More on flights

For people coming from outside the US

I've just noticed that SEA-TAC airport has a map and list of non-stop international flights. The list includes links to the airlines that fly each route; in most cases it's a monopoly, which is why it can be rather expensive.

You can definitely save some money by flying an indirect route (via New York seems to often be the cheapest way), but how big a saving seems to vary dramatically each time I check. It can be between a few dollars and a couple of hundred. If you try this, there are a couple of important things to bear in mind.

Firstly, make sure you compare all-included prices. Flying via NYC can add a significant amount of taxes relative to going direct, so if you compare ticket-only prices that may dramatically overstate the amount of money that you'll save.

Secondly, for the westbound trip remember that you will have to clear customs and immigration in the first airport you land at (I'm not 100% sure this is true if you fly via Canada, but it definitely is if you transfer within the US). This process can take 2 hours at the busiest airports (such as Chicago O'Hare and all of New York's international airports), and don't expect the slightest sympathy or practical assistance from the goons in uniform if you are in danger of missing your connection. It doesn't mean that the transfer is necessarily a bad idea, it's just that you should give yourself at least 2½ hours to make it.

Finally, and I realise this is me getting petty now, you'll be able to sleep better on the eastbound trip if you take one long direct flight than if you have to change. This seems to make much more difference to some people than others, so you'll have to decide whether it matters to you.

For people flying from Cleveland

There are quite a few ways to get between Cleveland and Seattle. I've tried several of the options, and so far I'd have to say that none are great and none are horrible. The only practical advice I can really give is that the direct night flight that Continental sometimes (on a very strange schedule) offers from Seattle to Cleveland is difficult to sleep on because they use the PA far too much, including playing a trailer for the movie some time after take-off. As above, this probably bothers some people a lot less than it bothers me, but since discovering this I've been opting to fly during the day, even though it often means having to transfer somewhere.

Postal Pettiness

There is a small chance that couple of you [US addresses only] will have been asked by the Postal Service to pay 12 or 14 cents to receive our card. This was due to a mistake for which I can not apologise enough; it's not that we think we're so important that people should pay to receive mail from us.

Here's what happened: there is a special postcard postage rate that is lower than the rate for the lightest letters, but subject to certain conditions. I knew there was a rule about dimensions, and checked that our cards were in fact small enough before buying a sheet of postcard rate stamps. However, I had not realised that there was also a rule that the address must be written in landscape format. Because the stamps we're using are quite large, and because the design on the cards is in portrait format, we wrote the addresses in portrait format. Apparently this makes the postcard rate no longer apply.

Fortunately, our mailman is helpful, and noticed this when he collected the outgoing mail from this building, so the cards found their way back to us with an explanation. I'll be taking the stack of them to the post office tomorrow to buy the extra postage and re-send them, but I'm not 100% sure that all the cards were caught, because we sent some on Friday and only heard from the mailman today. So if yours was one that didn't get caught, please accept our humble apologies, and be flattered that at least you were one of the first people we sent a card to.

The Sending of Cards

Over the past couple of days we've been busy addressing and mailing those save-the-date cards that we had printed over a month ago. For the handful of people who read this blog already I would have liked to have kept this some kind of surprise, but the cards refer recipients to this site, and we need to put some more information up.

There are two important things to tell our intended guests right now, so I'll start with those.

Dates

The wedding itself is on the 1^st of September next year. This is a Friday; don't worry, you aren't getting confused. The venue was already booked for the 2^nd, and we couldn't think of any over-riding reason why it had to be on the Saturday, so we went for the Friday. It is also the Labor Day weekend (clarification for non-Americans: Labor Day is a public holiday that falls on Monday the 4^th of September next year)

For everyone who doesn't live in or near Seattle—most of our guests, in other words—I would strongly recommend taking a week or two of holiday and spending it in the Pacific Northwest. This is a really cool area, with interesting cities, beautiful countryside, and no shortage of things to do, and typical end-of-August weather here is comfortably warm and not as rainy as Seattle's reputation would imply. Also, even if you're only coming from the Great Lakes it's already quite a long journey, and London is 9½ hours away. Doing a trip like that for just a couple of days is plain silly. I should know; I did exactly that last week.

Anyway, whether you just want to come for a couple of days or make a long trip of it, it would probably help you to know some of our plans. There will be a bachelor/bachelorette/stag/hen/whateveryouwanttocallit party on Wednesday the 30^th of August, to which all of our friends will be invited. Then on the Thursday night there will be a rehearsal dinner, to which all of our relatives will be invited. We haven't yet made any arrangements for these; just decided on the dates so everyone who would like to be there can be. After the wedding we'll have a day to chill and pack, and then be leaving for our honeymoon at a painful hour of Sunday morning; the 3^rd of September. And finally, I haven't made up my mind yet, but I will probably 'officially' take the last 4 days of August off work, because I know that realistically I won't be able to get much done that week anyway.

What this means for our guests is that you'd be better off arriving earlier rather than leaving later. If you're around for the week before the wedding, we'll be able to spend a lot of time together, and you'll be over the jetlag by the wedding night. Meanwhile, there's no reason why you shouldn't stick around for another week after the wedding, but just be warned that we won't be around to spend time with you.

For those who live outside the US, I would advise booking the flights relatively soon. There is only one flight between London and Seattle each day (BA 48/49), and being a holiday weekend there is a risk that the return trip will sell out early, not to mention that last-minute tickets can get seriously expensive.

Hotels

We would like to make some block-bookings for hotels. We're looking at probably making a block booking at 3 places: the Edgewater (the reception and possibly wedding venue, and quite an expensive place to stay), a hostel if we can book an entire dorm for our guests, and a mid-range hotel where you can have private rooms without breaking the bank.

Hopefully by doing block bookings we can negotiate some sort of discount for the two hotels, and if we organise for as many of our guests as possible to stay in the same few hotels near us [which also happens to be near the venue] it will make logistics easier for everyone.

Obviously we need to know how many people want to stay in what sort of place, before we can make the arrangements. To that end, please let us know as soon as possible if you'd like to be included in this, and what sort of place would suit you. We will probably start talking to hotels about a month from now; hopefully that gives people time to reply. Booking hotels later shouldn't be a problem, and we'll be happy to give recommendations for places that are nearby, but I think if we want a block of rooms all in one place we'll need to reserve that relatively early.

The best way to contact us about anything wedding-related is the email address on the cards, because that goes to both of us simultaneously.

Relations' names

This is probably one of the less important things to have gone through my head today, but I'll ask anyway. When we get married, my brother will be Melinda's brother-in-law, and her parents will be my parents-in-law, and so on. But does our language have a specific word for their relationship to each other, or are we stuck with my son-in-law's brother and my brother's wife's parents, and so on?

If, as I think is the case, English doesn't have such words, does Turkish? I know Turkish generally has more words to describe peoples' exact relationship with each other....