Plant nostalgia

Earlier this year I read The Language of Flowers, a novel with the Victorian language for flowers threaded through the storylines. In that era, flowers conveyed various emotions and intentions - so you'd assemble and give a bouquet carefully and thoughtfully. (I loved learning about this code!)

I don't assign these intentions to plants in quite the same way, but I do love linking them to memories. This week I experienced two distinct plant nostalgia moments.

The first: snapdragons. My parents nurtured beautiful gardens when I was growing up, and they were able to start plants earlier in the season thanks to a greenhouse space my dad renovated behind our garage. In addition to smaller pockets of flowers around the yard, there was a big flower garden and a large vegetable garden that's even more magnificent in my memory now that I've had practice tending to my tiny garden plot. Snapdragons will always remind me of those gardens. They were one of my favorite flowers as a kid because my dad showed me how you could pinch the bud and make the snapdragon open its "jaws" like a little puppet. Chomp, chomp.

I bought a bouquet of flowers at the farmer's market on Saturday and figured out when I got home that it was the sunflowers that caught my eye - but the white and yellow snapdragons that compelled me to buy it.

And later in the week, I opened the door and saw that one little snapdragon flower (unrelated to my bouquet) had dropped onto the patio overnight. (It's upside down, so it's a little harder to picture the chomp, chomp puppet motion I described earlier.) I don't know where the nearest snapdragon plant is, but the sight just about made my morning.

The second nostalgia moment concerned dill, and this one is two-fold nostalgia now. The smell of dill is one of the scents that brings me right back to those gardens growing up, which is funny to me because I wasn't particularly engaged with the process of harvesting dill or cooking with it. But because the smell was linked so closely to that memory, I loved the idea of including flowering dill in my wedding bouquet. And my mom, who put all of our wedding flowers together with help from a couple of friends and family, made it happen!

Now I love the sight and smell of dill (and flowering dill) because it reminds me of both the gardens from my childhood and my wedding bouquet. Imagine my total delight when I got to the garden earlier this week and saw that the dill had started flowering! It was the first time I've seen flowering dill since our wedding in September. I stood there and just watched it for a little while.

I broke a few stems off, not to encourage more dill and fewer flowers, but because I wanted to keep some in a vase at home. A mini-bouquet:

Gardens are gifts for many reasons, but this week I was reminded how clearly they can connect everyday plants to memories and experiences, recent and distant.

Ten wedding details

Right away when Josh and I got engaged, exactly 10 months before our wedding day, we knew we wanted to keep the planning process simple and relaxed. We were so excited and grateful about making this commitment to each other in front of our family and friends, and we wanted to keep the focus on that, without getting too tied up in the details.

Like many people before me, though, I felt a little overwhelmed early on by All Of The Options for every part of a ceremony and reception, for things I didn't even know we were supposed to think about. The choices got easier, more fun and more meaningful to me when I looked at the details as a chance to connect to a memory, story or person whenever possible.

This word count is gonna get crazy. Here are three quick takeaways:

1. My mom was an incredible source of ideas and knowledge and enthusiasm and energy, and so much of our wedding details happened because of her.
2. The Etsy online marketplace was a wonderful resource for me.
3. Most of these details don't actually include my new husband. To clarify: He was a huge part of the planning (I think he actually coordinated more components of the wedding than I did) and we had so much fun working on our plans together. But: these kinds of details, as he would say, are not his jurisdiction. (I am planning another post that gives the broader view of the whole day.)

In no particular ranking, with no possibility of ever being a comprehensive list, here are some of my favorite details. (I'll share more photos later on, once we get them from our photographers.)

1) The flowers: I grin when I think of our flowers. My mom, who has a florist's eye, spearheaded the project, with help from two of my aunts and my friend Sara. This group assembled everything the day before the wedding: an arrangement for each dinner table plus the five bridesmaids' bouquets and my bouquet. (Mom also made all of the boutonnieres and corsages, but that happened ahead of time. I am telling you - she's amazing.)

I stopped by my aunt's house the day before the wedding and marveled at the whole process unfolding in her backyard. Here is Mom with one of my aunts at one of the work stations:

Mom is well-versed in flower language and I am not, so we had looked at bouquets on Pinterest to help identify what I liked and didn't like. Beyond that, all I knew was that I loved bright, bold colors, especially that poppy-orange shade that showed up in lots of places at our wedding.

