On Dress Shopping

Last night I went to my seecond Wedding Dress appointment.

I wasn't expecting to be trying on dresses this soon because, well, I'm  not getting married for over a year.  But a particular dress caught my eye, and it happens to be a Spring 2013 dress, and when I called a few salons and no one had it I started to panic.  Then I found a place in Burlingame (Paper & Petals) who said they could have it shipped to them, but I had no idea they meant they could get it so soon…  So I found out last Monday that this place is holding my dream dress, and last Wednesday I went to see if it's the dress.

Honestly, the dress has been something that I have been stressing about since the day I got engaged.  I figured finding a venue and setting a date would be fairly straight forward (and it was!), and then after that the rest would more or less fall into place.  But, as I was browsing online for dresses, all I could think about was that I hate all of them.  There are no real trends or styles out there right now that I like (well, that is to say, within a reasonable budget). I just fear that I will end up with something that looks dated and embarrassing, with puffy sleeves like Ginny Baker's dress in Sixteen Candles.

I don't want to say much about the appointment, except that I got to try on a few different dress shapes. Figuring out what shape I like and what looks best was the important part, I realize this, but some of the actual dresses were awful – one looked like Morticia Addams on the top and Moulin Rouge on the bottom; another looked like Cinderella's dress after her step-sisters have torn it to shreds.

The other problem is that I watch too many shows like Say Yes to the Dress.  I am a very emotional person, but at no point during the appointment did I feel like I was going to burst into tears.  Even in dresses I really liked, I felt no emotional attachment to them.  Maybe normal people don't cry in bridal salons?  Maybe it's just a TV thing?  While does feel a bit anticlimactic that there were no tears shed, I'm not sure what I would have done if my mom and the bestie started shedding tears in public.

So, anyway, because Bear was out of town, and it was really important to me that my sister be there for part of this, we went back last night.  I just want a few key people to love it and think it's perfect for me and then surprise everyone else with it on the big day!

Of course, I figure as long as I don't poop in a designer gown during the appointment, I've done something right…

What has it got in its pocketses, eh Precious?

This is the story of how Boyfriend Fiancé and I got engaged!

When I woke up on Friday, November 30th, I had no idea that I would be engaged by that night.  I had taken the day off work because Boyfriend and I had plans to stay at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove.  But before any of that, I had to brave the storm that was hitting the Bay Area and go to the dentist and the bank, and generally boring things you do when you don't think anything special is going on.

That afternoon, when we finally got to Monterey, the storm had settled down, and we spent a few hours walking around the Aquarium.  According to the guides there, we lucked out – the week after Thanksgiving is always slow.  We saw every exhibit, and had a front row spot for the penguin feeding (where the power went out due to the storms)!  And since it was so empty, I later learned that Boyfriend almost proposed at the Aquarium at that window tunnel where the tide falls over you... We had, after all, spent our very first anniversary at the Aquarium and that would have been very fitting.

When we finally checked into our room at Asilomar we were a little shocked.  Back when I booked the room they asked if I wanted a "modern" room or a "rustic" room, and I had assumed "rustic" meant rustic like the inn in Pennsylvania where I stayed for my Cousin's wedding: old but updated, with a fireplace, and a bathtub, and such.  But, no.  This was a cabin that had not been updated since around 1946, with just a bed, a desk, and a bathroom, and with a ceiling so low, I could reach it with my feet when I was laying on bed.  I kept apologizing to Boyfriend for not booking a more romantic room when we first saw it; I apologized even more last after he proposed! 

We decided to go to dinner at once of my favourite restaurants ever: Peppers in Pacific Grove – they have an amazing Mexican jambalaya and blood orange margaritas to die for.  After dinner, Boyfriend suggested that we walk down to Lover's Point, which is only about 3 blocks from Peppers.  We grabbed an umbrella, and as it started to rain we headed down toward the beach.

