All photos by author.

I’ve dated my boss and my professor, and fallen in love with a much older, Sensitive New Age Guy. But I’ve always stayed clear of married men, or any man already involved in a committed relationship.

The idea of getting involved in any kind of open relationship made my eyes roll. Polyamory? Feh. My sistas are my comrades, and I’ve never been down with the man-stealing profession.

And yet – you guessed it! – I did fall in love with a married man in an open relationship.

A Typical Situation in These Typical Times

Jason and I had worked together for three years in California, and I’d known him and his wife since 2003. There had never been any eye-gazing across the printer, accidental touches when he handed me a file, or post happy hour shenanigans. I thought him to be a sweet and gentle guy – definitely attractive, but very married.

Thanks to the magic of office gossip, I even knew Jason and his wife had an open marriage. But I’d met his son when he was only a month old, for chrissakes! Open marriage or not, no thank you.

Then he moved from California. Beyond a Facebook friend request, and a wall post here and there, we lost touch.

Then last September I went back east for an old friend’s wedding and I ran into Jason and his son on the street. They were lingering in front of a kids’ museum while his son finished a chocolate chip cookie.

He told me later he was “never in town” on the weekends, since he lived with his family a little way out of town.

I too wasn’t supposed to be on that street on that day at that time, but a lost parking stub had sent me back to the restaurant where I’d just eaten lunch with my friends.

It seemed like a real coincidence we met like that: had I left the restaurant when intended, I would have missed them; had they not stopped for a chocolate chip cookie after the museum, they would have missed me.

A few hours later, I got a Facebook message from him. We decided to meet after the wedding for a chance to catch up. Three hours after that, I started to realize what was about to happen.

A Sense of Safety

What was it about that point in my life that allowed my outlook on dating a married man to change? There were many factors. I was fed up with my inability to be open with men. I was done with averting my gaze when a guy looked at me. I was over not having had sex in a long, long time.

With him, it felt safe – as safe as having a one night stand with a married man could be. I knew him to be a good person. We enjoyed each other’s company and conversation. Finally, and probably most importantly, his wife had encouraged him to contact me after he told her about seeing me that day.

Afterward, as the week progressed, we emailed back and forth about our night together and learned it had been a positive one for both of us.

But that’s what it was – a night. I left for the West Coast the morning after, and didn’t know where I was going to land next. The Southeast was far, far away.

Until, of course, I found myself moving back to my home state. I didn’t tell him. It felt too weird, but of course he figured it out thanks to Facebook. Soon after, we decided to meet again.

Leaving aside the ups and downs of the ensuing months, this past January we found ourselves alone in my apartment with three days to ourselves. No work. No common acquaintances. No five-year-old son to distract us.

It was one of those weekends where you’re surprised to find you don’t want to leave the other person’s side, where going to the grocery store together is an adventure, where sipping red wine together at a Spanish restaurant makes you feel sexy, alive, and really, really grateful.

I was scared shitless. What were we going to do when we got tired of having sex?

Fall in love, apparently.

Photo by Sam_Butler

Brendan Behan once remarked that, “All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.” Maybe at one time that was true, but in our LinkedIn, twitter-happy, Facebook flauntin’ world, that’s just not the case anymore. I’m sure Mel Gibson and a certain bunch of “real housewives” in New Jersey would agree.

I’ve spent more than 15 years working in public relations, with clients ranging from alternative medicine practitioners to mainstream movie studios. Although the products are very different, the practice of promoting them is similar: find your audience, tell them about your product, hope for good reviews, and do some damage control when the reviews are not so great.

These same skills can be applied to promoting yourself in everyday life, to help you get a job, a date or a promotion.

Presenting yourself in the best possible light is a key skill that everyone should use to their advantage. Here are 10 ways to put PR skills to work for you.

1. Create your own press kit

Blogs, resumes (traditional and online), and social networking sites are all part of your personal press kit, and create a distinct impression of “who you are”. This is particularly important for freelancers, who are constantly trying to get work. Plus the ability to reach out to hundreds of people with a single tweet or Facebook post is a vast improvement over making calls to inquire about work.

When creating your press kit, double check your spelling and grammar and make sure your blog or website is easy to navigate and looks well organized. Websites like Fast Pitch, HARO, LinkedIn, Xing, and PRWeb can all be helpful for making contacts and promoting yourself amongst peers and potential employers.

Photo by Sympra

2. A good reputation is priceless

Google yourself regularly. The Internet is a big place with a long memory, and you may be surprised by what you find.

Potential employers or dates are likely to do it, so be prepared and do damage control ahead of time. You may not always be able to remove what’s online, but forewarned is forearmed.

If you regularly promote yourself online, it’s important to know what people are saying about you or your business. Even just one negative post from a customer can change how you are perceived.

One of my clients, a small B&B, fell victim to an unhappy traveler on Trip Advisor. Although they had excellent ratings, the disgruntled guest wrote an unflattering comment about her stay. The owners of the B&B were unable to remove or edit the post, but they were aware of it and could respond accordingly.

3. Use protection against social diseases

Millions of people have a Facebook profile and twitter account. Social networking sites are great for connecting with people, but if you use yours for professional purposes it’s best to keep them squeaky clean.

It’s probably best to keep your Facebook photos private so they can’t be seen if others tag you. Also consider creating a fan page or a separate blog for your business or freelance work, to help keep your professional and personal lives separate.

Photo by Yoppy

4. Learn to pitch properly

In the PR world, this involves talking about what you have to offer and why someone would want it.

Knowing all the little details about your client or product – and portraying it in the best possible light – is one of the main parts of the PR hack’s job.

Always promote your best qualities, and downplay your flaws or make them work for you.

5. Don’t be a deer in the headlights

The ability to respond to questions quickly and succinctly is an important life skill. Um’ing and er’ing through an answer doesn’t make you look like the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Avoid becoming tongue tied by listening carefully and staying focused on the conversation. If you’re daydreaming about your upcoming weekend at the beach, you’re probably going to miss something.

Also, knowing your facts well helps you feel more confident. Before you have a meeting, for example, review your notes on the project you’re working on and check on the status of all its components.

Photo by Don Hankins

I’ve tried Internet dating a few times. The experience is always amusing. I’m often ashamed to admit this; most people just don’t understand. Even I can’t help but judge myself. But when I’m already spending 30+ hours working at a computer per week, it just seems logical. Kinda like inter-office dating, but on the web.

Unfortunately, the local prospects are less than promising in my city, where girls outnumber boys 4:1. The men rarely set up accounts. Last year I met a great guy from PlentyofFish named Gerard. We went out for a beer and had a fine evening, but there was just no physical attraction. I gave him a second chance and we went out for more drinks, whereby he became so intoxicated on rum, he puked all over me. After that, I shut down my account.

