Which List Are You On?

Weddings are not only a test of patience and stress-management, they are also an opportune time to take inventory of friends and family. This seemingly simple task takes on a life of its own when other factors come into play such as: family conflicts (who's fighting with who now?), extended family (just how far do we extend it?), coworkers (since they have to listen to you talk about your wedding), 'new' friends (so what if we just met him/her?), and that group of people you're just not sure where you stand with.

After all those people are consolidated on a list, it gets circulated to the parents who add another set of folks. Then as time passes, more friends are made and more names are added. And so the story goes. Now the list is at a whopping... 355. That's the population of a small town. We've only budgeted for 200 so how do we cut 45% of our guests?

Pick fights with people and hope others don't show up! Duh. (Just kidding.) We developed an intensely competitive ranking system of As, Bs and Cs. Now don't you wish you knew which one you belonged to? The list is constantly changing so feel free to send us presents to win our favor and work your way up the rankings. Or you can just click on ads. I guess that works too.

Now besides the A-B-Cs, I also created additional fields for each name because contact information just wasn't enough for me -- Category (Family, Friend), Sub-category (Buenviaje, Tinio, Nazario, New York, California, etc.), E/J/B (Eileens, Jeremys, Both), S/F/C (Single, Family, Couple), Member (numbering system to group families and couples together) and a 'Likely to Come' field (to give us a realistic headcount). I wish I could show you how awesome my pivot table is but then it would give away our list. And for now, you'll just have to wait and see which one you're on.
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The Wedding Wildlife

As you may have seen, Eileen has been focused on finding the right bridal partywear. She has also been thinking about what she wants the men to wear and after much discussion and research, we finally decided on the first piece -- a shirt. Since we found a potential shirt online and wanted to get it sooner than later, we had to act quickly. And we had to make sure the shirts fit.

It's not often that I buy fancy dress shirts and so when I usually shop, I look for sizes in the Small, Medium, and Large variety (Well, OK. If we're being honest - Large and X-Large nowadays). But since we needed formal wear and better fitting shirts, we needed to get the neck size and sleeve lengths. The nice lady at the store measured me at a 16.5 inch neck and 35 inch sleeves. The other guys would have to measure themselves.

When we received measurements back, most of them sounded reasonable. Two of them sounded a little off. One groomsman who's slightly shorter than me returned a 39" sleeve length. That sounded a tad long.

Another groomsman, who's also only slightly shorter than me, returned a 21" sleeve length. This sounded a tad short.

In the end we were able to get more accurate measurements and place the order. Unfortunately, we need to exchange all the shirts... except for the ones of the two groomsmen above.
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Hitched and Homeless

Although the majority of our efforts have been focused on the events of July 9 and shortly thereafter, a looming question has been -- where will we live post-marriage? Our living arrangements for the past few years have been confusing to say the least. My phone number remains a New York area code, I claim my hometown to be San Francisco but my mailing address is in Chicago. It takes quite an explanation if anyone ever asks me. But relatively speaking, my situation is tame compared to my other half.

For the past five years, Jeng's life can best be described by this:


In 2004, Jeng began as a consultant and his living out of a suitcase began. In five years, Jeng has 'lived' and worked in 9 cities (two of them twice) -- New Brunswick, New Jersey; Tampa, Florida; Akron, Ohio; Santa Clara, California; Montreal, Canada; Seattle, Washington; San Diego, California; Dallas, Texas; Palo Alto, California; back to Dallas, Texas; then most recently, back in San Diego, California. Somewhere in the middle, he bought a condo which he quickly realized he spent too little time in to justify its cost. It's been rented to great tenants... until recently. (See Craiglist if you're interested!)

With our wedding only 10 months away, we look forward to the day when we might actually be in the same city 7 days a week together, with all our stuff in one single place instead of spread between our homes, Chicago, and boxes in our parents garage. When we no longer have to squeeze a weeks worth of quality time with our friends, with our families and with each other into a 3 day weekend. But where will we be in 10 months?

We don't want to return to Jeng's condo if its in the hands of worthy tenants. We don't have the funds to afford a new place. And we refuse to rent. So that leaves -- my parents house? his parents house? my sister's spare guest room with a twin bed? Suddenly, this doesn't sound too bad:

Harry Potter did it up pretty well in a tent so maybe we can too. Considering our other options, the tent seems like the most promising.
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