Quick wedding update and part 1 of the honeymoon!

Heya!

So I'm finally an old married woman. It's weird; I don't feel married. I feel good, but being married makes me feel so old!
The wedding was beautiful. I have a few pictures that were emailed to me that I'm going to put up on my MySpace for now, but I'll put up the real thing when I finally get home … I really wasn't nervous until my flowers didn't show up until 1:30 and I freaked out, but then they finally got there and I was able to get dressed and walk down that aisle! I started shaking when I took Dad's arm, and I kept tripping over my slip but we managed to get through it and it was fantastic! The reception was great -- so much fun, and I got to see everybody and dance … I don't feel it was long enough -- I could have done that all night, if it wasn't for my 4-inch heels! I was in pain by the end of the night, but thankfully Shea and Kyle followed us to the hotel and brought our luggage (although after the hasty exit from the church I was missing several key items, like my bra and razor!)
We left for the airport at 3:30am, but our flight was delayed until after 6am. That put us an hour behind, and we missed our connecting flight in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Charlotte by more than 20 minutes. Thankfully, a manager squeezed us on the 9:20am flight to San Francisco on stand-by, but it was a good thing that nothing happened because they never took our names so we weren't on the manifesto. Alas, our luggage did not follow us.
San Francisco was neat but very cold. It was a high of the early 60s, and all our warm clothing was in my bag, which continued to be lost. Christen's came in the middle of the night Monday, but mine didn't show. We walked through Chinatown and Union Square, and ate dinner at the Stinking Rose -- I totally wanted to order the "Silence of the Lamb Shank with fava beans", especially since we were drinking a bottle of the house Chianti, but I just couldn't fit it in so I stuck with these amazing roasted mussels and a salad. Christen got the garlic meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes and Swiss chard (I could have eaten all that Swiss chard on top of my meal -- fantastic!)
We stuck around in San Francisco for another day Tuesday waiting for my bag to show up. We hit Haight Ashbury, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Park (ahh, the tulips were gorgeous). Finally after coaxing and a bit of hysteria, my bag was found at the airport and we dropped by to get it before jetting up to Santa Rosa just before dark to check in. Dinner was at Outback because our desk clerk was less than helpful about finding a good place to eat and we didn't know the area, but it was still pretty tasty.
Day one in Santa Rosa was awesome. Just awesome. We started out at the Kendell-Jackson vineyard, but they didn't open until 10, so we found a diner for breakfast and drove around through the mountains and vineyards until open. KJ was great, and the wines were delish -- we had the reserve list, which are very limited and only available through the vineyard. Our wine pourer was very nice and pointed us to a few other vineyards.
Next stop was the Delouch vineyard. The wines there were wonderful (we bought a bottle) and the pourer was also very interesting. We then hit a sushi place called Sake-o in Healdsburg and it was wonderful -- I had a Mt. Fuji roll (smoked salmon, cucumbers and scallops) and a spider roll, and Christen had chicken teriyaki. After sustenance we hit Simi winery where we had a very interesting tour (though neither of us cared much for the wines) and wound our way through the countryside stopping at Robert Strong winery for a taste before hitting Kohl's for some new bras and socks (thank god!) and grabbing a burger at In & Out.
Anywho, off to bed (Christen's been asleep for about 2 hours). Up tomorrow: Old Faithful, more wine and maybe dinner at the Culinary Institute of America's Wine Spectator Graystone Restaurant. More to come!

Gettin' hitched on Sunday!

The last few days have been a little crazy, so I'm just going to say: I probably won't be around at all for the next two weeks. After all, I'm getting married!

Yesterday was the last of the running around like a chicken with my head cut off (excuse the tired cliche, I have no time to think up good ones). There was the tuxes and getting the groomscake and manicures and showing up late to my own rehearsal ... but everything turned out alright, and we had the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner last night, which means today should be a little less stressful. I simply have to finish picking up the house, finish packing, get my pedicure (the girls will be here at 8:30) a print and assemble 80 programs for the wedding. No sweat, right?

So I'll leave you with our engagement photo, and I'll be back mid-honeymoon for a quickie (update, I mean!) Toodles until then!!

