SERIOUSLY?!?!!

Not to be completely Grey's Anatomy... but SERIOUSLY?!?!? SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?

So I've told yall before about my love of Top Gun. Let me reiterate by pointing out that I still have the VHS tape because I love the commercials at the beginning!! I still say this is the best pepsi commercial ever!

Anyway, I'm watching Top Gun on Bravo right now while making dinner and cleaning up and a few things struck me. 1 - when did we become such prudes?? When Maverick and Goose walk into the bar (just before the serenade) a la:

Maverick say's "Even you could get laid in a place like this." To which, Goose replies "I'd be happy to find a girl to talk dirty to me." Really? Is that THAT bad? Oh no, Bravo edited it to "Even you could have a good time in a place like this." To which, Goose replies "I'd be happy to find a girl to talk to me." Seriously??? "Get Laid" and "dirty" are too extreme for TV!?!??!?!

Oh, and it gets worse. Much worse. Maverick is in class and get's the note from Charlotte, and then he's pulling up to her house. Smooth transition right? Sure except they deleted the ENTIRE volleyball scene!!!

I rolled my eyes at the word edits, but at this point, I walked away from my cooking and rewound the "video" (thank heavens for DVR... oy I wish I had tivo.... but I digress..) and sure enough - they really did take out the ENTIRE volleyball scene. So, not only are you deprived of that fun, but if you had never seen this, or don't have it memorized like I do, then it leaves you with, "Why is he late? He keeps talking about needing a shower... Why?" I think its a travesty. GRRR to all the uber conservatives that think "talk dirty" is suddenly unfit for tv!

Oh, and just to make this somewhat wedding related.... (since this still is my wedding planning blog and all). As many mistakes and uber faux paus are made in "Top Gun", it is still a favorite of almost every Naval Aviator I know. Add alcohol and you have the proof!

Take 3 Naval Aviators (including the one in the middle not in uniform), one ex-military old fart (yup - thats my dad!), 2 good friends of the bride, plus LOTS of Jamie and Gingers and VOILA!

Yes, this is the wedding after party and they are all hammered singing "That lovin feeling." This is why you have an after party. :-D Ok, back to wedding day recaps!!

Military Bride

I'll get back to pre-wedding shenanigans in just a bit, for the moment, I want to touch on a bit of my real life.
So there are lots of fun things about being a military bride. Not the least of which is a dashing uniform!! Oh, and add to that that my husband is a pilot and spends most normal days in a flight suit... am I the luckiest girl ever? I think so! :) We also don't have to worry about insurance or lay offs, and we have a decent support system. Being in the Coast Guard, it becomes a very small personal world, scattered from coast to coast. But it does come with its drawbacks. We were married for 2 weeks before he left. He has 6 weeks of training in Alabama. I mentioned before that we spent our first 18 months of dating 6000 miles apart, but it still hurts every time, and now that he's my HUSBAND (still not used to that word!) its worse than before. So its back to phone calls and emails for us, while I try to keep busy enough not to notice how lonely it is to wake up without him. So, to any of you girls who has your guy nearby, go give him a hug and be glad you can.
Just so this isn't the most depressing post ever - one of the upshots of being a military bride - the sword arch!!

Thank you Wes for capturing this moment! (I know this shot was Wes because I can just see the edge of Rae's camera and shirt in front of us.)

I miss my husband.

Three Men and a Uniform: Dressing the Boys

So, we all know what I am wearing, we've settled on what my girl's are wearing, and even my mother has finally picked a dress!! (I kid you not, she's been through about 12 dresses to make this final decision. I am trying to get her to agree to let me post pictures...currently I'm threatened with death upon posting.)

But what about the boys?

Adam, the Best Man (*J) and my youngest/eldest brother also fellow CG pilot to Adam (*...crap. I was going to make him *M in following with the pattern of my non-naming naming system, but that my ID too! Damn non creative parents who could only couldn't create new initial sets! Oh yeah, in my immediate fam, you are either a MRD or a JWD - thats it! ok, we'll call him *G... for goober). ANYWAY - Adam, *J, and *G will be wearing Coast Guard Whites uniform. Something like this...

Yup, thats Top Gun. Yes, its Navy not Coast Guard, but its almost the same uniform. And, frankly, I just love that movie and will use any excuse to reference it. Inaccuracies in the film? Loads of them. Cheese factor? Mega-check! Tom Cruise crazy politics? I don't care. I just like it! So, feel free to roll your eyes and just bite me, cause right along side all the Disney references will be some Top Gun and probably some Hunt for Red October. Oh, and I'll have to get a picture of it, but we made a Mii for my Dad and it looks EXACTLY like Tom Skerrit!! hehehe.

So this is actually a photo of Adam and I from *G's wedding a few years ago. Ignore my pudgy face and Adam's sleepy look please!

Image courtesy of Pasty Brown (*G's photog).

