You guys got married already?! Wasn't there going to be a big wedding? What happened?
We did! There was! That one....well, that's a longer story. We have had some difficult events crop up in our lives, and unfortunately, part of the difficulty is an extreme lack of predictability in how things are going to turn out. Rather than having a large complex event that we might to cancel at the last minute, after long hours weighing out pros and cons, we decided to have multiple smaller events, which would be more amenable to alteration in the event that the things beyond our control took a turn for the worst.
Oh, dear. I'm really sorry about that, is there anything I can do to help?
Sure! Just be yourselves, go with the flow, and enjoy the experience of the nuptials we have, and help us gently mourn the plans that went awry. Feel free to throw in the obvious Robert Burn reference here. For this moment in time, the best we can do is that at some point this summer (tentatively, late August) we will have an open house/potluck for people to come and wish us well.
So what was the wedding like then?
We had a total of nine people in the living room clustered near the table Manda inherited from her father. A good friend of ours officiated, in a pragmatic and succinct style. The bride wore blue jeans and a purple sweater, and the groom wore his customary casual black pants and shirt. After the paperwork was signed, we dined in pancakes, bacon, and fruit. Coffee and tea were sipped, companionable chatting ensued, and a completely reasonable time was had by all.
What made you go that route?
At the time it was just going to be a formality, with some real-life practical benefits; getting legally married allowed Manda to be on Matt's health insurance, for example. Matt could also get a better deal on car insurance with Manda's delightfully clean driving record shoring him up. Mundane stuff, really. It wasn't until other circumstances destabilized that we decided it was The Wedding.
Want to divulge anything more specific about those destabilizing circumstances?
Not really. They're sad ones, and we're doing the best we can with them. If you're super curious, send us an email and we'll explain what we can on a person-to-person basis.
That's all really sad. Can I just float back into denial and go with the idea that you're an adventurous time-traveling duo who got caught in a temporal vortex?
Oh, absolutely! We believe a splash of fantasy makes coping with reality much more doable. Manda and Matt are both science fiction and fantasy aficionados, so we're totally at home with the notion of the selective abandonment of reality. Do yourself a favor and look up "steampunk" on a google image search. Go ahead and then come back when you're done; we'll wait.
That was wonderful! Is that what your announcement/invitation was?
You betcha. We went to the Mall of America Olde Time picture-taking place and found out they do a steampunk theme. You can see all our pictures here.