The Wedding!

Hello everyone,

Apologies for the fact this is nearly a week late, but we have been very busy! Anyway, I wanted to let you all know that the wedding ceremony went perfectly, and we had a truly wonderful day.
The after party was lovely, filled with good food, and our family and friends.

I have a few pictures to share of the setup, but not of Jon and I - yet! I might have some of those in a week or two.

Following the party, we drove north and spent the weekend in New York with some dear friends of ours, and got back the early hours of Monday morning.

So, here's the pics! (Some things need explanation, which I have wrote after the pictures. Click images to see full size).

If you're wondering why the Christmas lights and Christmas Tree, they have some sentimental value to us. As I have said many times, we wanted things to be special and unique to us, and that is exactly what we did.
The tree actually had a lot of sentimental ornaments on it, that were special to Jon and his family.
The one of the wider shot of the room is a view looking from where Jon and I stood with our officiant, Sandy. The chairs were of course were where our guests were seated.
The picture of the table with Peter Pan and Stitch on it was I guess, for want of a better word, the "altar", and was basically right behind where the room shot was taken (where Jon and I stood).

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below!

Just so you know, tomorrow we are off to Disneyland in California, and won't be back until late Tuesday night.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Dan.

Cakes and Flowers!

Hello everyone,

Last week I told you the exciting news about our rings, and today I'd like to share with you our cakes and flowers for the ceremony!

We have decided to chose two cakes that reflect both of our own unique personalities, and who we are as a couple.
As I have said many times before, we have never claimed to run by tradition. We are who we are, and we want what we want.
So, I have chosen a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cake, and Jon has chosen a Harry Potter one!

Here some pictures:

We are ordering them from Target (US department store/grocery chain).

When we were at Wegman's (another US grocery chain) last week we saw some really awesome roses. This is what we ordered:

Let us know what you think!

Only 4 days to go now until the big day!!

Dan.

The Day We Bought Four Rings!

Hello everyone,

Yesterday we went to Arundel Mills mall in Maryland to look for wedding rings.
Everyone we've spoke to seemed quite surprised that we left it so late - not least the ladies in Reeds where we ended up buying our rings!

We wandered around for a while, and were not really inspired by anything. We thought that maybe next weekend we could spend a day dedicated to looking for rings.
We walked into Reeds to just have a quick look, and was greeted by a very friendly assistant.

My two main concerns about buying rings had been that, one, if we bought them in Virginia - or at least tried to - we might have been met with some hostility. Virginia is technically "the south", it's a "red state", and they don't offer very many equal protections for LGBT people, especially not marriage equality.
Second, for those very reasons, we didn't want to be giving the state our tax money for expensive rings, when we weren't even getting married there.

Anyway, back to jewellers, and we browsed for a bit, and the very nice lady seemed really excited for us, if not really surprised we had left it so late to look for rings!
We wanted something a bit unconventional. I have never claimed to be conventional, and certainly wasn't going to start now!
They did have a good selection, including some rings that were labelled as wedding rings, but were definitely not your typical gold band.
We both liked two different styles, and couldn't decide.
The problem with the better one of the two styles we liked was that they needed to be custom ordered as they are made from tungsten (a dark metal).
We obviously wanted something for the ceremony though. So, we did something which some people might find strange, but like I said, I've never claimed to follow convention!
We bought the much cheaper titanium rings in our sizes there and then, and then also ordered the much more expensive tungsten rings, to be collected at a later date!

So, for now, we have a simple titanium ring each that fits, and in about 8 weeks we'll have our "real" rings, the tungsten ones!
So we'll actually have two wedding rings each in the end! At leas tI'll have a choice as to which one I want to wear on any given day!

I found some pictures of the rings on the internet for you to see.

The titanium ones we currently have are:

The tungsten ones we ordered are this neat Celtic dragon design:

Let me know what you think!

Dan.

Updates - Life in General

Hello everyone,

I know I haven't had much to say lately, but I guess while we wait for the process to get moving along, then there isn't much to report!
We have filled out the papers from the lawyers, and we sent in our fees already.
So, when I leave the US in September we can basically call the lawyer and say "ok, Dan is back home, and we'd like to file the petition now!" (You may recall before that I have said I can't be in the US while we go through this process.)

In the meantime, we've just been spending our summer preparing for our big day on the 23rd August.
We don't plan to have anything really big, but it'll be special and nice in its own way.
I haven't "officially" run all my plans by the rest of the family yet (!), so I can't reveal anything here, but we hope to talk to them, and our officiant for the day, within the next couple of days. Once we've spoke to them, then I can can let you all know what our big day is shaping up like; what we're doing, how we're doing it, etc.

A week ago today we went to get our marriage license at the Frederick County Courthouse over in Maryland.
It was a very simple process. We walked in, went to the clerk's desk, and told them our intention to get married. She asked a few questions (name, age, place of residence), and we had to take a very short oath swearing that we had no reason that we could not legally be wed (I.E. in an existing marriage still).
Then, we paid the fee (I think it was $75), she printed the certificate, and voila! We are now all set on that front!
On the big day, once married, our officiant will sign the certificate and file it with the court, and within 5 business days we should have our official marriage certificate!

Last weekend we went to BrickFair in Chantilly, VA. We've been before, a few years back. Always fun to see everyones crazy LEGO creations, and take a trip down memory lane looking at old sets.
Also last weekend my Canadian 'family' were down for a few days, too, and we hung out with them, which was really nice.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we are going to see the latest Disney Live! show. In all the madness of late I can't remember exactly which one it is, but I have a strong feeling it's a Disney Jr one, and has Sofia the First and Doc McStuffins in it.

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but the weekend we get married we are also going to New York City to stay with some friends. It wasn't intentionally planned as a "honeymoon" as we had made arrangements before we knew our wedding date, but I guess now it will be of sorts!

The week after that we'll be heading out to California for 5 days to visit Disneyland, and all our friends there, including one of our best and most trusted friends, Loren (I know he reads this, so I thought I'd give a shout out!).

After the DL trip I'll be heading home, then we can finally file all this paperwork that we have laying around! Then this process can really begin!

Anyway, I think that's all for now. I'll try to post more this weekend.

Dan.

We're Getting the Marriage Licence Today!

Hello everyone,

The title of this entry is fairly self-explanatory, I think!
We're driving up to the Frederick County Courthouse this afternoon to get our marriage license, so that we can actually get married on the 23rd!

Dan.