When I saw a draft of my bouquet, I couldn't believe how spot-on it was. I love, loved it - and didn't want to let it go.

Everything is real - and in some cases, home-grown by my family - except for the poppies. I love poppies, but they're too fragile to count on, so my mom tucked artificial poppies into my bouquet. Also, earlier in the summer, I smelled dill and it reminded me of the dill from our gardens when I was growing up. We ended up using dill weed flower in the wedding bouquets, and I loved that, too.

2) Our ring dish: "I think we should get a ring dish," I told my perplexed groom about a month before our wedding. (We didn't have any plans for a ring pillow or anything, so the plan at the time was for the best man, Josh's brother, to carry them in his pocket.) I saw some pretty options on Etsy and chose an ivory clay dish about four inches in diameter with a lace stamp over part of it. It's engraved with a few words ("i carry your heart") from one of our readings, the E.E. Cummings poem with the same name. I loved this little ring dish. It's on our dresser and I like seeing it.

3) The calligraphy: This spring, I signed up for a calligraphy class (with Sara!) with the idea that if I liked it, I might be able to address our invitations in calligraphy (and if it didn't work out, it would be a fun class to take with my friend). I was far (far, far, far) from an expert in the subject, but after six weeks of class, I felt comfortable enough to give it a try.

I had pictured a couple of weekend afternoons devoted to the project, but it worked better to spend half an hour or so at a time. (My letters got worse if I worked much longer!) Even though it took more time than I expected, I was very happy I did this. It helped me with names and gave me an uncanny memory for peoples' addresses (a weird consequence worth noting), and I loved spending a few minutes as I worked on those envelopes to think about every guest.

4) My headpiece: Once I chose my wedding dress back in January, I pieced together the rest of my accessories. I decided not to wear a veil - in fact, I wasn't going to wear anything in my hair. Then my mom suggested something called a "headpiece," which sounded to me a lot like a nice hat but actually includes a wide range of accessories. I was kind of overwhelmed by the options, but my mom really helped out here, too. She asked what I thought of using one of my grandma's brooches in the headpiece, which I loved, and also suggested using the lace that was cut out of my wedding dress during the hemming. (I'm 5'4" and needed a lot of hem.)

She sent me a mock-up of what she was imagining, and that was it. My headpiece was all set:

This was maybe four inches long, and you'll see how it fit into my hair soon.

5)  My bracelet: I wanted to keep the rest of my jewelry pretty simple. I got a necklace with a single pearl on it from Etsy, and then found earrings (also on Etsy) that coincidentally matched the brooch in my headpiece almost exactly. My bracelet, though, tied with the headpiece for my favorite piece of jewelry. My sweet aunt restrung one of my grandma's pearl necklaces into a two-strand bracelet. I loved how it fit and I loved that I could look down at my wrist and have a reminder of my grandmother so close.

6) The ties: The only part of the wedding planning process that was more difficult than I expected was our darn colors. As previously mentioned, I love vibrant colors, and with a green light from Josh, I chose to incorporate a poppy-orange and a deep bluish-purple around the wedding. (Orange ties in to some of our favorite teams and schools!) I definitely did not understand that these would be very weird and hard colors to find together. (A bright red ended up finding its way into the mix by the time we got married.) We found purple dresses for the bridesmaids and chose black suits for the groomsmen, and we thought it'd be nice to find a tie that pulled together the orange and purple colors. This turned out to be really hard to find.

Thank goodness for South Carolina's Clemson University, which happens to have nearly the right orange and purple as its colors. We found orange- and purple-checked ties via a Clemson vendor and almost got them, but they had a few tiger pawprints (the mascot) on the ties and we weren't wild about that. Then I found Handmade by Gigi, an Etsy store run by a person who makes bow ties in a wide range of Southern schools' colors (and lots of other colors). I saw this one and loved the fabric, but Josh and I wanted neckties, not bowties. I contacted the seller and asked if she could do a special order for neckties, and she did! She was one of the fabulous vendors with which we were lucky to work.

7) Our papel picado: Josh and I love papel picado, which is perforated tissue paper banners that you can find at Mexican markets. (We have some hanging in our kitchen.)

Some of our wedding elements were inspired by this art, in our invitations and in ivory papel picado hanging at our reception that wove in our names and wedding date. (Thank you to AyMujer on Etsy!) Our candleholders used papel picado more directly. I bought plain vases and several packs of the paper banners, and on a chilly spring Sunday afternoon, my mom and sister and I used spray adhesive to glue papel picado onto the vases, which we used as candleholders at each table.

