Kristie’s REAL Wedding Vows July 15, 2007

While the ‘ditto’ following Chris’ vows might have been funny to some, it wasn’t what I had really intended to say to him. I had actually written vows. Real vows. But I thought it would be silly of me to hold a piece of paper up during the ceremony, so I left it in the room thinking I would remember it all. I mean, logic told me all I had to do was look into Chris’ beautiful blue/green eyes and the words of love would all come streaming through me. Not.

Chris’ vows stunned me.

I don’t know why I was surprised, I knew they would. In fact, that was one of the reasons I knew I needed to prepare. I was marrying a poet. One who has an absolute amazing way with words on any old regular day – I knew he was going to shine on our wedding day. I thought I was ready. I thought I could hold it together. Then he pulled out two sheets of paper and I lost it. I mean, if Chris had to write his vows down to remember it all, I was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.

So when he finished, all I could think of ‘ditto’. Of course, the minute that left my mouth, I realized I should try and recover. Try to pull the words back through me that I had wanted to say to him. Two minutes of pure babble then followed. I guess it was a good thing I didn’t have the microphone next to my mouth the entire time as the ocean was drowning out most of the silliness. But it was ok. I was looking into the face of love and love was smiling back on me. At least he already knew I was a dork.

So without further delay, here are my real vows.

——

Muffin. My love. My partner. My soul mate.

I must admit it is a little odd to be standing here, professing my love to you, wearing a white (ok, ivory) frock, as we wait for a judge to tell us we are man and wife. Odd because I feel like we are already married, that we made our commitment to one another long ago. So this is just a formality…and a rouse on your part to get me in a dress, but it is ok, because having that piece of paper now means we get to save 20% on our auto insurance.

There is an undeniable connection between us, and what I initially thought were mere coincidences, quickly turned into signs I had finally met my mate. My soul mate. I had finally found the male version of me, scary as that may be.

• We both have ‘Chris’ at the root of our names – Christopher and Christy (legal spelling until I changed it in 7^th grade – yes, I was ahead of my time). I keep telling everyone I tried to fall in love with a Steve, but my heart caved for a Chris, so we will now forever be chrisandkristie.com.
• You have a cat named Ele, my cat’s name was Ellie.
• You and I had the same exact set of silverware. Oneida’s Sandstone. Not a real popular style. I bought this set over eight years ago and you had the same exact set so when we merged our households, this was a very big bonus for me as you know how much I like things that match.
• When we met, I was living in 94404 while you were living in 94044 and we now live in 94114. Just a neat numbers thing.
• We both own maroon vehicles. Not red, maroon. Almost freaky, isn’t it?

Christopher, I stand here today and promise to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle. I promise to love you in good times and in bad, when life seems easy and when it seems hard, when our love is simple, and when it is an effort. I promise to help you spend our money, and also to manage our debt. I promise to cherish you, to respect you.

You are the yin to my yang. The root of me. I love you.

• I love that you point out the cracks in the sidewalk so I won’t trip and hurt myself (as you know I would).
• I love when you do the ‘Miami’ dance.
• I love the fact you think the bright yellow shirt with orange flowers goes nicely with the red corduroy pants.
• I love that you will still curl up with me on the couch even three hours after I have had red meat.
• I love that you are a man who understands, and sometimes feeds, my Coach purse addiction.
• I love your smile and how it warms my soul when it is directed at me.
• I love that when I call you muffin, you call me scone.
• I love that you take better care of my knees than I do.
• I love that you are patient and supportive even when I keep taking the baseball swing on the golf course.
• I love that you kick my ass in Scrabble every single time, but don’t gloat (well, not too much).
• I love that you got your back waxed for me as you know it makes me happy.
• I love that you challenge me. I may not love it at the time, but afterwards, when I realize you were right, I love that.

Mostly, I love the love you have for me, and I promise to spend the rest of my life loving you, completely.

Kristie’s Wedding Vows… July 11, 2007

Ditto.

Chris’ Wedding Vows… July 8, 2007

You asked, so here they are… audio and video to come later in the week.

——–

Yes, we are match kids, in the truest sense of the word. We met because I changed my expectations of what I was looking for on match.com and I winked at you. Its a good thing you winked back online, because you can’t physically wink at all. I was attracted to you then because of your love for Dave Matthews, your great attitude, your smile and the fact that you werent looking for a serious relationship. Now almost 1400 days later, here we are at the altar with our true friends on a beautiful beach, fulfilling one of our childhood dreams together.

When we met in person for the first time, and you trudged up my 63 steps with your bad knee, you gave me a magic 8 ball – of course, I immediately thought to myself, what a dork… but I gave in and asked it a question… I didn’t like the answer it gave me, so I shaked harder and asked again – same result. I never told you what I really asked that day, so I thought I should finally tell you that I asked “is she the one?” the answer was ‘yes, definitely’

It’s hard to believe that the magic 8 ball was right, but clearly it was – I began to fall in love with you that very night, holding hands in the movies and making out in your car… I love you for more than kissing on the first date though – I love you because you and I complement each other in so many ways – in a true sense, as Livio kept pointing out to me about 2.5 yrs ago, we are perfect for each other.

