Reading Crazy Love And Still Being In Crazy Love After One Month Of Marriage

There are a couple of quick things that I wanted to talk about today in this super-awesome blog of ours (at least we think so). One thing that I want to give you all a little information about is the fact that Stephanie and I have joined a small group Bible study-esque type of group with some of our friends that we have met from our church. The group consists 3 other married couples and one of the couples is made up of the super blogging duo Matt and Christen Buman who I talked about over here in this post after we had our first dinner date with them. This is the first meet-up-and-have-a-Bible-study-and-talk-about-God type of thing that I have ever done before and after having just 2 meetings I feel like I’m getting a ton out of the experience.

One of the things that we’re doing that’s pretty cool is we’re all reading a book called Crazy Love together and playing along a DVD that the author, Francis Chan, put together in addition to writing the book. It’s a great way to read/interact through the book and we’re only through chapter 2, but I can already tell that the group, the DVD and the book are all going to spark plenty of interesting conversations around our faith and beliefs, which I guess is the point. Not all of the conversations are easy ones either, but the great thing is that we’re all in this group and this learning experience together, so there’s nothing that’s really considered off limits. I would say that it’s a situation that is pretty rare and hard to find these days, or at least it has for me. I’ll be sure to post some updates of what all Stephanie and I learn and experience in this small group as we move along, so this probably won’t be the last time that you’ll hear about it.

Besides announcing our involvement with the small group, I also wanted to let everyone out there know that Stephanie and I have officially been married for one full month and we are still as madly in love with each other as ever. It’s crazy to think that it’s been over 30 days since we met at the alter and had the best day of our lives together (and, of course, had one of the craziest receptions that anyone who attended has ever seen). So, tonight when I got home from work we had dinner together (stuffed peppers), celebrated our first month as husband and wife and made sure to let each other know how much we still are ridiculously in love. What a great night and what an awesome month. Here’s to many, many more of these to look forward to.

yeah, that was a pretty awesome day…

A sweet shout-out from the Anti-Bride for our colorful wedding awesomeness

Check out the super sweet shout-out that our fellow SF superstar Carolyn Gerin posted about me and Stephanie’s wedding awesomeness over here on the Anti-Bride blog.

Can you feel the love? We sure can.

Thanks for an AMAZING wedding and we’re off to Mexico!

It’s getting late, I’ve packed and repacked after just getting back to San Francisco a couple of hours ago and I’m about to pass out at the keyboard. But, before I officially crashed, I had to say one more HUGE thanks to everyone who had anything to do with our wedding because it was the best day of both Stephanie’s and my life and without all of you it wouldn’t have been able to happen.

Thanks again for everything and we’re headed off to Mexico (Riviera Maya) for a week of honeymoon awesomeness in about 4 hours, so we’ll see you back online soon! We posted a video below to give you a quick update on what’s going on.

Frank tries to eat an RSVP

I’m not really sure if you think that these videos are quite as entertaining as I do, but I’m going to continue to post them as frequently as I possibly can. I’m not sure if most dogs are like this and Frank is the first dog that I’ve ever owned, but I swear that he does something hilarious every single day (if not more). One thing that I have learned pretty quickly is that Frank loves to chew on stuff. He’s not too destructive when it comes to chewing things and most of what he ends up chewing on isn’t anything of real value (which is a good thing), but man, he chews and chews and chews.

Here is a list of some of Frank’s favorite things to chew on (in no particular order):

• My shoes (he will chew on them even if they’re on the floor for just a couple of seconds)
• The frilly things on the end of blankets
• Flaps on cardboard boxes (we think that he actually swallows the cardboard after he chews it — weird)
• My fingers
• Stephanie’s hair
• Turkey wrappers from Trader Joe’s (one of his favorites)
• Apple cores (he usually ends up eating the whole thing)
• The armrests on my chair at work
• His own paws (very odd)
• His toys (if we’re lucky)

So, with all of that being said, I guess that I should add a new one to this list — RSVP cards, which he tries to chew on until I eventually help him get a good grip on it (that’s what dad’s are for, right?). Check out the video below and if your dog chews up stuff, feel free to let me know what it prefers by leaving us a comment.

