Here's the final "montage" of our wedding video. Turned out pretty darn good. If you need a wedding videographer, let me know and I'll get you the contact info for our guy. He did a great job with the editing.

Tags: wedding

So it took forever and ever, but our "pro" pictures from the wedding are finally online and viewable.

You can check them out here - http://www.pictage.com/322632 (you will need to use the event key "carrie and matt").

Here are a couple I found funny. I would have posted more, but Pictage makes it really, really hard to get a hold of the image itself. In fact, I'm not even sure if you guys will see the ones here. So you might just as well go to the link above and look at 'em all.


Kristin gets busted digging into the candy buffet


Dallas cracks up on the limo bus.


Tosh and Amy get down.

Tags: wedding
Current Location: Elk Lake, Michigan

Here is it...Saturday morning. Dallas and Devon are asleep on the sofa bed, and Chris is snoozing in the guest room. And I'm wide awake, and have been since about 6 AM.

Last night was the rehearsal dinner. We went to Wishbone, and had a fantastic meal. The food there is so very good...and we had great company. Of course the entire wedding party was there, as well as our parents, and some other relatives, including my Uncle Jerry and Aunt Rebecca from Oregon, with my cousins Anya and Chaya. I have not seen them in a very long time, so I was really happy they were able to come this weekend, and extra happy they made it last night for some extra fun time.

My cousin Chaya is a very talented photographer (she recently won some type of awesomeness contest), so apparently Anya convinced swingdoc to surrender her camera to Chaya for a while. I am really looking forward to seeing all the pictures that people were taking last night.

After the dinner was over, a few of us walked down the street to Fizz, where we met up with atalanta74, swingfeline, and tigerworm. Had a couple of beers and then headed home, as we all have a big day today.

I am in the process of attempting to upload the slide show that Carrie's sister made for us up to YouTube. So keep your eyes open!

Shortly we'll be dropping Scout off at Stay, and then Chris, Dallas, and I will meet the rest of the guys at the Belmont Barbershop for shaves.

Tags: wedding

Accuweather.com
Saturday May, 26
High: 72°F RealFeel®: 67°F
Considerable clouds with showers and thunderstorms; breezy

Weather.com
May 26 Saturday
Scattered thunderstorms. Highs in the low 70s and lows in the upper 40s.

Weather.gov
Saturday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 68.

The worst part about all of this is figuring out what the impact is for the photos. All of our photos are outside, obviously, and in various locations. When we talked to our photographer the other day, she brought up the possibility of inclement weather, and suggested we discuss backup plans. She suggested if it wasn't storming, we could do some of the photos in the rain, if we obtained large golf umbrellas for everyone (18 x $12 = eep!). Also, we came up with an indoor location for the photos - the Garfield Park Conservatory. This place is really pretty, and has a lot of neat places to photograph inside.

Problem? To shoot wedding photos there, you need a permit from the Chicago Park District. $50/hour. No big deal...except....

...you have to apply for the permit 14 days in advance.

I don't have the slightest idea what we're going to do.

UPDATE: Just got off the phone with the nice people at the Chicago Park District. We will have our permit by Wednesday. Whew!

Tags: crap, screwed, weather, wedding

The wedding is actually, factually, THIS WEEK now. Like, this Saturday. Crazy.

I'm sure you're all looking forward to it, so that my LJ can go back to being about photography, the Cubs, and Scout. Only a few more days you'll have to put up with this. And I swear, I'm guy. It's so funny - everyone I work with really likes to play into the stereotype of "the guy just wants to know when to show up." Well, I got news for you - I'm an organizer. I like to be involved. And mostly, I don't want Carrie to be upset and/or disappointed. So I think that whole "guys shouldn't care about wedding planning" nonsense is just that - nonsense. I also think it's selfish and douchey.

Moving along - pretty good weekend. On Friday night Carrie and I walked down to Bowman's for a bite to eat, and ran into belcanto88, who was there to be trained on how to give out free drinks in a cute orange dress. We had a fun time chatting with her, and then headed home to work on, you guessed it, crafty wedding stuff.

