Booze? Check.

With the help of my anonymous friend pictured here, I ventured across state lines (shhhhhhh....) and bought enough booze to keep our wedding going for four days. With this much liquor, it's hard to believe we still need food.




Some highlights:

• Ronrigo Rum! Don't be fooled by the plastic bottle. This is the hottest thing in the Caribbean these days.
• Six bottles of vermouth! I'm not sure why.
  
• Huge bottles of Svedka Vodka (my dad's pick) for just $20 each!
• Two kinds of champagne!
• A mind-boggling 44 bottles of wine!
• Three surprise brands of beer!
  

Distant cousins Kahlua, Pucker, Amaretto, Triple Sec and Peach Schnapps will be well represented. Hopefully this will make some people, who declared themselves sober for the weekend, will rethink that thought.

The best part: We can return all the booze we don't drink! Although I can't imagine that happening.

Now the worst part: My anonymous friend was kind enough to store all the booze at his apartment, but I stopped by his place a few hours after I dropped off the stuff, and he looked like this:

When Homeslice Gets Laid Off, She Lays Out

No, we're not canceling the wedding, as some have suggested. No catastrophe could possibly stop this thing at this point.

And apparently life actually goes on. Hearing the stories about unemployment in comments and emails -- and more specifically the stories about getting laid off right before weddings -- indicates that this will probably not kill us.

Melissa was threatened with a lay-off three days before her wedding and then canned the day before her birthday. Guess what? Still alive. Marilyn lost her job the month before her wedding, and her husband lost his job the month after. Guess what? That was 1971, and she said it was "the best thing that ever happened"!

That's the thinking around these parts, too. To wit, this what the bride has been up to:

1) She went to the beach. Laid out. Had two beers, which intoxicated her. Standard. Posed for picture, above.

2) Started a blog about being unemployed with her friend Allison (above), another victim of the butcher on Sansom Street. It's the hottest thing in the blogiverse right now. Check it! Greetingsfromunemployment.blogspot.com

3) Completed a range of wedding-related tasks, including painting a ketubah! It's like arts-and-craft day at camp around here these days.

4) Organized job offers into alphabetical order.

It doesn't mean it doesn't suck, which it does. But this kind of thing happens on the regular in America in 2008. "Layoff" is the new "black." So we deal. And blog about it or something.

Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong; Guess What It Is

Let's everyone play a game. With 23 days left 'til Showtime, one of these dreadful scenarios actually, really just happened. The other two are bullshit. See if you can figure it out:

Scenario #1: At the last wedding dress fitting, the tailor at the Macy's Bridal Shop spilled her vente caramel-mocha frappucino on the front of the wedding gown, forming a bizarre splotch-like figure that could not be removed, despite its subsequent shipment to Hong. Three weeks left, and we have no dress, people.

Scenario #2: There was a fire at the apartment complex behind our wedding venue that triggered an explosion in a kitchen, which then spread, leveling an entire half-city block and leaving our venue in rubble.

Scenario #3: Out of absolutely nowhere, the bride got laid off.

The Answer: Number Three.

Deborah's agency lost their largest client because the company discontinued the brand. Deborah worked on said client, so she -- along with about 15 others -- were let go at 4 pm on a Friday. It was a fucking blood bath, and she's going to be better of for it. I'm positive. We just don't know when that better-off is gonna be, exactly.

Oh, and they apologized for the timing of her dismissal, considering, well, our wedding. The bossman also told her it was the Democrats' fault, whatever that means.

So, if someone is in the market for the best graphic designer/art director in the greater Philadelphia area, we're accepting offers. Give my startlingly talented future wife a job. Or even a freelance gig. Or she'll walk your dog every afternoon for $5 a pop.

Better yet, check out her new business.

Also, if anyone understands unemployment benefits in Pennsylvania, we could use a tutorial. I don't think their web site is written in English.

Look Who's Already Dressed For The Wedding!

Unfortunately, he won't be in attendance. But since we actually bought Shmelvis a cat bow tie for the wedding, he'll be wearing it instead of a collar for the next 3 1/2 weeks.

And he'll be more formally dressed than either of us.

I Will Beg. I Will Plead. Whatever It Takes To Get Into The New York Times Wedding Announcements.

I have pontificated before about my odd fascination with the New York Times wedding announcements. I am not sure why I'm drawn to them; I am not sure why I was hooked on them long before I even imagined myself in any sort of situation involving marital bliss.

But they are more robust, better read and filled with far more fancier people than any other wedding announcement page in America, so in that sense they are something of a cultural institution. Some mock them, some obsess over them. And that's why I must be a part of them.

Every Sunday, I have my routine with the wedding pages. I scan for personal points of interest (my hometown, college and city). I scan for couples of interest (old gay men, inter-religious matches, vast age differences). And I scan names/pictures of those I might recognize.

On Sunday, my friends Keith and Jen--whose wedding I was in as both a groomsman AND as the official bubbles-hander-outer--made the cut. Shockingly, as the newspaper was passed around during the Sunday morning post-wedding brunch, I oozed with pride rather than bitter jealously. I swear on next Sunday's copy of the Times, I was happy for them.

That happiness is contingent, obviously, on us being in there in four weeks. And with a picture -- and none of them bride-only shots, neither.