It feels like Christmas (the wedding gifts start to show up)

Getting married and putting together a wedding isn’t easy, it’s a lot more work than you would think — especially when you’re doing from about 3,000 miles away. But, as we move closer and closer to the wedding date (only 23 more days!) I think that Stephanie and I are both starting to see a lot of the work finally pay off in a few different ways. One of the first ways is that we are both getting more and more excited as the RSVPs continue to roll in. We had about 12 people RSVP yesterday alone (the Bridezilla RSVP video seemed to get more people sending them in…) and just imagining all of these amazing peope in one place, all at the same time literally gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. Honestly it makes me a little nervous knowing that everyone is flying in and what-not just for our wedding, but hey — it’s going to be an amazing time, so I know it will definitely be worth it for everyone.

So, even though seeing the RSVPs coming in is pretty exciting, it isn’t even in the same ballpark as the awesomeness of seeing our wedding gifts starting to show up. Each day we come home and go check out our lobby like little, giddy kids on Christmas morning who are going to see if there are any new presents under the tree. Here the last few days we have seen a few new wedding gifts come in from our registries that we set up at Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond and honestly, we can’t get enough of it. I think that one thing that this wedding has really shown us both us how amazingly blessed we are to have such amazing friends and family who really care a lot about us. Seeing the notes, emails and gifts come in have really reinforced this to us and if you’re reading this right now and have sent us a gift (or are planning to), we want to personally thank you for being so freakin’ amazing that it hurts.

Just to show how happy getting these gifts and letters make us, we decided to take a picture and show you. As you can see, Frank and Stephanie are very happy that my uncle Fred and aunt Bestsy got us a sweet, new KitchenAid mixer. I’m not even sure what the thing can be used for honestly, but Stephanie was practically doing back flips when she realized what was in the FedEx box.

Do they look excited, or what??? (Frank was a little confused)

You guys rock, thanks for reading and only 23 more days until the BIG day!

Why we decided to write a wedding invitation poem and a couple of good responses

On July 6th I emailed over a poem to Holly Gauper, our amazing wedding invitation designer (and soon-to-be photographer), that Stephanie and I wrote together after we decided that we weren’t going to go the tradition route of having some type of formal greeting writen on our invitations. Now, I’m not saying that going the traditional route is a terrible idea and should never be done, but for some reason it just made us feel all icky inside when we thought anout sending out something that was so freakin’ boring. If you’re not exactly sure what I’m talking about when I say ‘traditional greeting’ on our wedding invitations, I’ll give you a quick example:

Because you have shared in
our lives by your friendship and love we,
Karrie Ester Bryant
and
Matthew Edward Mergesen
together with our parents
invite you to share the beginning of our new life
together when we exchange marriage
vows on Friday, the ninth of May
two thousand fourteen
at half after four o’clock
The Hall of Casa Monica
Four North Bend Avenue
St. Augustine, Florida

Ummm, yeah, like I said — not so much for us. We wanted something that reflected out personalities and our love for being creative, so we decided to move more towards the originally-written and slightly humorous poem direction. Basically all Stephanie and I did was sit down on the couch with my laptop for about 45 minutes and proceeded to throw out randomly rhyming verses that we thought might be a good idea to send out to the people we love most in the entire world. I mean, no pressure or anything, right? One of the toughest things when we were writing it was maintaining a balance between being informative, loving and funny, which I must admit wasn’t real easy. You need to remember that this isn’t just going out to our friends, it’s going out to my family, coaches, bosses and gradmas — yes, grandmas. Eventually we came up with a version that we were happy with and we hope you agree that it screams Hup and Steph without going over the top.