But to research this article I created a new profile on PlentyOfFish and on several other sites, including OKCupid, and yes, SugarDaddie.com. (For the record, SugarDaddie.com was the only site where the majority of men had brains.)

The verdict? Some people just don’t have good online dating sense. Here’s how NOT to do it.

Don’t Be a Dull Danny

Photo by scragz

Have some freaking personality, both while chatting and sending private messages. If your profile says something like, “Hey, I’m a dude who likes to watch football,” and nothing more, how am I supposed to know if you’re worth my time?

Admittedly, sometimes the mega-weird personalities have the best profile. This one was a real treat:

I’m a 23 year old male that is in pretty good shape. I’m not much for conversation and I’ll probably never want to go out with or marry you. I have no diseases, I’m not a drug user, smoker, or drinker. I’m a rationalist and therefore an atheist. I’m horrible at most things.

The same goes when you strike up a chat with someone. Introduce some color into my dreary world, please. Don’t tell me what you had for supper, tell me about the time you traveled throughout Russia and were hijacked by an angry mob. If your life isn’t that interesting, tell me what you’d like to do.

The author and her beau, overlooking the view of the mountains.

Our yellow jeep wound along a perilous stretch of road alongside a cliff in Maui. I’d insisted on taking us to see a series of natural pools that lead to the ocean. My boyfriend thought this idea was ridiculous. Already, we couldn’t find the opening to the trail, and our friends were expecting us back in time for dinner. We started arguing.

Suddenly, he pulled over by slamming the brakes. I found myself looking directly in his eyes.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. He wasn’t talking about our plans for the day.

The Way We Were

For a long time, I didn’t know what to call my relationship. My boyfriend visited me in Miami. I spent the summer with him in New York. We met in the Dominican Republic, then later in Maui.

It wasn’t always this crazy.

We occupied the same world for some time, graduated college together, built a life together in New York. Our days filled happily with summer concerts, new restaurant openings, and lazy afternoons drinking wine on the fire escape.

But while he thrived in his creative work atmosphere, my life felt more and more like an endless droning desire for 5 PM Friday. As I found more freelance writing work, I dreamed of quitting my job altogether.

When I finally found the courage to make my break, I decided it made more sense for me to base my life in Miami for at least six months a year. My boyfriend was shocked. His business grounded him in New York for the most part, and he was happy with his life. I tried to assure him — as well as myself — with possible plans. I would come stay with him every few months; we could meet up in different places all over the world. It could work.

The author in Paris.

He knew I hadn’t been happy and in the end supported my decision. I was excited about the possibility of a relationship that could span different continents but also provide the reassurance of everyday routine. We agreed that we loved each other and wanted to make it work.

Our Lives Now

In some ways, our relationship re-energized. There’s new found anticipation each time we see each other. The constant shifting of location keeps life from ever getting stale.

But sometimes there are signs, invisibly chipping away at my confidence in the relationship, whispering ever more loudly that more and more often we occupy separate realms. I no longer recognize every little detail of his apartment, don’t know every aspect of his life. Nor does he know mine.

And yet, I relish my independence. I see my empty calendar and imagine the possibilities, but I still have that anchor drawing me back to him. I miss him, deeply, but my life is full of unique experiences and excitement.

His Side of Things

It has been a different experience for him. He’s had to readjust to his same reality only without me in it. He traces the same people, same places, same city only without me.

Then I reappear and everything is like before, until I leave again and he’s forced back to finding our city without me again.

The author in New York.

I didn’t realize until that rainy day in Maui just how the things that bring us happiness no longer had the same source.

He tells me he doesn’t want to lose me, but he doesn’t want to have me half way either. Neither of us has an answer, and so we keep things going the way they are. But we know we cannot continue like this indefinitely.

What Are We Doing?

This week, boarding a plane to New York is bittersweet like never before. He’s moving to California to work with a client. I’m considering Costa Rica for a few months. Things are getting more complicated. The middle ground moves farther away for both of us.

Neither of us believes in long distance relationships. Neither wants to change life course for the other. It seems our question has an easy answer now. Easy, except we love each other and want to be together.

What do you do when everything in a relationship fits except the worlds you are occupying?

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Have an answer for Gabriela? Want to weigh in? We’re interested in hearing your thoughts!

Photo by author

It was summer. Lila and her friend Maia played in the sandbox while we moms sat on benches drinking latte from the corner deli and comparing notes about the upcoming terrible twos. That’s the day I learned Talya and her husband were edging toward divorce.

“How do you know when the problems are just too big?” she asked me.

“We’ve been together long enough that…” I began, but she cut me off.

“I know,” she said. “You and Noah have been married long enough that you have all this stuff figured out.”

But that wasn’t it at all. Quite the opposite.

Noah and I have been together almost twenty years. We’ll have been married for exactly fifteen years this coming Friday, June 25, and we dated four years prior. That’s more than half our lives together.

What I intended telling Talya that fine July day is that at some point in a long relationship, you’ll have at least one time when you realize, this is it, we’re breaking up.

Noah and I have had two. One happened soon after September 11th. Hindsight tells me stress did it to us. We had just witnessed the most massive human destruction we’d ever seen. We watched charred paper rain down on the roof of our building and heard sirens blazing from Brooklyn through the Battery Tunnel to the once-standing WTC buildings. Soon after, all freelance work dried up in the city and suddenly we couldn’t pay our bills.

The second time occurred around the time we decided to sell our stuff and leave New York to travel. Again, maybe it was the stress of it all. We sorted through every piece of our lives, decided what to keep with us and what to discard. Whether or not we consciously realized it, we had to be wondering if maybe we should just disconnect from each other, really start over completely. It was tempting.

But then what?

I’m the same person with Noah as I am without him. If I want to be alone for a while, fine, but what if I want another relationship? I bring to any other person the same quirks and faults as I have with Noah.

We tend to have between five and ten different disagreement at any given time. We draw the same battle lines, repeat the same arguments and generally make our way to the same conclusions. At times, it’s excruciatingly boring. Other times, it’s outright painful.

Photo of Leigh and Noah, taken by Lila

Over the years, some arguments drop off the list. Others appear. Some are stupid. Some relate to our deepest personal beliefs. Some are just sticking points, reasons to argue because you’re pissed off at each other, unable to communicate and get stuck in gridlock.

That’s when you take a deep breath.

And when you figure out what’s really getting to you. It’s never the teabag I left in the sink or the bill left unpaid that caused the electricity to be cut again. Even infidelity and the lies that go with it are not in and of themselves the issue.

It’s what those things mean to you about yourself. The anger we feel toward others, while often entirely justified, always stems from our own insecurities.

When your partner tells you you’re being a hypocrite or you’re not making enough money or you’re not supportive enough or you’re a fucking dickhead and I hope you die, or any one of a thousand things people say to each other out of honesty or anger or the desire to be hurtful, it will only cut deep if there is already a wound there.

