The Fine Art of Brevity

"Be brief, be sincere, and be seated." -Sir Winston Churchill

Hi friends,

Are any of you still tuning in? Now that we're back on the scne as married peops, some of my parents' friends have been requesting an announcement in the paper. Well, that's just dandy, except for the fact that most of the announcements I've read in the paper make me ill with their excruciating detail of trivial facts.

For example, here is an excerpt from one I found in the Shreveport Daily News. The bride and groom said their vows in front of a cross carved from a beloved oak tree that once stood on the property of the bride's childhood home. A dinner reception followed on the lawn of the home. Guest tables were covered with chocolate cloths and lemongrass silk overlays. Each of the tables was adorned with hand blown trumpet vases or crystal bowls filled with hydrangeas, roses, dahlias and winged elm branches.

After this, I am left wondering if the cloths were actually *made* of chocolate or just a very good facsimile. Further, a prize to the first person who emails me with a basic idea of what in the world a lemongrass silk overlay is or a nice drawing of a winged elm branch.

As any of you who have read this blog or attended our wedding can appreciate, I am really anti any type of wedding literature endorsing the idea that my parents likely traded cattle or a substantial portion of land to Matt (or Matt's parents) as payment for my marriage to him. So I tried to avoid that kind of language. Also, I excluded too much personal information for any potential stalkers or suspicious persons reading. And lastly, I tried to avoid any photos that did not capture mine and Matt's thin side because as Matt has so gently put it "no one likes to see people looking fat on their wedding day. It just makes you feel sorry for them."

So here's what we (I) came up with:



Jean and Coulter Templeton of Mineola are pleased to announce the October 6, 2006 marriage of their daughter Mary Rose to Matthew Robert Turner, son of Marilyn and George Turner of Friendswood, Texas and grandson of Mrs. Frances Kay Griffin of Waco, Texas. Mary is a 2002 graduate of Rice University in Houston and a 1998 graduate of St. Scholastica Academy in Canon City, Colorado. She is currently employed as a weekly columnist and editor for several Houston-area newspapers. Matthew is a 1997 graduate of Friendswood High School and current student of Forestry and Wildlife Management at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. The two plan a December honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador and will reside in Nacogdoches.