8/26/10

Off to North Cackalacky

Off to Pinehurst, North Carolina for a nice four day vacation with a few of Marrvelous's friends - including our best man! Yay, I get to meet our best man. finally. I know, strange that I haven't met such an integral part of our extended family, isn't it?

Two of Marrv's best friends from Scotland live here in the States as well (Pinehurst and West Palm, FL), both are golf pros as well and are married to American women. The friends from FL will be there (as well as the Florida Scotsman's parents ... from Scotland. And yes, the father is a golf pro in Scotland. Over there they just put golf clubs in their hands as wee boys!)

I'm really looking forward to a long weekend with a group of people Marrv considers family. We spend so much time with my friends or friends he has made here in Philly since moving to the US, but these are the friends who have known him since he was a youngin' and will be the ones with the truly obnoxious, yet hilarious toasts at the wedding.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to it - but the best part has been the look on Marrv's face every day this week. He's like a child at Christmas, so excited to be on vacation, play golf and more than anything - spend time with his best mates. It makes me so happy to see him so happy.

Enjoy your weekend y'all!

8/23/10

A Place to Celebrate!

As mentioned previously, a few weekends ago, Marrvelous and I checked out yet another restaurant location as possibility for hosting our brunch reception. We had a long list of places to consider (Philly really is a great food town), but I think we were holding this one out for last just to be able to confirm to ourselves that this was the right choice.

From the get-go, the owner has been brilliant to work with - quick replies, creating multiple personalized proposals for menus, and just an overall attitude of being sincerely happy to host our celebration.

I knew I needed a place that had good food. Our city has too many fabulous restaurants to settle for anything less than deliciousness. Although I admit, I was a bit worried that even though we are going the brunch route, some restaurants may be out of our budget. But with those personalized proposals, the owner has also provided us several different pricing options as well. And as far as the food goes, all I have to say is that the menu will have jumbo lumb crab eggs benedict on it and so this going to be one happy little bride!

Finally, not only is the location perfect (just about 6 blocks from our ceremony venue and those 6 blocks take us straight through our favorite park which will be perfect for photos) but the look of the restaurant is spot on. We are taking over the 2nd floor, and the ceiling is made up of three extra-large skylights - so we'll have tons of light (fingers crossed for a bright wintery day - or even snow!) and you can also see the restaurant's gardens atop the skylights (from which they pull their vegetables and herbs).

So without further ado...please meet the restaurant where we will be toasting, laughing, and basking in the love and support from our family and friends...

8/20/10

Weighed down with Guilt

Ok, so now that we're only roughly four months away I've been putting more thought into the logistics for our guests. Wondering when they'll arrive, where they'll stay, what meals we should provide, all of that. And now this huge weight of guilt has fallen on top of my shoulders and I can't seem to shrug it off.

Our wedding may be on the more intimate side, but there is still a group of out of towners and we're asking them to travel the weekend before the Christmas holidays. And with a Sunday morning wedding, I wonder if they'll have to stay over night until Monday as well.

I start thinking about how much it will cost them for flights. For hotels. For drinks and meals that they may need other than the two "times" we're providing. Taking time off work. Some of these younger couples have babies or infants and may even be leaving them with grandparents so they can travel a little lighter.

And all for our little, tiny, insignificant marriage celebration.

8/12/10

Look Out Oprah!!

(And yes. There will be Cheezborger! Cheezborger! involved. And no pepsi, coke!)



I'm coming to your house! Or rather, one of your bajillion houses all over the world.

Heading to Chicago tomorrow morning for a quick mini girls' weekend away! My group of girl friends from college, who I've talked about on here before - see here and here - are spread out all over the country (and actually world...we've got one who currently resides in India with hubby and baby). Close friends for over 10 years now and I feel so lucky every day that these 5 fabulous women are still in my life.

With age though comes a)being spread out all over the world b)marriages c)real jobs that require us to actually work and not take as much time adventuring as we'd like d) multiple babies (!). We all decided at the beginning of this year that we could use a girls only weekend - it's been so long since we've done something like this and then it became a question of where. Since there is a west coaster and many east coasters, we settled on Chicago. And just as it took forever to find a weekend that worked for all of us, well, what started as a 6 person trip is now down to 3. Oh well, life happens.

But us 3 are planning on totally living it up with deep dish pizza, booze, bike tours (Oprah's house!), dinner at one of Rick Bayless's restaurants (I'm counting down the minutees), plenty of good old fashioned mid-western charm and more booze.

Enjoy the weekend!

8/3/10

Lovefest Weekend Recap

(via)

After a rather terrifying wedding-related nightmare last week, followed by high levels of anxiety for the rest of the day, I managed to have one of the loveliest weekends with Marrvelous in a long time. It was the kind of weekend that helps to remind us crazy kids why we are doing this in the first place!

In addition to what feels like entering crunch time of wedding planning, Marrv works some pretty crazy hours. Not only does he work Saturdays (as a golf pro, I'm just happy he has Sundays off), but he doesn't get home until close to 9pm on most nights. And then throw in that he's had juniors' camp added on top of his normal set of client lessons over the past few weeks - well, he's been a bit of a grump working on limited sleep. Pretty sure this weekend was what we both needed.