Getting Adept at Audacity

Anyone who has ever done any simple sound editing or mixing of any kind with their computer will have, at some point, encountered or even used an open-source program called Audacity. It is probably one of the better programs of that type available, though my use of it was sporadic and basic prior to getting engaged.

As implied, since getting engaged, my familiarity and skill with using Audacity has increased significantly. I hesitate to call myself an expert, but I'm definitely adept enough at it that I know roughly how to get it to do what I need it to do.

This, I think, was a natural result of having 2 people who disagree on what makes "good music". This wasn't such a big issue with the reception, where our music selections could take turns to feature, but it started to become one with the ceremony. I really wanted us both to like what was going to play for the ceremony.

Fortunately, while we had deeply divergent tastes in music, we did have strikingly similar tastes in movies. The problem with using music from movies, however, is that just because you like it doesn't mean it's always suitable for the occasion. It'd been chosen in that movie to reflect/support/heighten a particular scene or event on-screen, and if our guests haven't seen the movie in question, hearing the music alone means they may miss out on a big part of the experience.

That meant that any movie music we decided to use was rarely appropriate as it stood. There were certainly cases where the music was suitable in its original and unedited form (usually because the movie was popular enough or the message was pretty obvious even context-free), but these were few and far between.

Thus came the search for more suitable versions of the music we wanted to use or reference. Acoustic only, for example. Or a slower cover. Or instrumentals only. And it was surprisingly hard to find precisely what we wanted. Youtube was a great source, but depending on the piece of music I was after, there were either only a handful of options or an overwhelming number to filter through. It got stressful pretty fast, particularly when you consider that it's not just my opinion on a cover that matters - Blake's does, too!

I should clarify that we weren't picky to the point where we were going to record anything ourselves. I was happy enough to jury-rig songs to get them to sound roughly like what I'd envisioned. That's where Audacity came in.

The best thing about open-source, popular software like Audacity is that tutorials and how-to's abound on the internet. If I ever wasn't sure how to get a piece of music to do something, a quick Google search would solve my problem. Use it enough times and you start to figure out what the other "bits" of the software are there to do, and some hilarious experimentation eventually did get me feeling pretty comfortable with it.

None of it's perfect, necessarily, but it'll suit.

Sincere vs. Humourous Vows: The Ultimate Showdown

I enjoy a good laugh, and I generally adhere to the principle that life is too short to take it too seriously. Blake shares similar values and he delights in making me laugh. We have great privilege in being able to look at the world this way, and in some ways I feel this should be celebrated. Live to laugh. Of course, sometimes we go too far and accidentally hurt people, so we do have to get the balance right. Most of the time, though, if we're trying to make you laugh, it's because we care enough to want to see you laugh and enjoy yourselves.

On the other hand, if life is short (and it is), doesn't that also mean that the moments we do have are precious? Shouldn't we appreciate them? Take some of those finite minutes to acknowledge the depth and miraculousness of our existence, let alone what we've made of it? I've talked before on this very blog about how making things meaningful is important to me. Not just because I like symmetry in all things and am a bit superstitious, but also because it's how I was raised. If it adds no intrinsic, meaningful value, then it's a fringe benefit at best or a temptation to be avoided at worst.

The fence on which I've been sitting for the past few months has become increasingly uncomfortable as time ticks on. As you can tell from the title of the post, the dilemma I'm currently facing is whether or not my (our?) vows should be entertaining and amusing, or sincere and emotional.

Now, most of you level-headed, well-adjusted adults out there have already worked out that these things are not mutually exclusive. You can be sincere and emotional with laughter and good-natured humor, or vice versa, and there isn't anything really preventing me from having my cake and eating it, too. These are my vows, after all, to be spoken not necessarily for the benefit of everyone present, but to Blake.

But where I get stuck is making something sound true to me. Is it more "me" to keep it humorous and cute with referenced in-jokes, or is it more "me" to put that stuff aside for a few minutes on our wedding day to speak from the sincere, sappy, syrupy heart? More importantly - what would Blake prefer to hear? What's he planning on saying?

I really don't want to recite heartfelt, tear-jerking vows if he's going to recite something humorous back to me. I think I would actually die of embarrassment, so the tones would have to match. But I also don't want to know exactly what his vows will be before the day itself, because I want to be surprised. Yet his definition of "sincere and heartfelt" are vastly different to mine. I kind of like the idea of working on them together but finalising them separately.

