Weddingbee Blog

When I was a child, my first name was the bane of my existence.

People kept adding extra syllables to it. Or realizing that the last syllable of my name rhymes with “sneeze”.

I tried to correct the people who actually meant to say my name properly, but it would only work for a few days at a time. Then they would inevitably segue back into some horrible bastardization.

Of course, I was far too embarrassed to correct them a second time. This meant that some of my childhood friends said my name wrong for years. Um, okay, it’s possible they still do.

So, yes, I was an adult before I came to terms with having a super-unusual name. But now I kind of like it. It’s not like I’ll ever run into anyone else in the room with the same name. And I get to be a little bit mysterious, which is kind of fun.

It also goes together rather well with my last name. Together, my whole name sounds pretty solidly Indian (although my first name is not really an Indian name but a derivation of Persian name).

I never considered changing my last name at all until I got engaged. Now I’m still pretty lukewarm about the idea.

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Where we left off in the story, Mr.DD and I were engaged!

Well, sort of anyway. There was still another engagement to pull off. One that required a little more preparation on my part…

First up was a test run with the mehndi (henna) artist we’re planning on using for the wedding.

Didn’t she do a great job?

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I’m not sure how it happened, but Mr. DD and I have very few single friends left.

Oh, yeah, we’re getting old.

Needless to say, this means we’ve been to a couple of weddings in the past year. This has given us a good chance to borrow shamelessly steal other people’s ideas for our own wedding. So, just like our friends F and P, we’ll be having sliders as a midnight snack.

Well, actually, since we have to be out of our venue at midnight, it will be more like an 11PM snack. Still, I’m really excited about it. Food that I might actually have a decent chance of eating on my wedding day? Score!

Apparently we (and, of course, F and P) are not the only fans of the late night snack. Check these out:

Donuts and milk photographed by Jessica Claire

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Mr. Dew Drop and I got engaged in December, and we made our first wedding-related decision right away. Actually, we made a few wedding-related decisions (but only because they sort of went together).

It was a good thing too, because after that I went back to being my indecisive self immediately. It may have been months until I made another useful decision.

Anyway, the decision that started it all was our wedding venue. We’re getting married at Ralston Hall Mansion in Belmont, CA (about a half hour drive south of San Francisco). It’s all I never knew I wanted in a wedding venue. A lawn in front with a fountain and a bamboo grove and grazing deer. A beautifully patterned hardwood floor in the ballroom. A balcony and grand staircase for photo ops. A side courtyard for guests to steal away to if they’d like.

For the curious, here are a couple of pictures, courtesy of Ralston Hall’s website:

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By the time February rolled around, it was official. I was a failure at wedding planning.

Or, rather, I was a failure at beginning to plan my wedding.

Well, we had a venue and chairs and a color scheme. And we had the female side of the wedding party. (It’s possible that Mr. DD didn’t finish asking the male side of the wedding party to be in the wedding until June.)

But that was it. We still needed to pick out a photographer, a videographer, a caterer, a coordinator, a florist, a cake baker…

I tried to make progress. But I was overwhelmed. Not just by wedding planning but by starting my own business, renovating Mr. DD’s place (um, because that was a wise project to take on right after getting engaged), officially moving into Mr. DD’s place (and therefore officially moving out of my place), taking graduate law classes on tax law and estate planning, making plans to go help out my sister once her twins arrived, trying to actually see my friends once in a while, and being okay transitioning from unmarried person to married person.

The last one was strangely the most difficult thing. Sometimes it still feels like it is.
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Remember my soap opera-esque cliffhanger from yesterday?

It’s true. Mr. DD and I got engaged twice.

The first time was the private proposal Mr. DD and I both wanted.

The second time was at the formal Indian engagement ceremony (called a mangni) that my parents wanted.

Scheduling the second event meant that I knew when both engagements were going to happen. The ring arrived one weekend and the mangni was two weekends after that. That just left the middle weekend open for a proposal (and I was busy Saturday—so it had to be on Friday).

Although it was important to me to make a mutual decision to get married, I was quite happy leaving the details of the proposal to Mr. DD. And, although I didn’t give him much time to work with, he was determined to surprise me a little bit.
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I’ve never been one to wear jewelry very often, so I never expected to say this. But I love my engagement ring. Really, truly, madly, deeply. However you want to say it.

There’s the emotional part—it symbolizes my relationship with Mr. Dew Drop, what it is now and what it will be. There’s the ooh, it’s so pretty part. There’s the it’s exactly what I would have picked out myself part.

Oh, wait. I did pick it out. Or, rather, Mr. DD and I picked it out together.
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It was a dark and stormy night…

Oh, wait, wrong story. Sorry!

Actually, and though I hate to admit it, J and I met in a bar. This bar, to be exact.

It was a birthday party for a high school friend of mine. I was 24, fresh off my stint in Boston for law school. He was 28, working long hours at an internet company that my friend had just started temping for.

We started dating a mere five years later.

Life is funny, isn’t it? There’s this person you knew all along, but first you were dating someone and then he was dating someone. And while you knew him, you didn’t really know him, if you know what I mean. And then he sends you an email out of the blue. And you’re curious.
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Da da da da dum dum…

I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it. I’m about to lose control and I think I like it…

{Cut to me singing at the top of my lungs and jumping up and down like a maniac.}

Ahem.

So if anyone asks, that didn’t happen just now. There was no Pointer Sisters song playing on a tape. There was no secretly stashed away boom box. There was no vigorous head bopping and arm waving. And there was definitely no leg warmer wearing. Nope, no leg warmer wearing at all.

Now that that confession clarification is out of the way, let me introduce myself. I’m Miss Dew Drop, and (on the off chance I was being way too subtle with my singing) I’m so excited to be here!

This has been a really hectic year for Mr. Dew Drop and me. After we got engaged in December, things just started to get crazy. I’ve been opening up my own law practice and taking graduate law classes in estate planning. He’s been transitioning into a new role at work. We renovated his townhouse and are prepping my townhouse to rent out. And my sister had twins! So we rushed off to Connecticut to help out for a bit. Then we rushed back and began a mad dash to finish our wedding planning. And somewhere in there we’ve been trying to remember to have a social life (it’s important to actually have guests at the wedding, right?).

With everything that’s been going on, we’re really excited (and stressed out and then excited again) to be getting close to our wedding date.
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