Here’s the poem that we ended up putting on the invitations:

If you’re reading this invitation, then there’s something you should know
you’re officially invited to our wedding (and we truly hope you’ll show)

We’ve spent tons of money putting it together, our wedding will be an amazing time,
Actually we’re completely lying, it was bought on our parent’s dime

Whether you’re a part of our family, a coach, a co-worker or friend
you’ve meant a lot to both of us and we request that you attend

But if for some reason you can’t make it, we’ll understand, I guess,
our address is on the back of this invitation (you can ship our gifts UPS)

The big day is August 29th, the year two thousand and nine,
At Irvington Presbyterian Church, 5:30 is the time

It’s going to be great when we exchange our vows, but have no misconception
The real fun will be at the Rathskellar where we’ll kick off our sweet reception

We’re excited to celebrate our love on this day and we hope you’re excited, too,
It’s the beginning of our lives together and we want it to begin with you.

When we sent this out on our invites we expected to get a decent reaction from everyone, which we have, but a couple of people really took it to the next level by RSVP’ing back with a poem that they made up, too. I thought that this was super cool and creative and of course I get so excited anytime I can spark someone else’s creativity, so these pretty much made my month.

The first RSVP poem that was sent back was from my homeboy Mike Schwarz who went to college with me:

I went to the mailbox and found your invite,
You know I wouldn’t miss your big wedding night

The pictures are great, I see a pretty blonde girl,
But why is Ryan’s hair so long and have so many curls

You will have tons of fun and the champagne will pop,
I am so happy for Ryan, he didn’t marry his laptop

Better start packing, it’s only one month away,
You’ll have a blast being married, it’s fun everyday

The reception will be awesome, will dinner be casserole?,
Put me down for 2, I’ll bring my wife, cuz that’s how I roll!!!!!!!

See you soon!

Mike and Heather Schwarz

Pretty sweet, huh? I love it!

The second RSVP poem came from Stephanie’s stepmom, Shannon. Check it out:

If you re reading this note, there’s something you should know… you need to help me find some people to decorate who will actually show.

I’ve spent some money putting this together and we will decorate on time…  when it’s all done, it will look fine!

If you want to choose family, co workers or friends…. it doesn’t really matter as long as it gets done in the end.

If for some reason people don’t show, I know you will not understand… so pick some good ones who will stick to the plan.

The decor day is august 29th.  the year 2009… at the rathskellar, 9:45am is the time.

It’s going to go easy, I will have a detailed plan… I will need about 10 people, both women and man.

I am excited to decorate, and I hope you get excited when its up, because I will get excited to see you become Mrs. Hup.

Love ya chickadee!

-me.

As you can tell, Shannon has been our reception-planning princess and apparently she needs help decorating the morning of our wedding so that The Rathskellar can look amazing. If any of you that are reading this would happen to be available at 9:45am on Saturday, August 29th and would like to help her out (she has it all planned out), just drop us a comment below and we’ll get you connected up with her.

Now, as far as getting anymore RSVP poems back, I wonder if anyone else will whip one up?

The RSVP’s

Look at us!  It’s officially the 2nd day of our wedding month, and we’ve posted two times, consecutively.  I think we’re on a roll!

Design courtesy of Holly Gauper www.gauperphoto.com

Above is an image of our fabulous RSVP’s that my wonderful friend and wedding photographer, Holly Gauper designed.  We sent out the invitations just a week and a half ago, and already the responses are flooding in.  I think giving the guests the option of e-mailing us their RSVP was a great idea and can potentially save the guests some time and 43 cents ;)  As of today we have a total of 37 “Yes!” RSVP’s.   Not a bad start if you ask me.

So, Ryan and I thought we’d take some time to give you an update of what planning a wedding is really like.  The nitty gritty, if you will of the entire process can sometimes prove to be quite a challenge.  Despite the stress that a situation like this can put on a couple, I think we’re both handling it just fine, don’t you?  You can watch the video below or over here on YouTube

It’s officially our wedding month (and yes, we’ve been blog lazy)

I’m not sure if you’ve ever started  blog or not, but I have to admit — it’s a lot harder than you think it would be. I mean, it’s not physically or mentally hard to actually sit here and knock out a few words here and there, but for some reason just keeping up the habit of making sure that either Stephanie or I post something here isn’t real easy. Also, coming up with things to write about isn’t the problem, either as we probably do as much stuff as anyone that I know and for some reason we end up with more weird stories than anyone I’ve ever met. Oh, and don’t even get me started with Frank, I mean he gives us both enough things to talk about to keep this blog filled with new posts every single day.

