A Honeymoon That's Perfect For Us

Hive, I've talked about my honeymoon way waaay more than I ever intended. It's like a bar joke that won't ever die. "Two newlyweds walk into a bar on their honeymoon..." Or, you know, something more clever and memorable than that.

I have good news to share and then I won't speak of the honeymoon again until recaps. Our honeymoon is booked! Woot!

It's not at all the honeymoon I imagined and wrote about before. There were just too many obstacles in our way. Mr. Kettle has taught me so much about compromise since we've been together and that really came in handy when we were sorting out the details of our honeymoon.

To refresh your memory: I saw our honeymoon as a wonderful holiday triple threat. We were going to do Carnival, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras. We were going to Panama and New Orleans and it was going to be wonderful.

The price ended up being more than I expected, so we waited to re-assess our funds before we booked. The day I was going to book the trip (to make sure the New Orleans hotel wasn't full), something major changed. Mr. Kettle got word of a great opportunity for his music. He's a musician and a teacher and he's damn good at both.

The only thing about this opportunity it is was the week after our wedding, when we were supposed to be in Panama. Being the awesome almost-wife that I am, I reasoned that we could go to Carnival another year. And maybe with more advance planning, we could actually go to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Trading in a warm beach hotel for a hotel in the city of Chicago in February isn't what I was thinking, but it will allow us to be in the city the week after our wedding.

We are going to stay in a hotel in the city, so we'll still be honeymooning, we'll just also be working on Mr. Kettle's music opportunities. And we'll be going to New Orleans still for Mardi Gras. Searching for hotels in Chicago was a lot of fun. I compared options and found an amazing deal on a wonderful hotel and spa right smack in the middle of downtown.

Image via hotels.com / Dana Hotel and Spa

Image via QuikBook / Do you see that view?

Image via concierge.com / I could see having dinner there!

They also have in-room couples' massages. I'm thinking a relaxing week followed by a big party in New Orleans will be perfect for us. It makes sense for the Kettles that a big part of honeymoon includes Mr. Kettle's music. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Are you going/Have you gone on a honeymoon? How long did it take to secure your plans?

When I Get All Steamed Up Hear Me Shout!

Okay, so maybe I've been dying to include all the lyrics from "I'm A Little Teapot" somewhere. I'm Miss Kettle and I'm quirky. Forgive me hive, I just can't help myself. So, what is a shouting-and-steamed-up teapot referring to? Music of course!

One of the best things about marrying a musician is the direct benefits to my ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception. We are having, wait for it, three different sets of musicians. We're going to have a string trio for our ceremony, a jazz trio for our cocktail hour, and a DJ for our reception. It's going to be amazing.

The day Mr. Kettle announced our engagement on Facebook, he asked who would play at our wedding for free and several people responded. He was joking, but he definitely took them up on their offer.

The DJ is a friend of his who's soooo good down in St. Louis. He'll be coming in for our wedding. He's spinning for us as a wedding gift. Also, we're having three musician friends of Mr. Kettle's playing live jazz music during our cocktail hour. They also offered to play as a wedding gift.

The string quartet for the ceremony didn't offer to pay for free, but they are doing a reduced price for us. Winning!

Music is something that's very important to me for our big day and I feel so blessed that I am able to have these things that are a high priority for me while still having budget money available for other things, like flowers!

This is what I imagine for our wedding music.

Image: Palmetto Strings String Trio Photo

Image: Scottsdale Music and Entertainment

Image: Outer Banks Video DJs

Pack Your (Tea) Bags

Mr. Kettle and I both lived in the Chicago area when we met 4th of July weekend 2010. Six weeks later, he got a job offer to teach in St. Louis. Wanting to be a gainfully employed adult not living with his parents, he gathered his things and moved there less than a week later.

This wasn't an issue at first. I was unemployed, desperately applying for jobs and getting tons of "thanks, but no thanks" e-mails each day. I had a ton of free time and spent a lot of in down in St. Louis. I think that's partially the reason our relationship was able to move forward so quickly. We simply had the time to focus wholly on us.

