i'm sitting here avoiding work by looking up lawn game possibilities online. you know the classics: croquet, bocci, horseshoes. but there are others! more obscure/dangerous lawn games!

first, there's quoits. according to the united states quoiting association, there are about 87 different types of quoits, a game that apparently originated back in roman times when soldiers got bored and starting throwing their horseshoes (which were complete circles back then) around. at first, it was a distance game, like the discus. at some point the game got exported to britain, where someone had the bright idea of adding a peg to aim at, and quoiters never looked back. now there's regular quoits, distance quoits (played in scotland, where men are still real men), deck quoits (for playing in pubs. wanna guess which heavy drinking people from a country where the weather regularly prevents outdoor lawn games invented that one?), and rope quoits.

while i would love to get a lancaster county, amish made quoits game for the wedding (combining my american heritage with karl's british heritage), i can't see having wedding guests heaving 4 lb. steel rings around while trying to hold beverages and avoid hitting grandma. so i'm leaning toward rope quoits, which should limit head damage.

also, lawn darts. i was already mostly convinced that lawn darts was a bad idea, again because mixing alcohol and dangerous airborne objects doesn't seem like the recipe for a blood-free wedding. and then i came across dire warnings of the dangers (scroll to bottom) of lawn darts. and one man's courageous attempt to keep the game alive. and i kind of want to have lawn darts at the wedding now.

i know, i know, no one cares about other people's weddings.

02 June 2005 - 2:51 pm

i'm sure no one cares about the wedding plans. hell, i kinda wish *i* didn't have to care about the wedding plans (why was it we decided not to just go down to city hall again?). it's all just so *much*.

but, since this is my diary, and it seems like all i ever do these days is wedding planning* that's all i have to write about. so if there's gonna be new entries, they're probably going to have wedding stuff in them. you will just have to deal.

*what about that house you were painting, and that dissertation you were writing, you ask? ah, how i long for the days when we were complaining about all the housework to do. looking back, it seems like we has SO MUCH TIME. we've painted the dining room yellow, and started to hang red curtains (mostly to hide the prison bars that are de rigeur in our neighborhood. we don't actually need the privacy since the house next door is abandoned.) the dissertation is coming along, i think. i handed in 32 pages the other day, and am just now working on the comments. well, i will be when i'm done with this entry anyway. one section down, 4-5 more to go! not including refs, TOC, acknowledgements, appendices. sigh...

stuff that's done:

• dress: bought
• location and date: chosen. wedding will be august 19th at ridley creek state park. because it's pretty, has outside locations (scroll down for photo of the formal garden), and has an indoor location in case it rains. of course, lots of locations meet those requirements. the deciding factor for ridley creek? it only costs $175 to rent. boo-yah.
• caterer: hired. raise your hand if most of the weddings that you've been to have had sucky food. that's what i thought. you ALL have your hands up. the desire to have good food (if i have to eat one more dish of dried out chicken cordon bleu i will start bringing my own PB&J to weddings. DON'T TEST ME) and keep the costs to something resembling reason led us to Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que. Ribs and corn muffins, here we come!
• dancing: not so much. karl, he does not dance. he claims that british boys' hips just don't move that way. so we are having lawn games instead of dancing. ceremony, lawn games, then barbeque. instead of a first dance, we're having a first hit of the croquet ball.
• invitations: not finished, but i'm not worried. they're being done by a friend who is a graphic artist. they are going to be printed on translucent paper layered over a b&w photo of us, taken at the pma, where we got engaged.