to wife - is a rite of passage. Cherish it, slow down and make an attempt to remember everything you can about it. Don't neglect your relationship for a wedding, but rather cultivate your relationship for your marriage as you plan for the big day.

Engagement pictures ... check!

Well, we did it. We survived an engagement portrait session! Yesterday was crazy for both of us, but for different reasons.

The most stressful thing to happen to me was that my normal hairstylist's flight was canceled and she lost her phone, so there was no way to reach me to let me know she would be unable to style my hair. I panicked, then scrambled, calling friends and friends of friends, until I found a salon that could work me in that afternoon.

It began raining around noon and promised to pour the rest of the day. The photographer called to gauge our commitment to the photo shoot considering the weather. I went on a gut instinct to not cancel, which in the end worked out for the best.

I gathered up my clothes and hair inspiration pictures, Big Spoon's tie, my red high heels and headed out to Harlow Salon in Nashville. These ladies were wonderful and my makeup lasted well through the night.

Big Spoon and I met up near his work, met the photographer and headed over the Public Plaza first. Second, we took a few brief shots at the Schermerhorn before getting kicked off the property (which bugs me because I am a patron of the symphony).

We then took random, urban shots in downtown Nashville along various interesting backdrops and wrapped up our session on the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge. It began lightly raining as our photographer took the last shot. I really enjoyed working with our photographer, Derek Lee and his assistant.

Our Engagement Story

For the better part of our relationship, Big Spoon and I have been talking about a future together. Seven months have gone by and I can say now without doubt that we have experienced a whirlwind romance. We had only been dating two weeks before we decided to date exclusively; we had only been dating three months when we booked our trip to New York City and began looking at engagement rings. We were a six-month-old couple when we became engaged.

From the outside, everything seems to have happened fast, but to us ... well, let's just say that we had very few doubts that we had met our match. I can't remember exactly when we began talking about being married and I can barely remember a time in which I wasn't thinking that this man would become my future.

Our engagement began with a "misunderstanding." A few weeks before I met Big Spoon, the Nashville Opera performed Mozart's Don Giovanni. I missed it for a family function and I posted this disappointment online. When Big Spoon read this, he began to form a plan in which he fulfilled my dream of seeing a Mozart opera. What he didn't know at the time is that it wasn't this particular opera I longed to see, but any Mozart opera. In the end, its all very cute and incredibly sweet: he booked a trip around the Metropolitan Opera's opening of Don Giovanni. We spent five nights in New York City (four of which he carried my ring in his pocket).

On Monday, April 13, after days of rain in NYC, we finally made it to Central Park. By this point in the trip, I was off my guard and assumed Big Spoon was waiting for the opera to propose. We had just visited the American Museum of Natural History, and before going back to the hotel to ready ourselves for the opera, we took a stroll through Central Park.

It was a very short stroll. Just down the path and around the bend, there is a lovely spot where weeping willows overlook the water and one can see the skyline far off in the distance. Here, we stopped to take a picture. Big Spoon stopped a couple walking and asked them to take it for us. I went to stand by the fence and smile, but when I looked over, Big Spoon had taken a knee. He actually prefaced that move, but once I figured out what was happening, whatever he said was lost to my memory.

Sort and sweet, he asked me to marry him. And of course, I said yes. It was perfect.

The poor lady he handed the camera to was in more shock than I was and unfortunately, did not record the entire proposal as Big Spoon had intended, but that's okay. I waited until the couple wished us well and left, then I asked Big Spoon to put my ring on for me.

My ring is better than I had imagined; a beautiful solitaire in a white gold, four-pronged, cathedral setting and flat band. It even has bevel set diamonds on the front and back sides.

The opera was long but thrilling. My toe bled on the way back to the hotel. I gave away those shoes ... and we have a fairy-tale engagement story.

Another Great Engagement Shoot

I love looking at other people's engagement sessions. {This one} is particularly cute. One reason I keep browsing them is because I am trying to get an idea of what I would like to wear to our engagement session, which I booked last night for June 15 in Downtown Nashville.

Reap the whirlwind

I'm finally scheduled to be home for around a month now, so I feel like I can finally settle down a bit and let the engagement sink in. After all the hustle and bustle around the engagement, I have one piece of advice for any men who are thinking of how to propose to their girlfriends: PACE THYSELF.

