The Wedding Stinger

For those of you planning to be outdoors in Carlinville between the hours of 7 and 11 p.m., I and my itchy legs recommend you take mosquito and horsefly precautions. Last night someone asked me if I had chicken pox. I'm not joking.

Oh yeah, and do all the other things that make sense if you're going to be camping in a quasi-woodland meadow: don't leave food around that's going to attract the raccoon hordes, don't leave your flashlight at home because you assume there'll be moonlight, and consider brushing up on your medieval French. Also, check the weather one last time before you leave. It's definitely getting warmer, and last night there was a thirty-second thunderstorm.

Friday Night Accomodations

While it may be possible for those of you attending Friday night's rehearsal/out-of-towner dinner to latch onto someone with a couch to sleep on, do keep in mind that the camping we've offered near the Beasley's house is for Saturday night only. Those who are currently without places to rest their heads on Friday night may want to mention this in an email to the whatmemarry@gmail.com address, in case some kind soul who reads it has an extra space or bed available. Also, depending on your comfort level, you may find an individual or a couple who would be interested in sharing a motel room with you. After all, wouldn't your money be better spent on a Chuck E. Cheese suit that you could wear to the ceremony on Saturday?

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In case it helps anyone to have the information available online, here's the irreducible essence of the invitation you (hopefully) received a while back:

* the Kramp-Beasley wedding will begin with a "couple's shower" at the Best Western Carlinville Inn on Thursday at 8 p.m. Some of us know what "couple's shower" means better than others. The groom is personally terrified of what this term could mean.
* Friday morning will deal in some classic gender division: men inclined toward frustration in beautiful landscapes will leave the Best Western at 9:30 a.m. to play in the Mad Squirrel Invitational golf tournament. Women and less manly men (including the groom) will enter a berserker frenzy of colorful decoration.
* Friday from 3:30-5 p.m. we will hold a wedding rehearsal in the Clegg Chapel on the Blackburn campus. (You should already know about this if your presence will be required.)
* Friday night at 6 p.m. there will be a rehearsal and out-of-town-guest dinner at the Beasley residence on Shipman Road. This will not, repeat, will not go past midnight, so don't even try.
* The wedding proper will begin with a dinner at 6 p.m. at the Demuzio Dining Room at Blackburn College, which is near the campus's west entrance, just down the hill behind the Clegg Chapel. Guests are invited to arrive at 5:45 or thereabouts to get their bearings before the chaos begins.
* After dinner, between 7:30 and 8 p.m., the wedding party will move up the hill to the chapel for the wedding ceremony.
* After the wedding ceremony, we will move to the Beasley property (16194 Shipman Rd., Carlinville, IL 62626) for a reception that will include drinks, dancing, tents, and a cake that might well be heavier than you'd think.

With all that said (again), we refuse to retype directions to all these places. If you're absolutely incapable of bringing the invitation with you or using Internet map services, consider getting the info tattooed in a clearly visible area. In fact, this might be another prize we'll have to give: best wedding-related tattoo. And yes, tattoos received during the wedding itself will be eligible.

Hot Dogs!

Hot Dogs! Well, we can't promise we'll feed you any, but we can share with you that the cakemaker-friend is making the cake, and it will be all sorts of flavors--so many flavors that it will spring forth flowers, which will bud on your tongue and you'll be a windswept daffodil (Narcissistic as all get out) standing solo on the plains of the great Midwest! And other fellow daffodils will fall in, swaying to Styx or whatever it is we're playing on our stereo as fireworks--yes, smuggled from Missouri--explode overhead.

Ka-pow!

Carlinville's Shame

I had a painful realization yesterday while looking over a day calendar full of George Carlin's one-liner aphorisms: Mr. Carlin, who used to strike me as a fairly funny guy when I was 14, is in fact not funny at all. Each date contained an entry more groan-worthy than the last, and the nadir (beyond which I could read no more) was reached on November 16th: "In the future there will not be any doctors or medicines and people will be in pain all of the time." I couldn't tell where the bad comedy ended and the creepy, gnomic prophecy began. Or maybe it's one of those not-funny-so-it's-funny Andy Kauffman things. Anyway, when you arrive for the wedding, do know that the town of Carlinville has no affiliation whatsoever with this bitter hack of a funnyman, and do avoid the day calendar if you want to continue holding George--the man responsible for shepherding Bill and Ted through their time-traveling, mind you--in high, or even middling, esteem.