Yesterday was a crazy day. Carrie and I got up early so I could go "practice" run for the JPMorgan Corporate Challenge 5K this Thursday - we went to the park, and she threw the ball for Scout for an hour while I ran around the park. I am so NOT prepared for the race; I only managed to run about 3.5 K. And since it looks like it is going to rain on Thursday night now, I will probably bail on the 5K.

After our park time, we ran a bunch of errands, and then hung out with Chris at home for the rest of the afternoon. Carrie went out to her sister's house, and my mom and sister came over for dinner and helped finish tying ribbons on our programs. I cleaned the house and packed up a few more things to bring the hotel. It was quite a productive day.

Today I am going to Side Street around 3 PM for Chris's "going away" drinks, and Carrie and her dad have a dance lesson with Julee. Tonight I am driving down to Midway to pick up Dallas and Devon, and that's about it.

Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather this weekend!

Tags: wedding

One week from tomorrow. Crazy.

Our house is officially turned into Wedding Project Central. We try to keep the clutter at bay, but the whole apartment is virtually overflowing with bags of candy, jars, framed photos, programs, bags, and all sorts of other things.

Made some good progress this week though. The candy buffet is almost completed - we just need to get a couple more jars. But Carrie made all the cool signs/labels for each candy, and they look great. I wanted to take a picture of a big pile of Rollos for Brian, but I forgot. He'll have to visit them at the reception.

We still have to tie ribbon on about 75% of the programs, although I think my mom and sister might be coming over tomorrow night to help with that. But most of the projects are done. The big step now is packing everything up to take to the hotel, and labeling it all in such a way that the hotel people can figure out what is for which table, etc.

Still have to fill out the seating chart for the rehearsal dinner, and also the form for the tables for the reception (we know who is sitting at which table, but have to figure out which table goes where, if that makes sense). Tuesday I call the hotel to give them our final numbers and we sign all the paperwork for the final payments. Whoa.

Really enjoyed the season finale of The Office last night. And the series finale of Gilmore Girls this week was actually really good - it's no secret that I've been disappointed by GG for the past season or two, but "Bon Voyage" was pretty darn good.

Tags: wedding

Both of the meetings I had scheduled for today have just been either canceled or rescheduled.

I finished my Wedding Project of the Day (making little cards with directions to the reception from the church).

The actual, factual work I have to do today has been completed already.

I am Le Bored.

Tags: bored, wedding, work

Last night Carrie and I, along with scrapplequeen, Kevin, Lou, Julee, Stacey, Ray, Alexis, and Tommy, went to see Colin Hay perform at the Black Orchid.

I'd not seen Mr. Hay in concert before, although it seems like everyone else I know has seen him a bajillion times. I'm so glad we got to go. It was nice, small venue, and very intimate. Plus, since Tommy got there totally early, he managed to "reserve" a table for the ten of us (about 75 of the people at the show didn't have somewhere to sit and had to stand - but that wasn't us, thanks to Mr. P, Ray, and Alexis!)

The opening act was Ralph Covert, who is apparently the host of a local kids show called "Ralph's World". He was pretty good - Carrie and I both agreed that he had a very Beeyachski feel to him (especially the song about "Your Ex-Girlfriend") - but you could feel the kids' singer in him, with all the sing-alongs he did.

Colin Hay was amazing. The music was fantastic, although I'd say only about 50% of the show was music, the rest being hilarious stories and patter ("I like playing the songs", he said at one point. "They break up the stories a little bit.").

(Random sidenote - did I punctuate that last sentence properly?)

Today I went to the dentist to get some fillings done and, so I thought, get some bonding on one of my front teeth. As it happens, the only work done was the fillings (which were pretty hairy). I am going to go in a week from Monday to have him do the bonding on my front tooth (it's a little recessed, so he's going to make it match the one on the other side. This way I won't look like there's a gap in my smile in wedding photos). I also am hitting the Aquafresh Whitener Trays hard-core, per my dentist's recommendation.

