In Case Some of You Have No Idea What We Look Like…

Why Growlbert?

I guess the name Growlbert should be explained. Mike and I are both planning on changing our names to Grumm-Albert. In many conversations with friends this devolved into “grummbert”. It was Mike’s bud Scott who suggested we take it one step further (and ensure our kids are never messed with on the playground) to Growlbert. It totally stuck. We can’t imagine naming our wedding blog anything else.

Now if only we could think of equally awesome children’s names. Bertrand Growlbert, Albert von Growlbert, Helga Growlbert, and little Timmy Growlbert are the top contenders

Any other ideas?

The Important Info!

Alright everyone, here’s the skinny on the whole wedding!  Everything you need to know will be contained in this post!  Bookmark it!  Print it!  Tattoo it to your pets!

Wedding Ceremony: Saturday July 31st, 330 PM, Augustana Lutheran Church @ 2710 NE 14th Ave, Portland, OR 97212.  There is a very small parking lot attached to the church.  Please try to reserve those spots for our more senior guests.  Don’t worry, though, as there is plenty of street parking in the area surrounding the church.  We’ll keep the ceremony brief so we can skedaddle on to…

Reception: 500 PM, Miller Hall at the World Forestry Center @ 4033 SW Canyon Rd. Portland, OR 97221.  Go to the train and follow the balloons.  I promise that will makes sense when you get there!  The bar will be open at 500, but dinner will not be until 530-600.  Dinner menu will be announced in a later post, but rest assured, it will be delicious!

Directions: Refer to our Magnificent Marriage Map or click the link on the sidebar.

Attire: Naturally, Maggie and I will be gussied up, but the rest of you can come dressed semi-formally.

Registry: Macy’s (You’ll have to search for us by either of our last names) and Sur La Table (This will open directly into our registry, no searching required!)

RSVP: Click here and follow the instructions!

How to RSVP

Hello again everyone!  This is the official RSVP post, so please make a comment on this post, with the number of people in your party, or email us at mikeandmaggiewedding@gmail.com with the same info.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing everyone!

Arts and Crafts

Maggie has spent the last several days constructing our invitations.  While they are coming along very nicely, and will look great, there has been enough rubber cement, glue, paper cutting, and cries of “Oh no!” coming from the dining room table that maybe there was a bit more bitten off than expected.  Maggie is offering up the blog name, “Homemade Hell: 101 Ideas That Sounded Good at the Time” for $10,000.  Cash or check.

We have completed the address collection end of things (we hope!) and set aside an evening last week for writing return and mailing addresses onto envelopes.  I can safely say I have not hand-written that much since high-school, er, college!  Yeah, Mom, it was college, where I studied really hard!

Most posts to come, with some pertinent timing information!

Accomodations!

This post will be edited over time, and thanks to our amazing wedding planning associate, Beyth Hogue, we have found a couple of places for y’all to stay whilst in Portland!  For example:

• Hotel Lucia – Offering a group rate of $149-$199 per night if at least 10 “Room nights” are booked (example – 2 rooms for 4 nights is 8 room nights.  Stine, let Brian do this part.) UPDATE:  Follow this link to reserve under our group rate or call 1-866-986-8086 and ask for the Grumm-Johnson/Albert wedding block prior to June 30th!
• DoubleTree Lloyd Center – Totally green hotel in an excellent location, rooms from $220-$275 per night, down the street from the church and sits on the light rail line that runs to the doorstep of the reception!
• Hotel deLuxe - Rooms at $135-$199 per night, located in downtown Portland.  To quote Beyth:

“Condé Nast f*#^ing loves this place”

• Historic Hawthorne Rentals – This is where me Ma is staying while in town

Of course, these are not the only options available for you during your stay in Portland.  Feel free to look about to find arrangements that work for you.  In addition, one of the reasons we chose Portland was the concentration of family and friends who own comfy couches (Tom, I’m looking at you.)  Please let us know if you’d like to be set up with a couch or rollaway!

I am a Non-Posting Jerk

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a decade (roughly) since our last post, so, um, my bad!  Here’s something slake your wedding thirst!

A couple of weeks back Maggie, Jen and I hit Sur la (le?) Table at the Pike’s Place Market to continue our registration adventure.  We made the calculated decision to eat before going, and this was a wise maneuver.  In the nearly two hours we were there, I was only marginally hungry by the end!

