Earthquake interrupts wedding

Oh, poor East Coast people. You have shitty weather, and now you have earthquakes too? This cute couple had their wedding interrupted by yesterday's earthquake. Steve and Amy Mutton were getting ready to officially marry at the City Hall Chapel in New York when the earthquake started.

"We were in the chapel waiting," said Mutton, a 40-year-old IT consultant from London. "All of a sudden, they started evacuating the building." The rumbling, stemming from a quake that measured 5.8 on the Richter Scale and centered in Virginia, was over in just seconds.

His bride, Amy Mutton, 36, a project manager from Park Ridge, N.J., insisted it was a good omen and they went ahead and got hitched after the earth stopped moving. "It's not something we could have planned on. So you've got to go with it and get on with it, don't you?" she said.

Still, she was a little rattled. "I'm gonna go home and have some champagne now," she said.

The couple met in 2007 when she went to London for business. She will move to London to be with him. They planned the wedding five weeks ago.

-KB

Discounted diamond ring

I love Costco. It's hard not to feel like a queen when I leave with my enormous cart of 700-calorie muffins and steaks as big as my head.

If you're looking to save some money on your engagement ring and you REALLY want to feel like a queen then Costco is the place for you. This ring will save you roughly $500,000!



It's a 6.20ct diamond ring set in platinum for (pinky to mouth) one. MILLION. dollars.

The site says there's only one available. I'm sure there's someone out there rich enough to buy it. I'm curious of the back story. Does Costco have extravagant items like this all the time, or does the buyer just...randomly find 6 carat diamonds? Mystery.

-KB

Surprise wedding - for the bride

A guy named Shawn wanted to propose to his girlfriend Colleen in the most insane way possible - at their wedding.

He explains that over the course of several months, he asked her seemingly-innocent questions about her dream wedding while he was secretly planning their ACTUAL wedding. When he proposes, she doesn't seem that shocked about it (IMO proposals should never be a total surprise), but she is completely shocked that her bridesmaids are present, dressed, and ready to take her to get her dressed too.




Even my heart of stone is weakened by this couple. She's elated, and he is so sweet. He even went to all the trouble of bringing her entire bedroom to the ceremony site so that she would have everything necessary to get ready. That's so thoughtful.

-KB

Bert and Ernie won't marry

This article contains an hi-larious description of puppet sexual preference.

[Producers of the] 40 year-old TV series [Sesame Street] dismissed the idea of a made-for-TV, same-sex puppet wedding in response to an online campaign and petition to have the two "Sesame Street" characters get married as a way to beat homophobia and encourage tolerance of gay people.



In recent days, almost 9,000 people have signed a petition encouraging the wedding at http://www.change.org and/or become friends of a special "Bert and Ernie Get Married" Facebook page, sparking a lively debate on Twitter and other social media.

Bert, who is fascinated by pigeons and gets easily upset, and oval-headed, free spirit Ernie, have lived together at 123 Sesame Street since 1969. They share a bedroom, but sleep in single beds. Sesame Workshop noted on Thursday that as puppets, Bert and Ernie don't have sexual preferences.

"Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation," Sesame Workshop said in a statement posted on its official Facebook page.

The change.org petition had argued that their marriage would help to put an end to bullying and suicides of gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual young people. "We are not asking that 'Sesame Street' do anything crude or disrespectful by allowing Bert & Ernie to marry. It can be done in a tasteful way," the petition read.

I think it's really funny that they had to release an Official Statement RE: The sexual preference of puppets. Can't we just leave Bert and Ernie alone? If they are indeed gay, and IF they want to come out, then I will support them. I refuse to speculate about the private busines of two guys who have always been my supportive friends.




-KB

Oh, hi Mark! Why are you at my wedding?

Fans of THE ROOM, you might enjoy this country music video featuring Greg Sestero.




If you're like me then most modern country music is shrill ear-torture, but this video has a twist that you might appreciate.

Did you miss my last post about THE ROOM? I treat you like a princess...and you stab me in the back. Here it is.

-KB

Awkward live proposal

A local TV news crew was filming some fluff piece at an airport when they unwittingly caught a proposal in the background. The shot was live, and it was really sweet until the news reporter caught wind of it and used her quick-thinking to railroad a special moment.



Oh, local newscasters...is there anything you can get right?









-KB

Scariest wedding crasher ever

Bears: godless killing machines. And terrible wedding crashers.

It was a wedding party at an exclusive Taos resort but the two bears were not invited. A 300 pound mother bear and her cub crashed a wedding at the El Monte Sagrado Resort here on Sunday afternoon as they romped across lawns and climbed trees as wedding guests grabbed their cameras.



