Weddingbee Blog

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Now that Mr. Lily and I have been married for a few months, we decided it was time to take another new step in our relationship: buying a home. Looking for an apartment in Manhattan, as those of you who live here can attest, is a trying process. We **think** we have found a place we like (do you ever really know after a 5 minute walk through?) and we **think** we are going to put an offer in tomorrow. This made me wonder, how many of you out there are in a similar boat?

And if you do own, did you have panic attacks, dry mouth, and gag reflex when thinking about your very own mortgage?

Happy first monthiversary to us! Exactly one month ago today, we were married in the best. wedding. ever (at least, in my opinion)!

We lived together for almost a year prior to getting married (and spent several nights a week together before that), so it’s not like we had to deal with the transition of merging lives and belongings. A lot of people who live together before marriage say that nothing really changed once they were married. In some ways, I guess that’s true. But it does feel a little bit different. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what or how. It’s beyond that immense sense of pride I feel when we go out together and I’m wearing my wedding ring and beyond being able to check “married” on official government forms. I guess it’s more a feeling of contentedness (is that even a word?) that we’re married and the firm belief that finally, I feel like my life is moving in the right direction.

Happy monthiversary, love.

How do you think your life is going to change once you’re married? Do you have any moves to make (long distance, with each other, etc)? If you’re already married, how did things change for you, if at all?

1. He thoughtfully cleans up the mess from me making dinner, even though he didn’t eat what I made.

2. He takes me to 7-11 at midnight to fill an ice cream craving.

3. When I bring home the supplies for an ice cream sundae (that I’ve been talking about for literally 2 weeks), he laughs that I bought light vanilla ice cream, but doesn’t judge.

4. He’ll take time out of his schedule to help me pack up and move my classroom.

5. He doesn’t care that I practically kill his Palm battery playing solitaire.

6. Because he tears up when he talks about his dog that passed away earlier this year at 12 years old.

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Mr. Peppermint and I made our first purchase for our apartment together. This may not seem like a “big step,” but it was an instance when we had to come to agreement on this new addition to our apartment. It’s especially difficult for me (not just because I’m a control freak!), but also because he’ll be moving into my apartment. Granted, he helped me pick it out two years ago, but I’ve been in charge of all decorating decisions…until now.Are you ready guys…?

Drum roll please….

Meet: Our new lamp!

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Life has been a whirlwind this past week! We just started looking for our first home recently, and didn’t expect to find something so soon… but we did! It’s a new construction building in Chicago’s West Loop, and even though it won’t be completed until July/August of 2008, there has still been a flurry of activity. Meeting with realtors, MAJOR number crunching, upgrade negotiation/discussion, contract signing, large checks being written… *gulp*

We won’t know for a few days whether or not the developers will accept our contract, so right now we are on pins and needles. Due to all our wedding expenses, we requested that we be allowed to pay the deposit in 3 increments within the next 70 days or so. Hopefully that won’t be an issue for them. Eeks, please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Mr. Bluebell and I have been living together for almost 4 years, renting all the way. It’s not really because we’re getting married that we started thinking about buying now, but it seems like there must be some correlation since so many people buy their first home to move into when they get married! So, it’s time for a few polls on living situations:

Not too long after our wedding, Mr. Bird of Paradise and I took super fun newlywed pics. Kenny from Kenny Champagne Photography so kindly offered to take our pics for free. Love that. Here’s how it went down.

We arrived at Rip Van Winkle Gardens and changed into our wedding attire, complete with bout and bouquet. We were able to truly see each other as we did the day of our wedding, but without all the chaos that the day brought. This time we were abe to take it all in. Mr. BOP looked so sharp in his tuxedo, and I felt amazing in my dress. It was just us and a camera. Oh, and our little doggie too. Hehee.

I truly recommend taking NW pics. It was definitely memorable and fun, and we got some amazing shots. Here’s a few from the shoot.

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Mr. Bluebell and I did the dishes together last night, in our own particular way. We have long had the agreement that, if one of us cooks, the other one does the dishes. But if neither one of us cooks or we both pitch in, we always fall into the same pattern: I unload the clean dishwasher, and he rinses the dirty dishes and loads them in.

This has always worked well for us as we each prefer our task to the other one, which I think is very indicative of our general personalities. I asked him once why he doesn’t like unloading the dishwasher, and he said because it was annoying to have to take all the mixed up dishes and sort them out into their own appropriate compartment.

However, this is what I like about unloading the dishwasher! You get to make some sense out of the jumble, and then you have the promise of all those nice clean dishes eagerly awaiting future use. That’s why I find loading up the dishwasher depressing - you get your hands all dirty and they just go into a temporary holding cell (the dishwasher), so you don’t get to the step with that final satisfaction. But, when it comes to final satisfaction, Mr. Bluebell thinks it’s much better when you put the dishes in the dishwasher - because then you know they’ll soon undergo a magical transformation, whereas when my clean dishes are sitting in the cabinet, they are already done with the whole cycle and simply awaiting dirtying again.

Admittedly, this is quite off topic, but I just thought it was interesting and wondered how all of you handle who does the dishes between you and your fiance! Do you think that what type of chores you like to do gives any insight into your personality?

Like a few of the other Bees, Mr. Plumeria and I do not currently live together — so starting out together as a married couple is REALLY starting out together for us. In terms of furnishing our home, I have a lot of decorator odds and ends and kitchen items from the college days, not to mention plenty of paintings and artwork (also from the college days, as an Art and Design major), but not much to speak of when it comes to furniture.

We had earlier resigned ourselves to making do with my college futon as our sofa and getting cheap IKEA and/or used furniture for everything else. Somehow, though, things furniture-wise have been falling into place unexpectedly. Just last week, we went to see some of my wonderful relatives, who offered us their sofa and loveseat set, as they are buying some new ones to fit the decor in their home better. The set is only a few years old, practically new in appearance, and as modern as I could wish for!