The logical solution is to find a way to punctuate the sincere with the humour, or lead off with one and finish with the other. But that sounds hard! Only writers of the best sitcoms could do that with any sort of elegance and refinement. Me? I don't have that kind of wordsmithing prowess!

So, I turn to anyone who might be reading this. What did you do? Do you have any suggestions?

An Introspection Regarding Burpturd Behaviour

In an earlier post, I'd brought up a few possible reasons why brides become "burpturd brides", which is my hilariously silly term for "bridezilla". It's a bit crass and rude, sure, but all in good humour, I think.

I'm sure you've figured it out by reading between the lines, but I am deathly afraid of being thought of as a burpturd bride. I don't want to cause a fuss, I don't want to put my foot down, I don't want to be demanding. I am terrified at the prospect of someone even thinking anything that resembles: "ugh, bridezilla".

There have been a number of incidents where that fear popped up as an issue, and the one I'll use as an example is the hiccup regarding the Dorothy shoes.

The poignant part of that post is that I was going to wedge a chunk of newspaper into my wedding shoes just so that they could fit "well enough" for me to walk down the aisle. I really was! I had the paper in my hand, all scrunched up and ready to go! I absolutely did not want to return them and I did not want to call them to let them know something was wrong. My first instinct was to jury-rig it into being functional, even if it couldn't be perfect.

Initially, I blamed that behaviour on, well, myself. Sheer laziness, for one thing. It was going to be too much trouble to go to the post office to send the shoes back, too much trouble to negotiate for replacement shoes to be sent to me before I send mine back (as I needed them for a dress fitting and it wasn't clear the new ones would make it in time), too much trouble to solve the problem. And for another thing, it was probably my fault anyway for not sizing my feet properly.

It didn't occur to me until after I'd written that hiccup post that, hang on, was it really just about all that? Or was there something else I'd been smashing down and ignoring since the moment I said "yes" to Blake in a room full of candles and flowers?

As I eventually concluded, I was also terrified at the possibility that someone at Shoes of Prey - or literally anyone else - would think I was a burpturd bride.

This is, as you've likely already spotted, a completely irrational thing to worry about, because the shoes just don't fit! They need to be fixed! There is nothing overly burpturdy about wanting shoes that fit! Stop being ridiculous!

But then, it was the same with the flowers. My florist came back with an in-progress photo of the flowers I've ordered, and while she nailed the bridal bouquet, a few of the other items weren't 100% to my liking. My first instinct? To make myself be okay with them, because clearly I'd fucked up when putting the order in somehow! Those flowers don't really look that odd poking out of the posy, do they? They're fine.

If you're starting to feel a bit of sympathy for Blake, good.

I am so bad at giving anyone negative feedback on something that is subjective. Add on the fact that I want to be remembered by everyone as "that really cool laidback relaxed bride we had at the end of 2014" rather than a "bridezilla", and it's almost enough for a weird internal meltdown. I also like deferring to expertise so when suppliers come back with something I don't quite like, I blame it on my own bad taste. My first instinct is never to demand they change or fix it right away, it's usually to hem and haw about how it's really not that bad and maybe it's not them, it's me!

I'm getting a bit better at asserting my preferences. My parents, through repeat discussions on the Chan-Clan-household-mandatory-text Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, have long instilled in me a belief that there is a way to be assertive without being rude or demanding, though I don't always bother with that unless the occasion calls for it. Well, those skills are certainly being used to their maximum these days. I mean, I will go burpturd on a vendor or supplier if warranted, but 100% of the time it's a last resort. As I've been taught, any one can yell or demean or criticize to get the outcome that they want - and it probably works very well! But my conscience drives me to try to be a classier, more understanding customer. Shoot, if I were a vendor, whose bouquet/makeup/hair/dress/photos is going to get more time and effort from me because I want to put in more, rather than because I have to?

Before I start sounding too pompous, I will acknowledge that there's certainly room for cynicism here. There are plenty of people who will prioritize the loudest and most difficult customers because they're the ones that will bring the bad press, at the expense of the customer who is more understanding and forgiving. Absolutely. But I'd rather be the flexible and more relaxed customer than the burpturdy one by a long shot, because I'll be a bit happier with imperfection than a burpturdy person is likely to be with something perfect.

Moons of Honey

For those who've been asking: no, we haven't planned a honeymoon yet.

