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…

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

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.

The beauty of modern technology June 2, 2007

So as the big day edges closer, Chris and I have been trying to figure out a way to include those of you not able to join us physically on the beach in Mexico.

I think we found the solution. Enter uStreamTV. We have been playing with the technology here in San Francisco, and are working on getting connectivity while South of the Border so we can video the festivities. If we can make that happen, we will be streaming live, which means you can be there, watching the very moment we officially strap on the old ball and chain and I turn over my crown as I will no longer be the Queen of the Spinsters Club.

So, watch this site…if we can get it working we will announce it here.

We are also doing some ‘old fashioned’ things and will be videotaping the ceremony and taking photos as well. All of it will be posted once we are back, so you will have a few options to follow along. That is, if you so desire.