Mass Transits

I'm not sure if this is going to work, but I just created a gmail account that might work as our bulletin board for carpooling and getting people to and from St. Louis airport. The address is whatmemarry@gmail.com and the password is "carlinville", and my hope is that those of you who are planning to travel around the time of the wedding will send a message with a little travel info and contact info. Then you can go to gmail.com, log in using the above name and password, and see if anyone is on your wavelength yet. (Alternately, you can creep into the site, mess everything up, and ruin it for everyone. That'll teach me to be so trusting!) Also consider posting a note if you'd be willing to serve as a shuttle driver to or from the airport within a particular time frame -- I'm sure your passengers would cover the cost of gas, and it would be tremendously helpful.

(If your car is already full, this obviously doesn't apply to you. You can still let everyone know what your plans are, but I can't promise anyone will give a flying fax machine.)

Who's in Krampsley Kamp?

Hear ye, hear ye!
Friends, Family, Countrymen and women,

It's eleven days till we celebrate with all of you, though please feel free to begin celebrating! We certainly have... We've been celebrating thus far by affixing ribbons here and there to candleholders, by streaming streamers in your name, and by getting waterlogged in the lake and sunbaked by the sun... Rest assured, the zinnias are growing, just as our excitement is.

For those of you travelers who have been lethargic in your excitement, please note that Best Western rooms are limited. But don't be discouraged: additional hotels and motels in Carlinville do exist. Try the Sleeping Inn Motel at 217.854.2274 or the Carlinvilla at 217-854-3201. And remember, if you'd like a pickup from the airport or are looking to camp, we need a phone call sooner than later.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's postings, which will elaborate upon don't miss sites to see and things to do in Carlinville (named for standup comic George Carlin who brewed his best expletives here).

Up, Up, and Away

Tomorrow we go cloud-level and beyond, all the way to Chicago, and we're looking forward very much to being up to our elbows in last-minute wedding planning. (Did that sound sarcastic? It shouldn't have. We are genuinely excited for every bit of frazzlement and frenzy the next twenty days have to offer us.) If you come looking for us in California, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Our cell phone numbers are 209.217.7230 (SK) and 217.710.7304 (LB) if you need to reach us for whatever reason.

One thing that we're mulling over but haven't resolved yet involves arrangements for getting people to and from St. Louis airport: given the number of people who are going to be flying in between Thursday and Saturday, it makes sense to try to consolidate carloads and minimize the amount of bu$ine$$ we send Hertz's way. You're of course welcome to rent as many Chevy Malibus as you want, but for those travelers who are planning to camp at the lake or who don't expect to drive much, it would be nice if they could be saved the hassle and expense. We're also trying to figure out how we could run a minivan shuttle out to the airport to bring people back to Carlinville, but that idea has to be explored by people who are actually in the Carlinville area (like us as of 6/24). Anyway, we're probably just going to use the comments field of a future blog posting here as a kind of makeshift bulletin board, but if anyone has a better (and technologically simple) way of organizing this, we are desperately open to suggestions.

A couple of other things: you've probably heard about the heat wave currently hitting the Midwest. Our motto as of today is READY TO GET SWEATY LIKE A PLATE OF HOT SPAGHETTI. Also, Target's laser gun apparently only scanned one bag of garlic-parmesan potato chips, so someone out there is out of luck (that someone being the groom).

It's a bird, it's a plane... Yep, it's a plane. Definitely.

Fireflies, Take Note!

About the camping...
We'd really like RSVPs by phone or email from those bodies wishing to camp out at the lake (where the reception is taking place)...