I guess with these facts in mind and considering that both Stephanie and I are fully capable of posting something here at least a few times a week, the only thing that I can say for us is that we’ve just been a little blog lazy. Now, this is a pretty sad thing considering that 1. we’re not lazy people (I mean Stephanie DID run a marathon) and 2. we know that our friends and family love to read what we’ve been up to over here on the West Coast, so we know that we have an audience (at least a few people, at least). So, with all of this in mind and considering that we both hate to be considered lazy (and the fact that we’re getting so close to our wedding) we have decided to dedicate ourselves to posting at least one thing a day from here on out. Both of us won’t be posting something new every day, but one of us will get something up (even if it’s just a cute picture of Frank standing on paper towels). If you can, please hold us to this as we do honestly love updating this blog and for some reason our lives feel much better when we know that we’re sharing them with all of you.

That’s all I’ve got for you right now, but be ready for some serious wedding updates and what-not coming soon. Although we openly admit that we’ve been blog lazy here lately we want to let you know that we’re going to do all that we can to make it up to all of you (if you even cared in the first place). Oh, and as always, it could be much worse — I mean, we could be as lazy as the guy in the picture below.

Someone needs a haircut…what should Hup do with all of his shag?

I wanted to post a quick shot of what my hair is looking like. The last time that I cut it was around 5 months ago in February right before we got our awesome engagement photos taken by our friend Henry Sun. I’m not sure when I’m going to cut it, but before I do I’d like to have a little fun with it. I was thinking that I could potentially chop it into a mullet or a mohawk or maybe both?

So, what should I do with all of this shag?

If you have a suggestion for what I should do with it, feel free to leave it in the comments and who knows, maybe I’ll rock your suggested style for a while. I mean, I could literally wear monkey on my head that plays the harmonica and no one in San Francisco would even blink an eye. Maybe that’s why I love living here so much?

Hup and Steph might get married on the Today Show: What should we do for the 1-minute video?

One of my homies that I’ve met over the interwebs is a guy named Chris (twitter: @CarMaxChris) who runs all of the social media initiatives for CarMax. We met and started chatting over a year ago when he commented on one of our posts that talked about me trying to sell Stephanie’s car to CarMax once we realized we were headed out West to live the California life. Well, I didn’t end up selling her car to CarMax, but Chris and I never stopped chatting and keeping up with each other as time has gone on.

I tell you all of this because just yesterday Chris sent me over a Tweet that asked me if Stephanie and I were going to enter the contest to get married on the Today Show, which started accepting applictions on April 15th. After he sent it over I went over and took a look at the application process and after researching it a bit I might just have to say that Stephanie and I would be PERFECT for this contest and if we actually got on there we would take the top prize for sure!

Stephanie has talked about this contest before, but now that I’ve actually taken a look at it we’ve decided to give it our best shot and see what the Today Show thinks about your favorite soon-to-be-married couple (that’s us). The application is a little long, but it should be easy to fill out. However, there is one thing that we’ve been going back and forth on and that’s the 1-minute video that we could need to send in with our application. Here’s what they say we need to send in:

Read the application for full requirements and to find out if you’re eligible to be married on TODAY. Then fill out your application, print it, attach a couple photo, along with a one minute  (1:00) video of why you should be chosen and mail it to us. If you think you’re cut out to handle the competition, submit your application no later than May 15, 2009.

Not a whole lot of time to say something that will catch their attention, but we’re hoping to put together some ideas that will be a little, ummm different that will help us stand out from the rest of the couples. If you have any ideas of what we should include in the short 60 seconds that we’re alotted, please leave them in the comments below. We’ll keep you updated on our progress and get ready to vote for us soon — I know that we can win this thing!

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