Hopefully this is just part 1 of a 3 part series…. There was a photo I had taken when I got married that even before I saw it I decided it was going to be my favorite.

It wasn’t the photo of Amber and I kissing… Nor a photo of us dancing. It was a photo we took from the roof of the church that had *mostly* everyone who could make it at our wedding in it. It was and is to me, probably the strongest representation of our friends and family supporting us… Although, it would have been cooler to have about 100 or 200 more people who got left out of it in it…

In any case, for the longest time I’ve wanted to build an index of people in this photo, and make it easy to find them without having to play where’s Waldo. I wanted to do this using Google Maps. However, until last night, I hadn’t taken the time to actually learn the API well enough to make this happen… Well, here it is… my first attempt at a google map. I don’t have the index yet, nor am I going to explain how this was all done… but soon, maybe I will… For now, just enjoy the photo as if it were a google map .

It’s hard for me to comprehend how long 25 years is.

After all, it’s roughly the amount of time that I’ve been alive. The only people I can claim to really have known that long are my parents and immediate family… With the first non-relative that I still consider to be a best friend being Richard coming in at 17 years. Relationships take work to maintain that long…

So yesterday, I found myself celebrating 25 years of marriage with Mike and Jill Radabaugh (Amber’s parents). It was quite a day. It started by going to church at the church where they were married. Followed by a photo shoot (I wouldn’t be surprised if more photos were taken yesterday than on their actual wedding day) with the family. We then went to lunch where they had their wedding reception (and I ate WAY to many eggs, it was all you can eat…) From there, we spent the rest of the day playing Clue, watching the Indy 500, and testing out their new Blueray player.

It’s quite impressive to see a marriage that has gone that long. I know how much work it must have taken (ok, probably not, but I’m guessing it was the amount of work it took Amber and me the last year, times 25). I can only imagine what Amber and I will be like in 25 years when we get to that same point.

Amber went to Nebraska to be with Amy for graduation… I had some obligations Friday and Saturday that I really didn’t want to try to get out of… On top of that, I really wasn’t in the mood for an 16 hour trip for a 1 day stay. I love my sister, and am very proud that she graduated.

That said, so far this weekend has felt like the single life for me… Which to be honest, is kind of a refresher for me. It’s good to get some time away from the wife for a little bit (sometimes).

The biggest change: the time at which I’m going to bed. I stayed up last night til 2:00. Tonight, I plan on doing the same. It’s funny, I seem to be at my best, both as a late night person, and an early morning person… I’m not very much of an afternoon person… I’ve also been watching movies while I work… which is something I used to always do on the weekend, but no so much since I’ve been married because my Wife wants to watch them with me, not while I’m on the computer.  I’ve also made a little bit of time for World of Warcraft .

I spent today coding and playing DnD with the group (2 very epic sized battles today…). Tonight I watched Nascar (I’ve barely done that at all this season, and was happy to catch the last 50 laps… Jeff’s mistake made me mad. Jeff’s charge from 12th to 4th in the last 15 laps made it all worth while. Now I’m going to write some more code, probably watch another movie… And maybe play a little bit more gameboy (I’ve been paying Fire Emblem for the DS).

Really (and this is going to sound bad) I’ve only missed Amber twice… Once while falling asleep last night… and then again today when I could find a good way to get rid of Alabaster (Amber is pretty good at that).

And since I feel like the proverbial multimedia reference must be made in this post, and I don’t have any of my DnD related stuff ready to go that is worth posting… I figure I’ll just post this:

So I’ve done a few things to remind me to do so:

1) I’ve setup a category on this blog for marriage… Up until now, I have yet to really blog that extensively about it.

2) I’ve integrated Ourvows to automatically update using posts in the category marriage from either Banana Monkey or Rinsefirst.

3) I’ve kind of added it to what is very quickly becoming my new blogging routine.

So we’ll see how it goes… Today is more of a technology test than anything, but it hopefully will be the beginning of a new thread of thinking for this blog (and ourvows) to document.

Honestly though, I think the real question is, how much can I blog about marriage before it has an affect on my marriage…

If you are one of the many people who had a camera at our wedding, and you wouldn’t mind spending a little bit of time uploading all your photos to our online gallery, please contact me (justin@jrcorps.com) and let me know. I’ll send you back the very simple instructions on how to do it.

