Honeymoon!

I think I've been so busy trying to survive work and wedding planning that I've neglected to tell you all where we're going for our honeymoon. And since I know you are just DYING from the suspense, I thought I'd finally announce to the blog world that we are going to (drum roll, please!)...................

 

TURKEY AND GREECE!

I am beyond excited about this trip and absolutely can't wait to go! In the next few weeks, I'll be sharing a little bit more about this trip - including how I'm staying organized, my packing list, a few new honeymoon outfits, and a few new honeymoon underthings (I suppose you can't call them unmentionables if you're planning on doing a whole blog post on them, can you?). If you're familiar with either Greece or Turkey, I'd love to hear your travel tips in the comments or via email!

Steubenville: Justice and Rape Culture

Yesterday, like most of you, I waited anxiously to hear the verdict of the Steubenville case. I was relieved when the defendants were found guilty and felt a glimmer of hope, both that the survivor might find some solace in the verdict and that this "guilty" meant that we, as a nation, finally understood the need for justice.

However, I was quickly dismayed by the media coverage of the case. I was dismayed by the sighs of pity for these young men and the tremendous concern for the "promising athletes" whose futures now look grim. As if they were the victims. As if the real victim had, so tragically, ruined the careers and lives of these boys instead of vice versa.  And any glimmer of hope that this verdict kindled was stamped out by the overwhelming demonstration of our rape culture.

Much has been written in the hours since the decision. CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC have been, rightfully, criticized for revealing the name of the victim during the course of their coverage. Dave Zirin, who writes over at The Nation, has a great piece about the link between jock culture and rape culture. And Maya, over at Feministing, captures perfectly the way that I, and I suspect many of you, feel in the aftermath of this trial when she says:

I don’t want to live in a world in which a mainstream media outlet reporting on the verdict barely mentions the victim in their rush to lament the fact that the “promising lives” of the defendants have been ruined and that this “will haunt them for the rest of their lives.” I want to live in a world in which negative consequences are considered the logical effect of committing a terrible crime, and a sentence for rape that is shorter than those regularly doled out for drug possession or downloading academic papers is viewed as pretty damn lenient.

I don’t want to live in a world in which girls are so well-schooled in the consequences they’re sure to face for speaking up about a sexual assault that the victim immediately tried to assure people that she “wasn’t being a slut” and initially didn’t want to name the defendants ”because I knew everyone would just blame me.” I don’t want to live in a world that proves these fears justified time and time again.

Councilwoman Mrs. Ben Wyatt

Do you watch Parks and Recreation? You should! It is, objectively, the funniest show in the world and features one of the best female characters to ever hit the screen. Seriously, I frequently ask myself, "What would Leslie Knope do?" and last week, when I had to stay up basically all night every night for work, I reminded myself that Leslie Knope would LOVE to be up all night working on a project, so I should love it too. It kind of worked. :-) 

Recently, Parks and Recreation aired the episode I've long been waiting for: the Leslie and Ben wedding episode! It was magical and hilarious ,but my favorite part was when Ben said, "I really want you to take my last name… it’s just really important to me symbolically that Leslie Knope disappears and becomes Leslie Wyatt. Or Councilwoman Mrs. Ben Wyatt. That’s fine, too. It’s a deal breaker." Leslie's face was priceless, and I am so grateful to this show for making a joke about how ridiculous it is for a man to demand a woman take his last name. 

Congratulations Leslie and Ben! I hope you have many more seasons of love together. 

P.S. I wish I had been like Leslie, and asked for a wedding dress that captured "the sensuality of Eleanor Roosevelt combined with the animal magnetism of Lesley Stahl.”

A Feminist Wedding: Our Save the Dates

I have finally bounced back from this plague illness I've had for the past two weeks and lucky for you, that means you get to learn a little bit more about our wedding. :-)

When we went through our budget shortly after getting engaged, one of the things that seemed way too high according to our wedding budget estimator was paper. To start, Brett is definitely not a huge fan of paper. He could care less. And while I love to have a nice stack of pink flat note cards in my desk at all times for writing thank you notes and other things, I've never been a huge connoisseur of paper either. Also, I've never cared too much about what the save the dates and the wedding invitations I've received have looked like. After an initial "awww" and maybe a few months stint on our refrigerator, I don't keep them stashed away somewhere as keepsakes. 

We assumed everyone on our guest list would do the same and that our save the dates and invitations would eventually bite the dust (especially the save the dates, which will be replaced by an invitation a few months pre-wedding). And since there is absolutely no reason to spend $3 per person on something that is going to end up in the trash, we made the decision to cut our paper budget way, way down.

To save money, we decided to make the save the dates ourselves. There are a ton of cute free printable templates on the internet, and I spent hours trying to choose between all of the free printable save the dates over at Wedding Chicks. In the end, we chose this one because it was casual, had a vintage feel, and didn't force us to commit to a super-defined color scheme right away. It also had space for us to include a link to our wedding website, allowing us to give guests lots of information without using more paper. All we had to do was insert our photo and information into the template and voila! our save the dates had been "designed." We bought ecru paper from Paper Source, printed them on our printer, and cut them out while watching Downton Abbey episodes (tip: getting a paper cutter is SO MUCH BETTER! I resisted and tried to cut with scissors for awhile, but once I got my hands on a paper cutter, cutting the save the dates went much faster and looked much better).