New Mexico Game and Fish officer Matt Pengelly hit the bear with a well-aimed dart from his tranquilizer gun after 10 p.m. as it sat perched in a tree about 30 feet off the ground. The bears “messed up a wedding,” said Pengelly, as he readied his rifle for action. His Doberman named Mala, Taos police officers and resort security kept an eye on the bear as Pengelly got ready.

“This is the first time I have seen a bear here but we have had several bear complaints in the area and I think it’s probably the same bear,” said Pengelly.

Pengelly asked every one present to remain quiet so that the tranquilizer would take effect more quietly. Several minutes later the bear crashed to the ground and Pengelly checked to make sure no bones were broken.

“I heard it over the (in-house) radio calling all departments,” said front desk office manager Christy Newton. “That there was a bear on the property.”

Resort security guards said they had to keep guests back from the bears as they went from one tree right next to where the wedding was taking place inside to another tree further away. “The cub was climbing the tree and the mom was watching it and it fell,” said Newton. “It was cute.” The cub ran off while it’s mother stayed in the tree.

Taos police officers Ron Montez and Lloyd Garcia stood by before Pengelly’s arrival to “make sure guests didn’t wander out there,” said Garcia. Pengelly carted the bear away in his truck to contain it overnight before he was to release it into the wild. The late rains have not done enough to provide natural food for bears and there have been numerous recent bear incidents, Pengelly said recently.

Here's my theory: the bear spied her dream wedding and wanted to be the center of attention.

TELL ME I LOOK PRETTY

-kb

Hobo-themed wedding: assholes or awwww?

Is this a cute, vintage theme wedding with a can-do attitude, or assholery that mocks the impoverished?

Regretsy and Etsy both tell the tale of a couple who had a hobo-themed wedding. The bride's write-up says that her limited budget and personal interest in depression-era culture put the pieces together for a hobo wedding. Regretsy says they're dickheads who mercilessly mock the poor unfortunate souls who struggled through the real depression.


the hobo couple



hobo campfire


hobo...invitations?

I'm not sure why the couple insisted on calling it a HOBO wedding. It seems to me that it's a pretty flippant attitude toward the actual poverty that exists in the world. A depression-themed wedding could still have this same "come together" feel without mocking the thousands of people who survived (and didn't survive) a terrible time in American history. Starvation, illness, and homelessness are not romantic.

It is a cute wedding, but the hobo theme definitely leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

-KB

Computer conducts couple's wedding

Miguel Hanson and Diana Wesley couldn't decide on a human to officiate their wedding, so they programmed a computer to do it. They got married this Saturday, and here's their story:

Hanson, a Houston web developer and IT consultant, created the minister software program when the couple couldn't get a friend to serve as the minister at their wedding. "I was like, you know I'm going to write my own minister," Hanson said.



Wesley, a high school sign language teacher, said she's aware of the nerd jokes that might come the couple's way once more people hear about the wedding. But the couple says being married by a computer fits who they are. They met through a website called "Sweet on Geeks" and love science fiction and fantasy.

"That's kind of our thing," Wesley said. "In fact, my maid of honor, she's making my cake and she's making it with Nerds (candy) as the topping and not icing. That's kind of the theme, the geeked out wedding."

[Oh ma ga! I love this idea! But NO frosting? Hmm...]

The ceremony will take place in Hanson's parents' backyard in Houston. Wesley, 30, said she wanted a small wedding, and the couple started planning it after Hanson, 33, proposed in May.
The computer will greet the couple's 30 or so guests in a mechanical, robotic voice, give a little history about how they met and then go through the ceremony. The virtual minister, nicknamed "Rev. Bit," also will crack a joke or two.

"If anyone here has anything to say that might change their minds or has any objections, they do not want to hear it and I will not recognize your objections since Miguel has programmed me to only recognize his commands," said the program during a preview that Hanson played on his home computer. It's HAL 9000 meets "Here Comes the Bride."

While Hanson wrote the software program, the couple collaborated on the text the computer will recite during the ceremony. They said their friends instantly like the idea. But some family members took a little longer to warm up to it. "A couple members of the family were like, `Really? A computer?' I think once they see it. ... It's novel and so it's something they haven't seen," Wesley said.

There's a video of the ceremony here, though the audio only worked about half the time for me.

-KB

Friday funny - dog wedding photographer

I have no idea what I'm doing

Paralyzed bride receives corporate-sponsored gift

Last week the story of Rachelle Friedman was making the news; she's the woman who was paralyzed at her bachelorette party.