And if you’re looking for prints, or to download the photos, you can do so right from the gallery. Simply click the buy button at the top of whatever gallery you are looking at.

And for those of you who are wondering… Yes, we have surrived the first 3 months of marriage, and to be honest, it was rather painless. I haven’t spent all my time in front of the computer, and she hasn’t spent all her time at work, so that’s good. We just picked up our first christmas tree last night. Fun stuff… Now to decorate it with lots and lots of Star Trek ornaments.

Well we’ve started collecting photos from friends and family. If you have any you would like to share, PLEASE email justin (justin@jrcorps.com) and he will send you the instructions on how and where you can upload them.

If you didn’t take any pictures, or you just want to browse the growing collection, go ahead and click here.

There are also some pictures from our honeymoon.

Over 3000 pictures were taken by our photographer. We’ll post them as soon as we get them (probably about 2 more weeks). We also have some video footage (some of which can be found in the photo galleries.)

More on multimedia and how this site will look long term in the coming weeks.

Again thank you all for your support!

So here I am giving you an update on why there have been so few updates… It goes like this: “We’re getting married this Saturday.”

See the one thing you really dont realize going into the month prior to the wedding is exactly how much work is left on the table… Let me give you the quick run down of events and time consuming things you probably didn’t factor into your already busy lifestyle (I know I didn’t, very well at least):

• Showers and Bachelor/Bachelorette Parties – These events take planning, just like the wedding does. There are invites, gifts, favors, food, and location to deal with. Depending on how many your planning on having, this portion can be as much, if not more work, than the wedding itself. On the upside, bridesmaids/groomsmen generally do a good portion of the planning, which helps a lot. This is where I say a special thank you to Nikki, Ashley, Amy, and Richard for all the hard work they put in (sorry if I forgot anyone, but I think those were the people in charge of various events)
• Dance Lessons – These take time people! And most people wait until the month (or 2) before to do them. Worth having though if you plan on dancing.
• Rehearsal Dinner – This one is hard to miss, but it really does eat up a large chunk of time. Like the showers, the time isn’t so much the event itself, but the planning. Again, the groom’s parents generally are in charge of this, so you can get some help here. (Thanks mom and dad)
• Shopping – Shopping? For a Wedding? Yep! Things that you have to purchase (or rent) prior to the wedding include: Clothes (both rehersal and wedding outfits/dresses/tuxes), Gifts (for wedding party), Stuff (for honeymoon), Toys (anything you want to get before you marry your signigficant other that you don’t think they’ll let you get), Stuff (anything you need for your new home that you don’t think you’ll get for your weddig).
• Moving – Assuming your not already living with your significant other… Moving takes time, and some planning to, if your like me and need to work.
• Work – Just realize you still have to work during all this (most likely)

So that’s just a short list of the chaos that is going on in my world at the moment.

In other news, I look forward to seeing you all in just 4 days!

The biggest change so far was buying a house! Justin and I purchased our first home together and I (along with my cat) moved in at the beginning of June. Justin will be moving in once we are married. After being together as a couple for over 5 years now, and knowing each other an additional 2 years, I am so ready to be living with him. We are waiting to live together because of our religious and personal beliefs, but gosh it’s about time! It has never seemed closer than it does today though, and every day it gets both easier and harder to wait. Having a house is great though! I don’t have to be quiet or wash the dishes if I don’t want to. The nice thing is, it’s my house and I want to wash dishes!

I have gotten many things done for the wedding. We have ordered our favors, and just so you know, custom M&Ms are outrageously expensive so we didn’t go with those! We have booked our limo with Cities Limo who seem like a great company! Justin and I are starting dance lessons soon which will hopefully help me to not feel like a fool on the dance floor! Our registries are finalized, flowers, cake, and photos are paid for, and dresses are being altered.

There are still many things left to do. We (as in me, or me and my bridesmaids) have to make the placecards, finish the favors, and do 1 million other things! Our honeymoon is just about booked– we are still going to Disney! I am excited and nervous about that, since I am not a theme-park kinda girl but nevertheless it should be fun.

But in 7 weeks, and 5 days, none of this will matter. All of the stress felt, the money spent, and the hours consumed to plan the beautiful wedding of Justin and Amber will no longer be important. What will be most important is I will be married to my best friend, and we will have started our lives together as husband and wife.