• I love the way your soul smiles at the world

• I love your infectious laughter

• I love how you make me laugh

• I love how you make me feel when I look into your eyes

• I love your compassion and the way you support your friends

• I love the way you support us and give me strength when I have none left for either of us

• I love all of you, no matter how big or small

• I love your hair, no matter how short, long or russian

• I love the way you say ‘ohhhoohhh’

• I love the sweetness in your heart, the love in your eyes and the strength in your hands.

What I love most about you though, is how much more I love myself and the world around us when I am with you – you truly do complete me and with each passing day, you make me even more happy then the day before. Being with you here now is the happiest day of my life, but I know there are many happier days to come for us both.

So for these and so many other reasons,

• I promise to love, honor and respect, and occasionally obey

• I promise to fight you to the bitter end, but make up as quickly as possible

• I promise to hold your hands while we take walks on the beach (unless its too hot, and then I will only hold your pinkie)

• I promise to keep pursuing our dreams and never settle for second best

• I promise to do my best to make this a wonderful life for us, as we both work to make this world a better place

• I promise to always be a kid at heart

• I promise to always keep advil by the bed so I can never say not tonight dear I have a headache

• I promise to be true to you, and to us

• I promise to make each day an adventure as we explore new ways to express our love

• I promise to love you for ever and ever and ever – no matter what

You are my true love, and I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you.

Say Hello to Mr. Heuer and Mrs. Wells July 8, 2007

Just a quick update from the beautiful, humid, sunny beaches of the Mexican Riviera. We tied the knot. It was beautiful. It was perfect – everything we ever dreamed of. No chance to upload photos or videos for a while as Internet access is slow and hard to get to…

Will be sharing more soon enough though…

We love you all and are sorry you could not be here to share with us.

Get a bLaugh June 25, 2007

It’s funny because it’s true…

Meet the Men, Groomsmen that is… June 24, 2007

So Kristie has been on me to write this post for a few months now – since it is less then a week till we leave for our walk down the aisle, I figured I have waited long enough to tell you about the guys who will be accompanying me. Meet Scott Becker, Greg Marcellino and Coleman Hutchins – all good friends from college who are still friends with me after all these years, despite suffering through most of those 4 years of drunken madness at American University.

My best man (on left) is Scott Becker, all-star golfer, guitar player, entrepreneur, comedian and lover of the Jagermesiter. We have known each other since his first month at AU, which was during a particularly blurry time for me in my sophmore year. Scott was hanging out with some friend’s from Zeta Beta Tau in their dorm room, a pledge at the time. Since I was unusually hungry and atypically broke, the ZBT’s told me I should follow Scott to the vending machine and I should take anything I wanted under their authority. I took the Ding-Dong’s and we have been close friends ever since. Though we now live on opposite sides of the country (he is in North Miami), we are very fortunate in that we get to see each other and hang out at least 4 or more times each year. Over the past few years he learned to play the guitar and now performs about once or twice a month at various venues in South Florida. His company, Trust Event Solutions offers a golf event management software that is in use by many of the PGA Tour Pro-Am and Charity events. He recently navigated a very difficult time with his business as a result of some incompetent developers I sadly recommended, and I could not be more proud of his hard work, dedication and success. What a great guy to have as a friend and to serve as my best man.

Greg Marcellino (aka Zez, in middle) was my big brother in Phi Sigma Kappa. Oddly enough we did not really hang out a lot while I was pledging but afterwards we spent a lot of time together, especially in his Chevy Chase apartment. There are so many funny stories to tell about Zez, I hardly know where to begin. If podcasting and videocasting were available to us back in college, we would probably be in the entertainment industry by now – we were truly funnier than most anything you see on tv these days. His folks took me in and made me a part of the family when I lived in DC during school and especially when I lived there in the late 90’s – I even bought his dad’s yellow Cadillac Fleetwood for my pimp mobile! Their wedding was down in Puerto Rico and it was spectacular – he is one lucky guy to have Ivette for his wife and partner. When Kristie and I went to DC early last year, we had a chance to really get to know each other very well, especially nephew Ryan. I am so happy he and his wife are coming to the Wedding – it’s going to be a real treat to get to hang out with them again – I only wish we had more opportunities to do so.