There’s no such thing as happily ever after.

I used to think there was such a thing as a soul mate. Years with one person has made me change my mind. It’s not because I’m disenchanted with Noah, it’s more that I now believe it is possible to work through anything if you decide that’s what you want to do.

There will always be points of disagreement and discord, and even the most well suited couple, who seem to have everything in common, who agree on every point and never fight, will eventually reach a time in their relationship when it just stops working.

Does that mean you’re no longer soul mates?

Leigh at Burning Man

The way I see relationships is that when it’s good, I mean really great, those times you’re electrically charged toward each other, you can be sure those won’t last. You’ll always head into neutral or negative space again. But when they’re bad, there are no guarantees you’ll go back to the electric.

Some might call that cynical. Yes, I suppose. I see it as a reason never to take anything for granted.

Here’s the secret, I think.

You have to take care of your own needs first. Many will call that selfish, but seriously, if your head is in disarray or your body in pain, how can you possibly be there for or with anyone else?

It’s not really so much of a secret as something that’s easy to forget in the barrage of everyday life things. Whether you have kids or not, travel or not, are expats or not, there will always be something going on. Family, work, lack of work, natural disaster, death. Something will be there to stress you. Even more so, happiness can often be hard to handle. I mean, what do we do with ourselves when we actually get exactly what we want?

Then it’s just a matter of figuring out what it is you need in order to take care of yourself.

I like to be alone.

I don’t mean a couple hours to myself. I mean I need to get out and experience a bit of life on my own. That’s why I’m going to Burning Man this year, while Noah stays home with Lila.

I appreciate that he understands my need isn’t personal to him. In return, I try really hard to listen when Noah tells me the things he needs to take care of himself, even if it’s difficult for me to hear.

When you have that space to take care of yourself, you continue in your own development separately from your partner. You go your own directions, fuel your own interests and then can return to each other refreshed.

How do you know you’ll always come back to each other? You don’t. You just have to trust.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

How long have you been with your partner and what lessons have you learned along the way?

Check out the articles in our series Love in the Time of Matador where we explore the many facets of Matadorian love and relationships.

Photo by sKizzoNauta

The four of us formed a tight-knit group fresh out of high school. We traveled together, laughed and cried together, spent sleepless nights arguing over everything from politics to the personal. Time passes, though, and our personal goals came more into focus. As we each lived our lives accordingly, bit by bit, our daily experience diverged, but Adam’s approaching nuptials brings with it the spark of reconnection, an opportunity to bring our group together once more.

Adam reaches me from Florida to tell me he’s engaged. He’s already found Jayleen and Zach to tell them the good news, but it’s taken quite a few back and forth calls before he was finally able to catch me.

“What’s up?”

“How’ve you been?”

”Oh, the weather? It’s sunny. It’s always pretty sunny here. So, what’s it like there?”

I tailor my opening words for show, as if to say my life is fine without betraying my strong desire to know who you are again. It’s a way to test the waters and read the response.

Would it be too presumptuous to burst through layers of ice with blunt honesty? Is it too much to dive immediately into the dark waters beneath and say “I have no idea who you are, or who you’ve become, because I haven’t been around to know.”

What if that first rough crack isn’t hard enough to break through the surface? Will I be left standing precariously, ice pick in hand, at the edge of freezing waters, waiting for the certain click of the phone, the final note of an awkward conversation.

Photo by cbgrfx123

No, it’s better to start off with the polite opening, light and easy, designed specifically to chip away the icy surface at a gradual pace.

After a few minutes of the light stuff, it’s time to go deeper, “So how are you really? What have you really been up to?” With those words, the tempo alters from light and falsely familiar to slippery but not quite so hazardous.

Now, It’s Time To Dip My Toe In

Is it still possible to see the world the way you do? Have we slipped too far away from each other. I listen, trying to place myself in front of you as a real, tangible part of your life, but I can’t help feel I’m no more than a voice on the phone. To ease my discomfort, I talk about myself for a while. It takes a moment before you notice I’ve gone in a different direction. Do you follow? Will you you move yourself a thousand miles to stand in my life? Can you?

“Not much going on right now, “ I tell him. “Just trying to stay busy, I guess. It being the slow season and all, you know.”

“Um, no, I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Oh, Spring is slow season for tourists here. Most people just come to Hawaii in the winter.”

“Must be nice to live on the beach. What do you do for fun?”

Photo by Smart Destinations

“I’m on a pretty remote island. We usually go to another one to hang out. We’re headed to Oahu next weekend.”

“Where?”

“To Oahu.”

“Oh, okay. Who’s we?”

Things have changed. No longer can we take for granted a general understanding of the details of our lives, but at least the ice has been broken. He wants to know more, as do I. We might as well jump feet first now, cannonball into numbing waters.

I expect a blast of shock after the splash, but the water is more temperate than I imagined. Instead of unbearable cold and distance, our conversation takes us past the outer layers of circumstance and down to the person we each know. It’s a relief to know that down below, we are both the same. It makes me miss him even more.

“By the way, he adds, “I need the measurements for your tux as soon as possible.”

“Oh yeah,” I answer apologetically. “Sorry I haven’t called you back.”

“No worries. I’m used to it already.” As always, he tries his best to sound calm and contemplative.

“Will you send me Zach’s number?” Adam asks. “I told him about the wedding, but I can’t remember if I sent him an invitation.”

Photo by Vagamundos

By the sound of it, I think Adam’s driving somewhere as we talk. I hear her voice in the background. Adam, still trying to be thoughtful and deliberate, pauses to listen. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I need to mail you one, too.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m used to it already.” I can almost hear him smile on the other end of the line.

After a moment, he speaks up.“I don’t think Zach will be able to make it.” Adam somewhat manages to mask the disappointment in his voice.

I’m not surprised and shake my head, green-eyed at Zach’s ability to remove himself from obligations so casually without ever having to pay for it emotionally. “Zach is just way too free to pin down,” I say. “I doubt that will ever change.”

“Probably not?” Adam says, thoughtfully. “But that’s what makes him Zach, right?”

“But Jayleen will be there,” I say. “In spite of all her bouncing around.”

Jayleen. She does her best to stay grounded, tries on personalities like jackets as she melts from solo backpacker to business woman to hipster sharing an apartment in New York City. It will be good to see her, too, after so long, whatever outer layer she’ll be wearing.

After a pause, I speak up, “So, I guess we’ll see each other in Florida.”

“Yep, see you in three weeks.” This is the point when words are finished, and silence creeps in. I can’t believe he’s getting married so soon.

As I hang up, I know there is so much more to tell, but it’s too much for one call. “Bye.”

Then the click. The final note of a meaningful conversation.