It's not that we don't want one or don't think it'd be fun to have one, it's more that it's not very high on our list of priorities at the moment. With a shorter engagement it does mean we have to be really clear about what needs to get done soon and what can get done later, and the honeymoon's right near the bottom of the pile.

Part of that might be the overabundance of options. We can go pretty much anywhere if we saved enough money to actually do it, but where do we even begin? Blake and I have varying preferences on what we look for when we travel, but we haven't even touched on it at length. For a time, it looked like we weren't even going to bother with one.

But the advice I've been given by multiple parties is to definitely have some kind of getaway and not to leave it too long after the wedding. The logic is that planning the wedding is stressful and the wedding day itself is intense - everyone is in your face all the time and, apparently, getting a break involves dragging your bridal party into the bathrooms with you so that you can pee without ruining your dress. Oddly specific example aside, it makes sense; decompression is needed. We will also have family and friends flying in from overseas, so we will also want to spend extra time with them before and after the day itself if possible.

For me, I think I will actually miss the stress of planning a wedding. I thrive on projects - the bigger and the more reasons I have for spreadsheeting, the better. In 2011, I and a top-shelf dude by the name of Dave orchestrated a mass gathering of 30 nerds from all over the country (and 1 notable who flew all the way from the US) in Byron Bay. Why? Because we felt like it. In 2012, I engaged in the long and heavily involved process of applying for a visa to stay in Australia. In 2013, we bought a house and renovated it before moving in.

I don't plan to do these projects ahead of time, mind you; they just seem to pop up and I love that they do. And if I find myself lacking one, I inadvertently try to make an existing, smaller project bigger. I reckon that's how I ended up being a half-decent volleyball coach - in 2010, I went whole hog on training plans and getting feedback from players pre-, mid-, and post-season. Using Surveymonkey. And collating the results for my own reference.

I'm a nerd, guys.

It's an understatement to say that my 2014 project turning out to be planning my own wedding. I will genuinely miss it when it's over, but I'm sure I'll find another project before too long.

I think our plan for the honeymoon will be to do a small one closer to home at first - maybe a month out from the wedding just to dodge the busy holiday period. I find the idea of just hanging out with Blake, with no pressure to do or see anything, pretty perfect as far as decompressing after the wedding goes. Then, later on, we can put any money in our Wishing Well towards a much bigger, longer trip.

Decision-Making Fatigue

The title is a term I'm totally borrowing from my friend Kris, because I honestly haven't been able to come up with another expression quite so accurate without also incorporating disturbing toilet imagery.

We're reaching the part of the planning process where quite a number of final decisions need to be made. Everything left outstanding - jewelry, hair style, makeup, floor plan - now needs to be chosen and locked in. Suppliers will do whatever they can to accommodate me, which is a good thing, but they are terrified of not getting direction from me in case they cock it up and come back with something I hate.

The reality is, though, is that there are a great number of things for which I legitimately don't have an opinion. GASP! VIVIENNE WITH NO OPINION? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?!

The bare bones of the ceremonies in both cities are sorted - a place for the ceremony to happen, a time for people to turn up, and people to actually make it happen. All booked in, no issues thus far, and that's really all I care about.

Being a neurotic nutcase, I masquerade as a seemingly normal human being by prioritising everything. I work with lists and ranks - if something is a higher priority, everything beneath it will be ignored and shunned until the higher priority thing is sorted. Right now, all my higher priority stuff is either sorted or does not require further input from me at present. "Pending supplier action", if you would.

This means is that my attention is now turning to the lower-priority decisions that have yet to be made. The thing is, I'm exhausted from all the decision-making that took place in the upper echelons of my priority list, and my stock of "Shits I Give" has been depleted. I may have had opinions for some of these things before, but at this stage in the planning? I'm absolutely done even thinking about the rest of the list.

I do not have an opinion on what colour eyeshadow or lipstick I want on my face. I do not care if a rose is hidden by a lily or an orchid in my bouquet. I don't actually give a shit if the wedding cars have ribbons or not. Where should the wedding chairs go? ON THE GROUND, DUH. And why in the fuck would I care what colours the DJs wear?!

The people asking these questions don't seem to accept my sincere reassurances that my shit-giving bucket is bone-dry. I should also clarify that these requests for input aren't always from my suppliers, either; most of them are actually from well-meaning family and friends who can't seem to tolerate an "I don't know" or "I don't care" answer.

But I must know, they claim. I will care!