My original reason for setting our engagement trip for the time I did was that it surrounded the day for Don Giovanni that would allow us to have the best seats possible. I had originally thought that it was her dream to see that particular opera. However, in my haste to fulfill her fantasy, I neglected to clarify that it was any Mozart opera that she wanted to see, and especially in Nashville. After I made the initial plans to take her to New York, she clarified that the Marriage of Figaro would probably be the one she'd most wanted to see, which was playing in her second-favorite city, Seattle, a month later. Thus, had I been a bit more cautious, I could have made her even happier.

The Seattle show would have also been a much better fit with my schedule. I underestimated how stressful it would be to go from the engagement trip to a professional conference (in which I was giving a talk) with only one day between trips. To add insult to injury, I had some major supervising to do on my honors student's thesis the week before, and I had to make arrangements for getting some critical equipment fixed the day after I got back from the conference as I was preparing to go on the engagement trip. Truly, my planning sucked and made it so that I was preoccupied with work concerns when I should have been able to enjoy our first, special trip together.

However, like so many other bumps, I think we're weathering this one relatively well. She seems to miss me while I'm gone, which is an oddity for her; hopefully, a week-long trip I tried planning while at the conference won't be too hard on her. Conversely, I hope the pressures of my work schedule lessen so that I can focus more on her, as she deserves. I couldn't do most of the things I was hoping to do while she was visiting her parents this weekend because I was dead tired from all the travel!

The Ring, Part III: My precious

Though we didn't emerge with a ring she went ga-ga over, we learned a number of things about her preferences through the various trips.

1. A simple flat band works better for her than a more ornate band. The sparkly may be nice for a ring to wear out on the town occasionally, but it's both too distracting and ostentatious for an everyday ring for her.
2. Cathedral seems to be her preferred setting, and a round brilliant cut catches her eye best.
3. It's a rare four-prong setting that will allow the shape of the round brilliant diamond to show through.
4. She needs a stone with at least an SI inclusion grade diamond; she would unconsciously rub her finger along the milky I grade diamonds, as if to clean them!

From our travels, I'd recommend going to at least five stores together and getting some idea of your future bride's ring preferences. Just go to see what catches her eye, keeping in mind what your budget is. If she sees something that's waaaay outside your price range, don't be afraid to keep it in mind - but also recognize that you'll have to figure out a way to compromise something.

So, where do I go from here? Well, I doubt I was able to get her dream ring, but I hope it's something she likes all the same. I ended up with a custom order that I picked up on Valentine's Day. Certain compromises had to be made, but I hope it has the right mix of contemporary and vintage features to keep her smiling about it for decades. Guess we'll see in New York, won't we?

The Ring, Part II: You'd better shop around

We visited at least three different stores after dispensing quickly with the mall-based jewelers, whose diamonds were far too pricey and whose relatively simplistic or excessively gaudy settings and bands failed to please either of our eyes. We first went to Wiggins' Jewelers, whose staff was very helpful and gave us a number of wedding-related publications. They had one nice cathedral setting solitaire and a good vintage setting that we liked...somewhat. However, the cathedral solitaire felt a bit too plain, and the vintage looked too gaudy when actually on her hand.

Our next stop was Wholesale Jewelers, which had a number of attractive pieces. One that really caught both our eyes was a one-of-a-kind princess cut diamond with some small inset diamonds and subtle filigree on the setting. Alas, it was more than three times our budget - but at least it gave me an idea of the kind of setting Little Spoon liked best.

We rounded off our engagement ring viewing spree at The Shane Company. There, we saw a couple of solitaires that were pretty enough, and seeing their offerings convinced her that she liked having some additional stones in the setting to augment the main diamond. However, none of them struck her fancy quite like the one at Wholesale Jewelers.

The Ring, Part I: What a girl wants

Perhaps the biggest anxiety I've had about the whole wedding shebang so far has been the selection of her engagement ring. From the start, Little Spoon has shown tastes that mix contemporary and vintage (e.g., 1930s) styles. From what she's told me, she likes the clean lines and flat bands of contemporary styles, but she's also partial to the tasteful ornateness of vintage jewelry.

Finding a ring that satisfies both tastes is a difficult proposition, especially when combined with her love of round cut stones with a six-prong setting (to highlight the roundness of the stone; a four-prong setting seems more standard). Oddly enough, most of the more vintage-style settings seem to use princess cut stones, which we both agree look too boxy on her slender finger. At least she likes white gold, which seems to be the material en vogue right now.