Love is a Mix Tape: Choosing the Ceremony Music

Mr. Rucksack recently received an email of wedding song suggestions from one of his groomsmen. Some of them were wildly inappropriate and some of them were totally awesome, but they definitely reminded me that we need to start thinking more about music choices.

Having just solidified our DJ for the big event, Mr. Rucksack and I sat down with little cousin GM Brobot to start thinking about our "must have" and "do not play" song lists. GM Brobot focused on the reception, putting lots of thought into his choices. My favorite picks from my 9 year old cousin's list? "Boombastic" and "Safety Dance". Yep, I told you the kid is cool.

Mr. Rucksack and I focused on our ceremony and first dance songs. Luckily, we have a full list of songs we consider "our songs." With our extreme love of music (hello, we met during karaoke) I'm happy that we're getting married on the beach and don't have any restrictions on the music we can play.

Prelude: "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. This is one of our all-time favorite songs and one that we duet together all the time. We knew we had to fit it into our ceremony somehow.

    
"I Will" by the Beatles. It's a classic and also a favorite here in the Rucksack house. It's also the first song Mr. Rucksack played for me on his guitar.

Processional: "Marry You" by Bruno Mars. I know, could we be any more predictable? But seriously, what a great song and I think our bridal party will have fun walking down the aisle to an upbeat song. Plus, this engagement video? Still one of my favorite YouTube videos ever.

Bridal March: "Sea of Love" by Cat Power. One of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I have ever heard. I was randomly humming this around the house for weeks before it finally occurred to me to use this as my entrance song. It's not only gorgeous and the perfect tempo, but it's about being by the sea! And who's getting married by the sea? This girl!

Recessional: "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes. Mr. Rucksack sings this song to me all the time. I can't wait to smooch my new husband when this song starts playing!

Are you using non-traditional music in your ceremony?

Holy Whole Foods, Batman

In the past year, Mr. Rucksack and I have joined that whole Paleo/Crossfit cult you may have heard of. Because of our commitment to eat healthy, non-processed foods, Whole Foods is kind of our mecca. Of course, our love affair with Whole Foods isn't entirely new. In fact, Mr. Rucksack worked at Whole Foods when he was a graduate student in Hartford. (He worked in the cheese department and his dad still sometimes refers to Mr. Rucksack as the king of cheese!)

Soon after we got engaged, Mr. Rucksack and I were shopping at our local Whole Foods when I literally stopped to smell the roses. "I would totally just use these as our wedding flowers," I told Mr. Rucksack. He asked "Well, why not?" And I thought well, yeah....why not?

These tiny bouquets are a mere $9.99 and they're gorgeous.

Via Yelp 

Plus even more full sized (and cheap!) options from my last visit:

Whole Foods will work with you to create custom floral arrangements too, so that we won't just be buying up a bunch of flowers at the last minute. (Pretty sure that's what Momma Rucksack pictured when I first told her our plan.) The only downside is that because everything is sourced locally (which is really a good thing), we're extremely limited in availability. Luckily, the Milford Whole Foods Florist, Frankie, was able to help out. She made a lot of phone calls and was able to pre-order pink dahlias, pink ranunculus (my favorite) and billy balls.  The rest she'll choose from whatever comes in fresh that day. It's a little scary, but I think I'm in good hands!

From Left to Right: Dahlia via Wikimedia; Ranunculus via Whole Blossoms; and Billy Balls via Whole Blossoms

In addition to purchasing our flowers at Whole Foods, they'll also be making our cakes for our cake buffet. They have the yummiest strawberry shortcake layer cake and one of the best chocolate cakes ever - and that's coming from someone who's not a big cake fan. I think it has to do with the fact that I don't feel like I'm eating a pound of confectioner's sugar when I eat their cakes. While they won't be making our small paleo cutting cake (I'm trusting that to a gluten free baker), I totally trust them to serve up a bunch of yummy cakes for our guests.

I would honestly be happy scooping up any and all of these cakes on our wedding day. 

At $27 per cake we'll be way under the typical cake budget and our guests will have plenty of options.

There are a couple of downsides to going the grocery route though, two points that Momma Rucksack keeps pointing out every time she's given a chance.The biggest being that someone will have to pick up all of the goodies the day before the wedding. Currently I've volunteered myself and a bridesmaid, but we'll see what sorts of drama unfolds. Worst case scenario, there will be plenty of family and friends around that I can bribe. Not to mention, my car was born for this job:

Via Cookin with Mama

That's right. 3 rows of fold-down seats in that baby. We can fit all sorts of wedding goods in that trunk.

Would you consider using a grocery store for any of your wedding items?

Fatherless Brides

This post is a really tricky one for me to write. I spent most of my life convincing myself (and my mom) that I was just fine without a dad, and really I was. I grew up to be a smart, funny, pretty, accomplished lady. I have a great mom and an amazing extended family. I am lucky in so many ways.

However, over the last couple of years I've grown increasingly angry. It came to a head last summer when my dad's son (my half-brother) died at the age of 22. He and I weren't close, in fact we'd only spoken through email. And yet, it killed me. There were months of grieving and being angry at my dad. It's starting to get better, but I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that I missed out on knowing my sibling.

Wedding planning, too, has put an emphasis on the fatherless part of who I am as a person. I can get over my father giving me away on my wedding day. My mom - if she isn't crying too hard - will be walking me down the aisle and I wouldn't want it any other way. The aspects that bother me are things I never could have imagined would come up.

For instance, I obviously won't be having a father-daughter dance. I'm sure nobody will miss this, but selfishly I also don't want Mr. Rucksack to dance with his mother. I feel like their dance will put emphasis on the fact that I didn't get to dance with my dad. Even if nobody else thinks that way, I will and it will put a significant damper on my mood. I feel so selfish and childish thinking that way, but the pain has grown so significant that I really don't think I can not feel this way. (We will be inviting everyone to the dance floor after our first dance and Mr. Rucksack will dance with his mom at that point while I...awkwardly hug my mom? Not sure yet.)

The other thing that upset me? I will have to leave my father's name blank on our marriage license. Since he's not on my birth certificate and isn't part of my life, he doesn't get to go on my marriage license either. For some reason, this is just heartbreaking to me. I looked online for some guidance and all I found was a book titled My Ancestor was a Bastard with helpful tips for what to do if while researching your genealogy you come across a bastard relative with no father listed. Cue the tears. So many tears. And also a little bit of laughter.

I've been really into genealogy and have gone pretty far back (the 1500's!) on both sides of my family. Thinking about how my future relatives would be stuck with one branch of my tree made me realize: I have no right to my father's genealogical history. It was devastating. Did I mention that I was also reading Game of Thrones at this point? I couldn't have felt more like Jon Snow.

It's really hard trying to deal with all of these emotional issues while planning the wedding, especially since there's no solution. I've learned that my dad doesn't want to be my dad. He'll occasionally send me an email or a postcard but I've long since given up hope that we're going to have some sort of Hollywood ending where he suddenly realizes all that he's missed. I know it's something that I just need to deal with, but it's so sad. 28 years can go by, but the hurt doesn't lessen.

Who else is dealing with wedding related daddy issues? How do you "get over it?"