I have three of those pieces now - red, yellow, and blue - and I've used the red one as a vase, but I need to see them in action as candleholders. (Thanks to Mom and my sister for their help with this!)

8) My hair: Early this summer, Mom and I talked about my hair and decided that, if a couple of trial runs went smoothly, she would do my hair and makeup for my wedding. (She does hair professionally, so I was in very good hands, but we both wanted to make sure this wouldn't add too much to her plate that morning.) I was so grateful she was open to doing this, and I loved having time alone with my mom that morning as we got ready for the day. Also, I was really happy with what she did to my hair, seven thousand bobby pins and all. (See the headpiece now?)

9) Our dessert: When Josh and I started talking with caterers, we thought a lot about the dessert and weren't quite sure what to do. (Dessert is important to us!) We thought about a traditional cake, and one friend told me about pies at her wedding, which sounded great. Then, one day, I was thinking about getting some ice cream and it hit me. We love ice cream. Why not ice cream? Two of our friends had ice cream sundaes at their wedding in Washington, and we thought it was about the best thing ever.

Once we decided on ice cream sundaes, the pieces came together quickly. There are a few really good ice cream shops in St. Paul, but our favorite is Grand Ole Creamery. We set up a catering order and chose two kinds (birthday cake and sweet cream), and the shop sent two people to scoop the ice cream, and then our guests chose their own toppings. My sister grabbed a sundae for me right before we started the dances, and after the first few songs, I went back to our table all by myself and had a few bites, and it was so good. We were so happy to be able to serve our favorite ice cream, from one of our favorite shops in our city, to our guests.

10) Our guestbook: I must have read about alternative guest book ideas early in the wedding planning process, because right away, I wanted to do a thumbprint tree guestbook. There are lots of options on Etsy and other sources, so we chose a design with our names and wedding date printed under a bare tree, plus a few thumbprint-shaped ink pads in red, orange and yellow. (Y'all know how I love my colorful leaves.) Then we printed it at Kinko's on a mounted poster board, and set up a little station at the reception with the ink pads, the poster and some wet wipes to remove the ink.

As we made our plans for the wedding, we often wondered what it would be like to see so many friends and family members from different parts of our lives in one place. Picturing it felt so special to us, and we loved the idea of a visual reminder of that in our home. We weren't sure if people would be into making thumbprints with ink, but we thought it'd be worth a try.

Josh and I arrived at the cocktail hour maybe 10-15 minutes after the rest of our guests, and one of the first things I vividly remember seeing when I walked into our venue was the guestbook poster, already nearly full of thumbprints. I am pretty positive that I squealed.

It's hanging on our wall and I see it lots of times every day, and I love it.

Friends, I could go on and on and on. It was a wonderful day, and we can't say this enough: we are so, so grateful for the friends and family who helped with the details that made it even more special for us - and for everyone who helped celebrate, with us and from afar.

And we're home!

Hi, Reader!

Josh and I just got back from a marvelous few days way up north!

We are so happy that we were able to bring this guy along, too:

I think all three of us looked this happy and relaxed for the better part of the week.

I have been writing things like "more on this later" and "a full report soon" for basically the last couple of weeks. But soon it's going to happen! I'll start with our trip and work my way back, once I can gather all of my thoughts coherently, and then maybe circle back again to the wedding once more photos are available to post. I have a hunch those photos will cover more than I can find words to write.

Good night!

We're married!

Oh, what a wonderful weekend! We're married!

Yesterday, after the rest of our friends and family were on their way back home, Josh and I got the first look at our "guestbook": a tree with our guests' thumbprints as the leaves!

The guestbook was one of the first things I saw when I arrived at the reception, a few minutes after most of our guests, and I was thrilled to see it already all marked up! I can't wait to hang it up in our home.

Yesterday I got a little chill seeing all of the thumbprints again and thinking of all of the people who celebrated with us, supported us, traveled to be with us, and helped make the weekend happen. Words can't express how grateful we are.

I will tell you lots, lots more (promise!) later this week.

Let it be a wonder

I carry a little yellow Semikolon notebook with me in my purse and jot down notes as I see fit. (I try to limit it to thoughts and quotes from what I read, but sometimes notes from work meetings sneak in when I've forgotten the right notebook.)

