Author: Julia Rosen

Family

New family member

Julia Rosen

There’s been some movement on the wedding planning front, but first I wanted to share with you our newest addition to the family, Izzy the kitten.

We went to a Los Angeles city shelter and when we got to take her out of the cage she immediately started purring and giving me kisses. How could we not take her home? She had a scab on her nose, so we had to sign a waiver to take her as is and promise to get her fixed later. The vet thought it might be ringworm and told us to keep her isolated. It turned out her nose was fine, but she had a cold. I know, little kitten with a cold sounds adorable, but the poor thing was having sneezing fits and even got a bloody nose.

We ended up having to put her on antibiotics and despite our best efforts, Louie our 5 year old cat got sick too. Everyone is better now and best of all the cats get along really, really well. They wrestle, chase each other around the house, play king of the cat furniture and are even affectionate with one another. Now only if there was a solution to keeping Louie — who is on a diet — from eating all of her food…

Rights

Not rushing off to the courthouse

Julia Rosen

It’s one thing to fight as a staffer for marriage equality and lose — because you know it’s the right thing to do. It’s another to rest your hopes on a single court decision, hoping will be able to marry the woman that you love — and the court tells you that you can’t.

Most people know that Prop 8 is currently being challenged in federal court. We have an amazing legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies, backed by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. They won in district court and I was helping Rick Jacobs liveblog the trial over at the Prop 8 Trial Tracker, a site I helped create/build while working for the Courage Campaign. It was an incredible thing to be a part of and witness history being made.

But after Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, a stay was placed on his decision. So nobody is allowed to get married while the lawsuit makes it way through the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Our side filed a motion a few weeks ago to rescind the stay, right when Obama decided not to defend DOMA (which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages). Today the court decided to uphold the stay.

Kerry and I had formulated a plan in case they repealed the stay. We’d get our parents to fly out and immediately head to the courthouse, with some friends to be our witnesses. Kerry was looking into if we should include the first part of the Jewish wedding ceremony, which traditionally was the engagement contract. We knew that the people who had previously gotten married during the so-called “Summer of Love” in ’08 had been able to stay married and we assumed that likely would hold true if the stay was lifted.

I knew that the likelihood of the stay being lifted wasn’t big, but it really was our best shot to be able to have a civil marriage from the state of California before our Jewish wedding ceremony. So we were holding out hope, which was crushed today. The rain today matches our moods.

The court case is proceeding so slowly that it is unlikely that there will be a ruling from the Supreme Court by our wedding date, June 3, 2012. We will have to wait until September for the California Supreme Court to weigh in on a standing question that the 9th Circuit Appeals Court asked of them. And in the meantime, we will talk to lawyers to find out if we should get a civil marriage in one of the states where that is legal, instead of just a California Domestic Partnership — especially in regard to our year in Israel, which recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other countries.

Bottom line, the wheels of justice are turning too slowly for us to have a religious and a California civil marriage next summer. But as I told Kerry, today reminded me just how much I want to marry her.

(photo from flickr user deltamike under a cc license)

Planning

To wedding planner or not to wedding planner?

Julia Rosen

We don’t have a large budget and we are both pretty organized people with relatively flexible schedules. Ok, maybe Kerry is more organized than I am, and I have a more flexible schedule than she does. But together we are a pretty organized person with a relatively flexible schedule.

The two of us pretty much assumed we didn’t need a wedding planner and could save money by not hiring one. But after talking with Kerry’s brother Josh and his wife Ros, who swear by their wedding planner, we started looking into it. They are convinced that their planner ended up saving them more money than he charged.

Yesterday, we met with our first potential planner and she was great. We connected with her personally and she’d likely do a good job for us, but we still don’t know if we need that much assistance. However, we did leave further convinced that we likely need someone to do the day of event coordination. That way we and our parents don’t have to stress about vendors showing up, or rounding up family members for their wedding pictures, or all of those important details.

We’re fairly responsible people and likely will talk to a few other planners to help us make a decision, but I’d love to know what experience others have had in planning their weddings. Did you have a planner? Were they worth the money? Did you not have a planner, but regret it? Leave a comment and/or take the poll.

Oh and if you have a suggestion of a wedding planner in the LA area that we should talk to, please let us know.

Location

We think we found a location

Julia Rosen

On Friday we took a drive out to the American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley (Google map). Kerry attends AJU in LA and visited the Simi Valley campus as a kid.

She had a feeling that it was going to be “the location” – we were really hoping that it would work out for us.

One of our biggest struggles in finding a location is food. Kerry has Celiac Disease and we’ve been limited to eating only from our completely gluten-free kitchen for the past six months. So, we need a place that is willing to have their whole kitchen cleaned and reserved solely for our party’s gluten-free meal.

We’d been tempted by the beautiful pictures taken by photographer Meg Perotti at a wedding on the campus. I went with Kerry to her Friday morning class, and we drove out there midday. Or I should say, Kerry drove and I worked using my fancy new 4G aircard.

There were a ton of options on the campus for our wedding, after all they have 2,600 acres of property, only 40 have been developed. But we settled on a building called House of the Book. To reach it you take a small, two-lane road up a steep hill. Kerry joked that she was glad no rugby coaches were around to make us run it. It’d be a tough bike ride, let alone run, but I bet my brother Zack would do it.

There is a patio in the front, and the sun in the afternoon is behind the building (google satellite image). Given that we would do a late afternoon wedding, the patio would give our ceremony some necessary shade. Around the back of the building and by around, we do mean around, we would have the cocktail hour. The building is circular and we were using water bottles to show the layout to our friends/family/teammates who were over for dinner this weekend.

The reception would be inside the House of the Book, which was build in the 70’s by a funder who insisted that the inside is the inside, and the outside is the outside. So there are no windows, just one skylight. It’s concrete inside and out. And there are three round rooms inside the main room that have books on shelves.

I know – it sounds disastrous. But once inside the building, there’s an unexpected lightness and strong design elements. Regardless, we will need to bring some life inside the building, with  flowers, decorations, and of course, energetic guests.

The room is plenty big and there is a little stage on which the small band we are hoping to afford would likely fit. The building hasn’t really been renovated since the 70’s so it’s a little, um, 70s, but we can make it work. One of my favorite touches was the Warhol painting of building’s patron, hanging in a shabby frame in the foyer.

Some of you will recognize it from the Power Rangers.

Right now, we are waiting to hear back on a budget quote, which includes food, to figure out if the location fits our budget. But right now, we are feeling good about it.

(photo via katerw on flickr, under a cc license.)

Meta

Welcome

Julia Rosen

IMG_8651… Baby Chaplin!

We’ve revitalized our 6-year-old wedding page into our growing family page. It’s been a long, challenging five year journey to and through pregnancy. From IUI to IVF and back, from one uterus to another, from one coast to another, many of you have supported us as we have bounced up-and-down and all-around on the fertility rollercoaster. We’re so relieved to be off the ride, and to celebrate with you and brand new Baby Chaplin.

Thank you for being our village, wherever you live, however we’ve known one another. We’re excited to raise this squishy little human together.

Julia and Kerry