We're done here

All married and closing up shop. My regular blogging will be moving to Wordpress in the next week or two, so we'll see you there.

Last pre-wedding post

We're about 12 hours off from the wedding now. It's been a wild ride, and it's almost over. Tomorrow we'll be on paper what we have been for many years.

We hope to see you tomorrow, on what should be the best day of our lives.

Zero Hour Reminder

It's almost that time Folks!

Join us on Wednesday July 21st 2010
Ceremony beginning at 11:00 am

Oaks Park
7805 SE Oaks Park Way
Portland, OR 97202

Ninja Challenge: Bring flowers from your garden so we can use them in the ceremony. It will be special & awesome!

Festivities will commence immediately afterwords. We invite you to bring along a dish that you have with your family during times of celebration.

If possible, the wearing of a single color or hue would be appreciated, and fitting to our color theme of Rainbows.

If you are a musician, feel free to bring your acoustic instruments and we'll see that you get to play!

The After Party

Same day, starting at 8:30 PM at Vertigo
4260 SE Hawthorne, Portland, OR 97215

(We have space reserved, but we don't have the whole bar)

Ninja Wedding Assignment + After Party!

Wow, how time marches on. Last minute preparations are being made, a hundred little details are being ironed out, and Sarah needs shoes.

Sarah's shower is Today, and our bachelor/ette parties are this week. Still plenty left to do, and a dwindling amount of time to do it.

OK attendees, I have a ninja mission for you to complete: Bring flowers.

Don't spend any money on them, just pick a few from your garden (or someone else's , it is a ninja assignment after all) and bring them the morning of the ceremony. It will be awesome, trust me.

And of course, now we can talk about the after party.

Come to Vertigo Pub, and continue to help us celebrate our nuptials!

July 21, starting at 8:30 PM and running until it's time for the bartender to go home, we'll keep celebrating our best day until it's way past our bed time. Records will spin, a good time will be had.

A Reminder

Come celebrate the wedding of

Matthew Aaron Scott
&
Sarah Rebecca McKinlay

Join us on Wednesday July 21st 2010
Ceremony beginning at 11:00 am

Oaks Park
7805 SE Oaks Park Way
Portland, OR 97202

Festivities will commence immediately afterwords.
We invite you to bring along a dish that you have with you family during times of celebration.

If possible, the wearing of a single color or hue would be appreciated, and fitting to our color theme of Rainbows.

There will be an after party in SE starting about 8:30. Details to follow.

Registry Madness and other Stuff

Our registry has grown, it's now Target, Sears, and our nontraditional list. The original traditional one had some holes in it, and we wound up filling them at a different store.

We've both made concrete lists of our to do agendas. Sarah's is huge, mine less so (typical bride vs groom responsibility levels I suppose), but we're working on getting the done.

We've got a shout out here for some help we could use. We had planned on planting & giving seeds to friends for easy grow flowers that bloom in July. Great idea, but our rainy June has kind of killed it. So, if you have some stuff that you got in the ground early enough that will be blooming by the 21st, and you feel like making a donation to our flower pool let us know. Any thing but Azaleas will do (Sarah's allergic).

We'll be busy as caffeinated bees for awhile. More soon!

**Whew**

It's been hectic at we're getting married central. There was a screw up on some paper invitations getting out (caused by yours truly), so a couple of you might be getting them in the next day or two. Most of the "you" I'm referring to are on Sarah's side of the equation (not intentional, just a horrible coincidence and a reminder to my self to be thorough)

We are entering "We're getting married in six weeks and __________ isn't done yet" mode, so you can actually expect to see more posted here, as well as the possibility of you getting a phone call asking if you have access to plutonium and 400 gallons of blue paint.

I kid, we don't need paint. But, all sorts of other things might come up we'll need a hand with, so we might be calling on some friends to ask for minor, non financial, possibly just moral support, help.

