Sitting on my behind..

SOURCE

Current countdown till the big day?! 140 days. Scary as it may seem, I am spinning my wheels with boredom in terms of wedding planning. There is nothing to do- we're too far away to complete a lot of the detail oriented tasks and are waiting on others to complete things like wedding stationary. I am trying to fill my time by working on the details that will probably consume me as the wedding gets closer, but again- we're too far out to have any concrete 'details' so a lot of what is done is half arsed.

Some of the things that have occupied my time?! Getting a feel for how our ceremony will go. I was gifted with a great book about planning out your ceremony and it has some great readings and texts to help you create your very own ceremony. Mr. Yankee and I sat down one Saturday and pulled things from the book that we really liked and things that were important to us to include during our ceremony. It was a little hard at first because we don't want the ceremony to drag on, but we also want to make sure that certain people are recognized- I feel that we have a good mix of both length and sentiment.

Another project that has been taking up our time is music. I've written about it before, but Mr. Yankee and I have vastly different tastes in music. I like a little bit of everything, where he tends to like really annoying (or as he classifies them: 'catchy') pop music and cares for nothing before 1980 or after 1998 (with some rare exceptions). We were butting heads for a while there before we decided on a compromise- we are both creating a must play top 10 list that will be given to our DJ and working together to find the right sound to create a loose playlist for our DJ for our prelude, recessional, cocktail hour, dinner hour and party time! I have 7 songs so far on my top ten:

1. "Empire State of Mind" Jay Z (to which Brian responded with the need for California Love)

2. "Shook Me All Night Long" AC/DC (I am white. I need some old school, drum filled gritty jams from one of the best rock bands in the history of Rock n Roll. Shoot me.)

3. "Don't Stop Believing" Journey (Bay area band. Awesome rock anthem. Enough said.)

4. "Stronger" Kanye West (this was really hard to put on here, because I HATE Kanye. But I bop my head everytime this song comes on the radio. Damn tune.)

5. "It's Getting Hot" The Team (another local group- with a sick bass line!)

6. "Sweet Dreams" Beyonce (unless she releases it as a single and it becomes played out like all of her other music)

7. "Feedback" Janet Jackson

.. Now that spots are getting limited I am finding it's getting harder to finish- I want to make sure the music is excellent and that everyone can enjoy it!

Any other brides out there finding they have a lack of things to do?! How are you coping?!

I'll take an extra large Jay Z, with a side of Dave Matthews Band, please.

Music is a big part of weddings. No, let me restate the obvious here and say that music is a HUGE part of weddings. You have so many key moments in a wedding for the "right" tone to be set via music. The pressure is on, man! String quartet for the ceremony? Band for the reception? DJ for the after party? I think I might have overdosed on Platinum Weddings this weekend...

Anyway, my point is that music for our wedding is no different. Except for that when it comes to music, Mr. Yankee and I are completely different. The only thing we have agreed on was that we would get a DJ for the whole event instead of a band. After that, it has been battle after battle.

source

Take our ceremony music, for example. Mr. Yankee likes the traditional Canon, I like Bach (or even better- the instrumental version of "So This Is Love" from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'!); he wants to walk down the aisle to some of the old favorites, while I want to mix it up. I'd love to have an instrumental version of a contemporary pop song ('Ordinary People' by John Legend, for example) be what our wedding party marches down to, but Mr. Yankee loves his Canon in D. I want the Rocky Theme played after our first kiss, but Mr. Yankee is fighting me every inch of the way.

You see the problem is, Mr. Yankee and I are from different generations. We only have a 5 year age gap, but it has proved to be a very defining 5 years in terms of pop culture. He loves mid nineties R&B (jodeci, shai and boyz 2 men) where I am more accepting of contemporary music and love my hip hop ('cause you can't mess with the Jigga man, yo!); I'm also a bit more open minded to generational music than he is. I understand the beauty of the greats across all genres like Sinatra, The Eagles and AC/DC, where Mr. Yankee tends to lean towards the jazz greats of long ago (he played trumpet in high school).

So how, you might ask, did we get past this divide?! Say it with me now: COMPROMISE! I had to have Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind," so that meant we also had to have "California Love." I felt that it was important to have music everyone would recognize (read: Michael Buble, Black Eyed Peas, Janet), he felt it was important to have songs his 'peeps' would be able to 'jam' to. I said there was absolutely no way on this earth would I allow Dave Matthews Band, he in turn got to veto numerous choice numbers. The number one thing that has kept us sane is the creation of the top ten. Now of course we want to give our DJ the freedom to do his thing and do it well, but there are just some songs you need to hear when you want to party! And we're still a work in progress, but it has eased the process.

The one thing we need to work on?! The first song. This three minute, 100 year old tradition has caused many an argument in the Yankee household, unfortunately. Hopefully we are able to use our powers of compromise to come up with a solution we can both live with. Stay tuned.

How did you handle the differences between you and your beloved while planning the details?