Tag: wedding

Life as a married man, brog post #1

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
photo courtesy Matt Altmix

Let this be the first time I put in writing that I am now an officially married man, and this is the first time that I’ve had the time to sit down and write since both the wedding and the honeymoon.  After planning for both of these things for the better part of the last year, and then actually doing both things, I have to say that it feels kind of like having been on a train for a while and then having to adjust to the speed of walking all over again.  Literally, I’ve spent parts of the last two days sitting there in a dazed stupor, not having any clue of what to do next with, life in general. 

There are certainly things that should get done and need to get done, but I’m having a hard time bringing myself to make the first step in any direction to actually get started on doing anything really just yet.  It’ll all fix itself pretty quickly as daily life and routine begin to settle back down, but for the time being, it’s definitely taking some adjustment on getting back to normal life after finishing up a journey with some finishes in extreme rhythms.

As for the wedding, I have to say that I think the wife and I put on an excellent weekend for our celebration of union.  Trying to be as objective as I can for my own event, but I really genuinely believe that just about everything went so well and smooth, and I really couldn’t have asked for anything else,* as far as how the entire weekend went, from the arrival of friends and family, the rehearsal party to the wedding itself.

*except maybe some actual leftovers from our catering, which was completely obliterated by everyone, regardless of a few no-shows, resulting in nothing left for wifey and I after the wedding, but I guess that’s just another sign of success that we picked a good caterer who put out some irresistible food

I think it started with the location, and getting hitched in downtown Decatur made for a fantastic location for guests to stay where they were right next door to the venue, in an area where there were tons of restaurants and bars to eat and hang at, and a rarity in the Metro Atlanta area, somewhere that was MARTA accessible, meaning people could easily hop aboard the train and actually do tourist things.  Plus, the hotel was brand-spanking new, and the staff was outstanding beyond belief, and there’s little reason to believe the weekend wouldn’t have been as great as it was without them themselves.

Throughout the weekend, fewer things made me happier than seeing friends and family decisively doing their own things, and going out to eat or to the aquarium or the World of Coke, and making the most of their free time.  I took great pleasure and enjoyment in seeing people having a good time in Decatur and Atlanta, and not feeling like they were just humoring us, and like they actually got some time for themselves instead of feeling like they were just here for us.

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The last singles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I can pull the curtain back a little bit, whenever I sit down and write, there’s no guarantee that the most recent thing I’m writing is actually the most recent thing that’s actually happening.  Especially these days, I often times come across things or thoughts that spark the want to write, but I just simply don’t have the time to write, because I’m always busy at work, and by the time I get home, I’m either too busy to write or too fried to write.

In times like those, what typically happens is that I have a cloud-based document where I jot down the date and the general theme of what was going to be written, and if there’s any links that I want to refer to, that too.  And when I have the time and the motivation to do some writing, those are the things that I try to tackle first.  Typically, I don’t like the queue to grow too big, because then it gives me anxiety and a feeling of being worthless as someone who likes to write.  But there are exceptions to the queue, where I start writing about something in the true present, because usually there’s some degree of time sensitivity to where it’s not something that I can go back and write about retroactively.  At the time I’m writing this, there are three posts queued up that I still want to write about when I get the time.

Right now, is one of those moments.  Because the last few days, I’ve been coming to the realization that a lot of the things I’m doing, are the last time I’m doing them as a single guy.  Yes, melodramatic me is actually writing about the slow farewell to single, unattached life, because I’m two days from entering the wedded bliss of holy matrimony, and getting married.  What started out as mythical gf became mythical fiancé, and now I’m about to have a mythical wifey, and I’m actually going to be somebody’s husband.  Sucks to be them!

But anyway, it’s a lot of little things that I’m doing that I’m realizing are the last times I’m doing them as a single person.  All throughout the week, I’ve had my final chest and tris day as a single guy.  My last time running on the treadmill as a single guy.  Today was my last bis-shoulders-hamstrings day.  As the weekend progresses, I’ll have my last meals and drinks as a single person, and then when I’m at the altar, likely watching down at mythical fiancé coming down the aisle, probably looking radiant and beautiful, I’ll be ticking down my last minutes and seconds as a single person.

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No-context writing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes, I feel like I haven’t done any writing in a while, and then say that I haven’t really found anything that’s sparked any inspiration to write.  But then I chastise myself that the whole point of me wanting to write doesn’t always have to have specific context behind it, and that sometimes, it’s just the urge to write, even if there’s no specific subject at hand.