I filled up a bunch of pages this spring, when I read Tiny Beautiful Things, a compilation from Cheryl Strayed's exquisitely written "Dear Sugar" advice column. This passage, excerpted from the end of this column, was one of several that landed in my notebook:

Let your wedding be a wonder. Let it be one hell of a good time. Let it be what you can't imagine and wouldn't orchestrate even if you could. You're getting married! There's a day ahead that's a shimmering slice of your mysterious destiny. All you've got to do is show up.

And here we go!

A very important item

As we wait for friends and family to arrive, Josh and I are working on our To Do list this week. Here's one item on the list about which I've been especially excited!

A pedicure with Mom - what a treat! It was wonderful and so relaxing.

Tomorrow our first out-of-town visitors will arrive!

Marvelous Monday: Week 36

Hey, it's wedding week!!! We can hardly believe it but are so excited!

1) It's hot here (but supposed to cool down by the weekend!) and I slogged through almost 10 miles on Saturday morning, my longest run in a long time. (That last part is the marvelous part.)

2) This morning's run was another slog, but there were two very beautiful parts: a rose sky just before daybreak, and then seeing one of the St. Paul bridges lined with glowing streetlights on a foggy, cloudy morning.

3) This is totally not romantic or light-hearted wedding week reading, but I started reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood last week and am captivated. Along similar lines, Josh and I finally - finally! - started watching "The Wire" over the last couple of weeks and are captivated by that, too.

4) Tennessee's second game of the season (and the first one on accessible-to-us TV) happened over the weekend, and Josh and I camped out on the couch on Saturday afternoon to watch the Volunteers march to a good win.

5) I went to a lovely baby shower yesterday honoring a lovely mama-to-be and was so happy to be able to celebrate with her.

And there are so many marvelous things ahead this week, with marvelous people, and my heart is so full.

Marvelous Monday: Week 34

Hello! It's Marvelous Monday:

1) Caprese sandwiches on the grill for dinner = one of my favorite ways to start a week.

2) The garden is loving this heat wave. (More on this later.)

3) A family member of mine discovered that our wedding day is in the (very) extended forecast!

4) We are a little late to the party and just watched Justin Timberlake's VMA performance, which was completely amazing. We are also a little dismayed because Wish wondered afterward if he could go live with JT instead of us.

5) Tennessee football starts on Saturday!!!

Hope your week is starting out very nicely, Reader.

A new twist on an old tradition

Last night, my sister threw the most marvelous bachelorette party for me, with help from my mom and dad, my other bridesmaids, and the wonderful friends who were able to join us for the celebration. I try not to post photos at Miles and Laurel of friends and family who haven't given a specific thumbs-up for it, so this recap might not quite capture the entire spirit of the party. Well, scratch that! I hope it does convey the spirit, if not every little detail. (No one needs all of those!)

Really, all I need to say is that the whole evening blew me away, thanks in large part to my sister's thoughtful, amazing plan. I barely knew anything about the itinerary leading up to the party, and when she picked me up in the early evening, she let me know that we'd start with dinner at a nearby restaurant. (Most of us ordered pizzas we thought were going to be individual-sized that turned out to be enormous!) It was so much fun just to have dinner with friends from different parts of my life all together in one place. We enjoyed chocolate cake that my sister had baked for dessert, and that's when I found out the plan.

Remember our family's annual Easter scavenger hunt? Every Easter, my dad the Easter Bunny sends us on this chase, usually all over town, with one clever clue after another that eventually leads us to our Easter baskets. (Yes, this still happens!) My sister brought the Easter Bunny out for a late-summer excursion and created an amazing scavenger hunt in the Easter Bunny's voice and spirit (jokes and puns and all!). I was so surprised and so excited, and our first clue clearly sent us to our alma mater, which Josh and I share with my sister and a bunch of our friends, too. The one mystery: the clue noted that transportation would be provided.

I had no idea that a yellow school bus would pull up a few minutes later - with my dad at the helm! (He works part-time driving for a school bus company, and he and my sister had coordinated our transportation for the evening!) Here's how I felt about this surprise:

(I think I just had this goofy grin on for the rest of the evening, actually.)

And of course, the bus's interior was decked out with ribbons and streamers and pictures of Josh and me, thanks to my mom. We all piled into the bus, pulled the windows down to let the summer night's breeze in, and the ribbons started flying.