Adam cares deeply for the people in his life. Zach fights desperately to maintain his individuality, and Jayleen examines every word for underlying meaning. Me? I will always want to be in touch with them, to know their lives and loves and be there when it’s important, but I’m afraid I will never perfect the catch up dance.

Photo by Lei Lewis

Joe and I had been married four years when he slept with someone else. It was a one time thing, he said, but it took just that one time to get her pregnant.

We didn’t have the happiest marriage. We hardly had sex. He was always angry. I was always nervous. We spent every weekend at his parents’ house, taking care of his sick mom. In the beginning we talked about the kids we’d have – two boys and a girl – but now we didn’t want any.

But still I never thought he’d have an affair.

Should I stay or should I go now?

To this day my mother says I should have left right away. But it wasn’t that simple. Like a nincompoop, I still loved him, as I had since we met when I was 21. He wasn’t the most handsome guy, but he was smarter than anyone I knew, and he liked me for me. He didn’t expect me to be more outgoing, or sexier, or anything I wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of my silences. He thought I was the coolest girl he’d ever met.

Photo by Lei Lewis

How could I be on my own again? How could I tell my parents? Admitting to what happened meant admitting I had failed.

For a while I convinced myself I was okay with it. Maybe we could leave the affair behind us. Threatened with loss, we treasured each other even more. But it wasn’t just an affair.

There was a fetus growing in that woman’s belly. Soon it would be a baby, then a toddler, then a child. It would be an ever-growing reminder of what Joe had done.

Leave, stay, leave, stay. I couldn’t decide.

A horrible reality

Then one day I turned on the radio and I heard a Buddhist monk talking. “Reality is neither pleasant nor unpleasant in and of itself,” he said. “It is only pleasant or unpleasant as experienced by us, through our perceptions.”

Only through my perceptions? But my reality seemed horrible, no matter how I looked at it. Not only had Joe cheated on me, he was having a child with someone else. The child would be in our lives forever.

The monk went on. “We are like an artist who is frightened by his own drawing of a ghost,” he said. “Our creations become real to us and even haunt us.”

What did that even mean? I closed my eyes and tried to change my perceptions. My situation wasn’t awful. I should feel sympathy and love for the mistress, for the child. Breathe in, breathe out. Love, sympathy, love, sympathy.

I couldn’t do it. I still hated her. I was still miserable.

Only altering the situation would make it tolerable. If Joe changed his mind about raising the child. If we took the child and pushed the mistress away. If I were like the child’s second mother. If the child didn’t exist. If Joe had never had an affair.

Photo by sambeckwith

If, if, if.

Towards healing

I went to Prague. I needed to get away. “Come with us,” my friends said. I told myself not to think of Joe.

I’d only enjoy what I saw – Prague Castle and its stained glass windows, the Charles Bridge at night, the Jewish Quarter and the temple where the Golem’s remains supposedly lay. Golem, the wonderful and terrible monster molded from mud and magic, protector turned destroyer.

In Karlovy Vary, a spa town outside Prague, my mind crept towards Joe again. My friends and I stood on a little bridge over the canal. The sun was strong, and the water sparkled. I went silent.

“Are you okay?” one of my friends asked me.

I took a breath. “I don’t think I can do this,” I said.

My voice was quiet but the words loud. I said them again: “I don’t think I can do this.”

Later I’d realize it was my perceptions that needed changing, from rejection to acceptance, from anger to love. But what I needed to accept wasn’t the situation. It was the fact that I couldn’t accept it, that I needed to leave, and that I’d have the strength to tell my parents and bear their grief. The love and sympathy I needed to feel was towards myself.

My misery and rage were ghosts that I had created. They were monsters out of mud. Because I had created them, I could destroy them too.

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Have you ever received advice or help from an unexpected quarter when you’ve had a tough decision to make? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by author

When I first heard the story of Nudge, a gay dog, and his blind owner Ian Jolly being refused admittance to Thai Spice, an eatery in Australia, I was stunned. Apparently, the Thai Spice host misheard when Mr. Jolly demanded entrance for his “guide” dog, hearing “gay” dog instead. They assumed the dog had been “desexed.”

Still, at first I gave the restaurant the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was a joke. Or maybe, as with many restaurants, Thai Spice doesn’t allow dogs because of health code violations or because many people simply don’t feel comfortable watching a large mutt licking his genitals over lunch.

It’s Just Not Funny To Mr Jolly

As I read further, though, I began to realize this is no joke at all.

Photo by author

You see, it was not just one person involved in this horrible discrimination. The entire Thai Spice staff banded together to agree that this desexed – clearly another word for gay – dog should not be allowed to dine.

Thankfully, the miscarriage of justice was swiftly made right when the South Australia Equal Rights Tribunal ordered the restaurant owners to send an apology and $1400 in compensation to Mr. Jolly and his dog.

But the damage had already been done.

“I always have that fear now, when I go out,” says Mr Jolly. “I just want to be like everybody else and be able to go out for dinner, to be left alone and just enjoy a meal.”

Yes, because of this egregious incident, Mr Jolly will always live in fear.

Gay Dog Discrimination Hits Home: Is He Or Isn’t He?

I just got a new puppy. He’s only three months old now, but what if my puppy, my sweet little Manuel, is also gay? How would I handle the type of inexcusable discrimination faced by Mr. Jolly and Nudge?

Director Jason Bolicki produced a fabulous video detailing twenty guidelines to help determine whether or not someone is gay. These range from throwing like a girl, to being catty, to the love of dance.

The Case for Mani’s Gayness

He loves to dance. He’s a drama queen. He’s most definitely a whiny bitch and a mama’s boy. Mani adores being center of attention, and not a day goes by I don’t see him running through the yard with his most trusted gal pal, our daughter Lila.

The Case for Mani’s Heterosexuality

He does NOT pepper his dialogue with pop culture references, nor is he into water sports. He actually seems to hate water, as evidenced by his scrambling immediately from the tub every time I try to give him a bath. Thus leading to the next measurement of gayness. He is not at all clean. Mani is unbelievably stinky.

Some measurements were inconclusive. If he’s gay and we, his family, are the last to know, then how exactly would I even know that? I also have no way of gauging how dearly he values education, and I was simply not up to the task of testing to see if he likes a fist in his butt. I’m all for science, but one must draw the line somewhere.

Final results: Nine gay characteristics. Eight non-gay characteristics. Three inconclusive.

Darwin Was Wrong!

The more I research the topic, the more I find information that contradicts Darwin’s original premise of sexual selection. Males do not exclusively choose female animals for mating. In fact, there’s a very vibrant and vast gay animal kingdom in which over 450 species get it on with the same sex.

Photo by janet

Clearly, it’s too soon to know if our little Mani is gay, but if he is, that’s alright. If he prefers not to mount the nearest female in heat and instead chooses to partake in the penis fencing and genital massage of the bonobos, or the all-male orgies of the bottle nose dolphin, so be it. We will love and support him as he is.

