helen-louise's journal

Richard & I were successfully married last Wednesday at about 3pm. The Very Difficult relatives did not attend, the Difficult Relatives mostly behaved themselves, and we had twice as many friends there as we'd been expecting to have - so it was a rather good day. Apart from the fact I was feeling ill and in pain for a while at the beginning, but that was bearable. A couple of people said it was the least stressful wedding they'd ever been to, which is sweet and amusing. The highly religious aunt has told the entire family how thoughtful we were of people's differing religious sensibilities. Yay.

Photos exist, but need extensive Photoshopping before they can go online. The lighting in the registry office was bizarre. The photos in the room we got married in are all too red, and the photos taken in the hallway of the building have everyone alarmingly green-tinged like aliens. It's something I can do, but I need time and spoons to pick out the best photos and do the colour correction. Also, the more people that are in the photograph, the more likely it is to be unflattering to someone - nothing much you can do about that, though.

Nothing has actually changed in our relationship, which I'm pleased about. Some people do feel different when they get married, but we didn't think we would. I think some people put too much thought into planning the wedding and not enough into the marriage. I hope we've got that balance right.

People have been embarrassingly generous with presents. We need to write thank you letters soon. However, right now I'm busy stressing about the presentation that I need to give next week that doesn't even exist yet - 10 minutes with no more than 7 Powerpoint slides and 5 minutes for questions, in front of as much of the whole department can be bothered to turn up, and assessed by the Graduate Committee Of Doom. Argh. Still not very functional from the S.A.D. - I'm up now because I am most able to do work when I'm in bed with the laptop and Richard is asleep next to me. He's a very calming wuzzie.

I didn't actually get round to posting that I had arrived in Boston safely, but I figured that you'd know I was here from the lack of news about planes crashing horribly into the Atlantic. Here's my excuse: by the time I went to bed on Thursday night, I'd been up for 39 hours straight and I was losing the ability to do coherent English.

The journey was totally uneventful. Plane was only about 1/3 full, making me feel slightly guilty. I lay down across three seats and attempted to sleep, but couldn't. Even though I'm a short-arse, I still couldn't fit full-length across the seats, so I don't know how anyone ever manages it. Listened to music for the trip.

Arrived in Boston almost on-time, got myself across to the hotel on public transport, had an "amusing" time figuring out how I was supposed to get on the Red Line train at South Station - apparently you ask the driver for assistance. This is so totally unlike any UK train, where the driver hides in his or her cab for the whole trip and you never see them. The weather when I arrived was shockingly warmer than the weather at home and I thought this was Very Wrong, but then it started snowing. Yay.

bitty and bubblebabble came to pick me up and we went to Somerville to collect our wedding rings and see other jewellery and sculptures by the same artist. Feel free to guess which of the geeky rings on that site we went for, but I'm not actually going to tell anyone who doesn't already know until after the wedding :)

Then we went for dinner at Veggie Galaxy. It was good.

Yesterday I met lilairen, for the first time since January 2005 - she is now accompanied by 2.5 year old offspring, who is very clearly a Geek Child :) We went to Pandemonium, a Local Independent Bookstore. I bought many books not available in the UK, including some by papersky. Then we went for Chinese.

Later I met up with treacle_well, and eventually acquired my roommates HoopyCat and veryfineredwine, whose flights had been cancelled and rearranged several times in the space of 2 hours. (The flight they eventually got, leaving at 8 pm last night, was way superior to the original offering of a flight leaving today at 6.15 am and routing via Washington DC!). bitty and Arthur delivered them from the airport, and we had pizza from Peace o'Pie. I booted up the webcam and we talked to Richard over Skype, so it was like he was here with us.

Today I am supposed to be meeting up with Freezepop, but Sean is rehearsing with his other band Lifestyle, so arrangements are somewhat dependent on him. If I don't hear anything soon, I'll give them a call.

My father thinks he's going to walk me down the aisle.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Please comment below with all of the reasons why this isn't going to be happening.

I need opinions.

I "don't like rings". (This is very possibly a psychological hangup from a previous failed relationship, since as an ethical polyamorous person I have no need to hide my relationship status). I always said that if I got a wedding ring, it would live on a pendant rather than on my finger.

I have seen the most amazingly geeky, amazingly me, wedding ring in the history of the universe ever. I could link to it, but:
a) I'm trying to make this an abstract discussion.
b) if I don't get it, then I don't want the link left here.
c) it's so awesome that I'm actually kinda worried that someone else would buy it for themselves.

It is actually so incredibly awesome that I wouldn't get rid of it if, gods forbid, our relationship broke up. I'd just move it to another finger.

It would also look good as a pendant.

It is US $1600, for recycled platinum and recycled and/or ethically traded diamonds. That is $TERRIFYING_BIG_NUMBER, but not actually bad by the standards of platinum jewellery. (Platinum wedding-type rings start at £1000 and go up to £3000+. I'm pretty amazed to be able to find a platinum AND DIAMOND ring for just shy of £1000).

Of course, it is also available in cheaper metals, but I hate yellow gold. (Sadly, I have several yellow gold rings from when I was younger - I need to figure out if I'm going to sell them, or get the stones placed into other jewellery and recycle the metal...). Silver, white gold and palladium are all available.

Questions:
a) Should I get it?
b) How do people reconcile themselves to walking around with THAT MUCH MONEY on their finger?