Hotel Reservations - Hilton

Guests who are looking to make reservations at our Hilton room block can make reservations online.
Use this site to go directly to our group page and the group rate:

We look forward to seeing you in St. Louis!

Update on Google Rankings!

If you Google 'Zumwalt wedding', we are the first link! 'Zumwalt Green' also merits the first link. 'Green wedding' does not come close.
Exciting!

Wedding Research

If I mentioned Wedding Research to Valerie, she might think I had taken an interest in choosing flowers or cake (I like cake!). However, the Wall Street Journal recently ran an article featuring some statistics of successful marriages.

Enjoy!

How not to propose to your Fiance

Since I am getting married, I've become much more sensitive to wedding stories and other related nuptial events. So I listened to an NPR story about a man who put a $12,000 ring inside a helium balloon with rising interest.

Google Rankings

WooHoo! We're at the top of the first page for the Google search: Green Zumwalt Wedding!

I was thinking we might get close with Zumwalt Green as well, but I just got many other Zumwalt hits.

"Zumwalt wedding" also produces some weird results, but our page is about halfway down!

Marriage is like pancakes, sort of

I realized, recently, that marriage is like pancakes. Not in the gooey warm goodness, but in my interpretation.

See, pancakes are something Nana makes on cold Sundays or during the week either for breakfast or sometimes lunch (she also makes waffles). Pancakes with melted butter taste delicious with real maple syrup. And when I thought of pancakes, I thought back to my Nana making pancakes in her kitchen. Recently, I added Mr. Dennis Underwood to that mental picture; he makes excellent pancakes as well. Just recently did I realize that pancakes are also cakes that are made in pans. I had never realized my substitution for the dictionary definition of pancakes. Nana's face does not appear in the dictionary (but it should).

I don't know if I thought of marriage as I thought of pancakes. I knew I had a great Mom and Dad (Hi, MOM!), but I never really peered into or examined their marriage. They were just Mom and Dad. Mom helped with the homework and made me work at the copy machine at Delta. Dad took me to school in the mornings and made stuff in his shop with me. I'm oversimplifying, but this is a blog, not an autobiography (for sale at a later date; a MUST read!!!). They were best friends, but I don't think I understood exactly what a marriage was.

But in the past few years, my idea of marriage has shifted from a legal contract between two people (thanks Economics!) to become more like pancakes. Even before I left for college, I began to look at people deeper. Not at their interaction with me, but how they interacted with their spouse and with others with their spouse present. I'm proud (and thankful) to say that I have found some great marriage mentors (or honor couples!) that have adjusted my perception of marriage to become less like a legal contract and an economical living arrangement to that of pancakes.

Wedding by Proxy

While Val would not go for it, wedding by proxy sounds interesting. I'm not sure I would participate, but it does provide a valuable service to US citizens that are outside the country, like our military men and women. It also seems to make the participants a tidy sum of money.

Save-the-dates are out!

They were truly a labor of love, but we are thrilled with how they turned out. Valerie did the design and hand-calligraphy. A big thank you goes Andrew, Beth, Mark and Nana Bolte for help with the assembly.

We hope you'll be able to mark your calendars and join us.
For our out-of-town guests, we tried to pack as much information in these packets as possible. But, if you need more information or help while planning your trip, please let us know.
We look forward to celebrating with all of you.