First Wave of Paper, and the Wedding Party

The first wave of paper invites were mailed off in the last couple of days, so watch your mail boxes. There was no rhyme or reason as to who was in the first wave that went out, but wave two (final) will be out by Thursday or so.

We'd now like to announce the wedding party:

Us (of course)

Officiant: The Reverend Robert Scott

Best Man: Erich McNaughton
Groomsmen: Zach Barbery & Matt Mitchel

Bridesmaids: Cami Kaos, Rosie McKinlay-Mench & Sara McNaughton

Our friend Mark Savage has agreed to be our music poobah

More updates as they develop!

RSVP Here!

Hello beloved family & friends, check out the RSVP page! Feel free to use the comments to let us know if you can come or not. Feel free to email us at droidwhisperer at Gmail dot com as well!

If you've marked your self as attending on Facebook, there's no need to post here.

Fires Behind Us

Not all the things in the past stay the same: The coffee shop where we had our first date has been replaced with a Vietnamese Bistro, Grandma June has gone, and we have been through about about 5 cars.

Now, the place we met is gone as well. The Great Northwest Bookstore burned down on Sunday, leaving a great plume of smoke and a devastated Phil in it's wake. It's a place we've both moved on from, but we're sad to see it wiped out like that.

Everybody has a part of their past that winds up vaporized. Sometimes it's well behind and causes reflection, and other times it goes up in the now and hurts like hell. I hope Phil moves on, and does in fact retire as I know he's been mulling over for years.

I also feel for Walt Curtis, he was living there at the time, and who knows what treasures he lost. Walt's a survivor though. I'm sure he'll pick up his bottle of wine and his easy grin, then go write some thing that will challenge us all over again.

Maybe you'll get to meet both of them at the wedding, as they're on our track down and invite list.

Wednesday, July 21st at 11:11 AM

It is set in stone: We will be getting married on July 21st at Oaks Park. Mark your calendars, call in sick to work, and haul yourselves here for the event of our lives.

It will be awesome.

Date is Looming

We trapped a date for our nuptials, we just need to make sure it's going to hold still before we say anything.

It should stop thrashing in the next day or two, we'll send massive waves of messages when it's official.

My Dad is Awesome

My Dad has agreed to get ordained and officiate at our wedding. This is awesome.

I am in no way suggesting that the rest of The Five are any less awesome of course, but Dad really stepped up to the plate this time.

Another piece of the wedding puzzle has fallen into place, now if we could just nail down a date we could really get the ball rolling.

Theme and things

Wishes. That's our theme. As in, "I wish I get to go to Disneyland for my honeymoon, and not stupid Paris like Pumpkin wants." Paris, in itself, is not stupid of course. Beautiful city. Anyway, I'm getting that wish. Which kind of makes me froth over with joy because my boyfriend - um, fiance accepts the little kid in me. Kind of seems to admire it, or something. Also a good thing since I've been doing all this "what is the meaning of..." and "wow, it's a long way off this cliff into that grown-up marriage..." and maybe acting more than usually like the acid is just coming on. Witness this attempt to share some fun (to me) and interesting (I hope) details while we wait for the date to lock and how it's devolved into "Matt is great! He gives me chocolate cake!".

Oh My God, what if no one comes and all our jello melts?
Okay, back to reality. Some things to share.

Wishes is our theme.

We're asking the minor children in our family to be in the ceremony.

The fastest, easiest decision was cake. S (braced for a long debate about fondant): "What do you think about the cake?" M: "Chocolate raspberry." S: "Sold!"

Rings really had us stumped. Clearly a couple who shouts about baby arms when walking past jewelery stores is not about to plunk down a bunch of cash for some metal. But rings are important. But we will not be crushed by the wedding industry monster. But we like shiny things. Solution: jewelry making class.

(We may not end up with the most beautiful rings.)

------

I realized that Matthew already mentioned these details, so here are a couple more.