If Mani is, in fact, gay, this presents us as parents with a unique opportunity to teach our now six year old daughter tolerance and equanimity. She will learn that sexual identity is not a reason to discriminate or deny marriage, joint health care or living will rights.

Perhaps this new era of the gay dog will usher in a time of greater peace and understanding. A time in which all people and animals will look one to the other and say, “You’re OK by me.”

Or maybe it’s a sign of the impending apocalypse? I don’t know. I often have trouble discerning between the two.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What do you think about Nudge being refused entry to the restaurant? Do you have a gay pet? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by author

How We Got Together

You know how it goes. We happened to be in the right place, at the right time. In the right mood.

That pretty new tour leader who had been hovering around the periphery of my awareness suddenly snapped into focus, and we found ourselves on a felucca on the most romantic river in the world, huddled close under a blanket as the cold weather played cupid.

Before I knew it, I became one half of a couple. The problem was that we never saw each other– working as a tour leader takes over your life.

You meet a bunch of strangers and try to mould them into a cohesive group. You are responsible for every aspect of their holiday. You organise, advise, inform, entertain, and trouble-shoot. Sometimes you rebuke.

Photo by author

You are on call 24 hours a day. Outside your group, the world barely exists. Then you say goodbye, and do it all again with another bunch of strangers.

So, passing like cruise ships in the night, my new partner and I formed an early relationship of frantic phone calls– moments of cellular intimacy snatched from the possessive demands of our groups.

The forced separation drew out our honeymoon period. Months down the line, I was still a bundle of nervous excitement, anticipation and endorphins whenever I saw her in the flesh.

We barely knew each other, but we had plenty to talk about: the woman who asked if you could see the pyramids from Luxor, the surgeon who squandered all his money on fake papyrus. Snippets of gossip or scandal from life on the road.

We were constantly comparing our schedules, trying to work out which of our tours overlapped, and when we would next have time off together.

An Attempt at Stability

After two years of tour leading and roughly five months of dating, I decided to quit the life. There are only so many times you can wake up at 3:30 am to go visit old stones.

But I wasn’t ready to leave Egypt. This was the first woman I had ever met with whom I could sense a future.

We found an apartment, and I tried to find some work. We thought with one of us in a permanent base, things would be more normal. We’d see each other more often. No more creeping around hotels whilst on tour, hiding from the staff and our passengers. No more searching for privacy in the scummy flat we shared with the other tour leaders.

But things were not normal.

Leaving tour leading is like resigning as head of a cult. You no longer have hoards of worshippers hanging on your every word.

All of a sudden, you have free time. I tried to build other friendships, tap in to new lives, but part of me was still off in the desert, dancing to tabla and wondering at the stars.

Hearing about her tours made it worse, because I was trying to leave that world behind.

“Tour leader rubbish,” I thought to myself daily. “I’m beyond that now.”

But I wasn’t beyond it. How could I be? She needed to vent her frustrations about tours gone wrong. I needed to hear that her passengers were all horrible, or ugly, or 40 years too old.

Building a Nest Together

After another six months of repeated hello’s and goodbye’s, she sacked off the tour leading and we moved in together full time.

This was what we’d been waiting for. Breakfasts in bed and lazy nights curled up in front of the TV. Putting down shared roots. No bloody tourists whinging about hotel water pressure or dirty whatevers.

But it didn’t work like that.

Living with someone new is often difficult, especially if you haven’t spent that much time together before. Up to this point, at least one of us had been working as a tour leader. Now, we were both thrust back into the real world. The entire context, the setting, of our relationship had changed. Perhaps we had changed.

We always knew we argued, we just never knew how much. Now we had new things to argue about. Washing up. Housework. Coming home late. That these arguments were about such petty, mundane things made them all the more painful.

Photo by author

We started to question if we really knew each other. Whether, without the common tie of tour leading, we were actually compatible after all.

And then we argued some more.

The Break-up

You know how it goes. We happened to be in the right place, at the right time. In the right mood. We finally admitted it wasn’t working, and that maybe it was never going to work.

The words were said. Before I knew it, I was single again.

The Aftermath

Breaking up with your loved one is pretty shit. She moved to another town. I considered moving to another country. Or joining a monastery. Or running home to my mum.

But I dealt with it in as clichéd a manly manner as I could. I drank. I played a lot of pool. I surrounded myself with people that didn’t know her. Did I mention I drank? I might have cried, too.

Which is another way of saying, I got over it.

Even though the rational part of me knows that she and I were too different – that we would never even have gotten together if we had been living in England – I still miss her. We had each been a rock of support for the other in a city that doesn’t always take kindly to strangers.

This is life.

Community Connection

Have something to say? Leave Nick a comment below!

As a frequent traveler, one of the most important criteria I look for in significant others is a love of the world and a well-traveled past. So you can imagine my joy when I found a guy who was raised in the foreign service and grew up in places like Yugoslavia and Botswana. A guy who was familiar with chicken-buses, endless train rides, and language barriers.

But, there was a problem. This guy was all traveled-out, and I was about to leave for a year in rural South Korea. We were really well-matched in a number of ways, and the chemistry was all there, so this was quite the stumbling block for us.

Our Solution

We talked.

I told him that I would have no hard feelings if he didn’t want to get involved with someone who was about to move 10,000 miles away for a year. We could put things off and give it a go when I got back if he wanted. He surprised me with his persistence when he said that he wanted to give our budding relationship a shot; the distance be damned.

Photo by author

A little over two years later, we’re still together. We both feel that our relationship was actually strengthened by being separated so soon after we got together. We made it through the difficulty of 10,000 miles apart for a year, so everything after that seems like a cakewalk.

What Works For Us

One of the reasons my boyfriend and I are able to make things work is we take advantage of each others preferences. In having a boyfriend who has a career that ties him to our location here in Washington DC, I have gained a trustworthy caretaker for our cats and our stuff. In having a girlfriend who likes to travel around the world, my boyfriend has gained a partner he can boast about, who does neat things like motorcycling around Korea or horse trekking across Mongolia.

He is my rock, my home base. I like having a boyfriend and two wonderful cats to come back to and tell about my travels, and he likes living vicariously through me and not having to give up the career he has worked hard for and enjoys.

Through my traveling, we also end up getting our necessary time alone – something crucial in a relationship between two independent people. Our time apart allows us to maintain our identities as individuals, rather than be two halves of a whole.

We love each other for who we are, and we respect our differences. Just as I understand his need for a stable job and location, he understands my need to wander off into the unknown.

Our Additional Agreement

He and I have one additional relationship tactic to help smooth over potential rough patches: when we’re apart, our relationship shifts from closed to open. We’re each allowed to see other people while one of us is traveling, so long as everyone involved is aware that when the trip is over, so is the fling and the openness.

