Yup, only 5 days left until my/our wedding. Two things about it that I wanted to discuss. The first of which is our gift registries. We are registered at Bed Bath & Beyond and Crate & Barrel. We are also registered with two separate knife registries: Warther Knives and Cutco (for Cutco, you will have to search for our names). Although the last two knife registries were added much later, it has been interesting that a lot has been bought off of our BB&B registry and not as much off of our C&B registry - my thinking is that people assume that we are registered at the former, thus they go there and purchase from there, with less people going to our various registries from our registries page. (Oh yeah, if you wanted to get us something off of one of our registries (no pressure), even though you may not have been invited to the wedding, we will not hold you back from doing so.) The other is that we are finally finished composing our wedding brochure. Whenever I have gone to weddings in the past, I always wanted more information - some footnotes and some in-text citations. I then thought that mine would be different - it would be full of information and sources. But, alas, my fiance wanted no such thing. Okay, I really shouldn't place the blame on her - most of the guests probably care little about such information and just want basics and to follow along with the ceremonies and celebrations.
Aside from spending a good amount of time cleaning up my bedroom and kitchen today (though there is still much to do...), I have updated my wedding website, which is good, so people interested in attending either the wedding and/or sheva berakhos can have the proper information (and also so people can send us gifts :)). Anyways, back to cleaning....
Yesterday, I was at a fellow YCT student's wedding in Connecticut and it was very interesting for me to pay attention and see what was going on. I have been to several weddings of various people who live in Washington Heights in the last few years, but this was the first wedding I had attended since getting engaged. It is also the only one aside from my sister's wedding that I will be attending before mine. The significance was mainly (per mine) was not only to see how things went as well as the timing of things, but also to get an idea of how to compose an informational booklet for the wedding. All of the weddings I have attended have a program booklet explaining the proceedings. I am in charge of the booklet for my wedding. Anyways, this wedding was orchestrated by Rabbi Avi Weiss, who really did an absolutely splendidly wonderful job - I really don't know who can perform weddings better than he can - it's simply a work of art to see what he does. Seeing what he does sets an impressive standard and it's a fine model from which to glean. One of the interesting things for me to see was during the birkat hatanim (a/k/a the sheva berakhos) at the end of the meal that the first three blessings went to women. In and of itself, it wasn't anything strange, but I just had never seen it before. Joe Scheiner, one of Max Davis' roommates (Max was the groom), upon me saying hello, inquired about my blog, apparently having coming across my blog at some point (there's your shout-out, Joe).
In Judaism, there is a positive commandment to get married (see Rambam's Sefer HaMizvot, positive commandment 213; Sefer haHinukh 552, Sefer Mizvot Gadol, positive commandment 48). As such, it is appropriate that one prepare for this mizvah. This weekend, my fiance and I are in Rochester (and the shul where we'll be going for services, which will also be the same one as where my aufruf will be on 11 August, Beth Sholom, has a little blurb in their June newsletter about our engagement (on page 3)). Our preparations today for the wedding included going to the shul where we will be wedding to pick out which huppah we shall be using and to figure out the space (even though both of us were at a wedding there last year, it still helps to get another look at it). A very important meeting happened when we met with the florist to pick out our floral arrangements, etc. for the wedding. Flowers are, apparently, a very essential element to weddings. Although that was it for me for the day for wedding preparations, my fiance also went to the hair and make-up dresser to get a testing to see what may be done. - On Sunday, my fiance's bridal shower will occur.
Recent happenings in Drew's life: 1) Rachel (my fiance) and I have been taking a חתן וכלה (husband & wife) class at Drisha, taught by Ben and Shuli Sandler. 2) We have a wedding website, though it needs a lot of content to be added. 3) My knee got x-rayed the other week and went back to the doctor on Friday, but after waiting two hours and not yet having been seen, I walked out (I needed to get ready for shabbas). So, now I'm going to try to go to Rachel's doctor. 4) Alexis and Josh (my sister and her fiance) came back to the States this past week (my sister arriving Friday morning. 5) I marched on Sunday at the Salute to Israel Parade as part of YCT's sub-delegation of the Halakhic Organ Donor Society's marching group.
Today, I attended a wedding of friends of ours, where I was a groomsman. It was the first time I was a groomsman since my sister's wedding 17 months and the second time I've worn my tuxedo (the first being my wedding 16 months ago (and it's been hanging up in the closet the entire time)), although we had to go out last night to buy me a tuxedo shirt (fortunately, Macy's was open from yesterday through Wednesday without closing and has sales going on, so we totally lucked out with that), since I did not have a tuxedo shirt (which I found out when I took my tuxedo out of the closet).