Wedding stuff is coming along. Still a few invitations outstanding, but we're almost there. Trying to work out exactly what version for Carrie's first dance. She and her dad are going to take a dance lesson with Big City, so my mom and I decided we can't be shown up, so we're going to take a lesson as well.

As we come into the last few weeks of this wedding thing, it's definitely getting somewhat stressful. Mostly just because of all the "little things" that still have to be done. Also, since our wedding party is so friggin' ginormous, there's a lot of people to "wrangle" - so I do want to thank those folks who have stepped up and made my life easier in this regard. It's definitely a weird place to be - supposedly this is a big, special event for you and your soon to be wife, but it seems that you spend most of your time trying to make other people's lives easier and not offend them. At the end of the day, however, it always works out.

Tags: colin hay, concerts, dentist, music, wedding

We got our first wedding present in the mail today (as I am told that shower gifts are different somehow. I don't get it). It was pretty exciting. I like getting mail.

We're also freaking out a little bit, since the deadline for our RSVP's is on Tuesday, and there are still 28 invitations outstanding (which is more than 1/3 of them). I'm sure it will all work out, since most of the "outstanding" ones we have a pretty good idea of if they are coming or not. But it'll be nice once we know for sure.

Also just finished up the list for the DJ of "play/don't play" songs. Although I still have to find a song for Carrie to dance with her dad to. He wants something "instrumental", and probably slower jazz. We'll be digging through iTunes later tonight, I'm sure.

Our programs are pretty much done. We have to finalize a few things, but I think we've got them under control. Which is good, because we're having our final meeting with the priest on Tuesday, and he's gonna need to know all this stuff.

Tags: wedding

It is 3 days, 3 hours, and 12 minutes (or so) until my bachelor party "officially" kicks off.

The extravaganza starts off with a 1:20 Cubs game vs the Cardinals with Tom, Chris, and Doug (a friend of mine from work). We've got some pretty good seats, and the weather is predicted to be "mostly sunny" in the high 50s, so it should be a lot of fun.

After the game, we join up with the rest of the party and "suit up" for dinner at a fancy-pants restaurant in North Center, and then some carousing in local watering holes.

Saturday, a smaller group will be flying out to Las Vegas for several days of various activities. Including some awesome food, such as In-And-Out Burger, Binion's Steakhouse, and the buffet at Paris (mmm...crab legs).

I can't wait.

Tags: wedding

Honeymoon is paid for as of this morning. Whoohoo.

Tags: honeymoon, wedding

So seriously, this whole getting hitched thing, in the age of the webbertubes is really difficult to manage.

First problem - Carrie's email address is firstnamelastname @ gmail. Well, her last name is going to change. Gmail won't let you rename your email account, so that's the first problem. Second problem is that firstnamenewlastname @ gmail is taken. So she has to think of a new email address. I think I got one for her that is a variant, but that's gonna be annoying. Plus, she's gotta figure out how to do the whole migration from old gmail to new gmail, etc. Which would probably be more annoying for me than it is for her, since I store so much in my gmail, but she doesn't, really.

Issue the second - Flickr. We both have our own Flickrs. This was fine when we were our own people. But now, we share cameras. So what ends up happening is, all the photos end up on my Flickr. This annoys Carrie, because it makes her Flickr look lame. So the decision is, do we combine our Flickrs? Or create a new Flickr for "the two of us" and keep the individual ones? Or maybe just move our "combined" photos into a Picasa web album and still keep our own Flickrs?

Now, the website. We have carriematt.com right now, which is being used for our wedding website. But I'd like to have a site for our new family. Because, one day, it will be more than Carrie and Matt. Of course, all the names I can think of are taken. TheStrattons.com - taken. StrattonFamily.com - taken. Grr.