It was about 9-9:30ish at night, so there wasn't anyone around.  As we walked down the path that leads to the water we spotted a giant black dog on the beach (I think it was a Hellound; my mom later said it was probably Sirius Black) and Boyfriend thought he people below us chatting, so he stopped me halfway up the path.  We could still see across the bay and the lights on the rest of the coast, and it was beautiful.

Then he turned to me and said something like, "Sooo, I have a question..."

Now, don't judge me here, but I still wasn't expecting anything, and it wasn't like he got down on one knee (not really our style).  In hindsight it's all so obvious – even my best friend J convinced me to get a manicure earlier that week – which I almost never do!  But at that moment, I was expecting Boyfriend to say something like "Soooo, if Nic Cage was on a battleship and there was a giant squid attacking, and all he had was his shoes and some floss..." because we always start conversations like that.  But he didn't ask me about Nic Cage or anyone else.

Boyfriend pulled out a ring and I cried and jumped on his face and said "yes, yes, yes!"  And then we had to walk back to the car because though I could see the ring in the moon light, I couldn't really see the ring.  When we got back to the car, he had to drive because I while I was beyond happy, I was also something of an emotional wreck (and too distracted by the ring to drive).

So, it turns out that Boyfriend had been holding the ring in his pocket the whole day, and not even in the box, just in the 5th pocket of his jeans.  Which is hilarious when I thought back to that morning:

As we were leaving, Boyfriend got in the car and his pant's pocket seemed extra bulky.

"Are you bringing your GameBoy on our weekend away," I asked.

"No!  It's my wallet."  And he showed me his wallet.

"Are you sure you don't have anything else in there?  It's really big today."

"Nope, just my wallet," he insisted.

And then I said, "What has it got in its pocketses, eh Precious?" and I start banging on about how Bilbo had The Ring in his pocket the whole time and Gollum had no idea...  And all the while Boyfriend had a ring in his pocket, and I was just as clueless!

I think my love of The Lord of The Rings is pretty well documented, and only I could inadvertently turn my engagement into a reference from The Hobbit.  But hey, that's what makes us so awesome.

my childhood crush

 

“In all my life I’ve never loved anyone, but I love you. I’m in love with you and I always will be.”

My childhood crush said this to me at my 21st birthday party. 

I had spent my actual 21st birthday in Ireland.  I threw a toga party and my then-boyfriend's friends got us a wedding cake and wrote fake vows for us.  A bottle of Champagne got sabered, someone else made a penis cake, and there was a lot of drunken singing.

But because 21 is such a big deal in the States, and not as much of a big deal in Ireland (since we'd all been drinking legally since 18 there), I had a birthday party when I got home, too.

It was at that party that I saw my childhood crush for the first time in about 3 years.

After that, the next time I saw him was about 2 years later and we were both newly single.  We never talked about that night or his drunken confession.  I slept in his bed – nothing happened.

This summer he is getting married. 

I'm not jealous, if that's what you're thinking. 

When I was younger, I always imagined that we were betrothed, like Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.  And that our parents, because they were best friends, wanted us to be together.

But, honestly, it was always a dream; something that could never happen in real life for so many, many reasons.  And as I got older I realized this.  And as I got older, my childhood crush faded into memory.  

I believe that as you go through life, certain people will change you without even trying.  There are certain people that I will always compare or judge others against.  And there are certain people that help you develop into the person you are today.  I recently wrote about the friend who made me realize that I would sacrifice my own feelings for the sake of friendship, even if in the long run the friendship is ruined.  In this case, my childhood crush made start to realize that someone could like me for me – something I felt from him even before I really understood it myself.

So, while I'm not jealous, it is strange to think about him marrying someone else, even if I'm happily in a relationship, too.  Because, it's funny how the memories cling (even memories of things that never happened) as if I should be upset.  But I'm not.

I wish him the best.  I honestly do. 

