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I have been meaning to do this for a while.  Mike and I have now been married for nearly four months!  Married life is fantastic, as was unmarried life. Side note that has nothing to do with this post: if you are single or unmarried, please ignore all the pretentiously-married people who condescendingly insist that life is suddenly more complete when you have a ring on your finger.  Married people are not better than you, don't let them make you feel bad with their obnoxious comments - they either make them to validate their own choices or they are just trying to be nice and can't hear themselves talking.  Same goes to people with kids who treat you (and me) like you are less human because you're not currently pregnant or parenting.  Tune them out like me!

Back to the idea of this post: kudos to some really hard-working wedding folks.  Our wedding was superb and the people we worked with were similarly awesome.  I have written most of the vendors from our wedding one or more positive reviews online, but I think they deserve more than that, so here goes.

Venue and Catering: Bird & Bottle Inn was our venue for the entire event and also did the food.  I could not have been happier with them.  Elaine, the owner, is accommodating, experienced, and kind.  The staff is super friendly and the food is delicious. Their Sunday brunch is really good. 

Hair: Deb's Hair Design is where I've had my hair done for the last decade.  I loved my hair and what she did with the girls' hair.  She is always great for haircuts, color, and special events.  She was wonderful throughout the morning, helping us set up a bridesmaids' brunch right in the salon.  I'll continue to go to her for as long as she'll have me!  Call 845-265-7663 to make an appointment.

Makeup: Pretty Bird Bridal, run by Brooklynite-turned-Cold Springer Dorothy makes getting your makeup done a breeze.  I am pretty sure I will never look like this again!  She also did a great job on some of the maids and both the moms, making us look nice but not trying too hard.  She'll travel to you up to a certain distance and has all the tools and gear to beautiful the whole crew.  

Photography: Carlos Thomas Photography, based in Brooklyn, is an up-and-comer with a whole lot to offer.  Carlos and Michele are knowledgable, smart, and professional at every turn.  The picture above is of my nearly 200-year old veil resting on an old lampshade covered in a grocery bag to help keep its shape, and he made that look fancy in a photograph. If you saw us storing and carrying around this thing on the aforementioned setup, you'd understand a bit more about why I was so impressed by this. :)  PS All the photos you see here are taken by Carlos and Michele.  

Dress: Got my dress at J.Crew (big surprise, I know) and had it altered at Sew Elegance in the garment district.  Esin, the expert seamstress, took my dress in perfectly and proved to me that I could wear a strapless dress without having to tug at it all night.  She is not inexpensive, but she's reliable, experienced, and really nice!

Flowers: Carolyn of Carolyn's Flower Shoppe in Cold Spring is so easy to work with, and she is really laid-back.  The bouquets and centerpieces were perfectly simple, unpretentious, and gorgeous.  To be honest, flowers were one of those (many) wedding-y things I didn't care about at all, but when I saw these babies I was amazed at how pretty they were and how much I really loved them.  Call her at 845-265-9242 for beautiful arrangements on any occasion, or order select items here. 

Ceremony music: Scarsdale's Devonshire Players, an all-female string quartet, are fantastic!  They have a very extensive rep and seem to have the wedding business down pretty well.  When it began to rain during our ceremony (!) they made it under an awning without me even noticing and played the recessional and postlude without skipping a beat! 

Officiant:  Not a vendor, but a grandpa!  One of the best parts of the day was having someone so special and important to us perform a truly personalized ceremony.  

Bakery: Eat Sweets made us a small cutting cake and three different flavors of cupcakes.  We devoured the leftover cake the week after the wedding.  Abigail and Melissa, the girls at Eat Sweet are super eager to please and offer a lot of other customizable goodies besides wedding cake, all at reasonable prices.  

Stationary: I literally don't even remember where I bought our actual invites, but the day-of stationary (menus, programs, table numbers) was all done by Graphic Nature LLC in Fishkill.  Another pair of great girls runs this local shop.  Their turnover time is fast and their designs are custom, ranging from hip to pretty to old-fashioned.  

Entertainment: Perhaps the biggest kudos go to Party Time Productions based in Highland Falls.  Patrick and John Flynn run a pretty smooth operation there.  John was our DJ and he was spot on with each and every song as well as all of the transitions.  He was super flexible and stayed totally calm through a few minor snags.  The knack this guy had for feeling out the crowd was nothing short of amazing.  These guys do more than just DJ; they offer all kinds of party necessities.  Seriously, don't bother with any other area entertainment source, these are the dudes to call.  