When we began discussing marriage, we had to figure something out. Mr. Kettle first suggested I move down to St. Louis with him. I was worried about being an unemployed mooch/kept woman/short order cook. I was also worried about being a complete and utter disappointment to my parents' hopes for both my career and my chastity.

While we were discussing options, he was getting increasingly frustrated with the long-distance-ness of our relationship. It was more about missing me than anything else, which I find really sweet of him. He had gotten used to waking up next to me, and hated going back to it when I reminded him I still needed to spend at least some time at my house in Chicago.

Right around this time, I got the job interview with my current job. That whole process from first interview to hiring took a little over a month. Also during this time, Mr. Kettle was moving not-quite-so-subtly towards proposing to me. Further complicating things, his boss informed him they were interested in giving him a promotion to being in charge of multiple schools in the district as they were changing their arts program throughout the school district. It would be a great promotion with a lot more money. Things had just gotten complicated. Real complicated.



Image: Alliedow's Blog

We came up with three options.

Option #1
Commuter Marriage. We both hated this idea immediately, but we felt compelled to consider it. I was still on the fence about living with him before we were married. That was mostly from worry about the judgement of my parents. Knowing we were trying to have a wedding for them, I didn't want to do something that would make them feel less than supportive when it came to paying for the wedding. But with me having a great job offer in Chicago and him having a great job offer in St. Louis, it just seemed hard... to figured out how to get us both to one place. How would we pick who's job was more important? If we lived in different cities for a while, I could see about transferring to him later or something like that. Sucky option, but still an option.

Option #2
Push Back The Wedding. This was another idea we both immediately hated. Had we just gone and gotten married when we first talked about it, we wouldn't have to worry about pre-marital co-habiting. But if I started my job and he got his promotion, it would be hard to live apart. Neither of us wanted to be newlyweds living in different states. Pushing back the wedding would give us time to work and save money. But then we had a Sonny & Cher moment and realized we didn't care that much about money. What we cared about was being together.

Option #3
Suck It Up And Risk Parental Anger And Live Together Now. I wasn't comfortable with this option because I felt like I had done enough in the last year to disappoint my parents (the whole med school thing) and I didn't want to only further make them question their parenting abilities. Did I mention I was worried about what my parents would think? Plus, choosing one of our careers to prioritize didn't really sit right with me.


Momma Kettle and Daddy Kettle are really very supportive; It's me, not them (personal photo)


Mr. Kettle saved the day. His logic and reasoning really helped me get over myself and be honest about adult decisions that needed to be made for my life.

Right after I was officially offered my job, Mr. Kettle made the decision to move to Chicago. He said he would figure out what to do about a job once he got here. Luckily, he's a very good musician, so he plays a number of gigs around the city and state and Midwest and country so he's always got some income.

He told me to trust him that we wouldn't have to talk to my parents about living together until we were engaged and told me to start looking for apartments. My man is nothing if not subtle. Yup, he's sure a subtle guy...

He proposed the day before Memorial Day. He then went back to St. Louis and gathered his things and moved back to Chicago. Luckily, his roommate was getting married the following weekend and more than happy to take over the entire rent in exchange for not living out some weird reverse Three's Company.



Image: City of KIK

That next week, my mother suggested Mr. Kettle and I move in together. I was shocked, but quickly jumped on that band wagon of thought. From there, it was less than a week before we picked out an apartment and signed our lease. Less than a month after getting engaged, we'd moved into our new apartment in Hyde Park. Moving day was a bit like our first wedding party hangout since we have so many of our friends in the wedding party.

Want to see pictures? Sure, why not.


Mr. Kettle is getting ready to take a video of our possible apartment. This is our huge bedroom. The closet door is broken because they hadn't fixed it yet.



The last tenant left the apartment in a mess. A hot mess. But I could see potential. Can you see the pendant lights above the granite bar counter? Oh yeah, I was feeling it.

This is our kitchen on move in day. They had really fixed the place up. Or at least they did a major de-crudding.