Photo Source: Wedding Chicks

Besides printing them ourselves, we were able to save money by going with a postcard style save the date. We were able to fit 3 postcards onto a single 8x11 piece of paper (and thus, did not have to buy too much paper). We also got to skip envelopes (less money and better for the environment) and got to buy the reduced-price postcard stamps. It seems like only a small difference, but in the end it ended saving us around $60 in postage. Postcards for the win!

In total, we spent $15 on our save the dates and about $20 on postage, a huge difference from when we first started looking at save the dates and thought we might have to spend $200-$300 plus postage. Spending less on these has freed up space in our budget for prettier invitations and a few other special things that hopefully guests will enjoy more than their save the dates.

And if you're still looking for save the dates, the ladies over at Wedding Chicks have recently added two absolutely adorable save the dates that I wish I had an excuse to use:

Photo Source: Wedding Chicks

Photo Source: Wedding Chicks

P.S. I didn't include a photo of our real save the date because by the time I blacked out the date and our address and our wedding website, it did not look super cute. You'll just have to imagine it!

Monday Motivation

I'm skipping the usual Monday Motivation quote and posting Beyonce's Super Bowl halftime show instead, because what can be more motivational than a Destiny's Child reunion? 

P.S. I was tweeting about some of the Super Bowl commercials over on twitter, if you'd like to see.

Florida Man Accused of Fraud After Adopting His Wife's Last Name

Recently, a man in Florida was accused of fraud and had his driver's license suspended after he opted to adopt his wife's last name when they got married. 

Isn't that ridiculous?!

Photo of Mr. and Ms. Dinh, Courtesy of Reuters

The man says he followed the same process that a woman would follow to change her last name after she got married, but was later told that that process is "only for women" and that he has to go through a much more time-consuming and expensive process if he wants to legally change his name.

Apparently, only a few states have received the memo that women are not just chattel who are passed from their fathers to their husbands. Only nine states - nine! - have gender neutral marriage name change laws: California, New York, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, Iowa, Georgia, and North Dakota.

The whole incident makes me even more grateful to be involved with The Last Name Project and reminds us all that our laws, not just our traditions, still reinforce the good ole' patriarchal status quo!

I'd love to hear from men who changed their names when they got married. Did you have go through an alternative route? Did you encounter legal resistance?

[Maia] The Last Name Project

In this series co-hosted by from two to one and The Feminist Mystique, we will be profiling an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities. We will be posting profiles periodically and encourage you to stay connected via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.  If you would like to participate in this series, email Danielle at danielle [at] fromtwotoone [dot] com or Shannon at hill [dot] shannonp [at] gmail [dot] com.  

The following post is by Maia, a Midwestern transplant to the Bay Area where she is a chiropractic intern by trade (just shy of graduating!), and a modern dancer by passion.  She lives in a treehouse with her partner B (writer of urban half-truths,charlieupsidedown.wordpress.com) and dog Charlie (hiking aficionado, chaser of tennis balls and squirrels).  The non-traditional and varied relationship values of the Bay Area have provided endless food-for-thought about how she defines individualism, feminism, and partnership, and these views are continually evolving.

My last name has always held some frustration for me.  It’s difficult to spell, can be phonetically pronounced more than one way, and no one ever gets it right.  My first name is somewhat unique and seems to give people trouble as well—really, what’s so difficult about it? —So the name change dilemma has always been about aesthetics to me.  As I got older, I got in touch with the independence of keeping my own name, and I admire my father and the family I came from.  (As a side note, I can’t help but wonder; is keeping your father’s name much different than taking your husbands’, from a feminist standpoint?)  I also considered that I will become licensed as a chiropractor and begin a practice before I marry.  The logistics of changing my name later on become increasingly challenging and can pose professional risks after trying to establish myself by one name.

I don’t particularly label myself a feminist, mostly because FEMINIST seems to have taken on an extremist representation in a lot of ways.  I consider myself a strong woman, and I believe in fiercely embracing and supporting concerns close to women and modern female justice.   However, I don’t view keeping my own name as an act of defiance against the system which would take it from me, and I don’t view taking a partners’ as an act of submission to masculine oppression.  My sentiments may be shaped by a distinct early memory of my mom Christmas-gifting my dad her driver’s license in his name after 10 years of marriage.

B and I have been together 5 years, and while not engaged, we have a weightier task on our minds—choosing our own last name.  I like his last name.  It sounds good with my first, it’s German like me, it’s pronounceable and phonetically spelled, it’s right at the beginning of the alphabet and I’m tired of being at the end.  But he relates little to the family of his namesake; his relationship with his father has always been tenuous, and a shift in religious expression has widened the gap with the rest of the family.  At first I felt it was malicious to forego his father’s name, but I had to admit that I wasn’t thrilled about building a family on a name we didn’t value.

When B suggested we take his deceased mother’s maiden name, I liked his purposeful and honoring intent.  It seems like a logical solution, but superstition is holding us back—of a large family, none have survived to carry on the name, and that’s a little foreboding to us.  So we began to make up names, or try out ones we saw on publications or signs.  We have carved a nitch unique to us as a couple, and choosing a name that represents that is inviting.  Some are clever, some are silly, some are basic, some are rooted in reason or logic.  Some, we really like.  But it’s serious business to legally amend your formal designation.  It’s hard to come up with something you like and can live with, that also has value.   Currently, we’re weighing some frontrunners that allude to family but allow us to be original.  This way I can share a name with my children, further my individual identity, and feel no guilt for keeping OR changing my given name.