Wedding Vow Game Answers & Winner!

Thanks to all who played our little game!

Vow #1:
(Partner’s name), I promise to do my best in these things:
To love and respect you.
To listen.
To seek meaningful lives together – with passion, humor, commitment, honesty, and understanding.
To support your dreams and share mine.
To be a strong and compassionate mother for our children.
To enjoy and be present in the every day moments with you, while we seek out the extraordinary.
To continue to learn and grow, and support you, as you change and grow, as well.
To have lives surrounded by beauty.
And, to make loops and take shortcuts, whenever possible.

Vows by Christy & Scott

Vow #2:
I promise to always laugh with you and to comfort you; to love you when life seems easy and when it seems hard; to help you when you need help, and turn to you when I need help; to communicate my needs to you and to honor your needs in return; and to take care of myself so that together we may be whole. I pledge to build a home with you that is compassionate to all and full of respect for each other. I choose you as the person with whom I will spend my life. 

 
Vows by Rachel and Dan

Vow #3:
I, Deirdre, take you, Brian, for my lawful husband and companion, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

 
Vow #4:
I vow:
to give fully---my loyalty, trust, and affection, and to give you the freedom and encouragement to seek your own path.
to share fully---my life, love, and laughter, and to always do more than I must.
to strive fully---to support, honor, and respect you, and to earn your grace in return.
to cooperate fully in unity with you so that we may magnify our individual strengths and temper our doubts.
I ask you to be my playmate, confidante and side-kick; to teach me and learn from me; to be my guide and to be my helper, hand in hand through all the wonders and tribulations that life offers us. 

 
Vows by Karen and Eric

Vow #5:
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way
than this: Where “I” does not exist, nor “You”, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Poem by Pablo Neruda

Vow #6:
It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you. Forever. You and me, every day.

From the best scene of “The Notebook”

Vow # 7:
I’ll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold. Need you, feed you. I’ll even let you hold the remote control. So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink, put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink. All I want to do is grow old with you.

Song from “The Wedding Singer”

And the winner with the most correct matches (5 out of 7) was…

Christy

Here's what I got for you:
1. Christy
2. Karen
3. Deirdre
4. Rachel
5. literary
6. film
7. film

Prize of wine & chocolate to be awarded at our next gathering!

Thanks again---I especially enjoyed seeing your guesses, and being teased indirectly by at least three people about the lack of originality of mine! I prefer to call them “classic.”

And here’s to Natalie and Obe as they enter into a grand adventure this Saturday!

The Wedding Vow Contest

Thanks to Natalie for hosting a fun gathering at Rotary Park and tolerating a tableful of wedding advice! The story-telling flowed, and several people shared the story of how they came to write their wedding vows (weeks before, the night before, or simply plagiarizing their partner). We thought it might be fun to play a guessing-game, matching the vows with the right couple (we threw in a couple literary ones too).

The prize (still to be decided) will be awarded at September’s book club gathering! To play, send an email with your matches to Deirdre by Friday. Not in the comments because we’ll influence each other with our guesses. I’ll post everyone’s guesses next week with the winner.

Vow #1:

(Partner’s name), I promise to do my best in these things:
To love and respect you.
To listen.
To seek meaningful lives together – with passion, humor, commitment, honesty, and understanding.
To support your dreams and share mine.
To be a strong and compassionate mother for our children.
To enjoy and be present in the every day moments with you, while we seek out the extraordinary.
To continue to learn and grow, and support you, as you change and grow, as well.
To have lives surrounded by beauty.
And, to make loops and take shortcuts, whenever possible.

Vow #2:

I promise to always laugh with you and to comfort you; to love you when life seems easy and when it seems hard; to help you when you need help, and turn to you when I need help; to communicate my needs to you and to honor your needs in return; and to take care of myself so that together we may be whole. I pledge to build a home with you that is compassionate to all and full of respect for each other. I choose you as the person with whom I will spend my life.

Vow #3:

I, ( her name), take you, (Partner’s name), for my lawful husband and companion, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

Vow #4:

I vow:

to give fully---my loyalty, trust, and affection, and to give you the freedom and encouragement to seek your own path.

to share fully---my life, love, and laughter, and to always do more than I must.

to strive fully---to support, honor, and respect you, and to earn your grace in return.

to cooperate fully in unity with you so that we may magnify our individual strengths and temper our doubts.

I ask you to be my playmate, confidante and side-kick; to teach me and learn from me; to be my guide and to be my helper, hand in hand through all the wonders and tribulations that life offers us.