And now, just a week later, this, as an insanely generous wedding present from my grandparents: the Carolina 6-piece queen bedroom set from Costco, now on sale at Costco.com! We’ve been joint Costco members for a while, and I have to say that shopping at the large warehouse store has helped us to save money, but this well-made furniture set is probably one of the nicest things we’ve gotten from there.

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Last night, as my loving fiance was slaving away over dinner in the kitchen…

…he yelled out to me, “What are you doing?”

“Catching up on today’s weddingbee to make sure my post doesn’t overlap with anyone else’s.”

“Well why don’t you bring the computer in here to read while I’m cooking?”

So into the kitchen my trusty laptop and I went, where I caught up and then sat down to decide what to write. Mr. Bluebell, stater of the obvious that he is, suggested I write about who cooks more in the relationship. This was a slightly pointed comment since I had remarked, “I’ll start cooking again…sometime…” a few minutes before, as I haven’t made a full meal in…..oh a very long time. I am going to consciously try NOT to think of when it was because then I’ll just be embarrassed by having to face it head on.

That’s not to say that I “don’t cook” - I love cooking and used to cook a lot! And I do still bake on occasion. But somehow the whole “going to work” thing has recently meant that, for the past several months, I’ve just been too tired and stressed when I get home, so I’d rather eat cereal or order in if Mr. Bluebell isn’t in the mood to cook. We used to make relatively quick simple meals a lot though, instead of our regular ordering in these days. So in the interest of money and health, we reeeally need to get back on that. Recently, neither one of us has made any quick easy meals, so all the homecooked meals we’ve had have been exhorbitantly elaborate whenever Mr. Bluebell wants to experiment!

Back to the theoretical point of the post - even when I cooked a lot, Mr. Bluebell was really the chef in our relationship. I would generally make variations on a few relatively easy dishes, while he would experiment all over the place, and he would also be a lot more likely to be the one in the mood to cook on a given night. This never seemed odd to me since that’s pretty much the same balance my parents had when I was growing up. But after thinking about it and hearing friends’ stories, the more “common” situation seems to be that the woman in the relationship, regardless of whether she stays at home all day or works twice as much as the man, is the default chef.

Which of course means…poll time! So weddingbee readers…

I would also like to note that a lot of Mr. Bluebell’s desire to cook comes from his love of Food Network. If it wasn’t staring him in the face with all those different techniques and spices, I seriously doubt he’d be as ambitious in the kitchen. Where do you think your and/or your fiance’s love of cooking came from?

And a few more quick polls about cooking at home:

Feel free to share any other cooking-related stories you might have too!

After we got engaged my FI and I moved in together. Right now we are living in a 1 bedroom apartment in Long Island close to where we both work. Prior to that we were both still living with our parents. We are planning to buy a home for ourselves in a few years, when Mr. Orchid is finished with his residency. Planning and financing a wedding while trying to buy a home is too financially stressful for us right now. We plan to start saving up for our new home immediately after the wedding, and we should have a good amount to start with by the time he’s done.

Which got me wondering…

I’ve never lived alone. I went from living in my parent’s house to living with Mr. Kiwi. When I moved out of my parent’s place, I was about to turn 25 - yes, a little bit old. Why did I never move out? I’ve always gotten along with my parents, and never felt the need to “escape.” I came and went as I pleased, sometimes not coming home at all, out spending weekends with friends. Perhaps this is why I don’t have my license - because I was always taken care of with rides from my Dad and Mr. Kiwi and friends. Oh well, that’s a story for another day! I also paid rent (albeit a piddly amount) and bought my own food. It was basically like living alone, only with free cable and internet.

Anyway, so when Mr. Kiwi came along, I spent most of my time at his place. Cut to almost a year later, Mr. Kiwi wanted to move out of his place because his roommate recently had a baby and it was getting noisy. So, Mr. Kiwi looked at apartments around my parent’s house, and all the while, I was thinking, “Yeah, I could totally live here… or that last place.” I was definitely thinking I was moving in with him, and apparently he did too because he asked my opinion on all of the places.

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Mr. Strawberry and I recently moved from our nice new townhouse into a considerably older and not so nice apartment, all in an effort to save money to buy a house. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment. We went from having stainless steel appliances and a large counter island in the kitchen to very old and dated appliances that you can barely navigate around. All that, Mr. Strawberry can live with. The bathroom is another story. It’s pink. My dad tried to convince him that it was coral… but no, it’s pink. Pepto pink. The bathtub. The sink. The toilet. The tile. All of it. Pink.

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I was just reading our new Reader’s Digest in…well…the place where everyone reads Reader’s Digest (c’mon, it can’t just be a coincidence how neatly it fits on the back of the toilet!) and stumbled across this little gem:

(in an article on The Joy of Cooking):
“Recipe testers used 485 pounds of red meat and 3,000 eggs to guarantee that each recipe was worthy of inclusion.”

Don’t they make it sound like each recipe calls for 485 lb of red meat and 3,000 eggs? hehehe

Anyway, it did get me thinking about cookbooks in general. Last Christmas I received this:

Even though we’re not married yet, I use it all the time–it’s a great cookbook, and would make an excellent shower gift. It contains not only recipes, but general tips on cooking and entertaining…even things like “semi-homemade” recipes, throwing a party on a budget, theme dinners, etc.

But at the same time it makes me a little bit sad, because I think cookbooks may be headed on their way out…there are so many great recipe sites on the Internet now that oftentimes it’s just easier to look for things that way rather than thumbing through the pages of a book.

Do you still use a cookbook? Which one(s) is/are your favorite?