Modern Wife

Tag: marriage

  • Stay Healthy While Planning Your Wedding

    Stay Healthy While Planning Your Wedding

    Photo by demesa.com

    This is a guest contribution from Mark Wilcox of WeddingIntro.com.

    Wedding planning is a must, but it is also stressful. If you are not careful you can make yourself sick planning your wedding. In this article, we will look at some ways you can stay healthy while planning your wedding.

    Eat Well

    The most important part of health is proper nutrition. Later we will talk about exercise, but you cannot outrun a bad diet. If you eat only junk, it is going to make you feel like junk.

    I have found through my own personal testing that two mechanisms work better for diet. First is to cut back on sugar and carbs, processed foods in particular. Second, consider fasting. This isn’t the same as starving yourself. Rather consider skipping a meal or two. This will seem weird at first but you will get used to it. This skipping of meals is called intermittent fasting. For more information let me point you to Dr. Jason Fung.

    Exercise To Feel Good

    The most important way exercise can help is by releasing endorphins to control stress. Taking a break from wedding planning and getting your body moving will actually help you think of more creative solutions.

    Consider looking into weight training. I’m a big fan of kettlebells. But you can choose your own program. You will not end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead, it will make you look toned and fit.

    Taylor Swift before the 1989 tour was a skinny girl with a cute face. After going through her training for that tour she toned her figure to the point where many people said she looked better than Victoria Secret models.

    Another example is Ronda Rousey. She is beautiful. So beautiful they put her on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in just body paint.

    Relax

    There is no point in trying to plan a perfect wedding, because you will never have perfection. Instead, focus on the experience. You are planning to only get married once. If you spend time only worrying about the perfect wedding you will miss out. Don’t compare your wedding to your friend’s wedding. Or a wedding you read about in The Knot. Or worse some wedding you see in a movie. Just relax. Pay attention. Spend time with the people you love.

    Weddings are magical ceremonies, and one of the best days of your life. So eat well, get exercise, and relax. I hope you have an amazing wedding!

  • Our Love Story

    My husband and I met in New York City during the blizzard of 1996. He lived in a haunted Victorian Mansion, with a billiards table in the basement, taxidermy birds, fox and a giant elk, antique furniture piled on top of each other, grand pianos, giant ceramic demons hanging from trees, and feathered Indians made of stone. It was so different from the conservative Chelsea apartment I shared with my aunt.

    One afternoon, he and I walked from the haunted Victorian Mansion to the Staten Island Ferry bound for Manhattan. He stopped me, and bent to pick up a black plastic Batman ring on the ground. Then, he took my left hand and slipped the toy on my ring finger. Realizing what he’d just done, we both became nervous. Just then a strong gust of river wind hit us. It blew for about half an hour’s worth of our walk. The Winding Wind, we called it later. The Lenape native tribe called the island, “Sandy Shores and Haunted Forests.” I like to think we were cosmically married by the island ghosts that afternoon.

    Eight months after we met, we got officially married on a mountaintop overlooking Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

    We lived in New York City for a couple of years, while visiting his family in Maine during the holidays and summer seasons. Here we are on the picture above, hiking up Mt. Washington in our familyNew Hampshire, the tallest peak on the Appalachian trail (8,000 or so feet elevation). It is also known to have the fastest wind speed ever recorded in history.

    After that summer, we headed West to California. Together my husband and I run our internet home business and continue pursuing various creative interests.

    After 8 years of being married, we decided to have our first child. We are very excited about becoming a family, although also happy that we have spent a great deal of time enjoying life as a married couple, before jumping into the new challenges and rewards of parenthood.

  • Marriage

    she was pretending to be a bird
    and i was letting her pretend.
    i lay down beside her and remained still,
    waiting to see how the bird would react
    to my stillness.
    i pretended i was lying under a single tree
    in an open field
    and imagined the hypnotic motion
    of leafy shadows moving in the warm sun.
    the bird lay curled to my flank
    and after a while she poked me
    with a finger (or a beak?)
    to see who or what i was.
    then she whispered this in my ear:
    "put your hand on your breast,
    and become a tree."
    i did not know how to do that
    but i did not question her
    and her whispered words moved me
    to put my hand on my breast.
    then my hand rose from my breast,
    and settled back down.
    it rose again and continued to rise
    and my curled body began to lengthen
    my legs began to straighten
    until i felt the floor beneath me.
    my torso was carried toward the ceiling (or the sky?)
    lifted by the power of the bird’s will.
    and as i felt the strength of a tree enter my body,
    and as i rose upwards
    she leaped onto my back
    and threw her arms around my neck
    and her weight was beautiful
    because for the rest of my life
    i knew i could support it.
    and she had helped me to be strong
    to be her home
    and in that moment,
    the breath of happiness moved through me
    so that i cried.
    and she untangled herself from my limbs
    and placed her warm lips on mine.
    and we kissed.

    Jack Rose