There we have it.  A run down of some pretty cool local businesses from a supremely happy customer. 

Married!

When Mike and I first got engaged, the outpouring of excitement was almost unmanageable.  Everyone freaked - in the best way possible of course.  I remember my cousin (Emily) telling me to enjoy the engagement, as it would go by very quicky and is a very lovely time.  Several others expressed the same sentiment.  My mental response was one of vague confusion - Mike and I have lived together for several years and have been a couple for quite a few more, so I sort of saw the whole "getting married" thing as not much more than a big party.  No big deal.

Wrong.  If we had gone to city hall, maybe it would have been no big deal.  Nothing is changing now that we're legally married.  We are still the same silly couple we've been for nearly a decade.  However, even though Mike has always been a part of my family long before it became official, and visa versa, things for our families have undergone a transformation of sorts.  Let me back up a minute.  I come from an atypically close knit crew of aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, great aunts, grandparents, grandparents-in-law, etc, and one of my uncles always says that it's not just because we all live close by that we are the way we are; it takes an effort on everyone's part to make time together.  It takes Monday night dinners and Saturday barbecues, and getting on a train to a rained out yankee game together.  Ok, it's not an extra job, it's the best part of most weeks, but it's still an effort. But even with a family like mine, you need a time and space to celebrate the really good things about life, and that's what our wedding turned out to be.  We are a pretty consistently happy group of people (though I can't say I was always on the bandwagon here; the fact that everyone put up with that brat I used to be is amazing!) but at our wedding I saw most of the family happier than I can ever remember seeing them.  Most everyone was already married by the time I was born or really little, so I don't remember many family weddings before my own, and the overflow of joy was truly unprecedented. (Everyone at that wedding really knew how to party, and God bless them for that!)  Of course I was thrilled to be marrying the greatest person I know, but what put it over the top was really the collective love and happiness.  Any bride who seriously thinks her wedding day is only about her is crazy and won't have nearly as awesome a time as I did.

Woohoo!
Photo credit: Uncle Ward Haskell

Everyone says that your wedding day is one of the best days of your life, but it's less commonly talked about that the days, weeks, and months leading up to and following the wedding are also some of the greatest ever.  The engagement is over, the honeymoon is over, and I could not imagine being happier.

The Roller Coaster

Memorial Day is less than a week away.  You know what that means; summer is nearly here.  This [school] year is truly flying by, and I am at once nostalgic, overwhelmed, and ecstatic about the onslaught of changes that are riding on my heels.  Por ejemplo:

1. My first class of sixth graders moves on from our little school next month, graduating to high schools all over Brooklyn and Manhattan.  They were so little when I was their teacher just a few years ago.  Now they are teenagers about to turn a major page in their lives.  In a lot of communities around the country, the transitions from elementary to middle to high school are not such a big deal.  In New York City, there are a myriad of factors in kids' lives that change at warp speed during these points - your school, your friends, your commute, your uniform, to name just a few.  When this group of kids came to us, most of them had been considered the shining stars of their old schools and classes, and with good reason.  That transition is difficult, but now they're so much smarter and so much better.  I hope that they go through the same process smoothly in ninth grade, and that they continue to be pushed and challenged by their schools and their peers.  I can't believe they're leaving.

2. We are moving to Queens.  Our new lease has been signed and we will say goodbye to Kings County (at least as our place of residence) in about a month.  Our new neighborhood is quiet, residential, and green.  The New York City rental market is a rapid enterprise, so we essentially decided on this apartment in the blink of an eye when we saw the kitchen.  Needless to say, I am slightly apprehensive about the process of moving, as well as the new, traffic-encumbered drive to work.  Like many, I am a creature of habit, resistant to change of many kinds and happy to be settled into a predictable routine.  Upsets to the delicate balance I've created are not necessarily welcome, even when they are necessary or beneficial.  Nevertheless, the new apartment is quite satisfactory and I am excited to settle into a new routine with a new borough as the homestead.

