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Because we need somewhere to dance . . .

kerrychaplin

We’ve got a location!

The LA River Center and Gardens is just north of Downtown. It’s got great mid- century LA, Spanish-style charm, and it’s got some history with the Chaplin family.

I remember going there almost every week as a kid, when the Center was a Lawry’s mexican restaurant. My parents enjoyed their crappy margaritas (they said they didn’t know better at the time) and I enjoyed the mariachi band.

When I was two, I used to walk around singing, “ay, ay, ay, ay,” and no one could figure out why. Next time we heard the mariachis, I started singing along. I am proud that my first song was “ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores” because of the amount of time my parents spent drinking margaritas.

The ceremony will take place in a beautiful, but simple courtyard. And the reception will be in the main courtyard pictured to your right. It has a HUGE dance floor, so prepare to get your groove on.

Julia and I are really looking forward to welcoming everyone to our wedding and celebration there.

Planning

Help pick our save-the-date photo

Julia Rosen

We were incredibly lucky that the wonderfully talented Marta Evry was willing to donate her time for an engagement photo shoot. Since we were at the Montage Laguna Beach Resort for the annual Chaplin family vacation, we figured its amazing views were the perfect backdrop to take some photos.

Marta and her husband, Warren, came down for the day, had some dinner with us and took some fantastic sunset photos on the resort property and the beach.

Because each picture shows a different spirit, we are having a hard time deciding which picture to use for our save-the-date card.

So we are hoping that you can help us out.

Which one of the three should we use? Vote in the poll below.

1)

2)

3)

Location, Planning

Wedding planning ain’t easy

Julia Rosen

We thought that we found a location, but sadly it was not meant to be.

When you are planning one of the most important events in in your life, and spending a ton of money you want the people you’d be trusting to pull off that event to be responsive and not blow deadline after deadline, even the ones they set for themselves.

We soon found ourselves struggling to find a place that could accommodate our likely 200 attendees, let us have a caterer who could do both gluten-free and kosher, and be affordable. And that’s when we decided to bring in a wedding planner to help out, it was something Kerry and myself decided was worth it enough for us to pay for ourselves, for our own sanity. And importantly, so the days leading up to the wedding and the day itself would not fall on our family/friends shoulders as much, and they could enjoy the event, instead of working it.

The trick was finding someone who didn’t laugh at our budget, our 200 person guest count, our dietary needs and was cool with a same-sex wedding. We found the perfect fit in Teissia from Firefly Events. Teissia comes from a non-profit background and is full of enthusiasm and DIY spirit. With her help we are now contemplating two locations and two caterers, working to find the best combination of a beautiful place with great energy, good food, fun music and fit it all in our budget.

The first is the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens. Yep, snicker away about the L.A. River, but the place is actually really cool and Kerry has some family history with the place. It used to be Lawry’s headquarters, which they build in the mid-century in a spanish style. Now it is run by a non-profit. But when Kerry was a kid, it was a Lawry’s Mexican restaurant. She used to go there nearly every Friday with her parents, brother and her parent’s best friends and their two boys. The kids would run around, while the parents drank some crappy margaritas.

We didn’t know it was the same place when we went to visit it. After all, why would you think L.A. River Center = old Lawry’s restaurant. But Kerry mentioned on the way out that it reminded her of a place she had been too a bunch as a kid. I thought she was nuts, but she insisted I google it. And low and behold it was the same place. They even had a going away party for her uncle Ward 25+ years ago there, in the courtyard where we are thinking of holding the ceremony.

Most of the day would be spent outside, except for the cocktail hour, which would be in an sunny atrium. The location is near Dodger stadium, not in the nicest of neighborhoods, but you wouldn’t know it when you are inside. And it has plenty of room for our guests, plus is so pretty that we would barely have to do any decorating. Plus, it has plenty of room for a band to set up with a large dance floor. After all, there will be some Hora-ing.

The second location option is Rancho del Cielo (Ranch in the sky), which is as the name suggests high up in the Malibu cliffs, with an amazing panoramic view. On clear days you can see all the way to Catalina. It has a great energy, partially because it is actually somebody’s home with a beautiful yard.

We would need to shuttle guests up to it, since there isn’t enough parking up there and Malibu city ordinances make a live band impossible. Thus we would have to give up on having live music, something we really wanted, and get a DJ instead. But the place is beautiful. It even has Kerry, who didn’t care as much as me about the location, working hard to make the budget fit to have it there. Like the LA River Center, it would not need much decorating, helping keep costs down (weddings are damn expensive).

So this weekend, as we head to my friends

Family

The parents meet!

Julia Rosen

For months Kerry and myself would talk about what it would be like when our parents met each other. We were pretty sure they would get along. After all, they made two pretty amazing kids (yes, we are biased) and we both get along with the other’s parents really well.

We knew that our mom’s would have plenty to talk about, but were less sure about our dads. Turns out that there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Everyone had a fabulous time together, including my uncle Pete, my dad’s brother and Josh and Ros, Kerry’s brother and sister-in-law.

There were family dinners, leisurely walks down Wilshire, and a great visit to LACMA. We even took them to the place where we thought we were going to get married, but no dice. But we might have found a band to play at the wedding. They were warming up for an event when we were leaving. Kerry and I had some fun dancing before we walked back home.

By the end of the weekend Kerry’s dad was inviting my father to come down to their house in Florida for a scotch tasting. We’re looking forward to more get togethers and hope it won’t take till the wedding for that to happen.

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…

Planning

Camp One-on-One Training for Wedding Planners

kerrychaplin

We met with another potential wedding planner on Friday. Even though there was an appointment time mix up, we were ready to write it off as a miscommunication. But no, the mix up was indicative of the appointment itself.

I know this particular event planning company has a good track record, but the planner we met needed a “how to do a one-on-one”* training. Rather than ask about our story, or share her story, she went down a checklist: do you have a photographer? a location? All important questions, but not as openers. How about instead: tell me how you met, or what is your vision for the reception? If we chose to work with a wedding planner, we need to know that s/he can share and refine our vision, not just meet our logistical needs.

I gave her a few chances:  Tell me more about you. I like the books with events planned by your company, but can you give me some examples of your work? Tell me some stories about events you’ve planned before.

But she kept coming back to logistics. A complete lack of recognition for what we were looking for. And when she finally did share her career history, she never tied it to our needs. Sigh.

Wedding planner interview #2 is a negatory.

*One-on-one: a personal conversation in which the 2 or 3 people present share their stories in order to get to know one another. It’s also helpful to persuade people to do something they might not be so keen on – like spend $$ on a wedding planner.

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.)