WELCOME!

Welcome to our wedding website!  If you’re here, it’s because you know us and hopefully love us.

Feel free to take a look around the site for information regarding the big day, and scroll down for our ongoing account of the planning process.  It’s as riveting as it sounds!

WE GOT NEXT

If there is one thing we have become quite familiar with over the last few years, it’s weddings.

Since we began dating in December of 2007, we’ve been to roughly 157 weddings.

Alright, enough with the hyperbole. By our count we’ve been to 14 weddings together, but that does not count the time in 2009 when we each had close friends getting married on the same day. Nor does it count the four other weddings one of us has gone to without the other during that time span. Together we’ve been to Brooklyn, Boston, the Berkshires, Vermont (twice), the Catskills, London (Ontario), New Hampshire, North Carolina, Lake Tahoe, St. Louis, Tarrytown (twice) and Germany.

Last week, we were at one of those Vermont weddings — don’t worry, we managed to get out of there unscathed — when Margaret said, “you know, the next wedding we go to will be ours.” Yup, after more than a dozen weddings over four years that spanned seven states and three countries, we’re on deck.

BIG PIMPIN’* UP IN LIC**

If there was ever any doubt that our wedding venue is awesome, look no further than this recent photo shoot for Cigar Aficionado. You may recognize the man in those photos. He goes by the name of Jay-Z (aka Jigga, aka Hova). And the location for that photo shoot? You guessed it. It’s the Metropolitan Building. (The photo to the right is from the shoot in question.)

We have one rule in life: If it’s good enough for Jay-Z, it’s good enough for us.

*For our older readers who may not be quite so familiar with Jay-Z’s music, the headline to this post is a reference to a Jay-Z song entitled Big Pimpin’, in which the chorus includes the line “big pimpin’ up in NYC.”

**The Metropolitan Building is located in Long Island City, aka LIC.

HOW INVITING!

So we finally got around to ordering our wedding invitations.  Being the baseball nerd that he is, Matt has an appropriately dorky opinion on wedding invitations:”They’re like baseball umpires: You only notice them when they’re really bad.”

Obviously, we’re hoping that our invites exceed that that exceedingly low standard, and we’re certain that they’re not going to be the Don Denkinger of wedding invitations.

A POST ON POST

It’s been a big week for us. Not only did we receive our first wedding gift, but also a copy of “Emily Post on Weddings.” As you can imagine, there are many helpful tips. Here’s a favorite:

Q. How long should an engagement be?

A. The ideal length for an engagement is between three and six months, unless there are reasons for a longer one, such as the need to finish college or a long term yet to be served in the armed forces.

Don’t worry, folks, the long engagement has nothing to do with Matt’s impending tour in Iraq or the dirty little secret that Margaret didn’t actually graduate from college. (Really, she did.) We didn’t realize we were being so gauche when we decided on a 15-month engagement, and we hope the wait will be worth it for everyone.

LAST NIGHT A DJ SAVED OUR LIFE

OK, maybe not “saved,” but  he definitely “helped.” On the recommendation of many wedding blogs, we were led to a DJ named Phil Quinaz, aka PQ. We met with him a couple of weeks ago, really liked him and were inclined to hire him. But before we did, we wanted to hear him spin. Fortunately, he was playing at Southpaw,  a venue about a block from Matt’s old apartment in Brooklyn. Always eager for nostalgia, we got a group of friends together to check out his performance at “Hot Jamz,” a 90s-themed dance party. (You can see Margaret posing in front of the billboard to the right.)

Fortunately for us, PQ was excellent. He’s a gifted DJ with great energy on stage. He played a lot of 90s deep cuts, which was enjoyable, but we already let him know at our meeting that our wedding will need to feature a lot more Mariah and Gaga (see post below). He said, “If you want me to play the Spice Girls, I’ll play the Spice Girls.” Not sure we’ll go that far, but it’s good to know he has an open mind. We’ve already e-mailed PQ to let him know that he’s hired, and another task bites the dust.

SUIT OR TUX?

Not to give anything away, but Margaret will be wearing a white dress at the wedding. Matt’s attire, however, is still up in the air. He can’t decide if he should wear a suit or a tux, and he needs your help! For the record, this wouldn’t be one of those corny traditional tuxes that you rented for the prom. This would be a fashionable tux, like the kind that you might see Jake Gyllenhaal wearing at the Oscars.

Make your voice heard in the poll below.

WHICH LADY GAGA SONG WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR?

As you probably know, Margaret loves Lady Gaga. In fact, for her 30th birthday, I took her to a Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden and I’ll admit even I had a blast. We even made some new friends.

All that said, I don’t want there to be too much Gaga played at the reception. But if it were up to Margaret, the entire wedding would be a constant loop of just Lady Gaga songs. Let’s say there could only be two Lady Gaga hits played at the reception, which one would you most like to hear? Vote below, and the two most popular tracks will ensure their place on our wedding playlist.

WILL BAND OF HORSES PLAY AT OUR WEDDING?

We’re fans of Band of Horses, and we were blown away when we heard about a recent performance of theirs at a wedding in Norway. Per Pitchfork:

“On September 4 in Tromsø, Norway, Band of Horses delighted a couple of amorous Norwegians by performing at their wedding. Band of Horses played an acoustic version of their venue-appropriate “Marry Song”. Watch a video of the performance below. Apparently, the husband, Njål, proposed to the wife, Elin, at an Oslo Band of Horses show, and the band happened to be in town the day of the nuptials and said ‘what the hell.'”

If any of you knows any members of Band of Horses, let them know we’d be happy to have them perform at our reception.

THE VENUE IS SET

We booked our wedding venue yesterday (the Metropolitan Building in Long Island City), and I promised Margaret that I would create this website as soon as we put down our deposit. I’m a man of my word. Please enjoy our missives over the next year.