I had been in a very short open relationship back in college, and while I feel they’re not for everyone, I also feel that they have a time and place where they can be successful.

The conversation started when we were on a trip to Québec City the January before I left for Korea. I told him that I was very touched by his decision to stand by me through my upcoming move, and that I didn’t mind if he slept with other girls while I was gone. I told him that so long as he was safe, made it clear that he wasn’t available for relationships, and maintained his emotional loyalty to me, I couldn’t care less what he did with the equipment in his trousers.

Knowing my relationship history, he was not surprised by this offer.

The whole conversation lasted about two minutes and then we went back to drinking our Québecois beers. It was probably the shortest logistics discussion in the history of open relationships.

Us Today

And you know what? It worked so well that we decided to keep it as a general policy for when we’re apart, even after I returned from Korea.

We don’t consider ourselves polyamorous because we don’t have multiple serious relationships at a time. We barely consider ourselves to be in an open relationship. We prefer to see it more as having a respect for and understanding of each others’ wants and needs.

We don’t have a bunch of rules. If something works for us, we do that. If something doesn’t work for us, we don’t do it. In many ways, our arrangement mirrors the rest of our relationship: it’s not formal, it’s not rule-bound, and it shifts and changes as our own needs do.

If I had to sum up the reasons that our relationship works, I’d say that it has to do with respect, communication, understanding, and positivity. I feel that if you have a good, strong relationship, it’s worth a little compromise.

Community Connection

Leave a comment for Kelsey or ask her a question below!

When I got home from work today, my husband Justin told me he would be away all the following week at a training course in New Mexico. That means next week I will be home alone. Again.

Justin is in the Navy, so he goes on a lot of this sort of business trip. He was away for almost 8 months in 2009. This year, while he probably won’t deploy, I’m sure I’ll find myself on my own a lot and stuck in the house by myself.

Before I met him, I could never have imagined that I would want to stay in one place for any amount of time. Justin and I both felt the same way. Our first few dates, we tacitly impressed each other by talking about all the wild things we wanted to do one day, and our shared wanderlust made it easy for us to pack his car two summers ago and move out West.

We lived in San Diego for almost a year before he deployed, and all of a sudden, I found myself located an entire country away from family and friends and an entire world away from the man I loved.

Until then, I thought not having a home was more important than having one, but when I found myself fending for myself, forging a life without my partner, suddenly developing a solid home base became a priority. I manned the fort and turned the apartment – one that had only been ours a short time — into a home.

In my spare time, –and I had a lot of it — I began to create the perfect space for us. I placed Justin’s Bahraini rug, the one a friend brought back for him a few years ago, in the living room. It takes up half the room, but it’s neat. I like it. I collected candles and tried really hard not to let his cactus die. I moved furniture around. I bought decorative knobs for our dresser, and when the Anthropologie catalog arrives in the mail, I flip directly to the home décor section.

What exactly was I doing here? And who was this person I had become? I thought we were a couple who lived for adventure and defined ourselves by the desire to be free, not to be tied down. The summer Justin was deployed, though, that old definition of myself no longer mattered. Being with Justin is being at home. I couldn’t be with Justin, but turning our shared home into a place that reminded me of him and gave me the stability I was missing.

Many in my situation moved back home, but that wasn’t for me. It was a good experience to spend seven months in a totally new environment. I learned to be independent. Justin and I improved our communication skills while juggling time zones and work schedules which in turn strengthened our relationship.

When he leaves the Navy, things will return to normal. There won’t be jobs or mortgages holding us back. No threat of court martial looms should we choose to pick up and move wherever, whenever.

That future time in my life feels so open, and we spend many lovely hours talking about the possibilities.

“Should we do the Peace Corps?”

“Yes! Should I go to grad school in Manhattan?”

“Of course! Should I try to calculate how long we could live on our savings in an apartment in Mexico City or Paris?”

“Sure, I’ll help. Have you thought about the Appalachian Trail?”

The future holds everything and anything, but right now that’s not what I want.

Right now, I love every day that I come home from work, and he is waiting for me on the couch, legs propped on our coffee table, thumbing through the pages of another book on his reading list. I relish my to-do lists of household chores or schedules or anything that smacks of normalcy. I want to sleep in on Saturdays and play trivia at the bar down the street on Tuesdays. Right now, world travel can wait, because I like being home.

But when I know we’ll no longer be separated for months at a time, when we do take off and go, I’ll have no trouble leaving the candles and catalogues behind.

Photo by author

Singletons. If you fancy eating out this Sunday, don’t bother. Restaurants everywhere will be dispensing with their normal menus and serving overpriced, five-course dinners to twosomes, many of whom will be joined at hip and lip. Yes, Valentine’s Day approaches, and with it the grim stench of solitude for all us unattached people. No wonder they call it VD.

But what if we stopped believing the endless hype churned out by ad agencies and dating websites? What if we consider that being by ourselves can actually be enjoyable?

Beyond the Marketing Campaign

One-person homes are now more common than ever, comprising 27% of US households and 29% of UK households. Still, the media message blares forth: Happiness comes not only from having a long-term partner, but also by continually surrounding yourself with a fabulous array of friends. Sites like Facebook and Twitter make it virtually impossible to entirely escape other humans.

With these thoughts in mind, I join 21 others for the simply titled How To Be Alone workshop at London’s School of Life. The School of Life includes a new bookshop and social enterprise with the aim of teaching attendees “all the things you never learned at school” through lectures, discussions, meals and trips, all of which delve voraciously into philosophy, art and psychology.

Photo by Jurijus Azanovas

No One Wants To Be Stuck Alone With A Boiled Egg

Leading the session is Naomi Alderman, award-winning novelist and a convert to single living after years of feeling terrified of being alone. Once she left her door always unlocked so she could always come home to friends (or burglars). Now she appreciates the delights of solitude espoused by such luminary loners as the 19th century writer Thoreau, who spent two years by himself in a Massachusetts forest, discovering he has “never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude”.

In medieval Britain, almost every village had either a hermit — usually male and living out in the sticks — or a recluse, generally female and stationed at the edge of a neighborhood. Quiet and content in their stillness, these lone dwellers were considered deeply wise and often divine.

But, explains Naomi, this changed in the 1500s with the closing of the monasteries and the rise of Protestantism. Seen as a relic of Catholicism, hermits were now eyed with suspicion and linked to dark forces. To a degree, this stigma still continues today, with solitary individuals frequently viewed as weirdos, even serial killers in the making.

Thankfully, no one at the workshop appears notably murderous, and when Naomi asks us to form small groups for discussion, it seems we solo types have a lot to say. One woman imagines that everyone else in London is having a ball while she is “stuck at home with a boiled egg.” Another confesses to frequently telling her friends she is busy, when in fact she just wants an evening to herself doing nothing.