That's BM Libra having a "bright idea" with the light bulb from one of my lamps. BM ATL ('cause she lived in hot-lanta) looks tired. And hot.

She looked that way 'cause I haz a lot o' stuff.



That's GM Cuz ('cause he's a cousin) really happy the food finally arrived we said we'd get them for helping us move. That's BM ATL again, looking sleepy. That's also BM Mon's ('cause his people are from Jamaica, mon!) elbow in that shot.



This was after we loaded in the boxes that had to be unpacked and somehow actually fit in this space. How would we get it done? Magic.

So we settled into our new place and promptly forgot we still had to go through the process of getting married. Luckily, we had things coming up to get us going, such as our engagement photos.

Up next, I'll talk about the first three DIY projects I had going. They were made to formally invite our wedding party and as props for our e-photo shoot.

All photos personal unless otherwise stated.
Did you and your FI live together before you were married? Did you wish you could skip all the rest of the wedding stuff once you were settled in? Do you have lovely friends to help you move?

Heating Up The Water - Getting To Know How The Kettles Ended Up Engaged

Mr. Kettle and I were freshly in love when I last left off. I was spending a lot of time in St. Louis where he worked. I was unemployed and making the most of my free time. I went to a lot of Mr. Kettle's gigs.

As our relationship developed, we quickly realized we wanted to be together, and likely wanted to be together forever.

The Super Bowl was a big day for us because that's the day we first began speaking of the possibility of us getting married in a very real way. We even discussed eloping. If I remember correctly, the only reason we didn't is because we were quite sure it would disappoint both of our mothers for us to not have a wedding. Also, we weren't even boyfriend and girlfriend yet. But what were we? We were rebels.



This is Mr. Kettle's rebellious stance.

Mr. Kettle was making plans for asking me in a very special way to be his girlfriend. He wanted to ask me on the anniversary of the day we met on July 2nd. Yeah, we didn't make it to March.

Mardi Gras is now a very special night for us. We spent the night together and had so much fun. I asked him to promise me we'd spend Mardi Gras together the next year no matter where we were. He informed me we'd be married by then so of course we would. I was surprised because it was such a concrete deadline. I realized I would love the idea of having our wedding anniversary fall before Mardi Gras every year.

A quick Google search later and I found we'd have to get married the first weekend in February to make that happen. Mr. Kettle and I discussed it and he said that date worked for him. When I reminded him that meant he'd have to propose at least by July so we'd have enough time to plan a real wedding, he said that worked for him.

I was flabbergasted because there aren't a lot of men walking around just ready to get married and not backing down from promises made while in a moment of drunken happiness. Mr. Kettle had another great plan to propose on the anniversary of the day we met in July. But... he revealed the plan to me accidentally one night. But yeah, we didn't make it to June.

We joked that I would have to propose to him first before he'd propose to me. I told him I'd propose, sure. But it would be with a Lucky Charms ring! Secretly though, I took this very seriously because I didn't anything messing up our plans. In mid April, I made Mr. Kettle a very nice picnic and picked him up from work. We drove to the park and had a nice lunch. I had him unpack the lunch and in it he found a box. And in that box?

Yes I did. I made my man a ring out of Lucky Charms. It took me an entire individual sized box of cereal to get it right, but I did. A needle, thread, and cuff link box can go far. I guess this counts as my first DIY project for the wedding.

I said some sweet things about how I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life with him and asked him to marry me. He accepted and we both ignored how cheesy we were feeling and enjoyed the rest of our picnic. I did remind him that I didn't want to hear even one joke about us being engaged until he put a ring on my finger.

At the end of May, Mr. Kettle sent me to his jewelry store to get sized for a ring. He's very subtle. Very subtle. He also had me e-mail him some pics of rings I liked. That was on a Monday. That following Sunday, he took my dad, Daddy Kettle, out to brunch after church. Then he and I headed up for a Memorial Day BBQ at one of his cousin's house.

After the BBQ, we headed back to my parents house. I was really very tired and very hungry and very irritable. We decided to go our separate ways for the night, but before he could drive off, I asked him to wait. I told him we never leave things unhappy and so I would rally and continue our planned night. We kissed and made up.