Dear everyone - there are simply no spare shits left to give. The only thing I must and will do is marry Blake (his reciprocal "I do" pending). If the thing is not directly impacting on my ability to do that, then at this point it gets zero (0) airtime from me.

I've acknowledged before that a lot of suppliers and vendors do need a place to start. I get it, I really do. But as I also said in that post, I like to defer to their expertise and experience. Please, please for the love of god, just let me fucking defer to your experience. But nope, that's just not going to happen.

Therefore, I'm enlisting a wedding A-Team - people in addition to our not-so-available bridal party who will help me field the extra, superfluous decisions, thus sparing my sanity. If an answer is needed on something that's not a high priority, I am trusting the members of my A-Team to deal with it for me. And they will have my love and gratitude for the rest of my natural life.

Why We're Not Doing a Gift Registry

Ever since we announced our engagement, we have received a barrage of requests for links to a gift registry. All of these came from my side of the equation, where it's pretty much par for the course for extended family and family friends to buy gifts or give money to the couple at the announcement of an engagement. Now that the wedding is approaching ever so steadily, those requests have become something more akin to demands.

These days, it's pretty common to encounter a Wishing Well, which is in essence a pool of money that guests can contribute towards that pays for something significant, such as honeymoons and renovations. This means that rather than use a gift registry, you can just pop some money into the Wishing Well with the expectation that it'll get put towards something the couple wants.

I've become privy to a broad spectrum of opinions on wedding gifts. Some people refuse to give cash because it can feel too impersonal, too much like you're just paying the bride/groom for your dinner, or too tacky. Some people refuse to give gifts because it's not about what you give, it's about how the couple use the gift, and therefore cash is a better and more sensible option. I have lost track of how many times I've heard the discussion around how couples these days have been living together for a period of time prior to getting married, therefore they don't need all the "setting up the new home" items that were more common gifts for couples back in the day. Or how gifts are just this massive storage problem for a period after the wedding. Or how the excitement of opening a wrapped present is such a wonderful feeling. Or the environmentally unfriendly wastage of wrapping paper.

It all makes sense from both sides, it really does. I have no strong opinion on one side or the other; often, it'll come down to how well I know the couple and whether or not they do in fact have a registry. If there is one, I'll buy something off it. If there isn't, we give cash.

Out of respect to our friends and family who had requested one, Blake and I made an attempt to set up an online gift registry. We failed within 10 minutes of starting.

Our problem, we realised, is that we are extremely particular people. When I say I want a vacuum cleaner, for example, I don't just mean "get me anything from this brand". I will research the shit out of it and other brands, look for the most neutral reviews I can find, compare those to old models or other brands, create a shortlist of possibilities, evaluate those based on what I want in a vacuum cleaner, and then source the best price for that model. (For the record, don't get me a vacuum cleaner.)

We have found no (free) online registry that supplied or offered to supply every possible product we wanted at reasonable prices. On top of that, it was impossible for us to know how much was too much or too little to ask. Is it reasonable to ask for a [thing] costing $[number]?

In essence, those 10 minutes consisted of me finding a number of online gift registries, us staring blankly at each other for what we would even add to it in the first place, and then when an idea did eventually come to us, I went off and did my research. By the time I came back with a shortlist for that one item (at about the 10-minute mark), I realised that it just wasn't going to work. There is no registry that I'd found that offers the best model/version of everything, and we're too picky to settle.

I have to reiterate that we wouldn't have even bothered with trying if it weren't for all the requests we were getting, mostly from family friends I've known my whole life. I mean, another reason for us not knowing how to do a gift list was because we didn't really expect gifts!

In the end, it just seemed easier to field individual requests from the more In. Sis. Tent. folks out there and just direct everyone else who'd like to get us something to the Wishing Well. As it is, it's pretty common in Chinese weddings for people to give cash, so if you really want to get us a gift but are feeling a bit iffy about just dropping dollars, you can always just say you're being culturally appropriate!

On Burpturd Brides

There are a lot of recently-wedded people at work and in my personal life, which has led of course to a fair number of heated discussions about that one thing that none of us want to be but sometimes have to become: the bridezilla. It's an unfortunate and inaccurate term (seriously, people apparently don't really "get" Godzilla), so I'm going to use "burpturd bride" instead. Mostly because the sound of it makes me laugh, it's 100% made up, and I can't say I'm borrowing it from anywhere.