This week she's received a nice gift from Toyota. Most young women don't want mini-vans, but this is a nice gesture. She and her new husband received a Sienna Rampvan to accommodate her wheelchair. The van will put an end to Rachelle having to be carried in and out of the family SUV.



According to the press release, she plays quad-rugby. This girl is a badass! I hope the good stuff keeps coming for her.

-KB

Parents: Always mildly annoying

Don't get me wrong, parents are awesome, but sometimes there's an issue they just won't stop pushing.

This article outlines gay couples who are being pressured into marriage by their parents; now that gay marriage is legal in New York, their parents want them to make it official. Here's an excerpt:

One parent seeking that official stamp is Vicki Robinson, 58, a physics professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester. Ever since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the same-sex marriage bill on June 24, Ms. Robinson has been nudging her 27-year-old daughter, Stephanie Pollanen, to marry her girlfriend of six years, Lindsay Hall.

“I’m a Bible-thumping Lutheran who just got my church to put rainbow stickers on their door,” said Ms. Robinson, who is divorced and uses her maiden name. “If they were married, I would feel more like I could write Lindsay’s name in the family Bible in ink.”

But her daughter has refused to share her thoughts on marriage, so Ms. Robinson has taken to following her daughter’s Twitter feed for signs of matrimonial chatter.



“I intercepted a Twitter tweet of my daughter’s one day to a friend indicating that perhaps a wedding was on the horizon,” she said. “So I took my daughter and her girlfriend out to dinner and bought several rounds of martinis, and her partner happened to spill that they had discussed plans for a fall wedding.”

Nothing has been set, but that has not stopped Ms. Robinson from planning the big day in her head.

“Lindsay is small and adorable, so I see her in a flapper thing in ivory silk with an overlapping handkerchief hem and a cloche,” she said. “My daughter is larger than Lindsay and very curvy, so I see her in an old-fashioned off-the-shoulder wedding dress with a big skirt.”

Table settings and menus have also been considered.

“I also see lots of flowers and a string quartet with a band for dancing after,” Ms. Robinson added. “The food would be fabulous and exotic, maybe something sort of Moroccan-Middle Eastern.”


Wow, Mom. That isn't just pressure, it's a boa constrictor.

-KB

January-December wedding photos emerge

I love a good Hollywood scandal, so of course I've been following this trainwreck of a marriage. A 51-year-old actor married a 16-year-old girl, and they claim it's TRULUV4EVR. The girl's mom claims her daughter has never had plastic surgery, and is a moral young woman; the newlyweds claim they didn't have sex before their marriage and that their relationship is true.

Now the world can further judge them because they've released their wedding photos:

Lots more at the source

I looked at his IMDB page, and despite having seen a lot of his work, I can barely remember him.

So maybe they're both getting what they want - attention, infamy, and sex. Good for them?

-KB

Watch out for your bridesmaids

Don't get me wrong - this is a really sweet story about a long-term couple that takes the "sickness and health" part of their vows seriously.



A year ago, Rachelle Friedman was suddenly paralyzed, and it put her wedding to Chris Chapman on hold for a year. Their current upcoming wedding is getting national attention and lots of donations - it's a dream wedding now for a couple that has been through hell.

But listen to how the bride was paralyzed:

Days before the ceremony [last year], fate twisted their plans in another direction.

At her bachelorette party, a friend's playful push landed Friedman awkwardly in the shallow end of a pool. Doctors said she was permanently paralyzed.

First, I'm sure that friend feels awful, but there's a sick joke about an ugly taffeta dress in there somewhere.

The bottom line? Love is forever, but don't fuck with your bridesmaids.

Seriously though, good luck to them both. They're a cute couple.

-KB

Dancing wedding kid

Found via Reddit.

Wedding guests get food poisoning

Last week, shortly after declaring the entire wedding world boring, I got hideous food poisoning that took me out for the rest of the week. Because my mind is always in the wedding gutter, I was in a cold sweat, barfing my guts up and thinking "I wonder how many times people have gotten food poisoning at a wedding reception?". I Googled it - it happens all the time! Here's the most recent case:

Ninety-two people were hospitalized on Saturday in the northwestern province of Düzce [Turkey] shortly after sharing the same wedding dinner, leading to suspicions of food poisoning.

The Anatolia news agency reported that they were served chicken and pilaf at a wedding in the neighborhood of Aziziye. The 92 people all went to the hospital with complaints of nausea and vomiting. They were then diagnosed with food poisoning. The victims have been receiving treatment at various hospitals in Düzce.

I love that he's on his phone. I got food poisoning and double-eliminated right on the dance floor. Can you believe that?