I didn't expect a proposal at this point because Mr. Kettle can be super romantic and I figured he'd do some over-the-top romantic proposal. Plus, I wasn't sure he'd asked my father for my hand in marriage like he'd planned. Although I told him I wanted a low-key proposal that fit us as a couple, I wasn't imaginging that was the moment he'd choose.

While we were hugging, he asked me to marry him. At that point, Mr. Kettle was pseudo-proposing at least once a week. We'd talked about marriage so much that him saying the words, "I love you, will you marry me?" were commonplace. He gets emotional like that. So when he asked this time, I said, "Of course I'll marry you baby," without actually suspecting he might have a ring in his pocket.
Right near where we were back in October when we first decided to take another chance on each other, he pulled out a ring and got down on one knee. I was impressed because the ground was wet from having rained earlier. He told me some things that sounded so sweet and amazing at the time, but I can't remember for the life of me right now. I just remember saying, "Oh my God, you're serious this time!"

What I also remember is that I cried. It was unexpected for both of us because although I am very emotional, crying isn't usually one of the ways I express my emotions. I was amazed by the ring that he had specially made. It was very me. Very very me.


Pink sapphire, turned at an angle, white gold, pave diamonds. Oh yeah, this ring rocks!

We knew we didn't want a long engagement, and we were committed to sticking with our early February date. So from here on out, it's all about wedding planning!

How long were you together before he popped the question? Did you have a mock proposal first? How much do you love you ring?

Heating Up The Water - Getting To Know How The Kettles Ended Up Together

In this saga towards being engaged, I left off at my decision that I wanted Mr. Kettle all for my very own. That was right around the time he decided he only wanted to date the other woman he was already dating when he met me.

Ouch! Image via Oldham Athletic Blog

That's pretty close to how I felt, except maybe it was my heart instead of my face. He wanted to be friends-- I wanted him to kiss my @*#. Over the next couple months, I began dating someone else who had a ton of baggage from his last relationship and began doubting my taste in men.

Mr. Kettle was realizing that perhaps he had chosen the wrong girl. He was really missing me and things weren't going well with her. They had a lot of incompatibilities that made him realize they weren't right for each other. He would text/call me occasionally during this time. I mostly ignored all of these calls.

Turns out, that was the best thing to do. He was missing me more and more and it was killing him that he couldn't talk to me. It made him realize that he really wanted me around and he wanted me back. What happens next was just like a movie. After he called me and left a voicemail (I definitely pressed ignore) saying how much he missed me and how it was really important that he talk to me, I agreed, after hours of texting back and forth, to talk to him.

It was evening, and it was raining. He picked me up from my parents' house. When we first saw each other, he hugged me and kissed me while "I Wish It Would Rain" by Mayer Hawthorne played on the car stereo. He told me later he wasn't leaving the city (he was working in St. Louis at the time) until he got a chance to talk to me.

Image of Mayer Hawthorne's music video via The Incubator Blog

It took only a matter of weeks before we had hashed out all the issues from before and agreed to date each other exclusively. We put ourselves back on track to continue to get to know one another. We re-built trust and communication and it wasn't long before love came into play as well.

When Mr. Kettle first told me he loved me, it was also quite like a movie. One of my favorite movies is The Holiday.



Image via Amazon.com

The first time I visited St. Louis after we reconnected, Mr. Kettle sat down to watch this movie while I was cooking dinner. We had rented it from Blockbuster expressly for this purpose. While watching the scene in which Jude Law professes his love for Cameron Diaz, Mr. Kettle decides it's a good time to tell me he was in love with me.

I think what actually happened is that those emotions were building up inside him and seeing that scene in the movie made the lid blow off. Like a completely skittish, emotionally-deficient person, I said a whole bunch of nothing and ran off to the kitchen to cook.

It took me another week or so to say it back. We both knew I had been feeling it for quite a while, I was just extra apprehensive about saying it. But once I did, we were officially in the full swing of our honeymoon phase. You know what I'm talking about. That moment where both people are in love and feeling it.