3.  The wedding is very fast approaching.  Last night I had a strange and alarming dream in which we were a week before nuptials and it came to my attention that invitations had somehow never been mailed.  I realize in my awake state that this doesn't make sense, as I would have suspected a problem earlier due to lack of RSVPs, and my dream never addressed whether this accident was my fault or his, which I also looked back on with perplexity.  Whatever, it was a dream.  The point is that (back to the dream state now) I did not feel nearly as anxious as would be considered normal over such a massive glitch, and I simply told Mike to call everyone, apologize, and ask if they were coming.  As my dream self, the consuming emotion I experienced was not stress, worry, or panic, but rather anticipation.  It was not the kind of anticipation that ails you when you want to get something over with, it was the sort that you feel when the whole world appears to be at your fingertips.  So this is how I woke up in the morning, with an eager composure and delight that assures me: amidst the end of year madness, the upcoming move, and the impending wedding planning crunch, life is generally great.

The Anti-Bride

Mike tells people I've done most of the wedding planning stuff because he's no good at it.  I cringe.  Ali and I went to the Kleinfeld's accessory sale (and found nothing) earlier this month and they were filming Say Yes to the Dress in the next room.  She jokingly asked me if I would ever go on that show. (I think there's a pretty obvious answer to that question.)  I told her that if TLC ever made a show about future brides who procrastinate, cut corners, and don't give a crap about most of the details, then I'd be the perfect episode.  Props go to brides who care, and I'm trying but I'm generally useless.  I see all these cute things but I have zero motivation to actually use them or come up with my own ideas.  (Flowers?  Centerpieces?  Whatever, something with a lot of green.  Bridesmaid shoes?  Ali, go find some. Table linens?  Um....?)

I love the broad ideas surrounding weddings: getting everyone you love all in one place at one time, dressing up, eating and drinking, and making a public commitment to your person.  I love all that.  But there are several things about weddings that I don't understand one bit, and I will likely try to avoid in our own wedding.   Numbers two and three are still on the table to some degree, but probably won't make it to the final cut.

1. Garter toss.  I feel no desire to have Mike dig up my skirt to some strip-teasey song for a useless article of clothing that no one ever wears anymore.  I'm not wearing one, he's not tossing it.  
2. Wedding cake.  The whole thing about freezing the top layer and eating it on your first anniversary is nauseating.  Do people seriously do that?  Plus, I don't like cake unless my grandmother made it.  Cupcakes are cuter. 
3. Favors.  What in the world am I supposed to pick out to give to 100+ people of varying ages and interests?  Everything I've seen so far is maxed out on the cheese scale or just kitschy.  The only nice ones are always something made by the bride or the bridesmaids. We all know that's not happening.  
4. Religious undertones/overtones in the ceremony.  We're getting married outside for a reason.  Everyone knows we don't go to church.  Why would we pretend like we do? 
5. The tradition of not seeing each other before the ceremony.  I live with this man.  I see him all the time.  I want to see my friends during the reception and cocktail hour, and therefore will do the pictures beforehand so I don't have to sneak away and miss half the fun. 

All in all, aside from the whole getting everyone together, eating and drinking, making a commitment part, weddings are weird. :)

5 great happenings

This weekend, some very cool things happened. Needless to say, Monday morning was rough.  Here are the highlights...

1. I booked our flights to Koh Samui and found a fabulous resort to spend our final days in Thailand this summer. 
2. Jan retrieved from the attic two items of serious interest: the hundred and something year old veil I'll wear at my wedding, and her own wedding dress which I have stolen and will wear to our rehearsal dinner.  It's knee-length, ivory, comes with a swanky coat, and is so very Jackie.
3. Pop turned 80!  Actually, Pop turned 80 today, but we had his party yesterday afternoon.  Big family brunch at the Hotel Thayer in a gorgeous room overlooking the river.  Mimosas, the whole crew (minus William who had to work, BOO) and as much food as you could possibly eat.  Since we were a day early in our celebrations, I called Pop this evening to sing to him again.  He said he had a great day and he couldn't have imagined anything better.  In particular he loved the read-aloud that us grandkids did (top 25 things we love about Pop - Kathy's very cute idea). He really is a softy; don't let him fool you.
4. Danielle and Susan came over to watch football and eat wings and guacamole.  And my guacamole came out really good.
5. Ben Roethlisberger lost the Superbowl and I didn't have to listen to that stupid "Black and Yellow" song at all on the morning after.  

Good weekend?  Most certainly.