We have pitched the Times hard. We sent along our flip-book invitation, a copy of the actual magazine when I proposed and a detailed summary of our relationship and familial pedigrees. The whole preparation process took like three days, so in case we don't get in (bite your tongue! godforbid! perish the thought! fingers-crossed!), here's our announcement:

Deborah A. Hurwitz and Matthew E. Katz are to be married on Sunday evening (August 31) by Rabbi Lee Friedlander in the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, PA.

The bride, 27, is a senior art director for Gyro Worldwide, an advertising and marketing agency in Philadelphia. She graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University. The bridegroom, 30, is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, covering Camden, NJ. He graduated from The George Washington University.

Although the couple went to the same college, they met later through friends. At the time, Mr. Katz was a news reporter at the Gannett-owned Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ, where he also wrote a nationally syndicated dating column. Distributed by Gannett to about 50 daily newspapers, it was called The Bachelor Pad, and it chronicled Mr. Katz’s dating life. (See mattkatz.net for back columns.)

Mr. Katz and Ms. Hurwitz became friends, and he told her he was interested in dating her. But she made it clear that she only wanted to be friends. So Mr. Katz began writing columns about wanting to date a friend (see two attached articles). Eventually, Ms. Hurwitz relented. And Mr. Katz began writing about that, too.

Mr. Katz chronicled the couple’s relationship in The Bachelor Pad for about two years. Although he wanted to propose in a way befitting the public, written nature of their relationship, he said he thought it would be too predictable to propose through the column.

Fortunately, just when he was ready to ask Ms. Hurwitz for her hand, the New Jersey Monthly magazine interviewed him for a profile because his column ran in a half-dozen daily newspapers in New Jersey. The magazine headlined the profile "Mr. Write." In a quoted passage in the last paragraph, he proposed. (See enclosed magazine.)

Ms. Hurwitz read the article in their apartment in Philadelphia, and when she got to this quote – “Deborah, will you marry me?”—Mr. Katz got on one knee. He now writes a blog about their engagement at engagedguy.blogspot.com.

The bride is the daughter of Ilene and David Hurwitz of Randolph, NJ. Her father retired as president of Allerton Enterprises and is a former vice president of Fisher Scientific, now Thermo Fisher Scientific. Her mother is an administrative assistant with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Madison, NJ.

The bridegroom is the son of Roberta and Richard Katz of Roslyn, NY. His father is an independent insurance broker and retired as deputy director of the New York district office of the Food & Drug Administration. His mother retired as a New York City public school teacher after 32 years.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kelly Turso Photography (this pic is not the one, unfortunately, that the Times got)

Commitment Tattoos!

In one single article last week, the New York Times pointed a shotgun at my head and blew my fucking mind.

I grew up with strong conservative Jewish principles rooted in the northeastern Queens mid-1980s traditions of Judaism, and one of our main precepts was: "Thou shalt not get a tattoo, because thou won't be allowed to be buried in a Jewish cemetery."

Guilt trips don't get any worse than, "When you're dead, we won't let you hang out with us." And as such, almost every Jewish kid I know has kept his and her arms pasty white, free of the cool barbed wire that our goy brethren wrap around their biceps. Religious or not, atheist or not, the vast majority of Jews refrain from getting tatted up because of the whole Jewish cemetery thing.

Unfortunately, it turns out it's bullshit. The New York Times:

The eight rabbinical scholars interviewed for this article, from institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University, said it’s an urban legend, most likely started because a specific cemetery had a policy against tattoos. Jewish parents and grandparents picked up on it and over time, their distaste for tattoos was presented as scriptural doctrine.

This is the first and only time you will ever see me write this: OMG!

I haven't stopped thinking about this article since I read it. It's like turning 21 and finding out you can drink every drop of booze in the bar and no one can stop you. A whole new world is open to me...and us.

Clearly, Deborah and I need to take advantage of this. Should we get matching "commitment tattoos"? Should we write something in Hebrew, to be doubly ironic? Should we just brand ourselves with Shabbas candles?

The options are limitless. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

CREDIT: Justin Dawson/The New York Times

A Waffle House Wedding

And you thought we were taking some liberties with wedding tradition.

Consider the case of George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian, two 23-year-olds who work together at the same Waffle House off the same highway in Georgia. Bubba (I shit you not, that's his real nickname) married Pamela in the parking lot of their Waffle House because it was too much trouble figuring out how to arrange their work schedules to make time for a more typical journey down the aisle.

Waffle House holds a special place in our relationship, too, as it is our go-to spot for coffee and cholesterol whenever we take our bi-annual Southern roadtrips. Waffle House has some of the most delectable hash browns man has ever made, and despite the carbon monoxide from the neighboring highway, it has a quaint charm. For the uninitiated, the details to this wedding are all you'll ever need to know about Waffle House.

Nearly all the wedding pictures on the slideshow (scroll down here) include a decked-out bridesmaid with a Newport 100 dropping out of her mouth. The trail of cans attached to the back of the "Just Married" car includes at least one Keystone Light.

Yes, we are getting married at the house where Betsy Ross stitched the first American flag. But these guys? True, blue Americans.

CREDITS: Benjamin Hager (photo)/Randi Max (tip)