Happy New Year!

The Jewish Rosh Hashanah festivities are upon us. Filled with golden honey poured over slices of shiny red-skinned apples, noodly kugel and doughy challah, and celebrating and reciting prayers with family and friends. The cool breeze of autumn is slowly replacing the almost relentless summer humidity and students are suiting up for their first days of school. It's football season, again, too, with every team hopeful for a long, winning record. Anything is possible, it seems. And so, in between my mouthfuls of comfy New Year food and sitting at shul, listening to the sound of the blaring shofar, I start to think of the year that has just passed me by, and the one coming right up. This last year has been, for lack of a better word, eventful. As I reflect on my 5:00 am engagement, our weekend away to celebrate alone and then all the wonderful calls, e-mails, hugs, cards, and other forms of well wishes from family and friends, I feel very happy. Then I turn my head to the next year, which will undoubtedly offer more excitement (and more planning) as our nuptials draw nearer and nearer. June will be here before you know it, many people have told me, and I believe them. But as much as the new year is a time of celebration, of bonding with family and looking forward to a new beginning, of endless possibilities, it is a time of reflection. Of thinking of how you may have wronged others, or yourself, in the previous year and repenting and trying to make right in the year to come. A new year isn't only a fresh start, but also an improvement on you lived the year before. That's why, next week, I'll put aside the savory foods and fast for a day. Remembering the wrongs and trying to make this next year--and all the exciting promise it holds--a bit sweeter.

Making Your Own Waves

And now, for my second guest writer, I bring you my friend Anne, who married her husband in a small, unique ceremony.

On June 1, 2002, I married Kevin Andrew Hurst in a simple ceremony at a B&B in Manteo, North Carolina. For recent college grads, our wedding was a bit unconventional:

*We didn’t have a first dance (in fact, there was no dancing);
*I didn’t wear a veil;
*Kevin didn’t wear a tuxedo;
*I did not go to a salon and have my hair and makeup done;
*We didn’t have flower arrangements besides the daisies I chose for my bouquet at the florist the day before;
*We did not have a DJ (though we did hire a local couple who played the violin and the mandolin);
*We did not have a complex, tiered cake (Kevin doesn’t like cake); and
*We did not register for anything.

But you know what? Our wedding was perfect—for us.

We did not want our parents pouring money into an event that lasts a single day. And being frugal (okay, cheap), we wanted to save our money for traveling and purchasing a house. I’ve never been much of a girly girl and Kevin dreads crowds so a small, intimate wedding was logical. The B&B had an onsite wedding coordinator who made all the arrangements. Kevin picked out a seer sucker suit from Banana Republic and I found a simple linen J Crew number (before their wedding collections!). Of course, it was difficult to tell friends and extended family that we were just having immediate family at our wedding. There were some hurt feelings, but most of our social network was supportive, realizing it was our wedding and we should choose the framework for it.

The wedding weekend felt like a family vacation at the beach and was low key. Since our families had not spent time together, it allowed them to get to know each other. We had several dinners together and had leisurely breakfasts on the B&B’s veranda. After the wedding ceremony, we listened to the string musicians, sipped champagne, and munched on sushi in the B&B’s sun-dappled courtyard as Kevin’s nephews tumbled around on the ground. Then we walked to a nearby restaurant and had a lovely meal. The following day, Kevin and I had a beach picnic and biked around the island exploring its historic, moss-covered neighborhoods, a perfect coda to our wedding weekend, and so very “Anne and Kevin.”

Having a small, intimate wedding is not for everyone, but far too often, I hear my friends say, “oh I wish I would have done what you did.” Hearing this makes me sad because a wedding should be about the couple and should reflect their unique style. I think Kevin and I achieved that with our wedding. You should, too!

For Now, A Wedding Guest

I am sitting at a computer in hotel's business center in New Canaan, Connecticut. My parents, Dan, and I drove up 1-95 last night for a friend's wedding later on today. I really can't wait for the festivities. For a lot of reasons. I lived down the street from the groom growing up--he and his brothers and sister were such an integral part of childhood. Going to a wedding of a friend who you'd play kickball with and roller bladed in the neighborhood streets has a special sense of nostalgia. Plus, I always love an opportunity to wear my favorite knee-length, flowy, turquoise dress with silver rhinestones embroidered on the straps...and matching blue shoes and a shiny silver hand bag. But also, as I've ventured into this crazy wedding planning process, I've gained appreciation for what really goes into making such an affair come to life. It reminds me of an article on music I wrote for work: One of the world's most beloved composers, Beethoven, was deaf when he wrote Sympathy No. 9. To enjoy this musical selection, a listener does not have to know that Beethoven couldn't actually hear the notes he was writing. But if you know the whole story and have a better glimpse of the process, you may enjoy the music just a bit more. The end result may be a bit sweeter.

Climb Every Mountain

Okay, I know what you're thinking: I am Sound of Music obsessed. This is the second time I've borrowed my blog title from the 1960s movie chronicling the musically inclined Van Trapp Family's escape from Austria on the brink of World War II. What can I say: it's a good film.