Coleman Hutchins (right in photo) is also a member of my fraternity, though he joined in my Senior year, so we did not get to hang out too much, but what I do remember from back then is how much I liked this guy – smart, fun and laid back – a good combination all around. He reached out to me when I was working for the US Mint after seeing my name on a memo (his firm, Fleishman Hillard, was doing the PR for the Mint at the time). We have been good solid friends ever since. When he left FH for a while to strike it out on his own, I had the good fortune to bring him in to work with me on my Palm contract, putting him up in my house for a short while. That was an awesome time to have a great friend around as we got to go to tons of concerts, ball games and even golf in Colorado. In late 2005 , having returned to work with FH, Coleman invited me in to work with him and the DC office on some social media projects. During 2006, the work I was doing with him and his very sharp team in DC was my primary source of income – while I don’t work with FH any longer, we are still great friends and talk regularly about what is happening in the industry and our lives. Most importantly, Coleman is someone I respect and can have fun with – definitely in the friends for life category. I am really honored that he is taking the time off from work to come join us and be one of my groomsmen.

So, I could go on and on, and probably should, but I have to get to other work now. If you are coming to the wedding you are going to have a great time hanging out with these guys – I can hardly wait to see them all on the golf course together…

The hidden costs of a destination wedding… June 24, 2007

I have planned a few events in my lifetime and thought I was pretty darn good at budgeting needs and associated costs by now. I thought this, that is, until I started doing the checklist of all the things we need to do before we head to Mexico, and suddenly realized how many little ‘big’ things I forgot to factor in…

• Cat sitter – $350
• Home alarm system – $450+monthly expense (so let’s just call it $930 for one year)
• Cables and other tech stuff – $250
• Suitcases/bags – $150
• Personal trainer – $1,600 (which hindsight tells me, we should have put in more than 1-2 days per week in the gym as it really made no difference – but that is our fault, not the trainers)

And I guess while I am at it, I should add in the ‘play clothes’ we have purchased as we both needed some ‘beach attire’.

In the blink of an eye, I just added $3,700 to the cost of the wedding. Crazy.

Now, some of these things aren’t really wedding expenses, meaning we should have done them anyway (alarm system, trainer), and I know in the long run, this will seem like peanuts as the destination wedding is still about 1/3 of the cost of what it would have been if we got married in San Francisco, but it never ceases to amaze me all the little ‘gotchas’ that pop up.

So just a word of advice to anyone else thinking of a destination wedding, well this applies to any type of wedding I guess, just be sure to have an extra credit card (or two) laying around for all the things that may come up during the planning process. You will be thankful you have that cushion.

Photo credit: Refracted Moments

Whitening our Choppers June 24, 2007

Since neither of us lost the 30 pounds we would have liked to before the ‘big day’, we are now doing everything else we can to take the focus off our plump bodies.

First stop – BriteSmile.

They promise an hour and a half of your life for a whiter, healthier looking smile. So of course, I signed up us. If you have beautiful pearly whites beaming in the Mexican sunshine, no one is going to be looking at your double chin, right?

Chris and I head down to their Union Square ‘lab’, don some funky orange glasses, settle into a really comfortable high-tech looking chair, turn on Battlestar Gallactica, slather on some bleaching gel, and chill out for a while. Note: more photos are available on Flickr.

It’s a pretty simple process really, done in three 20-minute sessions. Apply gel. Apply light. Apply gel. Apply light. Apply gel. Apply light. Rinse. Smile widely at everyone you pass on the street.

The only thing I didn’t like about the process was the requirement to eat nothing but white foods for 24 hours afterwards to ensure your teeth have time to ‘recover’ (they dehydrate the teeth to get the whitening gel inside, so anything you eat within the first 24 hours could badly stain your choppers). As we were walking through Safeway, I quickly realized how much I enjoy food with color. Steak. Spinach. Red wine. But it was only for 24 hours so we managed to find a way to suck it up and be good. Oh the sacrifices we have to make to be beautiful. )

We are now a couple of days later and I am not sure I see a real big difference, but my teeth feel whiter (if that makes sense).   I do find myself smiling a bit more than I did before so I guess it made sense to spend the money…

Now remember -no looking at my bingo wings…focus on my teeth.

What I do for love…. the pre-wedding back wax. ouch! June 22, 2007

So Kristie really wanted me to get my back waxed for our weeklong destination wedding in Mexico. I have done it for her before, so I reluctantly obliged, but this time, I set up my Canon HD Video Camera so everyone could see what it was like…

Now, the thing is, it is really not so bad – over in under 20 minutes really, but it does hurt like crazy bad. Some parts of my screaming is really NSFW – other parts of my screaming are very much like a little girl. It is very funny though I need to make a short version of this but don’t have time…

PS – The kind woman who did this for me is a real pro and very good. The salon was a bit worried about being mentioned in this, so I won’t give the name or her name here, but I do reccomend them highly, so if you are looking for someone good to do it, let me know and I will put you in touch with them.

Canada’s finest export: Our photographer June 14, 2007

I am so very excited that Kris Krug has agreed to photograph the Wells:Heuer festivities.

Kris has an amazing eye with a true gift of capturing the energy of his subjects. I understand he is also very good at Photoshop, so I working with him to make sure I am airbrushed down a bit to a size 2 if possible. I know, I know. He is a photographer – not a magician.

Seriously, we are so very lucky to have him there with us not simply as our photographer, but as our friend.  Thanks buddy.