Being Alone Vs Being Lonely

Everyone agrees that being alone and being lonely are entirely different things. One is forced upon us. The other is a choice. If you spend Saturday night alone watching a DVD because that’s what you want. Great! If it’s because you’ve had no other offers. Not so great.

Photo by Only Sequel

Naomi encourages us to contemplate the potential benefits of solitude: creativity, inner peace and an increased affinity with nature. She then suggests activities for improving our ability to be alone, including meditation, gardening, and visiting a restaurant by ourselves. There are several protests over this last one. Apparently a table for one still serves as the icon for alone-without-choice.

Naomi also emphasizes the importance of making new friends and proposes numerous ways of doing so in order to spend at least some of our time with others:

“Knowing that you can do solitude and socializing makes each one better.”

Indeed, as with so much of life, the answer lies in balance. There’ will be times when aloneness, as Californian author Anneli Rufus puts it, provides “just what we need, the way tuna need the sea”, and isolation can be truly splendid. There will also be those times we need the comfort and stimulation of other human beings around us.

As we shuffle out the School of Life’s cosy lecture room, a number of us decide to move onto the pub, but we won’t forget what we learned tonight. We are independent spirits. This weekend, we won’t give a monkey’s what those couples are doing as we head to our favorite restaurant with a single-seat table to people watch or read a book or simply enjoy the meal as we dine alone
.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Embrace the solo spirit with Michaela Lola’s Solo Travel: 6 Reasons to Wander Alone

Photo by Lisa_at_home2002

I’ve had my share of screaming family arguments. They leave me feeling hurt, angry, horribly unbalanced and almost never lead to anything positive. There’s been quite a bit of trial and error, but these are the things that help me remain calm and collected during sometimes difficult family time.

If you know who someone is, then you know what to expect from them.

It could be a constant stream of questions. Or maybe it’s the look your mom gets on her face when she sees your new haircut. Or how your brother starts every freakin’ sentence with “You really should…” Or any of the other fun family stereotypes that drive us batty.

You feel put on the spot, completely misunderstood and unheard because, quite frankly, you don’t ever intend on marrying some nice boy or “settling down” in the way they think you should.

Don’t let it hook you. Yes, easier said than done, but when you know a question is coming, why allow it to make you angry? Prepare for it instead. Have a joke ready in response. Stuff a roll in your mouth. Or just smile hugely, lean in and give your inquisitor an enormous hug.

The trick is in knowing you have no obligation to respond unless you really want. If you do choose to respond, here are some tips to avoid saying something you’ll ultimately regret..

Photo by Computerjoe

Don’t drink or do drugs if you know they have a negative impact on your emotions and behavior.

Pretty simple, actually. If your inhibitions will be lowered, leaving you more likely to get into an argument, don’t imbibe. You can always meet up with your favorite cousin later and discuss over a drink how grandma detailed every moment of her last bowel movement while serving the roasted potatoes with brown sauce. Yum!

Don’t expect more from people than is fair to expect.

Relationships go in phases, and you will not get along with everyone all the time. Some family members are simply different than you. You don’t see the world in the same way, and thus, you don’t get why your aunt prefers to live in an elaborate apartment in New York City while she may never understand your desire to travel through the Mekong Delta with only a backpack and shoes.

Accept it with grace and ease and talk about the things you have in common. I find children seem to be a binding point for many. They can distract you with their games, and two adults who disagree on everything can usually find something they both love about the smallest members of the family.

Make time to take care of yourself.

Do you need occasional time alone? Would you prefer your deeply offensive uncle stay far away? Are you vegetarian? Make a list of the things you most need in order to feel sane and comfortable.

Photo by Lefthand

Of course, there’s a fine line between addressing your needs and being flat out needy, so perhaps choose your top three and work toward making them a reality.

At first, family may be offended, but over time, I promise they’ll get used to it if they’re rational and see that you’re making an effort to be part of the group in other ways. If they’re not rational, there’s no point in rearranging your life and behavior to accommodate someone who will likely never be pleased.

Pick your battles very wisely

Sometimes we want things our own way because we’re feeling pressured, disrespected or unheard. While these may all be good reasons to stand up for yourself, you have to decide whether the family Christmas dinner or New Year’s party is the best time to address them.

Fight only for what you need to take care of yourself, not for what you think should be or what you believe is fair. Fair tends to lose meaning, anyway, when faced with so many personalities, desires and personal philosophies.

If you do fight, do so with humor and sensitivity.

Don’t approach anyone in the throes of anger. Instead, take some time to compose yourself, focus on which issues are most important to you, then address those things directly. State them as a reflection of your feelings and experience, not as an accusation.

Example: It makes me uncomfortable when you make racist comments in front of my African girlfriend.

If your family member makes excuses, don’t get sucked into an attempt to justify yourself. Just repeat, I hear what you’re saying, but it makes me uncomfortable when you make racist comments in front of my girlfriend.

It isn’t easy to remain calm and friendly while restating the same thing like a broken record, but you’ll be surprised at how well this works.

Don’t discuss past details, either.

Details tend to lead to more details and pointless discussion. Next thing you know, you’re screaming about five years ago when Uncle Phil trotted out his travel tidbit of how Brazil is beautiful, if only there weren’t so many brown people it. Yes, Uncle Phil is a schmuck, but it’s not going to address your situation sitting at the dinner table in the here and now.

Walk away if you feel you’re not getting the response you want or feel yourself getting angry.

Everyone Loses It Sometimes

It’s not an inexcusable character flaw to make a mistake. Calm down. Try again or don’t. Take time alone. Or choose another way to disconnect from the drama.

Photo by Symic

Remember, losing your temper is not the end of the world, no matter what anyone else says about it, and no one is exempt from slipping up.

All in all, it’s important to see each visit as its own entity. No matter how much history, practice or experience you have with a person, what happens during one visit exists as a distinct event from anything else that has ever happened in your life and times with your family member. Each family event is just one opportunity to add a bead to the string of positive experiences.

Then, you go back to your own life.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

How do you cope with family stress over the holidays? Share your insights and experience in the comments.

Feature photo by Breathindigital. Above photo by Tambako

According to statistics provided by the dating website Beautiful People – where you must be rated by other members and found attractive enough to join – the British are uglier than pretty much anyone else on the planet.

Yes, the Polish, Russians and Germans seem to give the British a run for their money, but British topped the pops as not only being dipped in a bath of fug, they are truly beyond repulsive. A whopping 85% percent of British women and 90% of British men were rejected by members of the opposite sex for inclusion in the dating pool.

Even the British seem to agree.

