Greetings, Purple Elephants, Housekeeping, Public Commentary, and Good Old Fashioned Legalese
June 13, 2011Greetings:
Looks like you’ve found our Blog. We’re going to use this first posting to get the big items out of the way so the picture is painted, the words are penned, and we can move on with documenting the current life we live versus the past events that have made us who we are.
The Purple Elephant in the Room:
Yes, we’re “that couple”, the couple that planned a perfect wedding day, invited family and friends, and put on our tuxes and dresses excited for what June 5, 2010 was supposed to be. Thanks to The Mavris Arts and Events Center, John Mavris, Jerry Lowery, and other Mavris employees; things turned tragic.
Read the articles below to understand:
While these media pieces are just a small sampling of the many articles out there, and they don’t have 100% of the facts correct, they do a decent job painting the picture of the past year and represent a good portion of the dates we have had our names in print.
Depending on the situation, we are very good at unknowingly bringing The Purple Elephant into the room with us (don’t worry, he is leashed at all times). We’ve lost friends who simply didn’t know what to say, we’ve walked into places where we were instantly recognized and heard the whispers, and have even witnessed employees of doctor’s offices start crying when they realize we are “that couple”. We have not settled on a name for The Purple Elephant, so whenever mentioned in the future he will be either The Purple Elephant or TPE.
Housekeeping:
If you’re looking for a “tell all” that discusses the details, you won’t be finding it here; at least not yet anyways. This Blog isn’t about that, it’s about where we are currently in life; that’s not to say that The Wedding, The Crash, or The Lawsuit won’t be discussed, but we know what we say will be used by The Defense to further their position of desperate need and won’t be saying anything that isn’t already publically available either in Court filings or in The Media.
Here is a quick breakdown of things you’ll pick up on as you read our Blog.
1. When you see The Blog, The Crash, The Wedding, The Lawsuit, The Defense, The Purple Elephant (TPE) The Good Guys (our attorneys), The Court, or The Media; it isn’t a typo. We view these all as living and breathing things and by calling attention to them with capitalization; we are showing them as such.
2. When you see “–L” or “–TH” it’s just what you think it is; how we normally shorthand our signature in emails to one another, and we’ll carry that tradition over to The Blog.
3. For the most part we will never mention names of people unless it is vital or imperative to do so. Lots of initials, name anagrams, and whatever else we feel like doing. It’s to protect the innocent who don’t need their names splashed across the internet; though chances are if you know us well you’ll figure it out.
4. Follow us on The Blog, but don’t friend us on Facebook. It’s nothing personal, honestly; it’s just that we’re part of the original generation of college kids that had to have an .edu account to sign up for Facebook, we use Facebook to communicate with our family, friends, and people we associate with that we know “in the flesh”. We’re pretty hard to find in the first place as we’ve got it locked down tight, but more importantly we just will decline any request from strangers.
Public Commentary:
We have an amusing love hate relationship with public commentary related to anything from The Wedding or The Crash. Some of the comment sections within local media were downright infuriating, if not amusing during the days following The Crash.
1. To the person who said Lauren was Bridezilla and that is why The Wedding occurred that day even after the tragedy, we hope your life was a bit more enjoyable for the 30 seconds after you posted that. Lauren was actually one of the most laid back, calm, and collected brides ever, far from Bridezilla; but glad you got your social interaction that day.
2. To the person who said we must have gotten married because a baby was on the way and it was a shotgun wedding; all we can say is that we just celebrated our one year anniversary sans spawn, and more importantly, when we filed our taxes in April we most certainly did not take that tax deduction. But we appreciate you giving us a laugh in some of our darkest hours.
3. To the guy who tied our story to his political diatribe about, well, still not quite sure what you were actually trying to rant about; but still…you’re about as bad as some of the media networks who called us within hours of the crash to ask us to be in New York right away to be on TV. We didn’t realize the “if it bleeds it leads” mantra had carried over to the blogosphere until that moment in time.
4. To those that sent their actual condolences and support, your words did not go unheard and we appreciate the outpouring from the community that was united in the tragedy of that day.
Needless to say, we will NOT be opening any of The Blog’s blogs up for public commentary, nor are we really interested in creating another avenue for The Defense to obtain discoverable material. We hope you’re coming here to read our words, because if you can’t already tell; we typically live by the “I do what I want!” mentality, and we’re not soliciting feedback from others who don’t really know us at all.
Good Old Fashioned Legalese:
We have friends that are attorneys; we have family members that are attorneys; and for the past year we’ve had our very own set of attorneys we call “The Good Guys”. So if you think we’re foolish in putting our current lives and situation out on the Web, please understand that you’re pretty far down the list in terms of people who either have already told us, or just shake their head at our rebellious tendencies. We view the legal system as a really big sandbox, and The Good Guys are the biggest, meanest, and most cutthroat kids to ever have built a sandcastle. Therefore, we state it here and now, any Blog posting that mentions The Lawsuit immediately is discoverable to The Defense and will be treated as such by us and The Good Guys. So again, in the interest of helping The Good Guys and the massive amount of paperwork already on their desk related to this, we’ll keep stuff related to The Lawsuit to a minimum.
In addition, while it is posted on the bottom of this page, we feel it is important to call attention to our disclaimer:
After what we’ve been through the legal dance and legal doublespeak isn’t exactly high on our list of favorite activities. Here’s the deal, everything we say is our opinion, experiences, or version of events. We know (and have been advised) not to have this Blog as we work through our legal process related to The Wedding, we know that The (insert favorite description here) Defense will use whatever we say against us in a twisted out of context way. We want you to know that we simply speak from our experiences, and the ability to document life, love, and the future is important enough for us to go forward regardless of what would make the legal situation easier. Don’t like what we have to say; then don’t read. Disagree with what we say; email us. Think that it’s tragedy what we went through; we appreciate the thoughts but don’t need to hear it as we’ve heard it before. Somehow going to try and angle a position to benefit you from our story; we advise against it as we have had over a year to sharpen our very long sticks. Don’t copy, reuse, or try and steal our words, story, or experiences; we have Google-Fu and will find out. Cheers.
Let us find our rhythm on this project as we allow it to grow, check back early and often and pass it on to others that might find a bit of a smile, inspiration, or focus from our words and thoughts.
Cheers
-TH
-L