Category Archives: occasions

Old-Timey Tuesday: A little older, a little kookier

January 3, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia/January 4, 2013, New York, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although slightly belated, this post had to happen once I came across the picture on the left earlier tonight. That was taken at Abby‘s 21st birthday shindig at her parents’ house lo those many years ago. At right, we have a picture taken roughly three weeks ago up in New York at Abby’s 30th birthday bash. What a difference nine years makes, huh? (A camera flash that doesn’t wash us out helps too.)

BONUS: Check out what Abby instagrammed in honor of our 25 years together:

Old-Timey Tuesday: before and after

Elks Lodge, Johnson City, Tennessee, September 1, 1972

Colonial Heights, Kingsport, Tennessee, September 2, 1972

Dad sneaked me a few slides to have scanned in the run up to his and mom’s anniversary — these are some of my favorites from the festivities. Perfection.

It was 40 years ago today…

…that my parents got married! If you’ve been following along for a while, you might recall that they were debate partners and high school sweethearts. Here’s their prom picture from 1966, my mom’s senior year, to jog your memory:

This weekend my siblings and I threw them an anniversary party, which you’ll read more about in coming days. In preparation for the event I spent a lot of time digging through the basement, scanning photos and hunting for video, and I managed to turn up a reel of super 8 film that my mom’s uncle shot on the day of their wedding. I had it converted, then edited it down (read: removed the really, really dark parts) and made a little movie to show at the party. It’s a bit fuzzy, but it’s a fun watch — especially if you know my family. My mom has, apparently, always been a total ham. Enjoy!

Laura & Jim, September 2, 1972 from Kathleen Poe Ross on Vimeo.

Year Two

Now that it’s been a month since our second anniversary, I should probably post about it, huh? Last year’s celebration was a multi-day hit-and-miss affair; this year we decided to keep things low-key (and relatively inexpensive), particularly since it fell on a school night, so to speak.

Because Jon is forever a little kid when it comes to presents, the day started out with exchanging gifts. It’s possible I was still in bed when Jon brought me mine. The traditional gift for your second anniversary is something cotton; I love the challenge of sticking to a theme. Jon gave me a band t-shirt, and I gave him seersucker pants and a gift card toward a custom dress shirt. (I later noted that we each got the other their favorite form of cotton clothing. Good job us!) I also got Jon this awesome card: (He studied saxophone in college and now plays for the dog on occasion.)

That night after work, we got fancied up and had a lovely dinner at Empire State South. They didn’t have an appetizer I had seen and lusted after on the online menu and our waiter was kind of pretentious and inattentive, but the food was delicious and the meal didn’t totally break the bank; we counted it as a win. Besides, any meal that ends with phatty cakes is bound to be a triumph.

Pleasantly full, we left and drove around the block to the W Midtown, where we had lodged and afterpartied the night of our wedding, for a nightcap. As we entered the lobby, the doorman said, “Welcome back!” How did he know?

We ordered drinks in the lounge area then went in search of the secret cave beneath the staircase where we and our friends had spent a couple of hours once we left the clubby bar. I forget now who discovered it, but we were apparently quite lucky to have landed it that night, I was recently told; normally it’s a first-come-first-serve battle for those in the know. It was somewhat less lively with just the two of us, but it was cool to be back in that space and confirm that it was not merely a figment of our collective imagination.

Once we finished our drinks and marveled at how frickin’ weird W hotels are, we headed toward home, stopping on a whim at our friendly neighborhood Kroger to buy some scratch-off lotto tickets. None of the $10 worth of tickets we bought was a winner, alas. I’m gonna start playing our lucky/magic/sentimental numbers in the real lottery and see where that gets me…

But I digress. It’s hard to believe our amazing wedding was two years ago already, and that we’re, like, old married people. I was 26 when we got married! Now I’m almost 29!

Where does the time go? I have no idea, but I’m glad I get to spend most of mine with this guy.

Old-Timey Tuesday: Anniversary edition

Atlanta, Georgia, May 22, 2010

Today marks two years since we got hitched. Two years! Noots! In honor of this momentous occasion, I borrowed an idea from Matt Miller of Our Labor of Love and made a video of all 600+ Smilebooth photos compressed into about three minutes. It’s kinda super awesome. Please enjoy my hilarious friends and family:

all photos copyright Our Labor of Love

Old-Timey Tuesday: How do I look?

Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y., May 13, 2007

Right around this time five years ago, we were “graduating” with our master’s degrees. (That’s in quotation marks because we still had about eight daunting weeks of work ahead of us in the form of writing and workshopping our capstone stories.) This photo, post-walk, was my way of determining whether my cap had left unsightly lines on my forehead, because Jon probably told me I looked totally normal and I didn’t believe him.