Better

So last week was bad. Like, bad, bad. Bad. By Friday night my face hurt from frowning and I was falling asleep on Nana's couch during cake and ice cream for her 82nd birthday. Everything came to a head: work sucked, wedding things weren't getting done, Christen was going to start working nights, stress was falling out my ears.

So this week I've decided to make an about face and stop worrying. As for work, I can only do what I can do. Other than that, I'm done worrying about it. As for the wedding, since Christen is working nights anyhow, I can start working on everything on my own and not have to worry about what's not getting done. If I do it myself, I don't have to think about it so much. Tonight I'm going to stop at JoAnn's and get things for favors and see what I can figure out on that front. I haven't really decided what I want to do, which makes things difficult. I've been skimming through Frommers.com and tripadvisor.com to find hotels in our price range that are nice so I can make reservations pronto. Does anyone know of hotels in San Francisco, the vineyards, Yosemite and Vegas that are nice and stay around $100/night? I don't need a lot of amenities, just clean and cute work for me. And for the longest stretch, in the vineyards, clean is my biggest thing. We plan on staying in San Fran for 1 night, Sonoma or Napa for 7 nights, Yosemite for 2 nights and Vegas for 2 nights.

The weekend was good but busy. Saturday I worked at the library in the morning to make up for my Mondays that I've been taking off, and then I had a cake tasting. I really liked the chef and the cake but he was so busy. We ordered a sample cake to see if what we want will work out, and we'll have to decide on that later. I'm not too concerned, because at least we've started on it. The afternoon was dedicated to taking my mom up to Spring Hill to get a bike. That worked out well, but it seems there is an issue with the battery that now needs to be resolved. Because nothing's ever easy, right? That night we went over to Charlie & Katie's new place (a wonderful 3 block walk) and brought Lola to mingle with their dog Holly. That was a trip -- Holly kept running from Lola with her tail between her legs.

Sunday I made guacamole and we ordered wings for the superbowl. S&K and S&R came over, and we had a great time. I'd venture to say that it was one of the best time that I've had with the six of us. We had a fire in the pit behind the house and Shell and Rich stayed until very late having s'mores and listening vaguely to the end of the game. And it was a great game! I have to say, I didn't really care who won, but I love turnovers. They're so exciting! And I was technically rooting for the Colts (Kyle was the only pro-Bears rooter of the day) so things went well.

Like a whole new ring

Yesterday was a bad day. That's all there is to it. I called out at the library in favor of lounging on the couch and being waited on by Christen and catching up on shows from last week. There were, however, highlights:

I paid for our invitations, and those should come in 7-10 days from now (hurrah!). This is what they look like.

And I stopped at Jared's to see if I could get my mom's ring fixed, as it was missing a baguette. My mom gave me this ring a couple years ago, and it was the first ring she ever bought herself. It's not generally in my style (it's gold where I prefer silver, it's a baguette setting and I stay away from those), but I love it dearly. Since I got the ring, it's been missing a stone and I've been too lazy to get it fixed. It was also filthy from 20-odd years of never being cleaned. So I took it in the get it fixed, and the lady seriously cleaned it. Like 5 minutes in the steamer cleaned it. And guess what! There weren't any missing stones -- the ring was just so dirty that you couldn't see the one stone anymore. So she cleaned it and polished it and now it's like I have a whole new ring. Mom says it probably looks like when she bought it :) That makes me super happy.

The last gift for my bridesmaids came in. I can't say what it is, because they read this too, but they look so cool! I ordered one for myself too, and it has my soon-to-be name on it, so I brought it to work and put it on my desk so I don't feel the urge to show it off to my girls ... now, I just need to get them spelled right and we'll be good. They spelled mine and Autumn's correctly, but misspelled Shea's and Shelley's names so I have to send them back and get them redone. Thankfully, there's plenty of time for that. Yay for getting stuff for people!

I also started looking for something to get the parents. I found these sappy sweet framed poems that you put a wedding picture in that is a definite possibility. Parents like that sort of thing :) I need to make a list of everything I need to finish so that I can get it done -- my goal had been to finish getting everything done this week, but that's obviously not going to be the case so maybe by next week? Hmmm ... if I don't go nuts by then, we'll see. :)

Toodles!