Any advice you guys out there might have for any of these issues? Suggestions for a good domain name for our "family" site?

Tags: annoyances, internet, marriage, wedding

So this could be a pretty fun thing. Carrie and I are making up our "please play" and "do NOT play" list for our DJ (Riley). In general, we have every confidence in Riley's abilities as a DJ, so our "please play" list is probably pretty short - just a few songs that we really love. The "do not play" list is going to be somewhat longer.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to ask you guys to list the songs you hear at weddings that drive you batty, to help us get some ideas. So far, here is what we have:

Macarena
I Will Survive (although I think we're going to concede on this one, since Carrie's mom wants it)
Celebration
YMCA
Electric Slide
My Heart Will Go On
Chicken Dance
Hokey Pokey
Hot Hot Hot

What are we missing?

Tags: wedding

So, last night, Carrie was sending an email to our videographer. One of the questions was "how do you want your names listed on the DVD labels?"

Carrie started typing in "Carrie and Matt Stratton".

"No, my name should go first, technically," I corrected her.

"But," she said, "you're 'Matt Stratton'. That's how your name goes."

She then changed it to "Matt and Carrie Stratton".

And the proceeded to flip out, because I think it was the first time she'd seen "Carrie Stratton" in print.

Heh.

Tags: wedding

Well, looks like it's official now. I just bought our plane tickets for Costa Rica, so we're definitely going there.

Here's our itinerary:

May 28th SAN JOSE - ARRIVAL- PEACE LODGE
Arrival. Private transfer to Peace Lodge. Aprox. driving time 1 hr

Check into a deluxe room, breakfast is included

May 29th PEACE LODGE - ARENAL VOLCANO
After breakfast, private transfer to Arenal. Aprox. driving time 2 hrs.

Overnight at Tabacon resort, superior room, breakfast included
*+Please note that the check in is at 4 pm**

1 pm: BIKE TOUR

May 30th CANYONING/RAPPELLING
morning tour with lunch included

May 31st TABACON- QUEPOS/MANUEL ANTONIO
At 11 am, transfer to "El Tanque" airstrip, to take a local flight to Quepos, upon arrival, transfer to Hotel Si Como No in Manuel Antonio

Check into a superior room, breakfast is included

June 1st MANUEL ANTONIO NATIONAL PARK
Half day guided tour includes transprotation

June 2nd CANOPY TOUR
In the morning, includes lunch

June 3rd MANUEL ANTONIO
Free day

June 4th MANUEL ANTONIO - SAN JOSE - DEPARTURE
After breakfast, transfer to Quepos airstrip to take a local flight to San Jose, upon arrival transfer to the international airport

Tags: costa rica, honeymoon, wedding

I will update this post later tonight with pictures, but Flickr is blocked at work, so you'll have to wait.

Friday after work, I too the Metra out to Wheaton, so that Carrie and I could meet her friend Kristen for dinner. Carrie also finally got to take me to the Popcorn Shop, which is this tiny little candy store in Wheaton. It was pretty cool. After dinner we headed home and passed out.

Saturday was SUPER busy. The day started when the cleaning lady showed up half an hour early at 7:30 AM (just as we were waking up). After Carrie attempted to explain what she wanted done, she (Carrie) dropped me off at the Belmont Barbershop for my haircut and shave.

After my shave, it was time to play babysitter. Over the summer, Carrie babysat for a family with three little kids - well, turns out they have a fourth on the way, so they are selling their Bucktown house and moving to the suburbs. As part of their house sale, an HGTV show called "Buy Me" was filming at their house on Saturday. So Carrie was hired to take the two oldest kids (Lincoln, who is five, and Nathan, who is three) out for a few hours.

We took them to Chuck E. Cheese. Here's a hint to budding parents out there - if you want to have your kid's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, totally do it at 10 AM on a friggin' cold day. The joint was EMPTY.