It really wasn't too much later that we began discussing the possibility of getting married. We still weren't ready to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but we were, you know, considering all our options.

Did any of your big relationship moments resemble a romantic comedy? How long into your relationship did you declare your love?

Heating Up The Water - Getting To Know How The Kettles Met

Okay hive, this is the post where I try to dive into how we met and our story of how we ended up proposed. It's a story that seems to take longer to tell than the time we've actually been together, but I will try my best.

When I was younger, we're talking 10-15 years ago, I went to a music conservatory. I was classically trained in choral singing and piano. It was an amazing time in my life and I learned a lot though I made no friends and never quite got over my hangup about playing in front of people.

During this time, there was a guy at the music school that I thought was incredibly cute. No mystery here, it was a younger Mr. Kettle. I thought he was so cute with his afro and his big nose (I have a thing for big noses). And he had a special sort of something about him that made me swoon every time he had to play his sax during assembly.

We never spoke during this time and I never knew his name. I didn't really want to know his name, he was just a crush. Now fast forward to July 2, 2010. I attended the wedding of a friend I grew up with at church. Mr. Kettle tells this part of the story much better. He remembers laying eyes on me and deciding I was beautiful and looked like a lot of fun and therefore he had to approach me at the reception.

I was feeling amazing that day. I had just lost almost 20 pounds and I was wearing a new sexy dress. I also had just gotten my hair locked for the first time (I'll explain that later). I noticed there were a lot of young, probably single men at the wedding. I was also feeling fed up with lack of progress with the guy I was currently dating. Mr. Kettle was fresh out of one relationship and just on the outskirts of a new relationship.

All this adds up to both of us looking to just have fun. At the reception, we ended up near each other on the dance floor. Fast forward to the end of the reception and we were having so much fun that we made plans to go out. In one hour.

We went out after the wedding and had so much fun we made plans to go out the next day. The next day we had so much fun we made more plans. And more plans. And 15 days later, we realized we had only spent a couple days apart since we met.

We were both convinced at that point that we were just having fun hanging out. That's why I have no pictures of us except a few from Facebook that other people took. By the end of the summer, I was completely smitten with him. He constantly showered me with compliments and told me how much he liked me and how glad he was he met me. I had decided that the casual hanging out thing perhaps wasn't good enough.

I'll continue this story in the next post.

Were you and your FI dating other people when you met? Was the transition to dating only each other a smooth one?

Heating Up The Water - Getting To Know The Kettles Part One

Hi hive! The first thing you should know about me, at least the foreseeable future, is that I usually blog while at work. I love my job, but I work 12 hour shifts. So when I'm not working, I'm at home sleeping or trying desperately to slip in a bit of actually living life.

I say this to say don't judge me for the occasional lack of coherence. Did I mention I work the night shift?


Image via Wikipedia / Book by Stephen King

No, not that night shift, but I've heard it's good writing. I work in an office doing good work with organ and tissue donation. Be an Organ Donor!

My job consists more of me sitting here like this:

Learning lots 'o stuff (I'm still training) from over sized binders such as this:

And calling myself healthy because I eat snack like this:

The great thing about working nights is that I'm a night owl. The other great thing is that Mr. Kettle is a musician. On days I don't have to work, I have no problem staying out with him at a gig until the sun comes up. And he has some amazing gigs. Ever been to Andy's Jazz Club in Chicago?



personal photo taken @ Andy's Jazz Club

That's him playing the alto saxophone in the picture. I love that man with an undying passion. Want to see more pictures of him? Of course you do.

Whoa! Sorry about that last one. But I showed so many of him as this "serious" musician, I felt I needed to change it up. I love Mr. Kettle's music and I love his sense of humor. He's my favorite fiance thus far. Did I mention I have an odd sense of humor?

Mr. Kettle is also a teacher. He teaches music to elementary age children. He's an amazing teacher and his kids always love him. He works very hard. He also gets summers off which is sweet!