7 weeks and 5 days….

But more than that, it’s allowing us to see our RSVPs faster than one could imagine. In fact, we have already gotten 18 people (6 families) RSVP’d. Congrats Wade on being the first person to RSVP from an invite .  It’s exciting to know whether or not people are coming so fast… much cooler than waiting for snail mail.

One other advantage to this method is that people can update them after submitting. For example, let’s say your a guy with a girlfriend, and for some reason you break up with said girlfriend between when the RSVP was sent, and when the wedding actually happens. In the old way, you would have to call us to update the name of the person coming, OR, wouldn’t be able to tell us that a second person was coming (perhaps you decided to “pick up chicks” at the wedding (not recommended)). With the new way, you simply log in again and update your details. Pretty slick eh? It’s not a one-shot deal like normal RSVP cards.

But as with all innovations that involve computer programming, or humans in general, it may still have a bug or two in it. If you happen to hit of those said bugs, please please please, let me know so I can get it fixed right away. If your response code isn’t working, give me a call and I’ll let you know what the proper one is (Amber thinks she may have misnumbered 1 or 2…).

Of course, if your not technically savvy, your probably not reading this, but you are surely welcome to send in the response card.

Less than 3 months to go people!

P.S. I might publish my RSVP Wordpress plugin (it’s almost perfectly packaged for re-use). It still needs a few tweeks though… If your interested in my plugin, stay tuned at http://www.rinsefirst.com/.

For example: you would probably never have guess this (yeah right), but me and Amber are pretty much in sync when it comes to our religious beliefs. In fact, we scored liked a 90/100 on it, which is pretty dang tough to do (I’m not even sure 100 is possible, and everything seems to be rounded to the nearest 10). We also scored pretty strongly on our communication… which probably explains why we’ve been able to date for 5 years with little trouble.

Our weakest was finance, which to us wasn’t all that surprising. Amber and I have very different views on money, which has already caused some “fun” in our relationship while planning this wedding… And even more fun now that we are looking for a house/townhouse in Woodbury. Needless to say though, our communication skills have so far been able to overcome our views on money, and when they haven’t, prayer seems to have solved it for us . In any case, I’m hoping that we limit the fireworks in our 4th session (which will be almost the sole topic for the week).

In other news: we have started looking for a home. We’ve secured pre-approval on a loan, and have already got a house (or 2) in mind. Amber’s hoping that we are able to go look at it as early as tomorrow.

Still waiting for some music requests from people . Right now I’m leaning towards hits from 1992… Things like:  Achy Breaky Heart, Black or White, Baby Got Back, Life is a Highway, 2 Legit 2 Quit… Ah yes.. Back when I had my own radio show…

What? What did he just say? More on that at Rinsefirst at another time…

• Should be able to dance to it
• Song requests should be posted in the comments
• Limit 3 song requests per person
• We reserve the right not to put anyone’s requests on our playlist.

Also, we added the last place of registry to the registry page, as well as a list of some hotels in the area, be sure to check out both sections. Who knows, maybe Amber will have an update as to the “invite” process and how that’s going…

I must admit, registering isn’t the most horrible of procedures. Every store has things to help Bridge and Groom’s get through it all. Macy’s so far has been my favorite… They have a built in affiliate program (yay), as well as lots of free stuff (like a tote bag and magazines).

The most difficult part is deciding what you want/need. I mean really… How do you really know if a pot or pan is good? My biggest requirements for most things were those magic words like “Machine Washable” and “Microwave Safe”. After all, I love being able to “Rinse First”. hehe.

All and all the date is getting closer and closer… We’re what now, just over 4 months away ?

Exciting.

• Got worksheets for a personality profile that will be used to try to identify where we may have problems down the road (to be done alone at the moment)
• Got worksheets for long term goals to again help us see where we may be on “different roads” (to be done alone at the moment)
• Talked about how most wedding ceremonies are laid out.
• Talked about life a little
• Talked about some of the decisions we had already made for the wedding (like Joel doing music and Derek doing the message).

So far, no “blow out fights” although I’m not sure I will go into details of anything like that if it comes up… Just perhaps a brief overview of the process.