Here's the snafu, we've got 3 civilian groomsmen... what are they supposed to wear!?

The knee-jerk reaction is a white tuxedo a la..
A couple things wrong with this. For starters, the white uniform they'll be sporting (from here on out dubbed "Whites") is actually equivalent to a suit, not a tux. The tux equivalent looks like this... and isn't really favored...
More often then not, they are mistaken for waitstaff.
The other issue is that the white tuxes, or even white suits available in Panama City are..umm... limited. The ones I saw struck me as looking like a waiter, or looking like P-Diddy (or is it Puff Daddy again?)

So we dropped the stark white idea and decided that the civilian guys aren't going to look like they are in uniform, so might as well just be different and not try to blend in. So then began the search for a suit that would fill some requirements:

• Look appropriate on the beach
• Not clash with Whites
• Affordable
• Rent-able or re-wearable

2 of the 3 civi-groomsmen are still in the "broke-ass" phase of life where a nice suit isn't exactly affordable or needed, and the third works in Manhattan where he wears lots of suits... lots of DARK suits. I never realized how much of a southern thing light colored suits are. After A LOT of searching, waaayy too much "maybe. I'll think about it." We finally picked one! It was at Men's Wearhouse, so all the civi-groomsmen had one nearby they could go to, and it was on SALE!
It's a little darker than ideal, but oh well! (Am I the only bride that really just doesn't care THAT much?) So for about $40 more than renting a similar suit, they will own the (above) Sean John 3 button suit, a white shirt under it, and, we've already got the ties! Done and Done!

(I'll tell you a little more about the actual fun of getting these and the impressive way Men's Wearhouse handled things in my vendor review that will be coming in the near future.)

Oh, and I don't know what Adam's dad will be wearing yet, but just for fun - here's my dad at another wedding wearing his "wedding suit"... check out the wedding tie. :-) Oh yeah, that's my dad. And his socks totally matched his tie.

Anyone else find it harder to dress the boys than the girls??

Blog Bliss: Not always that blissful!

I am an avid Unbride stalker, and will soon post a normal Blog Bliss segment on it... but for now, the downside of blog stalking: The reality check.

Remember how I said that this winter Adam and I will be moving to LA for the next for years? (If not, read here.) Well, just a bit ago, the wonderful Justine of Unbride posted this:

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July 29th, 2008

Yikes you guys, we just had an earthquake! It was a 5.8 and I was in the shower. I jumped out and picked up Oliver and now I still have conditioner in my hair. Everything seems to be okay but there isn’t much phone service.

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E-freaking-gats! I am a Florida girl! Hurricane's are my thing; You get some idea of when they hit and you always know where! (Note to non-hurricane vets - 5 days prior to landfall wherever the weather station predicts the hurricane will go is the safest place to be. As in, Tuesday the news says that Sunday night, Hurricane Bubba will hit Panama City... Panama City will be the best place to be on Sunday because Bubba will have changed course and smack right into NOLA or Pensacola. Almost fool-proof. Oh Lordy - fools out there - ignore please.)

Granted while living in Hawaii, we had some earthquakes. Once, one was SO STRONG, it ALMOST knocked a picture frame over....

I gotta tell ya... this makes me nervous.

Wedding Location Pt 1: At Home? Destination? wait...who's home? hometown? Mine or yours? Where we live now? or where we'll be next year?...

Ahh the fun of military life... never in one place for too long. And we were not high school sweethearts from the same town... or state.... or state of mind! So before we delve into the world of flowers, themes, dresses and linens - we need to start with a city, or at least a state. And wow we have such a range of options!!

I am from Panama City, Fl. He's from Manheim, PA. We started dating in Hilo, HI. At the time he was living (and loving) in Seattle, while I was living in Hilo. We currently live in Pensacola, (the cradle of naval aviation) and we love it here. Waiting to find out our first air station which could send us to San Fran, Los Angeles, Oahu, Puerto Rico, or Savannah. And I could really picture a wedding in each of these places. eek! Too many options!!! And this list doesn't even include destination possibilities!

A Hawaiian Wedding could be great and very "us". I love the beach. I love being barefoot. Adam and I always had a fantastic time when he came to visit me in Hawaii. I love tropical flowers and Hawaiian traditions.

This inspiration board from Elizabeth Ann Designs
just makes me want to go back and celebrate the next phase of our love right where it began.

But many of our friends are still in their first jobs out of college or in grad school or for other reasons are financially strapped. We really want all our friends to have the best possibility of being able to be there to celebrate with us. Alas - airline tickets just aren't cheap enough, and it requires so much travel time, we decided that we would at least keep it to the mainland.

Ok, so we've knocked out Hawaii and any other "destination wedding" spot thats not attached to the continental US. Wow there are still a lot of options to go!

Ahead: Small details start to form our wedding ideas... and an air station fake out!