We're both very family-oriented people. We spend a lot, a lot, of time with our family and friends. We're very simpatico that way.

Image via Timberlake-JustinFans

Did anyone see that ridiculous movie Bad Teacher? No one? Just the crickets? Okay...

What else can I say about us? I could talk about how we met, and how we got engaged. That's generally what people talk about right up front, yes? Okay, that's what I'll talk about in my next posts.
It's really great to be here hive, I can't say that enough.

Put On The Kettle!

Hello hive!

I'm Miss Kettle. Miss Kettle! Yay! I'm so excited I get to finally say that!

I'm so excited be here. I wish there was a way to convey through words the extent of my joy. I could try, but I'm not a writer, I'm a scientist. My grasp of spelling and grammar is no small feat in itself, so I will accept that proper word choice is just outside my grasp.

That, my new friends, is why God made Google. It's my best buddy on the Internet. There's nothing Google can't do. Well, that's not true. But there are no Internet needs of mine that it can't meet. The best example of this was when Mr. Kettle went to Europe for a month last winter and we were able to talk on the phone and video chat -- for free-- through Google (technically gmail, but it's the same thing). But I digress... 

Through Google, I can find pictures to try and express my joy.

Image via BitStorm



Nah, that's not really it. But I am having fond memories of my childhood while also wondering why in the world my parents let me watch that show!


Image via Ravesque Tarot

Yeah, now that's more like it. This joy is not mine alone because Mr. Kettle is really excited too. He was very supportive of my plan to be a Bee and almost submitted the application for me. Thank goodness it was still too soon to apply because I wanted to go over my application myself and have my voice shine through.


Now that I've done my very best to express how happy I am to be a Bee, let's talk about how I got here. Mr. Kettle and I first discussed marriage very early on in what was a short courtship. It was the night of Mardi Gras that we decided we'd be married by that time the following year. Almost immediately after that, I started looking at wedding websites and Google sent me to Weddingbee. I fell in love instantly and had dreams of being a Bee myself one day.

Mr. Kettle and I overshare, so I told him of my new obsession with wedding websites and surprisingly, he didn't back off the discussion of marriage or the development of our relationship. Possible "crazy" label avoided. Winning!

When we were officially engaged (he liked it so he put a ring on it), I realized there was only a short amount of time before we were at the 8-months-out-mark and I could apply to Weddingbee. Well, they rejected my first application pretty quickly. I was sad, very sad.

personal drawing on my PC

I didn't cry, but I was wondering why I couldn't be fascinating enough to catch their attention. I took another look at my blog and tried to figure out what to do. I began tailoring my blog posts as if I were actually a weddingbee blogger, which meant more pictures, more details of how I arrived at decisions, projects, and feelings.

As soon as four weeks passed (technically a few days before..) I submitted a second application. Then it was all wedding blogging every day. My personal blog became wedding central. Mr. Kettle spoke of how I "better be a Bee blogger this time after all this". He is very passionate you see.

But it paid off! I got the e-mail from Pengy (I call her that 'cause everyone else does) and I was over-joyed. I was at work when I read it so I had to do my best to contain my glee. It was hard. Real hard.

I called Mr. Kettle and after a bit of phone tag, he got the good news. He was just as happy as I was. Then we hashed out what my icon would be. Knowing that he would have to be Mr.______, he wanted something that was manly. He didn't say that outright, but I got that vibe after he ruled out both bracelet and petit four.

He wanted ticket, But I really wanted sunhat. He probably frowned (we were over the phone so I can't be sure) and then we played a game we're very good at. This game is called compromise. We decided on an icon that fit us as a couple and one that both of us would be proud to be the Mr.______ and Miss ______. Ultimately, kettle it was.

We drink a lot of tea, so I think it fits. We're very warm, we like bright colors, and with all the music we constantly have around us, the tea kettle whistle fits us too.

I look forward to months of blogging and having you all go with me through this planning process. I've already done some DIY projects and I will be glad to share those with you.

Here are the Kettles (and our cat Belle). These are both personal photos.