Yes, I am taking 'his' name.

Dear Feminists,

Yes, I am taking my partner's surname in marriage. No, I don't believe this makes me submissive or a disgrace to the female gender.

To me, marriage is about refinforcing that we are taking on life together - as a team! As such I want to share a last name, a team name, and I don't mind being the one to change. I don't have a particularly strong attatchment to my last name (which, I might remind you, came from my father's side anyway) and would happily swap it. Considering this, it seems crazy and selfish to force him into changing his name just so that we fit a particular feminist criteria. Even more so as it's a stance that I don't see as very progressive.

Another reason for sharing a name is that we do want to have children together. If we don't take on a name together now, we only delay this same decision for them. Do they have my name, his name, or both? My name if it's a boy, his if it's a girl? There are various solutions avaiable, but I'd rather have our children feel like we're all the same than use them to make quasi political statements. Not to mention that, with our surnames being quite simlar (there is in fact only two letters difference), they sound pretty awful hyphenated.

Early on, I suggested that we think of an entirely new last name together, but we haven't thought of one that we like. To be honest, I've really gotten used to the idea of being Mrs R, married to Mr R. I'm not unthinkingly accepting the tradition. We have thought about and talked about it as a couple and made the decision that we see as most fitting to our long term values. This, I think, is the most important point: it is a decision that we made together. So, I'm pretty sick of justifying it to everybody. This wedding is not about me being a woman and him being a man, it's about us being equal parts of a long term and complex organism.

Our decision doesn't have to be the same as your decision as long as it's right for us.

Yours, The Future Mrs R.

Refreshments.

Looks refreshing, yes? Mmmm.. lovely for a summer wedding like ours, but will we really be able to use five or six of these after the wedding? Probably not. These, on the other hand will look just as nice and have many more options for re-use. Perhaps we will get some and pair them with stainless steel ladels for serving iced-tea, lemonade and rum punch.

Today is Tuesday

Listening to: United by Pheonix

Reading: The Doors of Perception By Aldous Huxley

Cooking: Apple Cobbler for breakfast (yummy!)

Leigh took a day off yesterday. We went into town and looked at various rings. It was nice. I love getting to try on all these amazing, sparkly jewels. Even the ones we could never afford. I think it's the fancy dress fan in me, because there are lots that I wouldn't actually like to wear every day either. One woman let me walk right out of the shop to look at this huge stone in the sunlight. Lucky I have an honest face, eh.

We're pretty certain that we want to go with Metal Urges because we really appreciate Chris's approach to his craft. He travels around and collects stones himself and he loves being challenged to create new and different designs. I also love how keen he is to have an ongoing relationship with his clients. The website is: http://www.metalurges.com.au/about/

Absolutely worth checking out if you are local to my area.

The image at the top is some of Ernst Haeckel's beautiful work. He has been very inspiring to me, both as an artist and as a scientist. I'd like to use this kind of imagery in the form for my wedding ring. I'll post more on him later. For now, I have work to do.

Paper Computing

Today I am Excited about...

...Laurie Anderson.

...picking up my tutu and my library books tomorrow.

...this very nice blog: http://thatshappy.blogspot.com/.

...the fact that I have not one, but two costume parties to attend this weekend.

...the idea of calling a celebrant tomorrow. A friend has passed on the phone number of a lady that she thinks we will like.

...getting to try out my new cake decorating tools tonight.

...my latest project. I think I am actually getting somewhere with it.

Signs

I nabbed this video off Bridechka at: http://bridechka.blogspot.com/

It is completely lovely. Her blog is too, so go check that out when you're done watching this:

Venue Blues

We always said that we'd like to sort out our wedding venue before planning too many other details because so many of the details depend on the venue. We never realised, however, that finding a relaxed, outdoor setting would be so hard. We didn't want to get married in a winery or at an estate but, if it was possible, we would like some basic form of a kitchen to store and prepare food in. Another thing that we were keen on was being able to do the ceremony and the party in the same place. I know that I said that our wedding is an extravagance, but I really don't see the need to travel between two venues. So, I guess by being relatively specific we did cut down our options a bit, but I still wouldn't have anticipated it being this hard.



I keep having dreams that we go out for a drive and discover the most amazing house with a lovely big garden. We get out of the car to have perve on the flowers and see that it's for sale. In the dream we then realise that this is one of those meant to be kind of moments, so we stroll up to the front door and knock. This little lady in lilac opens up the door and invites us in for cups of tea and a chat. By the end of the dream we're all the best of friends and she's agreed for us to buy the place under the proviso that we have our wedding there. Quite honestly, we assure her that we wouldn't want to have it anywhere else. I love that dream but, since there is a fair chance it isn't coming true, we've continued to search around. No luck so far, but I'm sure we'll find somewhere.