Book 'Em

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Look what came in the mail today...this! A gift from us to us!

At first, I resisted buying a planning guide of any kind. After all, shouldn't our non-conformist gay Icelandic wedding be, by its very nature, non-conformist? But, having been born without the wedding gene, I realized I didn't want to commit some heinous faux pas and have everyone we invite drowning out the recitation of our vows, whispering to one another, "...and the invitation and response card weren't even separated by a piece of tissue paper! Gauche comes to Reykjavik is all I'm saying." Ruzzah ruzzah and so on.

I shouldn't even have desired a book about "gay weddings." I've said before that Eric and I didn't want to view this wedding as a "gay wedding." But spend a couple of minutes poking around on TheKnot.com (not linking it...you can find it if you want to badly enough) and you'll realize that you need to search a little farther afield for information on less traditional weddings.

In the end, I decided to support the gay wedding industry in whatever way I could, considering my repeated contention that legalizing gay marriage in California would basically save or create about a billion private sector jobs and save the entire economy. And this book is considered the best of breed, among shockingly little competition. But if you think it's hard to find a comprehensive text about planning a gay wedding, good luck finding a good one detailing the process of gay adoption.

Yes, It's a Holiday So There's Nothing New

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But I want to know the time and temperature in Reykjavik right NOW!

Gosh, relax. It's under control. Calm down already. lt's all right here.

What's that? You also want to know the weather forecast, the sunrise and sunset times, duration of the day, the times of civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight, the current position of the sun, the moonrise, airport locations, coordinates, long-distance dialing codes, whether or not they have a Daylight Savings Time, and the native name of Iceland? You're curious!

Pleased to Meet You

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In honor of this Labor Day weekend, let us rest from all this pesky planning and gaze upon a special artifact in mine and Eric’s relationship: the first photo ever taken of us. This was the night we met at Pamie’s house, and it guest stars a very special friend indeed.

See you at the wedding, old buddy!

Up in the Air 2: The Rise of the Boring Logistics

DAYS REMAINING: 349

In honor of yesterday’s flight of fancy for some lucky couple hoping to get married before the cabin pressure changes and they get knocked out of the sky by a vengeful God with a penchant for ironic timing, today’s entry is proof that planning a wedding is a lot more boring when you get down to the nitty-gritty.

So, the Question Of Thrills for this Saturday: will we book one group flight for all (or as many as desire) of our guests to travel to Iceland together? I had thought perhaps we could work with the airline and offer some kind of promo code so people could get a discount when they booked their individual flights. Turns out, however, they cannot. So Anna hooked us up with the name of a group sales specialist at Icelandair. If 30 people end up going on one flight, that is going to be a serious party bus. Especially if my poor, flight-phobic mom is on the flight. In the good news column, that means Valium for everyone!

Also exciting: if you ever find yourself in need of a group flight to Reykjavik in service of your own wedding or other celebratory event, you have all of the info you need right here!

**************************************************************

Dear Daniel,

As per your request, please find the quote below, for your Rogge Wedding Group to Reykjavik, Iceland

Travel Date/Flight Itinerary:

30 Seats
FI 612 18AUG 4 JFKKEF 1405 2340
FI 613 21AUG 7 KEFJFK 1030 1230
FI 615 21AUG 7 KEFJFK 1700 1900

Return FI613 Net Fare: $510.00 per person, plus taxes, fuel surcharge, fees and airport charges.
Return FI615 Net Fare: $530.00 per person, plus taxes, fuel surcharge, fees and airport charges

Airport taxes, Q fuel surcharge, fees, and processing charges: As applicable at final payment; currently $255.00 per person.
(Fees and processing charges of $15 per person are included in above total).

Taxes, fuel surcharge, and fees are subject to increase from original quote and contract dates to final invoice date.

Children/Infant Fares: Children under 12 years of age pay 75% - Infants under two years of age pay 10% of adult fare.

Please note: In some cases, the individual airfare purchased directly on www.icelandair.com may be lower than group pricing. However, these fares often require instant purchase and have limited availability. Group fares allow for more flexibility regarding the deposit, final payment, deviations, name changes, cancellations, etc.

Optional upgrades based on availability are as follows:.
From Economy Class to Economy Comfort Class: $300 one-way or $600 round-trip.
From Economy Class to Saga Class: $600 one-way or $1200 round-trip.

A description of Icelandair's service categories may be found by visiting the following:

http://www.icelandair.us/information/on-board/service-categories/

Net Fare and Conditions are subject to availability and subject to change until a $100 per person deposit is received. If not received, reservations are subject to automatic cancellation. Deposit is due 30 days after contract is issued.

Should the group size fall below 15 passengers, an additional $50 net per person will be charged

Preliminary name list is required no later than 12 weeks prior to departure.

Final name list and payment is due 6 weeks prior to departure.

Deviation Policy: Icelandair allows a maximum of 15% in deviations for this group.
A $150 per person fee shall be assessed for any date or routing changes after designated date in the contract.
No deviations are permitted after the final payment date.

Reissue Fee is $ 200.00 per person. Fee shall be assessed for any date change after ticketing.