We had a couple of clues at my alma mater: the residence hall where I lived during my first year of college, the building that housed many of Josh's science classes, and so on. One of the last clues on campus led our party to a nearby watering hole, and then after that stop, my dad dropped us off at the house where I lived with Sara (a bridesmaid) and a few other friends during my junior year of college. My sister had gone to the house earlier in the day and asked the family that lives there now if she could stash a clue in their fence. They gave her permission, and when we returned that night, they had put a bottle of champagne out with a note congratulating us and thanking my roommates and me for warming the house for their arrival, a year or two after we moved out.

We took lots and lots of photos. Here's one of me with the bridesmaids in attendance:

There were two other dear bridesmaids who I missed that night, but at the next stop (in the spirit of another family tradition), my sister included life-size photos of their heads on a stick so they could be included in the group photos, too. At nearly every stop, she had thought of fun activities for the group to do.

The second to last stop brought us to the restaurant where Josh and I had our first date, and some more friends joined us there before we headed to our last stop, which featured the all-important dance floor.

I was so, so touched by the level of care, effort and detail my sister put into weaving together an evening that I loved wholeheartedly, one that included many of the dearest people, places and neighborhoods in my past and present. Thank you, so much, to everyone who helped make it happen. I am a happy bride-to-be.

Marvelous Monday: Week 32

Hello, blog! It's Marvelous Monday.

1) My aunt and cousin hosted such a sweet party for me yesterday: beautiful desserts, fresh homemade summer beverages, and wonderful family. I was so touched.

My mom's penchant for organizing photos at events used to be a thorn in my siblings' collective side, or whatever the right expression is. ("Mom! Another picture?!") Obviously, if you've visited this blog even once before, I've come around to appreciate her habit of getting out the camera. I love this photo of my grandma, mom and sister with me.

2) I also love reading and thinking about kindness. On today's run, the Slate Double X Podcast to which I was listening steered me toward "George Saunders's Advice to Graduates". "Err in the direction of kindness," he writes. Who do I know that needs an extra touch of kindness this week? Who do you know?

3) Tonight was a grill night! I prepared a play on a recipe I read in this month's Martha Stewart Living that involved topping grilled eggplant with basil, cherry tomatoes, olive oil and feta, which I swapped for fresh mozzarella I had on hand. (Can anyone give a high five for not just eating the caprese salad and skipping the eggplant? 'Cause I almost did.) I haven't grilled eggplant before and it was great.

4) The next few days call for mid-70s and sun. Yes!!

5) Josh just came home after a long day and Wish was so elated that he went airborne in his greeting, which I don't think I've ever seen before and was totally marvelous.

Happy times at Miles and Laurel.

Marvelous Monday: Week 31

1) I finished Gone With the Wind on Sunday, and my reading experience certainly added oomph to my quest to read more classic novels that I missed reading via school assignments. I loved working my way through it over nearly three weeks and thinking of the main characters during that time - it truly was a reading experience because it wasn't the kind of book one could churn through in a long evening and then set aside.

When I checked out the book along with Pride and Prejudice, I mused that I was thrilled to read this epic novel as a traditional hard copy instead of the Kindle version, but wow, 1,024 pages makes for a hefty book, especially when your copy has a fragile binding. I might have preferred a Kindle version. Also, I'm not sure what I was thinking, checking out Gone With the Wind and Pride and Prejudice in the same three-week borrowing period. I finished the former with three days to spare. (And yes - I can't wait to watch the film adaptation.)

2) It's dear Ellie's birthday today! Here we are, at Nat's wedding. (Her nickname is Fence.)

I cannot wait to see her next month.

3) It's August and our wedding is next month! The date felt so very far away for so many of the months of planning, and all of a sudden it seems a lot closer, and we are so excited.

4) I grilled corn tonight for grilled corn and potato chowder, which I chose to use up the red potatoes and chives from this week's CSA (the sweet corn in the box got used up in sweet corn and quinoa over the weekend). Anyway, I was excited for grilling the corn because 1) I had never grilled corn and 2) this is a big reason why I wanted to learn how to grill: not just for main meat entrees, but also for components of other dishes. (I made the soup more fun by topping it with bacon and cheese, but I would give it a thumbs up either way.)

5) Yesterday I got to see Wish notice a squirrel way up in the treetops and then try to leap up the tree trunk, as if just this once, he might get enough momentum to catch the squirrel.

Your turn, Reader! What's marvelous in your world this week? Have you grilled lately? Have you read or watched Gone With the Wind?