But I digress. My purpose with this post is not to tout the movie, but to reflect on how important it is to meet challenges head on, to try something new and when it's hard...to keep going. A few weeks ago, my father embarked on a nearly week-long, 60 mile trek in California's Yosemite National Park (elev: 8,000 ft and higher). Every morning, he'd wake up at the campsite, and after a hearty breakfast (the food, apparently, was to die for), load up his 30-pound backpack and hike across some of the country's prettiest passages. Under clear, cloudless skies he'd pass by navy crystalline lakes and spy wild deer prancing in their natural habitat. At night, the sun would drop, chilling the air and forcing him to bundle up in hats and gloves for an appetizing dinner meal.

My brother, too, adventured this summer. A timid traveller, he bit the proverbial bullet and flew over to Israel for a two-week Birthright tour. There, he rode camels in the Negev desert, floated in the salty Dead Sea, watched the sun creep into the sky from the top of Masada, and relaxed on the Tel Aviv beaches.

When I talked to them both about their experiences, saw their pictures and heard their stories, I thought that I too needed to take leaps sometimes. Try the untried. Go onto unchartered territory. Fear nothing. What should I do, I thought. A total physical adventure is off limits right now, thanks to a persistent leg injury. But then I thought of something so painfully obvious, I am embarassed it wasn't at the top of my mind. Getting married! Not planning a wedding and thinking of flowers and guest lists, but actually embarking on a lifelong commitment with someone. For me, it's untried and unchartered. It's perfect. And, if the smiles on my dad and brother's face after their respective trips are any indicator--it's that new things, even if they're tough at times, are really rewarding.

A Great Conversation Piece

On Tuesday, I met with a financial consultant at work to discuss my 401k plan. Before you knew it, the conversation on stocks and bonds had evolved into a chat about wedding flowers and cakes. Where are you getting married, she wanted to know. When? Then she went into some of her family's wedding day disasters. Once, the hair stylist assumed that a Friday wedding fell on Saturday, and when the miscommunication was uncovered (apparently late in the game), she was no longer available to twist hair and pin up barrettes. A replacement was quickly found and hired. In a similar story, a cousin's make up artist was a no show and the financial consultant herself (the one relaying the story to me) had to fill in. She was a self-claimed cosmetic novice but in the end, she rose to the challenge and applied the bride's eye shadow, mascara, and blush perfectly. Her point in telling me these stories was to ease nerves (hey, small things happen) and maybe give herself a pat on the back, but I left a little horrified, worrying that my cosmetician would bail and my hair would be a jumbled mess.
This story certainly does not stand alone. Ever since I became a bride-to-be, I have talked shop to complete strangers: traveller next to me on air planes, people in an professional development class I took, other future brides as we tried on wedding gowns, and even a waitress when I was asking for the bill (that was particularly awkward...I asked her opinion on the name of our burgeoning wedding web site, and she looked at me like I had lost my mind. Dan wanted to crawl under the dinner table). Yes, sometimes it's really helpful. My doctor, for one, recommended the band we're using, and the woman on the plane listed some bridal dress stores. In certain instances, it's just plain fun, watching strangers think back to their own nuptials before offering sweet tips. But other times, it's probably best to just give the waitress a tip, and keep her out of the wedding dialogue.

A Snapshot of the Crazy Cousins

At our engagement party, I heard my dad yelling for me to come downstairs. I was fixing my hair and reapplying some lip gloss when he announced it's time for the cousins' picture. And so, I raced down stairs to join the ranks of the cousins, who were already assorted in age order. Luckily, it was easy for me to fit in. I am the oldest.

***

This cousins' photo began probably 15 years ago, when my six cousins, brother, and me--in chronological order from the date of our births--affixed ourselves on a sofa and smiled for a series of cameras, each held by an adoring aunt or grandmother. I was around 13, and my youngest cousin was 4. Over the years, relatives snapped a few other pictures of us eight cousins squeezed onto a couch (finding a seat got progressively harder to do as we got older). Even more photos survive of us at various stages of childhood, running through the Bethany Beach waves or eating creamy Vanilla Fudge at Candy Kitchen. It's been a while since the eight of us were all together. First off, Bethany Beach has gotten way too built up. The ocean waves are ridiculously overcrowded. Although it's probably more because each of us is searching, journeying, dreaming, and studying, and those activities usually involve some geographic dispersion. But it's nice that at times like an engagement party, all of us can find our place in the chronological line, ready to be photographed.

Happily Exhausted

I sit here by my home computer, my eyes heavy with tiredness. I debated blogging tonight. I'm pretty exhausted, and not 100% mindful right now. But I wanted to capture the now, the raw emotion. So I sit and begin to write.
***
This weekend was our family engagement party, where relatives from both sides flew, drove, or trained in to celebrate our pending nuptials at my aunt and uncle's house last night. It was so wonderful. And when I just typed my last sentence, I felt frustrated. Wonderful doesn't capture it. Amazing. Touching. Unforgettable. There's something truly special celebrating with both the people I've known my whole life, and with the people I've grown so close to over Dan and my years together. And having them--Dan's family and my family--begin to form strong bonds with one another. So I'm signing off now, to relax and prepare the mundane after the sublime: Monday morning.