Announcement

[baratron]

Richard & I are getting married on 1st February 2012. It's a Wednesday.

I need to write a general FAQ about the wedding, but here's some basic information for now.

We've given up on the idea of having the sort of wedding we actually want, and instead we're splitting it into two parts:
1) a tiny legal wedding with as few family members as possible, plus a handful of our closest friends to stop us murdering any of my family. Less than 20 people, simple civil service, meal at local restaurant.

2) a much bigger commitment ceremony, some months later (could be as late as 1st August 2013, depending on how badly hotel & flight prices have increased due to the Olympics) with many friends plus a handful of family members of our generation. Followed by a party with lots of cake, music, gaming area, and a chocolate fountain.

Essentially, we're doing something traditional with/for the oldies, and something untraditional for us.

The legal wedding will be in Kingston, but all I can say about the commitment ceremony is that it'll be in or near London.

In lieu of presents, we want friends with spare money to donate it so that friends who are broke can afford to come - like a convention fan fund or BiCon equality fund. The only people who will know who's given or received money will be me & Richard, and frankly we already know which of our friends have spare or no money anyway.

There is only one thing I need to say at this point: will anyone be offended not to be invited to the legal ceremony?

[Poll #1792971]
Note that with regard to the commitment ceremony, there is no option for "I can't come because it's too far away". If you want to come, we will find a way to get you here.

Just so that everyone is informed now and there are no misunderstandings later, we don't want any young children who might make noise at the commitment ceremony. Children who are able to sit quietly with a book are welcome, and children of all ages will be welcomed at the party.

Comments

[hoopycat (from livejournal.com)]

Yay! The two-ceremonies thing does simplify things, doesn't it? :-)

Alas, February 1 lands right in the middle of the academic quarter, so I suppose I'll have to postpone my UK debut until the chocolate fountain instantiates. Drat.

Congrats!!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Indeed! The reason for 1st February is that it's already our anniversary - I was wanting to keep the same one. We were *supposed* to be getting married on our tenth anniversary, but apparently weddings do not organise themselves.

To make for a nice round number we could wait another year for our fifteenth; but we got together when we were 21, so we could go with some sort of Rule of Sevens instead. If all goes well and there is no Rapture or nuclear holocaust, then we will have our 21st anniversary when we are both 42, which seems Fitting.

Anyway, you don't want to come to the legal marriage. That'll be 20 minutes long and not very interesting. The commitment ceremony will be much more enjoyable.

[hoopycat (from livejournal.com)]

Ah! We did it the other way: the commitment ceremony (of sorts) was on our existing anniversary. Then again, we met in late June, which is a little more convenient.

Fourteen is not a small number of years. You can be all poetic and stuff and say that you're beginning your next fortnight of your lives together or something. But the septenary approach works quite well too... you can tell people you modeled your life in MATLAB (with array indexes starting at 1) but when you implemented it in C (with array indexes starting at 0), you ended up getting married after the second seven-year cycle instead of the first.

It's a common-enough problem; people will understand.

(BTW, got your postcard. Haven't been on IRC lately thanks to school stuff. We are now on week 10 of 10 so there is a rapidly-approaching light at the end of the tunnel! Also, secretly, I've been working on affecting the results of <http://blog.reddit.com/2011/11/grow-college-subreddit-competition.html> in my spare time.)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really matter which way round you do it, as long as you don't end up with three anniversaries to remember.

Unless you want them, of course :)

We already have our "unofficial" anniversary (Richard's birthday, when we kissed for the first time and realised we loved each other), our "official" anniversary (when we decided that we were officially going to be A Couple), and our half-anniversary (6 months after the official anniversary). Adding yet another day to that would be Too Much!

I'm glad you haven't disappeared for any sinister reason, anyway. Several people all seem to have vanished at once, and it's dead quiet on soc.bi without you.

[hoopycat (from livejournal.com)]

Yeah, anniversary proliferation is a grave risk :-) Bad enough remembering two of 'em... I think we do actually have three, maybe? I dunno. At this point, I can't remember if I'm wearing pants half the time...