Despite the fact that I’m still offline, a notion that isn’t ever not there whenever I sit down to write, it’s been an entire week since I last ranted about how much the Morbius movie is probably going to suck.  Since then, no matter how much I scour the news for an interesting topic, various websites and feeds to hope to see something that piques my interest to turn into a word explosion, it’s been pretty barren out there for my interests and inspirations.

Regardless, such shouldn’t be an excuse to go stagnant for too long, and despite the fact that I don’t really feel like I have anything to write about, the inherent urge to write is still there, which brings us to now, where I’m sitting in front of my laptop with a word doc open, no specific topic in mind, and my fingers still moving.

For the most part, a lot of this general writing stagnation probably has to do with the fact that these days, I don’t really have a tremendous amount of free time anymore.  Such is the nature of being an adult, and trying to maintain my place in the working world, as well as undertaking the responsibilities of a job that is no longer really on the ground level anymore.  At work, I’m often times operating with varying levels of stress in place, with there seldom being none at all, and simultaneously I have to remind myself that my decisions hold more weight than they used to, and that I am actually responsible for other people.  I can’t phone it in as much as I’d like to at times, and sometimes it feels like I’m doing less work, which feels strange, especially since I still see that the workload amongst the team hasn’t exactly dwindled.

Outside of work, has been a tremendous amount of other work, specifically all related to the planning of my own wedding.  I’m not going to pretend like it hasn’t felt overwhelming at times, the sheer amount of tasks and things to consider before June, because it sometimes does, and I hit points where I don’t want to do anymore work at home, and just want to marathon something on Netflix or watch the WWE Network for four hours instead of doing actual work.

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Photos: A couple of engagement pictures

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: because mythical now-wife and I wanted to unload most of our wedding budget on stuff like hiring a baller photographer and getting the best catering we could (that we ourselves were barely were able to eat), engagement photos were one of those things that we kind of took a DIY approach.  I’ve got an okay camera with a few okay lenses, and in the end, we only needed like 1-2 good photos to use, so we took it upon ourselves to orchestrate our own shoot on a cold-ass December afternoon like the geniuses we are.

And then we went to get some beer at Gate City Brewery in Roswell, to where it turned out to be a good place to take a few shots there as well, because we’re classy folks.

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Photos: A tiny Vegas trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Literally, two weeks ago, a close friend of mine messaged me out of the blue to tell me that she was getting married in Vegas.  Initially, she assumed I was already going to be in Vegas because of Otakon Ve(r)gas, but pffh I don’t don’t really go to conventions anymore, much less the ones run by friends.  I had no intention of going out to Vegas for OV, but to be there for a good friend’s wedding?

Not to mention an Elvis wedding?  Totally worth it.

Thankfully, I was able to find some reasonable travel and lodging accommodations, and was able to make it out to Vegas this past weekend, in spite of the last-minute nature.  The wedding itself was everything I thought it would be; short, succinct and to no real surprise, the Elvis impersonator himself was really mediocre.  He didn’t do the voice, barely any mannerisms, and nary was there more than like two lip curls.

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Seeking a Korean starter wife

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My mom’s convinced that at some point, I promised her that I would marry a Korean girl by the age of 30.  I can’t really say I recollect making such a ludicrous promise, but regardless my mom badgers me about it just about every time we speak on the phone.  She knows that I’m not really into Korean chicks let alone Asian chicks in general; all jokes aside about me being Korean as burritos are, and being an mega-Twinkie/banana, I’m just not.  Maybe the right one(s) has never come along to spark any interest, and break the walls, or maybe it’s the fact that I grew up surrounded by Korean women, so it’s like this awkward family complex I have towards other Korean girls in general.

No matter, she gives me the old-world spiel about how she wants to see me get married to a Korean girl before, of course, she dies.  Obviously no good son really wants to see his mother die at any point at all, but we’ve had discussions before on the importance of her happiness for her, and my happiness for myself.  Clearly, there’s a conflict of interest here.  She wants a Korean daughter-in-law that will birth my heir and give her yet more grandchildren, and then become a subservient caregiver while she lives out the rest of her lives in my home, or something along those lines, right out a circa-1990s Korean drama VHS tape that Korean moms and grandmas would trade and rent and watch for endless hours.

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Haha I forgot I wrote this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whenever I buy something for someone off of their registries, and the retailer always has a few lines to fill out for the complimentary card note, I never really quite know what to write.  For the amount of space that these cards give you, it’s not like I can be thorough with my words of encouragement and congratulation, really leaving me to write something boring and unoriginal.

But in the case of my friends Carolyn and Joe, there’s no such trepidation.  They already know how I feel about them, so there’s no need to put some corny congratulatory lines, when a classic wrestling quote would be more than sufficient.

Because when the day is over, very little is really better than having a good laugh, sometimes.