I am determined to be a calm, laidback, pretty relaxed bride. I knew my engagement was short, so that means having to let a lot of things go. It runs counter to my neurotic nature, but I figured that I could be neurotic about being calm and laidback. Yeah, I'm gaming the system, and this is not going to backfire in any way.

(This is the part of the movie where they zoom in on all those eggs that that the just-killed mother monster laid that no one will find until the next movie.)

Thus far, I've been successful. Just. I got a bit fired up about the wedding favours thing (which, again, was something that goes to my guests), but since then it's all been pretty chill.

It's super common for engaged couples to come to the eventual conclusion that weddings seem to be horrendously over-commercialised and overpriced. It's hard not to get disillusioned by all of it. I've heard stories of the "wedding tax", of wedding cakes costing 250% more than the same cake that had been purchased as a replica of a wedding cake at a 50th anniversary party. It was juuuuuust enough to make me go full-on cynic, until a friend of mine offered an alternate perspective.

I know this lovely girl named Julia. She used to work as a florist and while she doesn't do that anymore, she did explain the story from the suppliers' side. I'm paraphrasing here, but she pointed out that, for wedding flowers, they put in extra hours and their most experienced florists and their very best-looking flowers. There's also more time and energy spent communicating with brides to make sure that they get precisely what they want. These extras incur dollars. That's to say nothing of the fact that fresh flowers can't exactly be done weeks in advance; it needs to be timed, scheduled, delivered, and perfect.  There are brides out there who really, really care how their flowers look, and if you don't commit every resource available to providing the perfect product, there's no telling how they will react if it's not quite what they want.

But what if you don't want or need "perfect"? You could easily argue that maybe you don't need all that extra attention and you'd genuinely be happy paying less for less. Surely it's not fair for burpturd brides to ruin things for you when you're so laidback and offbeat!

The fact is, from the supplier's point of view, they can't tell if you're a burpturd bride until you actually become one, usually only after something has gone wrong. We all know there are burpturd brides out there who start out being burpturd brides and you can see them coming a mile away. But there are also plenty of brides out there who, like me, attempt to be easygoing and calm about the whole wedding plan.

At least at first.

Insert a metric tonne of stress, all the Expectations from your friends and family, your own ceaseless second-guesses, and the realisation that you are spending gobs of money on this wedding. As the timer ticks down and stuff starts being delivered and coming together, suddenly that vague, nice-looking bouquet you were hoping for morphs into horrifically specific, no-this-flower-needs-to-go-here, posy-wrecking mayhem.

And never forget the inexcusably high possibility of something being criticised by someone who has a snarky OPINION on the decisions you've made for your wedding.

Almost overnight, that laidback bride becomes a burpturd bride. The flowers into which the florist put their blood and sweat are crap. Your wedding is ruined. And you tell all your friends about it. You post on the internet about it.

That probably doesn't happen often, but it really only has to happen once for suppliers to be on their guard. It's safer for their business and their reputation to assume that all brides are burpturd brides, because at least if things go wrong, brides can't claim you didn't do everything you possibly could to make the day perfect. And honestly, I don't think anyone gets in the wedding business with the intent to defraud others of their money if it also means dealing with more than one's fair share of bridal burpturdiness. Surely it'd be simpler to own a car dealership.

BA-ZING.

Let's not forget the lesson I learned from my makeup hiccup - there are people out there who genuinely love weddings and they are committed to making them perfect, which means they will charge more because that commitment costs more. I totally get and respect that.

Thus far, I've managed to maintain the laidback, easygoing facade I have created for all things wedding. It helps that I'm a pretty big advocate of deferring to expertise, and honestly have no opinion on half the things that I've encountered. Florist, I envision that I am paying not only for your flowers and your time, but also your training and experience. Makeup person, I am paying for your understanding of what makeup can and can't do, what does and doesn't look good; not just for your brushes and products.

But I do acknowledge what it means from the other side. Whether you're a florist, make-up artist, photographer, dressmaker, or hair stylist, much of your business deals in subjectivity. You could think that something looks great while your client absolutely hates it. I definitely understand that the folks in these sorts of businesses appreciate having a place to start, though it does become exhausting creating an opinion out of nothing.

I'm sure I'll have a burpturd moment before the wedding is over. There's plenty of time left to go. But for now, when something vaguely burpturdy comes up, I do just take a deep breath and remind myself that the only thing that HAS to happen is that I HAVE to be legally married to Blake by the end of it all. That brings me right down to earth again, and the burpturd bride within remains unstirred.

For now.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

[FADE TO BLACK]