We had a good time with the kids - at first it was a little overwhelming; their "strategy" for the games was just to run up to as many as possible and deposit their tokens into them without actually figuring out how to PLAY the game. I think that for Nate especially the fun part was just putting a token in a slot.

However, after a while, I was able to help Nate figure out a couple of the games, and he got really lucky on one and won 125 tickets at once. I also convinced him to climb up in the slide/tube structure (they don't have the ball pit there anymore, apparently), and we all enjoyed some pizza. Quite wisely, Lincoln and Nate were both not interested in saying "hi" to the guy dressed up as Chuck E. Cheese. I couldn't blame them - I too found the 6 foot tall talking rat to be a little creepy.

After that, we took the kids home. And were filmed walking into the house, and had to sign releases. So if you are a fan of "Buy Me", keep an eye out for Carrie and myself.

We left babysitting and headed home for a break. As we got ready to attend the Swingers Ball, we had a few minor meltdowns - Carrie had issues with her hair, and I freaked out because I couldn't remember how to tie a bow tie. Then, we missed our cab, and I had to raise holy hell to get them to send us a new one. But finally I got my tie tied, the cab showed up, and we arrived at Dave and Julia's house only about a half hour late (but half an hour before we were supposed to leave for the event).

Swingers Ball was a lot of fun. A group of us shared a limo on the way out there, and Dave wore a bright red tux. All the girls looked lovely, although they were heavily layered on top of their hot dresses, due to the Arctic conditions. Carrie and I danced a bunch - she's really coming along. She also got to meet Tom Thomas, and danced with him (after she danced with him, Carrie said "I think Tom Thomas thinks my name is 'Kelly' and that I'm 100% Irish.)

We had a reserved table, and for those of you knowledgeable about the history of swing dancing at the Willowbrook, you'll appreciate that our table was to the right of the stage - back where the "cool kids" used to gather in the heyday. And Tracy was chosen as Queen of the Ball. Which was funny, but neat.

Sunday was really busy - we got up early, and went to Crate and Barrel to register. Afterwards, we went to the Bagel to get some matzo ball soup to warm up, and then headed out to Wheaton to Carrie's parents' house to watch the Super Bowl. We ended up leaving a little early, because Carrie was feeling really sick. We got home about two minutes before the game ended. It was sad.

I'll fill this in with some pictures from the Swingers Ball when I get home, but if you want to go look now, cruise over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mugsy and take a gander.

Tags: super bowl, swing dancing, swingers ball, update, wedding

...or anyone else who might have some ideas.

I'm looking for a very good version of "Love" - not too fast, with maybe a couple of cool breaks, and not the "usual" versions. If any of you have any ideas, please let me know.

Also, I need an idea for a song to dance with my mom. Again, swing, hopefully with a good "mother/son" theme, and not too fast.

Tags: wedding

(x-posted, sorta, from Yehoodi)

So, Carrie and I are working out our honeymoon. And in the process of doing so, discovering that it can be a huge pain in the ass.

See, the thing is, I know nothing about this kind of thing. I've never done a big vacation before. And I figure our friends are nothing if not opinionated.

So I ask you, dear readers - what are your suggestions? To put some parameters in place - this will be about 7 nights, in late May/early June. We'd prefer to do all-inclusive (just for convenience), but there needs to be things to do other than just get drunk all the time. We want to go someplace with good beaches, and mostly, interesting activities to pursue. I'd like to keep the total cost under $4,000 (for two people). Some other caveats - we're avoiding Europe (because we'll be doing a big Europe trip in the summer of 2008), and want to have no longer than a 6 hour direct flight. And Carrie isn't a big fan of Mexico due to some previous experience.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Tips and tricks?

Tags: lazyweb, vacation, wedding

Just chatting with k_rocked, and I realized that the wedding is exactly one year from today.

Whoa.

Tags: wedding

Of course, it's over a year away, but if you really feel like checking out updates about our wedding and all that junk, it's all online at carriematt.com

Thanks to bluemekka for clueing me into the site that I used to create it.

Tags: wedding