Old-Timey Tuesday: Junior PDC

Atlanta, Georgia, December 1999

Since I posted about PDC just the other day, I thought it would be appropriate to share a shot or two from our Junior year pre-dance photo session. I really do think things were slightly less crazy around these affairs back then, as I mentioned in my other post. This wasn’t a party, it was us getting together 30 minutes before the dance to take pictures and get in the right cars. Just look at that photo: three of us are kneeling on the floor, and NOBODY is working the sorority arm. How young and innocent we were! It’s worth noting as well that I only have a total of eight photos from this. Oh, the days before digital. I also find it refreshing that there’s a range of style and formality represened

I considered breaking out the super old-school Freshman PDC pictures today, but upon seeing them decided they were too unfortunate to be posted online. (Friends, you are welcome. Though I will say that Abby looked pretty hot that year. Well done!) All you need to know about that occasion is that I was wearing a long, bordeaux-colored burnout velvet dress (which I still have — who’s gonna throw a fancy ’90s party I can wear it to?), had braces and a horrible updo and was a good six inches taller than my date. (And I was not tall.) Awkward city!

I digress. In these pictures we were juniors and at this point knew generally how to dress and conduct ourselves in such situations. This was probably the best year of all the PDCs because I took Winston, then as now one of my best buds:

In fact, I think we all took good friends as dates. Always a good strategy.

Abby (above right) and I are both rocking Betsey Johnson dresses that we had bought in, like, August, because we wanted an excuse to get them. I actually wore the hell out of that dress for years — I think it finally retired to goodwill in a recent closet cleaning, but damn did I love that thing.

Intro to Etiquette

At left is another gem of yesteryear that I rediscovered at mom and dad’s house last weekend: a social etiquette primer from my freshman year of high school. The Pink Book, as it was called, was neatly tucked away in a desk drawer with high school honors day certificates and a Meyers-Briggs test I took in 1999 (ENFJ, if you’re wondering). I may be a packrat, but at least I’m orderly about it.

This booklet was meant to introduce us young ladies to the art of responding to invitations, specifically invitations to annual dances known as PDC — Pre-Debutante Cotillion. Yes, there are still debutantes. Yes, some of them are normal people. Most of us just wanted to go to a fancy date party!

Miss Liz Clement-Riker, an old battleaxe of the local Junior League (may she rest in peace), distributed and walked girls through the Pink Books at a gathering at the Driving Club called a Coke Party (Ha!). As in, we all got together and drank Cokes and listened to the rules of how to accept or decline and invitation. To wit:

Watch out for homophones, ladies! And be sure you note that the invitation was gracious and kind rather than giving yourself that credit when you respond for the Spring Dance. Otherwise you may not be invited back for the Christmas Dance, the Holley [sic?] Ball or the Mistletoe Buffet. Of course, please disregard any grammatical errors that may be found in the Pink Book. (There are plenty.)

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Postscript: When I googled “pre-debutante cotillion Atlanta,” I learned that indeed they still have Coke Parties and a Pink Book with the same drawing on the cover! I also found a 2008 blog post by a Danish exchange student attending my high school that attempts to explain the PDC phenomenon to her readers back home; her account is pretty spot-on. It probably sounds just as odd to many of you as it surely did to the Europeans. Those of you who have experienced PDC or will likely be as amused as I was to read about it from her point of view. I don’t think the whole affair was quite so thoroughly noots back in the day, at least among my crowd… but I guess it’s all relative.

Old-Timey Tuesday: More punkins!

Dawsonville, Georgia, October 27, 2007

For our first dating anniversary back in 2007, Jon and I headed up to North Georgia for some autumnal adventures. We went hiking in Tallulah Gorge state park and had a celebratory dinner at the Dillard House, but before all that we went to Uncle Shuck’s Pumpkin Patch & Corn Maze near the outlet mall in Dawsonville. We’ve been back to Uncle Shuck’s every year since then (except last year — oops). This is my favorite picture from the whole corn maze collection. Is it really necessary to tell people this? Please, don’t kick the pumpkins.

Old-Timey Tuesday: Dawson’s & Bud Light

3017 Allison Hall, Evanston, Illinois, October 2, 2002

Just about nine years ago, the final season of Dawson’s Creek kicked off on the WB. Having grown up with the kids of Capeside — they were freshmen when we were freshmen… then maybe the timing got a little wonky — many of us were quite attached to the show, so my roommates and I hosted a season premiere watch party in our spacious triple. Above, the hostesses (with the mostess).

We ordered Papa John’s for dinner to provide a good base for the evening’s main event: Dawson’s & Daiquiris. Alas, one cannot buy any mixers in Illinois under the age of 21 (or at least you couldn’t then. And hey, what if I wanted a Shirley Temple and not a tequila sunrise?), so in a last-minute scramble, Abby’s sorority mom/big-sister/whatever they were called at NU managed to scare up a case of Bud Light. I still have the rules of the drinking game we made up and taped to the television in my desk at home — I’ll scan those in later this week in case any of y’all want to bust out the DVDs for a wild night. I know for certain that when Dawson and Joey finally hit it (at long, long last), we were instructed to chug a beer. It was one of the most hilarious, outstanding nights I had in all of college. Do we know how to party or what?