Cancellations:
A. $200 total will be charged if the entire group (not per person) cancels from the deposit date to the preliminary name date
(12 weeks prior).
B. $150 per person will be charged and is non-refundable for cancellations from the preliminary name date (12 weeks prior) to the final name date (6 weeks prior).
C. 50% of the net airfare per person is non-refundable for cancellations from the final name date (6 weeks prior) to 48 hours prior to departure.
D. Within 48 hours or less prior to departure all payments received are non-refundable.
Icelandair is willing to review this policy if a medical reasons applies. A Hospital Admissions form is required.

Name Changes: A $150 per person fee will be charged for name changes after ticketing.Name changes are not permitted within 48 hours of the departure date.

A Iceland Stopover package may be booked for the group, but must be booked at the time of the original group.

This space has not been booked and is therefore not confirmed for your group.

Group quote is only valid as a quote and cannot be guaranteed until the space is confirmed; seat inventory and fare can change from the time of the quote to time of booking.

When you are ready to book the seats, please notify either the Icelandair Group Desk.

Thank you for considering Icelandair for your group business. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Rosa Gudmundsson
Group Sales Specialist
Icelandair
Group Department
1900 Crown Colony Drive, Quincy, MA 02169
800-223-5500 Ext. 5 Fax 857-403-1812 E-Mail: rosa@icelandair.is - http://www.icelandair.us

**************************************************************

Up in the Air

   
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Fine fine. Go ahead and have a quirkier, more adorably Scandinavian gay wedding than ours. I so don't care. It's fine.

WE'RE MORE IN LOVE THOUGH YOU KNOW.

Honeymoon in Everyplace

DAYS REMAINING: 351

At the time of our wedding, Eric and I will have been together for five and a half years. We have spent most of that time so convinced we were going to be deprived a Real Wedding that we planned, paid for, and executed two vacations with the helpful rationalization, “Well, we don’t get to have a WEDDING, so this is going to be our HONEYMOON.”

That’s right. We went on two huge trips together out of spite. Spite-cation!

Our first phony-moon took place in the Fall of 2008. We had been working constantly for two years, and finally had a hiatus at the same time. And so we embarked on our European Adventure Tour, which took us first to Amsterdam:

And then on to Paris, where for some reason I crossed two international borders and arrived in the same hoodie:

The fact that this trip took place the exact same week as the beginning of the global economic meltdown only dampened my enthusiasm slightly, as we jetted off on a direct flight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam while Western Capitalism burned 30,000 beneath us. (Not to mention the economic fate of one certain tiny country we flew over.)

The following Spring, my ten-year old Saturn with 170,000 miles on it (a car that had traveled back and forth across the country something like seven times) died in the parking lot of the West Hollywood Trader Joe’s with $200 worth of groceries thawing and warming in the back seat. And since I was driving to set 80 miles round trip nearly every day to production meetings beginning at 6am, I could NOT afford to have a car that died in the parking lot of the West Hollywood Trader Joe’s with $200 worth of groceries thawing and warming in the back seat. So I had to get a new car, wah wah me.

To celebrate, a few months later, Eric and I went on phony-moon #2: A Driving Tour of the National Parks of Oregon. This was a cheaper vacation than our Europe extravaganza, but no less scenic and fabulous.

We drove the car up snowy mountains wearing VERY wrong clothes:

And posed SO fiercely on moody beaches:

And stayed in a haunted hotel near a scary cave:

And quite a honeymoon it was. Again.

Cut to 2010. When we moved to New York in April, we took a hard look at our life savings and decided that this calendar year could feature either a fabulous vacation OR a move to New York. Having cast our lot with this New York thing, we looked ahead to next summer, thinking that, if we worked the whole time and spent no money in the interim, we would be able to afford a trip somewhere in the Summer of 2011. We started scoping out Scandinavian locales, as they were easier to access from New York than they would have been from LA. Knowing that we’d already gone on two honeymoons, we decided this would be just a regular bit of travel, and we roped Eric’s brother David into a trip that would take us to Norway, Sweden, and, time and money permitting, Iceland.

When this morphed into the wedding plan, we scrapped everything but Iceland, and decided our post-wedding…travel…together…thing…would take the form of a driving tour around the entire country. But we didn’t want to lose David from our plans.

And that’s why we’re inviting all of our guests to join us on our honeymoon, as a standard insert in the invitations. We figure that, as long as everyone will be over there in the first place, why not make a real vacation out of it? C'mon...vacation like you can't legally get married!

And you're telling me you don't want to go chill with this?

Meanwhile, Back in Massapequa

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On September 25, the staid suburban town of Massapequa Park, New York, will be rocked -- ROCKED I SAY ROCKED -- by a future it could no longer avoid.

This lovely-looking place, the site of invitations for many local Bat Mitzvahs and first communions (not to mention my grandmother’s 90th birthday party, which also took place in Massapequa), will print invitations for a gay wedding in Iceland. And despite the fact that the word two words “fairytale” and “affairs” seem to work in direct opposition to one another (and they lived happily ever after, except for all that infidelity), it still looks like they do pretty great work. I emailed my mom asking her if she was SURE she was okay with doing the invites there, to which she immediately responded, “I don't have any problem with the subject matter of the invitations, and if they make any comments, we're outta there.” Go, mom!

I guess this is what I mean when I say we practice activism just by being us.

So many photos to come.