Says RickyBee in a comment to a similar story on TVNZ:

We’re mostly heinous. It’s a combination of things: our miserable faces, horrific school food, the weather, an addiction to out of town shopping malls, scraped up dog-burgers, chips, litres of coke, complaining, a big streak of nastiness and stupid hair”

Or as Matador’s resident Brit Paul Sullivan says, “I am a dirty minger.”

Leave it to the British to come up with a word for ugly that comes from the Gaelic word for septic vagina.

Binge Drinking A Recurring Problem

Looking more deeply into the problem, it may also have to do with the massive binge drinking the British have so desperately tried to eradicate in recent years by closing pubs early or banning loud music

Not simply because of the toll consistent binge drinking takes on the body or the many nights spent face down in a ditch, but because Britain is a country with a permanent case of beer goggles. There’s no real need for Britons to spruce up their appearance in order to, as we Americans like to say, get some.

How Can You Be One of Them?

To see what the British are up against, I took a quick mosey off to Beautiful People and browsed through photo after photo of the most beautiful people in the world in order to devise a few tips to help you gain acceptance into this elite club.

For Men: All photos should be shirtless with rippling chest shaved and well greased. Always pose with the ever attractive “thumbs up” sign.

For women: Your breasts or hair – whichever feature is better — should be the main focus of your photo. Make sure to pout for the camera.

Both sexes can be greatly helped by wearing sunglasses or making sure photos are slightly blurry and taken only from the neck up.

Oh yes, and one final tip? Don’t be British.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

The definition of beauty changes greatly from person to person. It can be mind over matter. Or beauty can be best when at its most pure and natural. Other times, our attempts to make ourselves more beautiful backfire, and we find the opposite of what we want.

What does beauty mean to you?

Wedding photos by Philip Chang

I could write about how not to spend money on a wedding — getting married at City Hall or eloping to some far flung place. But this is for those who want to have a more “traditional wedding” without having to take out a second mortgage on their home.

Below are some tips on where and how you can save some cash in planning your wedding, and still make it the beautiful and classy one you always wanted.

Free cherry blossoms

1. Keep the guest count down

Do you really need to invite your third cousin twice removed’s little niece? Stick to those who you keep in touch with on a regular basis. If you haven’t broke bread with someone in over a year, it’s probably not appropriate for them to partake in your day. We kept the guest numbers down by limiting the invitees to immediate family and the closest of friends.

Yes, you may rub some people the wrong way, but this is your day. You have your reasons, and they should be respected.

To take that further, we split the wedding in two parts: ceremony/dinner and par-tay. Half the guests came after dinner to celebrate with us, which also helped keep costs down.

2. Make your own invitations

Another nice thing about keeping the guest count down is you need fewer invitations. This means you should have time to make and send them out yourselves. If you’re crafty like my wife, you can make unique and special cards. We included a blank page in the invitation and requested that the guests make it their page in our guestbook and to bring it to the wedding.

With the time they had we received some really thoughtful and colourful pages to insert into our guestbook. Much more personal than just a couple sentences and a signature, or, worse, drunken words of advice.

3. Use your contacts

If you think about it, you probably know someone who has some handy skills you could take advantage of. Maybe even a friend of a friend. An old high school chum who I occasionally ran into agreed to do our flower arrangements (it just so happened she is a florist). In lieu of payment, we invited her to the wedding.

Friends and family were also more than willing to chip in as they could, some coming to the venue early to help set up decorations and chairs. And speaking of venues…

Barclay Manor in Vancouver’s West End

4. Find a cheap venue

While the big ballroom with floor-to-ceiling glass and a panoramic view over the ocean is ideal, it’s going to be expensive. Find a place that doesn’t normally do weddings.

We scored a beautiful heritage house and struck up a nice little relationship with the events coordinator. We negotiated a great deal and had extra access to the venue for planning purposes and also cleaning up post-wedding.

5. Be your own DJ

Sorry DJs of the world, but you aren’t needed here. We sent out an email to our guests and asked them for song requests. I then mixed everything together myself with MixMeister. It was easy to use and it was fun putting it together, plus it makes a great memento. We still have the original file and dance to it on our anniversary.

At the wedding, you can play this mix from your iPod or laptop. We rented a mixing board and big speakers for party level music. We also got a dancing colour light.

Professional DJ for $1000 or this set-up for $80? You decide.

6. Don’t go pro

It’s not always a case of “you get what you pay for”. We’ve all heard the horror stories of professionals providing less than adequate service. But it also works the other way round. You can get some seriously good service for a discounted price.

Photographer: We found one just starting out in the biz and so was offering a deep discount while he built up his profile. He came with an assistant (with his own camera too) and was with us for eight hours.

Plus, he was willing to give us all the images he (and his assistant) took throughout the day instead of just a set amount of prints.

The “homemade” wedding cake

Videographer: Also a newbie, but as this was his first wedding he offered to do it for free to get his portfolio going. The end result was fantastic and he was extremely professional, polite, and took great care of us.

Caterer: Try a culinary school to keep your catering costs down. If you’re in Vancouver, check out Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. My mouth is watering just thinking of the food they dished up that night.

We found a cheap and cheerful bartender off Craigslist, where we also found the photographer and videographer. Just make sure you meet with them at least a couple times to make sure you’re comfortable with them.

7. Make your own cake

This is not for the faint hearted, but you can save heaps here. Rather than a sugary, fluffy cake, use one you actually like. We used a tuxedo cake (from Save-On Foods) square base, with a round raspberry and white chocolate cake on top, offset in the corner for artistic purposes. And, of course, decorated it.

8. Find some good, cheap booze

Who says you have to spend over $20 a bottle for some good wine? We tested a bottle or two each week, which was fun in itself, and found a red (Chile) and a white (Germany) for around $10. Same goes for the sparkling stuff, no need for the Dom Perignon.

9. Finally, recoup the costs

I don’t care what people say, I think it’s perfectly fine to ask for cash gifts, especially when the guest knows where it’s going (i.e. travel funds). You can also mix it with a registry of sorts for things you actually need.

Other random things we did to keep the costs down:

We rented a white PT Cruiser — modern, classy AND cheap — and I asked a work colleague to be our chauffeur. We “pruned” the cherry blossom trees around town for some free and beautiful center pieces (do this under the cloak of night).

All unopened bottles of booze and mixers were returned to the liquor store and Safeway, respectively.

Also, Yvonne’s wedding dress was so last year. But it was also so not expensive. And it was so gorgeous.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

If you’d rather plan a destination wedding than go the traditional route, Matador has the Ultimate Guide to Planning a Destination Wedding.

And we’ll never leave you at the altar– check out 16 Places to Stretch Your Honeymoon Dollar too.

For those of you who have already passed this stage and are on the next phase, you’d best read the Expectant Mom’s Guide to Travel.

How about you? Do you have any wedding money saving tips to share?

Pop them in the comments below!