As hard as I tried, I couldn't convince Mike to let me document our lives under the title "The Real Mel." Therefore, I hearby announce the creation of our new joint blog: mikeandmelissawilde.blogspot.com. Please refer to our new bloggy blog for updates on our lives.
This is the real Mel, signing out. It's been a great ride.
The End.
8.20.2009
7.31.2009
7.22.2009
What You DON"T Want To Happen 2 Weeks Before Your Wedding...
Happily, we're all okay, though my brother-in-law's 7 day old car was totaled. And now, to repeat what my sister said: Avoid car accidents at all costs. And never drive a vehicle with faulty breaks. Especially if you're going to rear-end a car I'm inside. Thank you.
7.07.2009
Mike and Mel Through the Years
Here's a quick version of our story for those of you wanting the 411:
Mr. Michael Wilde, AKA hottie fiance extraordinaire, and I met on a blind date. This is no less than a miracle considering the fact that both Mike and I consider dating (and especially blind dates) to be closely akin, if not earthly representations, to our versions of the inner circle of hell. So the fact that we both agreed to go on said date, and actually went through with it, instead of backing out last minute, is amazing. Apparently I made a good impression because he asked me out again the following weekend. And the weekend after that. And again after that. And then he started making up excuses to see me during the week. Then he held my hand. Approximately sixteen years later he kissed me. Then we started seeing each other every day. Somewhere along the road we realized we were falling in love with each other. We graduated from BYU together on April 24th. Late that night, surrounded by rain and stars, sitting on the swing in the gazebo nestled in the corner of his parent's backyard, Mike asked me to marry him.
I said yes.
Some Engagement Pics:
"Are we done yet?"
Mr. Michael Wilde, AKA hottie fiance extraordinaire, and I met on a blind date. This is no less than a miracle considering the fact that both Mike and I consider dating (and especially blind dates) to be closely akin, if not earthly representations, to our versions of the inner circle of hell. So the fact that we both agreed to go on said date, and actually went through with it, instead of backing out last minute, is amazing. Apparently I made a good impression because he asked me out again the following weekend. And the weekend after that. And again after that. And then he started making up excuses to see me during the week. Then he held my hand. Approximately sixteen years later he kissed me. Then we started seeing each other every day. Somewhere along the road we realized we were falling in love with each other. We graduated from BYU together on April 24th. Late that night, surrounded by rain and stars, sitting on the swing in the gazebo nestled in the corner of his parent's backyard, Mike asked me to marry him.
I said yes.
"Are we done yet?"
Superfluous Information:
August 1, 2009
LDS Temple in Salt Lake City
Notre Dame Law, class of 2012
I'm one lucky girl. =D
7.01.2009
Countdown
14 days.
14 more days and the wait will be over.
14 days and it will finally happen.
14 days and the day I've waited for since I was a little girl will finally be here.
14 days and the moment I've dreamed of, planned, and rehearsed thousands of times will arrive.
14 days until pure bliss.
14 days.
14 days, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will FINALLY come to theatres.
(31 days until the wedding thing, but really, what's more important here?)
14 more days and the wait will be over.
14 days and it will finally happen.
14 days and the day I've waited for since I was a little girl will finally be here.
14 days and the moment I've dreamed of, planned, and rehearsed thousands of times will arrive.
14 days until pure bliss.
14 days.
14 days, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will FINALLY come to theatres.
(31 days until the wedding thing, but really, what's more important here?)
6.16.2009
Dress Shopping
None of the following are the dress I ended up getting, but here are a few I tried on. Some were close seconds, some were mediocre, and some were downright hideous. I'll let you decide which is which.
Me and my wedding planner/photographer/fellow cupcake-taste-tester/sister extraordinaire, Marci.
I would have liked this one a lot more if it weren't for the whipped cream finishing:
Major thanks to Marse, Leesie, and Tin for coming, supporting, and preventing me from throwing off the wedding when I came out of the dressing room looking like the abominable snow beast:
Current thoughts on weddingness: Now that I have pretty things to wear I'm a little more excited to show them off via reception hoopla. I still think wedding celebration traditions have become quite ridiculous over the past century, and am doing all in my power to avoid superfluous fluff. But as the countdown has turned from months to weeks I have focused my energy less on tan lines and napkin colors and more on the beauty and eternal nature of personal relationships. This has helped my happiness levels increase tremendously, as appreciation usually does. Weddings may be a pain, but Marriage is pretty gnarly.