A Philadelphia Wedding

Kim & Evan Morris

It's a story that starts with my cousin calling me about a year ago, in which a game of phone tag ensued where we both left long, rambley, mostly insulting messages on each other voice-mail: his asking if I was knocked-up and/or on drugs; mine hoping that he wasn't in jail and wasting his one phone call because eff family obligation, I wasn't going to drive to L.A. to bail him out.  Eventually I found out he had proposed to girlfriend.

I was immediately excited.  I have always liked Kim, my Cousin Evan's girlfriend.  This isn't the best story of me, but the first time I met Kim, we had all gone out to a bar where my cousin (un)fortunately knew the bartender.  36 Sea Breezes later (I might be exaggerating that number), Kim sat with me in the bathroom as I puked purple.  I think Wayne Campbell said it best: "If you blow chunks and she comes back, she's yours. But if you spew and she bolts, then it was never meant to be."  Of course, in this case "yours" means Evan's. 

The wedding was outside of Philly, near where Kim grew up.  We stayed at The Joseph Ambler Inn, where our whole side of the family was in one building so we wouldn't disturb any other guests while we post-reception partied until 3:30am.  It was such a cute place and, oh my god, the bath tub in the room was to die for.  I was expecting it to be in the middle of nowhere, but it was actually in populated place.  And the ceremony and reception were at a nearby country club.  It was all so beautiful.

One thing you should know about my family is that we take our Weddings seriously.  The party started on Thursday night.  While the Wedding Party had their Rehearsal dinner, the Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins hung out in the tavern (the Wedding Party joined us later, of course, for more drinks).  The Wedding was on Friday night and we started the Reception around 6pm at the country club and, as I mentioned, continued back at the Inn.  There was a lot of drinks, dancing, and fist pumping (for some reason). 

I had the change to dance with one of Evan's friends, Raven, who I had met years before while helping Evan move from an apartment in Berkeley.  Raven's wife couldn't make the wedding and Boyfriend wasn't there, so we were each others dance partners for part of the night. I don't know if I've ever had such a good dance partner.

I immediately text Boyfriend:

Me: One of Evan's married friends, whose wife couldn't make it, slow danced with me. He dipped me! We need to take dance lessons.

Boyfriend: Yes. I'm down for that.

Me: Keeper.

Boyfriend: I like how you mentioned he was married. Otherwise I'd have to kill him.

And if that wasn't enough of a celebration Saturday was Sports Day.  We had a Frisbee Golf Tournament (the wedding favors were screen printed frisbees!), a Croquet Tournament, and a game of Ultimate Frisbee.  And Yours Truly won the Croquet Tournament!  I might have won mostly due to lucky shots and gravity, but don't tell anyone... And I may have held my mallet up in the air and yelled "Croquet!" when I won... It's a classy game.

 It was such an amazing weekend.  We rounded out the festivities with a tour of Historical Philly.  And that's a story that ends with my Uncle handing my 12-year-old cousin a paper map of downtown Philly and assuring us that if we follow him, we'll have no problem getting out of the city – and no, we aren't taking the same route we took to get in; this is a new, better one.  Evidently, he did not trust my iPhone's ability to provide accurate directions. 

My mom and my Sister couldn't make it, so I was representing my branch of the family.  It's a shame because it was so good to see family I hadn't seen in years, and I know they would have had a blast.  I always have fun with my family, but these special events seem to seem to radiate fun.  The silver lining was that I got to spend some sister-esque time with my 15-year-old cousin.

Since Evan is my only older cousin, my Aunt, his mom, spent no time in reminding me that I should be next to get married...  Of course, Evan's wedding was so awesome that if I am next, I have a ton of ideas that I might borrow for my own!

Cousins! Conor, Me, Evan.  Perhaps I should photoshop Bear into this..

Coming soon: hopefully a post about the amazing dress I wore to the wedding, but more importantly, a recap of my trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

Meet Me in the Basement

Oh my god, you guys. I've figured it out.

I'm gonna walk down the aisle to this song some day.

Meet Me in the Basement - Broken Social Scene

Oh! Probably, you should ignore the images and just focus on the music.