Heads up:
* we can't offer hot showers the following morning... a porta potty and the woods are you toilette; the lake, your bath.
* there will be breakfasting as a post-party clan somewhere in town on Sunday
* while there is a rowboat and fishing gear and perhaps apaddleboat at your disposal, and while we all love to swim and very much advocate the use of our lake, please keep in mind that the rules of the lake are: to always swim with a friend; to use a lifebelt if you do not swim with confidence; and not to swim or boat after drinking alcohol.

When exactly does the party begin?

Hey, folks,

Because there are a number of people coming from out of town, we're having a BBQ on Friday evening at the Beasley hacienda. This was not advertised in the invitation, so we do ask that you RSVP by phone if you plan to join us for soda pop, swimming, and meeting Beasley and Kramp people.

BYOMI: Bring Your Own Musical Instrument(s), and we'll jam on the patio.

Campy for Camping

Don't forget your citronella, your sparkling can of heat repellent.


Find out more about Beaver Dam State Park (not too far down the road from the Beasley house) at:
http://www.roadcamping.com/rv/Illinois/Plainview/property_4194/rv_parks_campgrounds.html


We can help with some camping matchmaking for those of you who would like to have a free camping site on Saturday night post-party, and for those of you who need to borrow sleeping bags, tents, or blankets, etc. Let us know by June 15th what you need so that we can plan this and make sure you're well taken care of.

Trophy Hunting at Target

So after all our internal debate about whether or not to register, we finally agreed to put a few "necessities" on a list at Target. Blunt knives, motheaten bedsheets -- one can see why replacement items might be appealing. It all made so much sense going in. The reality of registration didn't quite match up with our simple-living vision, though. I don't know what happened, exactly; a bar code laser gun can do strange things to a man. Oh yeah, and to a woman as well. Anyway, it wasn't pretty. You can see the results (now revised) for yourself if you want to play judge. We are, however, completely serious about the garlic parmesan potato chips, and if we don't get those ten half-gallons of soymilk covered by the Wednesday before the wedding, it's off.

Color Guard

Just so you know: we ain't kidding about the bright color thing. The brighter the better. It's entirely possible that there will be a multi-million-dollar prize for the brightest ensemble, and even if you don't win you'll probably still feel some mild euphoric effects from all that color. Also, for those of you who worry about feeling dorky, have you no faith in your fellow attendees? Do you think we are the type of couple who would invite a bunch of no-fun scumbums to our nuptials? Heck no! Everyone else will surely look at least twice as wild as you will.

(Now prove us wrong on that last point.)

(And did I say multi-million? Pardon my typo; it should read multi-billion.)

Register, Schmegister!

One thing worth mentioning right off the bat is that we have changed our collective mind and are registering at Target instead of at Bed Bath & Beyond. In fact, we're heading over to Target this very evening to pick out some things we like. We're still hoping that many of you will find affordable musical instruments to send our way, or will make a donation to our honeymoon fund (a trip to New Zealand would be worth many kitchen gadgets), or will instead bring us a perfect or peculiar gift you discover at random and that that all but shouts "Keezeley! Bramp!" right in your face. We understand that such inspiration doesn't always come when called, though, so Target could be a back-up plan. Above all else, remember that you have a year to do this, and even then we are hardly going to show up on your front stoops to work a mafia wedding-gift-shakedown on you. We're really hoping any gifts we receive are emblems of lighthearted fun and unadulterated affection. There's already enough guilt and obligation in the world.

A last reminder to those of you who are crossing great distances to attend our wedding: You are absolutely exempted from any sort of gift giving. Your presence is all we ask. We can't wait to see you all.

Welcome to Our Wedding Blog (a.k.a Why Does "Wedlock" Rhyme With "Headlock"?)

I thought a blog might be a fairly painless way to transmit information to the large number of people interested in the upcoming Beasley-Kramp wedding caucus. While we aren't able to send shrieking e-mailed alerts notifying you whenever we publish something (something sure to be of incredible, universe-tilting importance, I should add), if it crosses your mind to check in here every so often between now and the fateful events of 7/7/07 please do so. There may occasionally be helpful advice or modifications to earlier plans. We'll do our best to make it a painless experience for all involved.