We're asking the guests to dress in monochrome. Any number of shades of the same (or similar) hue(s). The bride will be in rainbow and the groom in white with rainbow embroidery done by the bride. Somehow ribbons will be involved for at least the young ladies we're asking to participate. Stumped somewhat on an accessory for the young gentlemen, so if anyone has an idea?

Both atheists, we agree that invoking a deity during the ceremony would feel blasphemous. But since we could be wrong about the nature of the universe (I mean, odds are, right?), we want to have a period of time after the ceremony when our friends & family members of faith could bless us according to their own understandings. In my head, this happens under a small canopy, but we'll need to let that one ferment.

Music - The only piece that struck us both is Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me To the End of Love" (which is probably called something else). If we think of you as a friend, and you perform music, don't be surprised if we ask you if you'd like to play something of your choosing. Once we have a locked date. Riley, you should count on it.

Bride saves wedding guests from paint poisoning! Matthew wanted very much to paint minis for cake toppers. But we came up with an even better alternative.

Coloring books, paper airplane materials for guests to play with. I hope we can also revive the Monster Lab of Broken Dolls.

There's this tradition we're trying to work in...

Matthew's request that our wedding not be used as a political statement pops into my head all through here.* So I will just say that after discussing weddings & gifts with The Five (my shorthand for the beloved and deeply respected Bob, Laurinda, Mac, Marilee, & Nancy), we came up with:

The Registry Registry & The Non-Registry Registry

Political Gifts

Donations to NCLR's Elder Law Project, BARK, Equality Now, HRC, NARAL, NOW, Habitat for Humanity, Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon, Mercy Corps, Doctors without Borders, Outside In, other groups you think should be supported.

Volunteer time for same.

Buttons, t-shirts from great campaigns of the past or present.

Geek/Childish gifts

Cool Steampunk airplane lamp at Really Good Stuff - 1322 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214-3616(503) 238-1838‎.
Dice. Gamers never have too many dice.
Donation to Fall Honeymoon in - brace yourself - Disneyland.

Artistic gifts

Art: objects you made for no other purpose than to speak your mind/muse/soul/vision.
Crafts: just like above, but also serving a second purpose: hand towel or calendar, say.
Literature: by you, or someone else (yes, we work at a bookstore, but that gives us a convenient way to pass on texts when we need room for more).
Music: again, by you or others.
Found Objects: "No, I've never seen a pebble quite that color before, either. Honey, look at this gray. We should keep it with the other awesome rocks."

Practical gifts

Refrigerator in better shape than the leaky, freezy one we have.

Screen door ditto.

Mac laptop ditto.

PC laptop ditto.

Plates, Bowls, Flatware: green, blue, or metallic copper - we didn't put any on the RR because I would rather an eclectic mix.

Bookshelves.

Freezer.

Knives, Pyrex Cookware, Bakeware - not on RR because we decided that anyone who was going to give these would know better than us what would be best.

(the RR has mostly stuff like this)

*because, I mean, MY special princess day, non-political?

OK, News, and a Date Window

Our official window to wed has been narrowed down to July 5th through the 23rd. Some time in that span we will be having the ceremony.

As with most things, we're going nontraditional on wedding registry. There will be a list here on this site coming soon. I'll leave, and not read, the comments field on for discussion amongst the group.

We have also made a few other decisions: We'll be taking a jewelry making class to learn how to make our own wedding rings (take THAT wedding industry), the cake will be chocolate with raspberry, and the food will be something different as well.

We figure, if you're asked to come to the wedding, we want to share this special part of our lives with you, that you are part of our community. When special things are celebrated, people tend to make special food...so we want every one to bring that special celebratory dish in a huge wedding potluck extravaganza!

We're also trying to figure a lot of other things out. Location, Music, etc. If you have any suggestions, drop a line, we'll gladly take any input!

The blog title is accurate.

Sarah & Matt are indeed getting married. This year in fact, probably in the summer. More details (and an improved website) shall be forthcoming!