It was a much more enjoyable experience at Sur.  We registered for a little bit of everything, and I was most definitely acting as the voice of reason for Maggie and Jen, especially in the baking aisle.  All said, it was a great place to go for anything kitchen, especially gadgets and spoons and goodies. 

My only gripe thus far is that there’s no good barware ANYWHERE!  Macy’s has one line – the Martha Stewart line.  Martha’s quite the success story, but I would say to myself, “Bourbon – it’s a good thing,” every time, and it’s not a good thing!  Bah!

We’ll be gathering address for invitations in the next couple of weeks, so expect a note! 

-Mike

Plates are difficult.

Maggie here.

I really wanted to get started on registration so we could do a little at a time.  Mike and I tend to get overwhelmed by things like this.  Boy did we.  Standing in the midst of casual dinnerware-not to be confused with fine china or even formal dinnerware-I finally understood why so many brides bring their mothers and sisters along.  It’s hard!  I thought I would love picking plates.  My mistake was not thinking about salad plates, dessert plates, cereal bowls, soup bowls, pasta bowls, serving trays, etc.  It’s not that we need all of these, it was choosing between these that made my head hurt.  If we got service for 12, do we need 12 pasta bowls?  Should we get 12 salad plates?  What about 6 bowls, 8 small plates and 12 large plates.  Is that too much?  Not enough?

Because we are choosing Fiesta Ware, the colors or endless.  Everything in one color?  Plates in white and bowls in blue?  Maybe serveware in brown?  We wouldn’t want to make a mistake, we’ll have to look at the stupid dishes for the next 10 years!

We made it in 1 hour and 15 minutes before we conceded defeat.  Mike was hungry and I was too worried I’d just created the ugliest tablescape ever seen.

The Joy of Registration

It has begun.

Maggie and I hit up Macy’s after I got off work yesterday to begin the Great Registration Process.  It’s early, yes, but a head start on a daunting task is a good thing.  We met with a Bridal Advisor (I think that was her title) and begain the droll stuff, name, address, etc.  Finishing that, she began to list off some of the benefits we’d be receiving.

I was expecting free magazines, maybe an ugly picture frame or something.  What we got was something much more sweeping.

Thanks to Macy’s having deals with manufacturers and designers, simply registering for enough of a specific brand of whatever (take Wusthof knives, for starters) we will be sent a free gift (in this case a beatiful knife).  Mind you, this isn’t if someone gets it for us.  Just for putting it on the list, bam!

Soooo…. if you see a lot of something, we either really want it or… uh… the perks were too good to pass up.

How we met – Mike’s version

Or should I say…the TRUE version?!

After retaining two jobs for a grand total of 6 weeks (one was a 2 hour bus commute to and from Renton, for 48 hours a week, tons of money, and a batch of misery, and the other resulted in me driving a Ford F250 over a BMW…please don’t ask) my friend Gayle asked if I’d considered a career as a Barista.  I said no, but work’s work, right?

Enter SBC.  I started in January of ’06 and met Maggie, among my other co-workers.  I was dating someone at the time, but I found myself getting along with Maggie best.  I was single after a couple of months, but wasn’t really looking to date.

After a while, I started opening shifts at the cafe, and when I could drive, I’d sometimes pick Maggie up, and we’d commute in together (which is funny inretrospect; how many times have we done that drive down Madison now?)  We got along great, and I really enjoyed working with her, but we rarely worked the same shifts.

As the holidays approached, I found myself talking more and more with Maggie, who mysteriously enough, always smelled good…but I had made a rule for myself a long time before: no dating co-workers!  I had seen too many awkward couples who had brought a tiff into work, or brought their affection into work, and I was resolved against it!

At this point, I had talked to a few friends about the general dating scene for me, and when asked if I was interested in anyone, I would think for a moment, and say, “Well, there’s this one girl at work…I mean, if we weren’t coworkers, I’d totally ask her out.  She’s cute, she’s good people…I dunno.”

Come Thanksgiving time, Maggie asked if I wanted to get some lunch or something before she went home for the weekend.  I said sure, sounds fun.  We had a good lunch(date) and went our separate ways.  A couple of weeks later, we started texting a bit more, and a couple of days after a holiday party hosted by one of our co-workers (and a rather suspicious Secret Santa arrangement, and yes, I AM suspicious, to this day), I needed help Christmas shopping and asked Maggie to come along.  Dinner followed and the rest is history!