Meanwhile, officials from the Düzce Provincial Agriculture Directorate took samples from the wedding meal to further investigate. Officials from the Düzce Provincial Health Directorate also took samples from the water the guests drank in order to find out if it was the water that had caused them to be ill.

If this happened at my wedding, I would feel so awful. Brides always worry about things that will ruin their wedding day, and truly this is one of them.

Eat safe!

-Kay

Bor-ing

There's nothing good going on in the world of weddings right now. Kim Kardashian, Prince of Monaco, blahblahblech. So it seems like a good time for a break. I'll be back next week with...stuff?

For now, here's a picture of an awesome Homer and Marge wedding cake.




xo,

Kay

I Moo.

If you love delicious sandwiches* as much as I do, then you'll love this.

Personally, I'd rather have a hamburger ring (hence the title of the post) because I think a domed, sesame seed encrusted ring at the top would look cute and make a funny engagement ring. "Here's the bun, baby, but you have to wait for the meat". That's vulgar.

-Kay

* If you're vegan/tarian, you can pretend the bacon is seitan. Or avocado if you're a celiac vegan. Let's just put avocado on everything and call it a day.

Kindle Single - Sparkle by Mara Altman

Amazon recently introduced Kindle Singles; "long-form journalism" that is shorter than a novel, but longer than a magazine article. They cost a buck or two, and focus on one specific topic.

It seemed like fun to try something new, so I bought Sparkle by Mara Altman. It is well-reviewed, and one of the reviewers was absolutely appalled by the filthy language, so I was pretty sure I'd find it funny.



The general gist of the book is familiar - a slightly neurotic modern woman gets serious about her boyfriend and wonders if she's losing herself as a result of the coupling. The (essay? article? I don't know what to call it) story outlines Mara Altman's personal crusade to discover WHY people wear engagement rings, and why she's so conflicted about wearing one.

Not being an engagement ring kind of girl, I snorted forcefully at the description of the classic 3-stone ring as "the cock-and-balls model". Altman researches the history of the engagement ring back to the old Egyptian myth that says the vein in the left-hand ring finger flows right to the heart and quips, "Anatomically speaking, veins that connect to our hearts also eventually connect to our assholes." How can I not love this woman?

I will not divulge all of Altman's discoveries on her journey to dissect engagement rings (and her relationship), so I'll just say that the article was enjoyable. It was part informative and part engaged-Bridget-Jones; I related to many of her feelings about engagement rings and learned a few things along the way. Overall, I'm pleased with my first Single - it was $2 for a lazy morning's entertainment, and I think that's a good value.

-KB

Carmageddon wedding in LA

Southern Californians are bracing themselves for "Carmageddon weekend", the weekend when a huge stretch of the major 405 freeway will be shut down for repairs. It seems like it's going to be bad, but hopefully people will stay home and not clog all the major roads. My close friend and I have been wondering how many weddings will be affected by the freeway closure, and how much it sucks because there was no way of knowing about this last year. Here's the first story I've seen:


A year ago, a young Marina del Rey couple picked the seemingly innocuous date of July 17, 2011, for their wedding in Bel-Air. Then came the unthinkable: Transportation officials announced that a nearby section of the 405 freeway would be closed that day.



"My mom said, I'm going to tell you something, but don't freak out," said soon-to-be bride Dalia Franco, 25.

But panic has been unavoidable, and Franco brought her concerns to the freeway closure meeting Thursday night. A total of 130 wedding guests are expected to arrive from local areas as well as from San Diego, other parts of the United States and even Israel and Africa, she said. She's worried that people will not be able to get to the ceremony on time.

A family friend's house on Bellagio Road will serve as the venue for a 5 p.m. garden wedding themed "Romance under the Stars," Franco said. She and her fiance, Moshe Shmuel, 26, are bracing themselves for a logistical migraine. The couple have asked guests to schedule early flights that will land in plenty of time for the ceremony. Few options exist to ease the drive from the airport or from guests' homes.

She has sent frantic calls and emails to local government officials, asking for their help. She approached public safety officials at the meeting Thursday night seeking advice for her wedding guests. Shmuel, a business student at Santa Monica College, also came to the meeting.

After hearing Franco speak, Los Angeles city officials promised to help the couple make a contingency plan. A group of police officers came up to talk to her after the meeting.

"What we're doing is finding out more about the event and looking at alternate routes," said Capt. John Egan of the LAPD's West Valley area and an operations chief for the closure weekend.

The plans may involve buses or other ways to efficiently move a large number of people, Egan added. Franco said she greatly appreciated the response.

"It's something to calm my fears a little bit," she said, adding that either way, "it's a wedding no one will forget."


I sincerely hope this all works out for them. Good luck, Dalia and Moshe!

-KB