I’m Back!

Our little getaway was fun and relaxing and I know you are waiting on pictures!

All I have right now is non-professional snaps, so if you want to see them then let me know in the comments. If not, then I will wait to get my professional pictures and then do re-caps.

Also, I want to know should I keep blogging here or should I start a new blog?? Would you come along with me to a new spot, now that I’m going to talk just about any and everything??? Let me know in the comments as well.

As a teaser, here is the view from our hotel room on our honeymoon!

Isn't that lovely???

The Day After

All the hard work was worth it. The wedding was wonderful! I had 2 great wedding coordinators, everyone loved the food, the decor was loverly, my bridesmaids looked HOT and the groomsmen were so dapper.

And my HUSBAND looked good enough to eat!

Thanks to you all for coming along on the ride with us. But never fear, I plan to keep right on blogging!

Here are a few non-pro pics of us. I’ll be back later on in the week with some more snaps!

Leaving and Cleaving

Although I am enjoying planning our wedding (at least up to this point, ask me in 2 months), I am really looking forward to being married. Myron is a joy to be around, keeps me laughing and loves me dearly. And generally for me, thoughts about marriage leads to thoughts about family and what makes a family. Their are a lot of different families in today’s society. Two parents, single parents, singletons, family by blood and family by choice.

I grew up in the standard two-parent home. A dad, a mom and a baby brother. I have a half-brother but we didn’t grow up together. My immediate nuclear family is very close despite the fact that my brother and I are 12 years apart. And as such, we spent a lot of time together, even when I became a self sufficient adult. It was nothing for me to stop by for dinner during the week (when I lived closer, I’d go over there for lunch!). Sunday dinner was a given. I am their resident IT person, clerk-typist-bookkeeper, and reader of important mail. My mom sends us cards for Valentine’s Day and makes us baskets for Easter. Even as grown up kids, we still get Christmas gifts. Myron says I’m spoiled, but my mom says we are just well-loved!! LOL!! I have some good parents, and I know without a doubt that I am extremely blessed.

But the flipside to having a close family, especially when you have been single for a long time, is a double edged sword. The parents think that you are available to them almost at the drop of a hat and when you break routine (like going for dinner every Sunday), they sometimes don’t understand.

The Good Book says that one must leave their mother and father and cleave to their spouse, and I certainly agree with that. My first priority is to my husband-to-be. But what I didn’t expect is the mental transition that I am finding that I have to make and that my folks will certainly have to make as well. My time will no longer be my own and their feelings can’t be hurt when I decline an invitation because my husband might just want to chill at the house or because we have other plans.

I think that men have an easier time of leaving and cleaving because they are expected to go and make their own families, but for (most) women it’s a bit harder. But the fact of the matter is, when you get married you are creating your own little family. And though you are in the infancy stages of creating your family, it’s up to the two of you to nurture it, protect it and set the boundaries with friends, as well as your own families.

What say ya’ll???

Reservations for Two

Instead of only my hungry mouth to feed up in here, now there are two hungry mouths to feed and since I’m not working right now, a hungry mouth (his) also needs to eat lunch.

I am fortunate that Myron is a excellent chef and doesn’t mind doing more than his share of the cooking. He also has quite the knack for pulling together the pantry items for dinner. I am, alas, not quite that visionary and am a slave to my few recipes. I am trying to add more to my repertoire, however.

What I am finding though is that several times a week we are still running to the grocery store in the evenings to pick up something to augment whatever we plan for dinner because it wasn’t in the pantry and I’d like to stop doing that.

In addition, at the beginning of April we are going to start the Couch to 5K program and we need to start eating and cooking a lot healthier than we have been doing thus far. After all, we want to look extra fine for the wedding pictures!!!!

We have similar food tastes and don’t mind leftovers at all, especially so Myron can take them for lunch the next day. And with good food being expensive to purchase, I am definitely trying to minimize our waste and make sure we eat all of what we cook.

So, gentle readers, please share your tips in the comments with us for better meal planning, recipe sources and anything else you have to say that would help us out.

The Name Game

When a woman gets married, in particular after being single for a while, it can be a very agonizing decision on whether to change one’s name. If a woman has achieved a significant amount of success in her career as a single person (i.e. a journalist or attorney or filmmaker) it may be hard to decide to take her new husband’s name. If she has a strong feminist viewpoint, it may be an affront to her value system to take her husband’s name. If she was a single mom, taking her husband’s name may mean she won’t have the same name as her child(ren) anymore. Perhaps, she’s her father’s only child and he has no sons, so there is a strong attachment to the name that was bestowed upon her at birth.

I guess I fall more into the traditionalist camp. I plan to change my name when I get married. I guess it just wasn’t that big a deal to me. I’m the only girl. My daddy has 2 sons. And it’s important to Myron that we have the same last name. It’s a simple thing to do that will make him happy, so why not. And for those of you who know my last name in real life…let’s just say that I’m not hyphenating it with anything. It would just sound too weird.

It’s kind of funny, though. When I was pledging  my sorority in college (I’m a Delta),  there was another Tiffany on my line. To distinguish between the two of us, my big sisters started calling the both of us by our last names and it stuck. To all my friends I am not Tiffany, but my *last name*, I am introduced to others as *last name* and more than likely after I get married there will be some who will still call me by my OLD *last name*. I’m OK with that and so is Myron. His MAIN concern is that my name is changed LEGALLY.

Would you change your name if you get married? Did you? Did you hyphenate? Did you both choose a brand new last name? (Apparently that’s the latest trend..which gets a side eye from me, personally)

Holla at me in the comments.

(Thanks to Tazzee for the blog inspiration!)