Vow #5:

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way
than this: Where “I” does not exist, nor “You”, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Vow #6:

It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you. Forever. You and me, every day.

Vow # 7:

I’ll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold. Need you, feed you. I’ll even let you hold the remote control. So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink, put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink. All I want to do is grow old with you.

 

August Pick: Committed

Thanks, Marva, for a great discussion and lovely evening. Yummy cheese and fruit and chocolate. A even more delicious gin & tonics. I've been converted.

Some highlights from the evening: the giant pause after Karen's Aunt Helen statement, which lead to hilarious laughter once we realized she didn't mean what we thought she might mean. Here's to all the fun that comes from not all of us having finished the book!

Also, we will be teasing Christy that her favorite mixed drink is tequila for a while!

I love the Smiths & Nick Drake, but my mix tapes were full of Indigo Girls and REM. Do you remember mix tapes? Do you still have some? I finally got rid of my collection this spring (and captured it here). Even in this age of Pandora and Spotify, I love mixing CDs as gifts.

Another highlight of the evening: Looking for Alaska by John Green courtesy of Karen! (If you wanna fall in love with get to know John Green, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mUDw0sRZV0&list=TL4xM8818ldFo)



Perks of a Wallflower led to great discussion---love picks that reveal how we all see and experience the world differently. The unknown "you" that Charlie addresses in his letters left some in search of an answer, some indifferent, some thinking they were the answer.

And some had a Sam-like high school experience and some of us had a squeaky-clean-sheltered high school experience. And while it was fun to remember, none of us wanted to go back and live through high school again, and hope we will be able to accompany our children through those years with some grace and humor (and use Karen's mom's strategy if our kids sneak out at night!).

Natalie picked Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed: A Love Story for our August read, most likely the 22nd---look for more details via email.

And if you didn't get a chance to read Perks of a Wallflower, above are most of the best lines, compliments of teen-obsessed readers on Pinterest.

July Pick: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thanks to Catherine for our lovely evening in June discussing  The Gastronomical Me (the title of which I can no longer read without hearing it sung by Ethel Merman as if the title of a Broadway play, thanks to Liz!).

Catherine's celebration of local wine and homemade cheese included food tales (no one wants to go to Peru for a food tour now), delectable and disgusting descriptions of past food adventures, tangents about the tooth fairy and the big Talk, a spirited debate on Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and lots of good movie recommendations that I now can't remember (Liz's recommendation of The Whistleblower and mine of Safety Not Guaranteed are all I can recall---Karen, please update if you still have the list, thanks!).

Marva has chosen The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky for our discussion on July 25th. Till then, enjoy a cool drink and stay out of the sun!

Food for thought

This Thursday bring a food story from your life to share for conversation. Thanks!

JUNE: MFK Fisher's, "The Gastronomical Me"
June 20 TH 6:30 p.m. at Catherine's house.
Be there or be square.

May Pick: Licking the Spoon

A head's up that Rachel will be hosting a discussion of Licking the Spoon next Thursday, the 16th. Several copies are in circulations as well as available at Back of Beyond.

If, like me, you're a fan of the memoir/cookbook mash up, here are some of my favorites:

 I'm a huge fan of Nora Ephron, and Heartburn was the first book of hers I ever read. I love it too much to discuss. Someday I'll make that keylime pie from my favorite scene.

Cookbook fans will enjoy her retrospective essay, Serial Monogomy, about her favorite cookbooks over the years. The link takes you to the article at The New Yorker, but it is also in her essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck.

There's a blurb on the cover of Licking the Spoon from a previous book-club-pick author, Gretchen Rubin, liking this book to Heartburn and another of my favorites, Home Cooking by Laurie Calvin, but for the life of me (I still have the last quarter of the book to finish), other than the fact that they all include recipes, I don't see any similarities.

A Homemade Life, the memoir of a much younger author, with recipes, is another favorite. She is the writer of the blog Orangette. It made me wish I lived in Paris and ate bread & chocolate daily (oh, wait, that last one I do).

I'll end with Kingsolver, whose didactic and sometimes condescending tone I can forgive because the recipes in here are really good. Her pizza crust recipe has become a staple. And she's right about almost everything, but I just wish she wasn't so sure of it.

I love Ruth Reichl, but have never read any MFK Fisher. Please share your favorite food-writers! And let me know if you'd be interested in borrowing any of the above---I think I have all but Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which was a library check-out.