I did learn one thing though that I thought was rather interesting. In the state of Minnesota, if you go through 12 hours marriage counseling (as opposed to just getting married), you save $50.00 off your marriage license (that’s something like a %40 savings I believe). Seems like a pretty good way to help decrease the number of divorces (and the load they create on our legal system). So if you were thinking about skipping it, you might want to reconsider.

Well back to work I go, just felt this place needed a little love.

Not that a year is long… It’s not on the grand scale of things.

But I believe Joel said it once, at church:

• Long time dating
• Short Engagement
• Long Marriage

Being engaged is such a weird state in a relationship. It really is no different than dating, except for two very key things.

One: your anticipating being married. This anticipation can be both good and bad for a relationship. It causes you to think about what life will be like for the next 70 years. It causes you to think about how great it would be if you were married right now. I like to think of it like Christmas presents. Once you know Christmas is coming, you can’t wait for the gifts… You keep thinking about what you might get, and it continues to build. Eventually though, if Christmas gets delayed long enough, you lose some of that anticipation and joy. You might also get frustrated at whoever is with-holding the gift from you (I know always did when they made us wait until after dinner to open gifts when it would have been just as easy to open them before dinner).

Two: your relationship becomes very much about the wedding day. Every question is related to planning and preparing for married life. Personally,  I think having a short engagement would do wonders for many men’s sanity… Simply cramming all the wedding plans into like a 3 week window would be so much easier. You wouldn’t have to worry about who you forgot to invite, or whether or not everyone would come… It would be to short notice for you to even be able to care.

In any case, I can’t wait to be married… I’m counting down the hours as they say.

I did not want to go to Disney because I am very much against theme parks and have never enjoyed them.  Nevertheless, I have been convinced to go to home of the great mouse, Mickey.

While using Walt DisneyWorld’s wonderful website to create our trip, Justin and I discovered an incredible package that will give us many upgrades to our trip.  Since I have never been to Disney Justin will have to explain more of the perks.  The one that I am most excited about is the premium seating for fireworks and a special cruise to watch one of the fireworks shows.  I love fireworks!

We are going to be staying there for probably 13 days.  I want to go to SeaWorld sometime while we are there also.  Hopefully we will also get a day just for us!  We plan to stay at the Grand Floridian, which has the beach that I wanted!

Our honeymoon is going to be wonderful.  I am really excited.  Now we just have to book the trip!

 Big Families == Big Fun!

One of the most fun things I look forward to doing with my future wife is building our own traditions. We actually already have a few, one of which is getting our picture taken with Santa Clause. So let us share this tradition with you as we share what might just be our holiday card this year (if we find time to send them).

That said, there are surprising number of things to decide when it comes to building the cake of your dreams. Things like, what kind of wedding topper do you want? What kind of cake do you want (I might talk Amber into Marble )? Do you want a grooms cake?  How much cake is everyone going to want to eat? How many people are there going to be? Do you want to save the top of the cake in the freezer for your first anniversary?

All these things need to be answered. Thankfully, Joan and Steve (the owners) know that there are a lot of questions to be answered, and they want to do everything they can to help. They even have these wedding cake shows where you can go, see a bunch of the latest cake designs, and just talk with them about what it is your heart desires in a cake. I’m going to post the times for their wedding cake show, just so you have them (and so I don’t lose them):

• Thursday, Jan. 10th, 2008 5:00pm to 8:00pm
• Friday, Jan. 11th, 2008 1pm to 5:00pm
• Saturday, Jan. 12th, 2008 10:00am to 2:00pm
• Saturday, Jan. 26th, 2008 10:00am to 2:00pm
• Sunday, Jan. 27th, 2008 10:00am to 2:00pm
• Monday, Jan. 28th, 2008 5:00pm to 8:00pm

It even says they’ll have samples! Yay for samples!

In other news, if you think we should style our cake a certain way (for example, Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Zelda, Super Smash Brothers, Wii, Computerish, Legoish, or any other fun way) let us know in the comments.

I would just like to reiterate how good a 6 to 8 hour drive can be when it comes to planning a wedding. Neither party has anything that can distract them, and really, there isn’t much else to do while driving other than listen to the radio and look for gas stations.

Now if only we could figure out what we are actually going to do for invites… Amber seems to have 1 idea… I seem to have another.

One last note: We meet with the photographer tomorrow. We’ll let you know how that goes, and if we go with them, we’ll post their name .