Me and my wedding planner/photographer/fellow cupcake-taste-tester/sister extraordinaire, Marci.I would have liked this one a lot more if it weren't for the whipped cream finishing: 
Major thanks to Marse, Leesie, and Tin for coming, supporting, and preventing me from throwing off the wedding when I came out of the dressing room looking like the abominable snow beast: Current thoughts on weddingness: Now that I have pretty things to wear I'm a little more excited to show them off via reception hoopla. I still think wedding celebration traditions have become quite ridiculous over the past century, and am doing all in my power to avoid superfluous fluff. But as the countdown has turned from months to weeks I have focused my energy less on tan lines and napkin colors and more on the beauty and eternal nature of personal relationships. This has helped my happiness levels increase tremendously, as appreciation usually does. Weddings may be a pain, but Marriage is pretty gnarly. 6.10.2009
For Authors
Having recently graduated with a degree in English Literature, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking of the many people to whom I owe thanks for contributing to my education. Though I certainly couldn't have completed my undergrad without the help of many family, friends, teachers, and mentors, this one goes to perhaps the greatest contributors to my education: Authors.
From Plato's bravery to think on his own, to Thoreau's urge to "go confidently in the direction of your dreams," to Poe's melancholy, to Austen's subtle insights, to Wilde's clever wit, to Stoppard and Beckett's arguments for the humane side of existentialism, to the sheer brilliance Shakespeare spewed on paper, to Conrad, Gerthe, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Enger, Kidd, Twain, Hawthorne, Morrison, Wharton, Faulkner, Ishiguro, Orwell, Salinger, Greene, Hurston, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lee, Woolf, Ellison, Card, Rowling, Rand, De Cervantes, Swift, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Bronte, Alcott, James, Huxley, Koestler, Homer, Reqmarque, Joyce, ... I have spent my life pouring over the works of these people. I owe my mind to them. Their thoughts have molded me and have given me perspective, imagination, and (hopefully) wisdom.
A note on imagination: This is one of the most important and undervalued qualities a person can have. No one says it better than JK Rowling in her 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech:
"You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared...
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy." (Read the full text in all it's awesomeness by clicking here.)
I have loved studying, reading, learning, and expanding my imagination. If nothing else, it has set me on a path of life long learning; And that, in the end, defines education: knowing you will never know everything, but trying anyway.
So thanks, Authors, for your daring to think and courage to write. This world would be far less enchanting or enlightened, and just plain dull without you.
"Those of us who have been readers all of our lives seldom realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.... In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself." --My Buddy Clive (AKA C. S. Lewis)
From Plato's bravery to think on his own, to Thoreau's urge to "go confidently in the direction of your dreams," to Poe's melancholy, to Austen's subtle insights, to Wilde's clever wit, to Stoppard and Beckett's arguments for the humane side of existentialism, to the sheer brilliance Shakespeare spewed on paper, to Conrad, Gerthe, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Enger, Kidd, Twain, Hawthorne, Morrison, Wharton, Faulkner, Ishiguro, Orwell, Salinger, Greene, Hurston, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lee, Woolf, Ellison, Card, Rowling, Rand, De Cervantes, Swift, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Bronte, Alcott, James, Huxley, Koestler, Homer, Reqmarque, Joyce, ... I have spent my life pouring over the works of these people. I owe my mind to them. Their thoughts have molded me and have given me perspective, imagination, and (hopefully) wisdom.
A note on imagination: This is one of the most important and undervalued qualities a person can have. No one says it better than JK Rowling in her 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech:
"You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared...
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy." (Read the full text in all it's awesomeness by clicking here.)
I have loved studying, reading, learning, and expanding my imagination. If nothing else, it has set me on a path of life long learning; And that, in the end, defines education: knowing you will never know everything, but trying anyway.
So thanks, Authors, for your daring to think and courage to write. This world would be far less enchanting or enlightened, and just plain dull without you.
"Those of us who have been readers all of our lives seldom realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.... In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself." --My Buddy Clive (AKA C. S. Lewis)
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