Marvelous Monday: Week 27

I've missed a couple of Marvelous Mondays lately, including the halfway point of 2013! Time to get back:

1) I'm almost done reading The Shining Girls, which is making the media rounds this summer. It's creepy and probably not the best book to read before bed, but it's got me hooked.

2) Molly and I had planned a run for this evening, but with the temperature hovering near 90, we thought a stroll might be wiser. Baby (her sweet boy!) came with us and we had a splendid walk around her neighborhood.

3) Later in the evening, Josh and I had marriage preparation class. We've been meeting every week or two with a couple at the church where we're getting married and go through a workbook with exercises about communication, financial goals, conflict resolution, and that sort of thing. We were totally unsure about what to expect going into these classes but have found them really interesting, productive and valuable.

4) With each member of my household contributing, we've finished the eight pounds of strawberries I picked with Mom last Tuesday. That is not marvelous, but the strawberries were definitely marvelous. We ate most of them plain, made strawberry shortcake once and finished the leftover strawberry toppings on ice cream.

5) We cleaned yesterday and are starting the week with a clean house, which makes everyone happy except Wish, because he had to listen to the vacuum cleaner.

What are you up to this week, Reader? Best book you've read so far this summer? Favorite summer food? Tell me, please!

Pretty evening

Engagement photos tonight! We had to postpone the session a few weeks ago, during that part of June that was neverending rain and dreariness in Minnesota, and I kept yammering about how glad I was that we had postponed and ended up with tonight instead. The skies finally cleared this week, and the light this evening was one of my favorite kinds of light in any season or time of day.

I feel happy, tuckered out, and fortunate to get to know and work with the husband and wife team who will be our photographers at our wedding in September.

Friday report

Today...

...is one day after one of my favorite Tennessee football players from last season got drafted by my hometown NFL team!!! You may know that my household is a Broncos one, not Vikings, but I am very excited. When Cordarrelle Patterson committed to UT last year, I could not have imagined that, one year later, he'd be coming to play in Minnesota. He is such fun to watch. (Speaking of, the new UT coaching team is doing work on the recruiting trail and I'm also very excited about that program's future.)

...the weekend forecast looks like this:

...is therefore a day when I greatly look forward to my evening stroll with Wish.

...is when I got the dreaded "three days left in your Kindle library loan" email regarding my temporary digital copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I am fascinated by the book but only something like 18 percent into it. Crunch time!

...is when I get to try my wedding dress on for the first time since picking it out back in January!

...kicks off a weekend in which 1) I expect to look forward to running outside, 2) I might catch some outdoor baseball in the spring sun, 3) I'll see my friends for book club and 4) I get to have my family over for dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday earlier this month.

That's what's on my mind this morning. What're you thinking about for the days ahead? Will you be spending time outside this weekend?

Marvelous Monday: Week 14

I'm back in Minnesota after a great long weekend with friends in Washington, D.C. While I enjoy looking at my trip photos and dream of the 70s and 80s in the city I just left, to distract myself from this week's forecast, I will share a few marvelous tidbits:

1) I got to reunite with Wish today! There was jumping and playing and snuggling.

2) I put away my travel bag and its contents, which is a huge step and a major rarity for me.

3) Today was predicted to be Washington's first 80-degree day of the year, I think. The first part of my travels took place during a warm, sunny, beautiful morning.

4) It's almost five months until the wedding! Josh and I are working on some planning details this evening and will check a few more items off the list this week. Also, all but one of the bridesmaid dresses have arrived and are changing hands at an extraordinarily rapid rate. There is one in D.C. now. One is at my parents' house (I think). Next month, one will head to Massachusetts. I think two are with their rightful owners. I kind of want to make a little map tracing these dresses' paths. (Thanks again to my sister for her help with them!)

5) Two friends are welcoming their baby boy to the world very soon, and I am so excited and thinking of them as they wait to meet him.

The trip recap will be here momentarily! Hope your week is starting out well!

The dress (unabridged)

And I do mean unabridged, dear Reader. This post is just for the archives, but I hope you enjoy reading about the dress-shopping extravaganza (minus identifying details about the dress itself, of course!).

I'll freely admit I was excited but also pretty nervous going into the day. I love the group I assembled for the trip, but I'm so not usually an all-day shopper with people crowding around me with feedback. I was nervous about getting cranky and grouching at the three wonderful people who had taken the day to be with me for this experience (and thus forever remembering the fun, special day instead as The Day When The Bride Got Freakishly Grouchy). I was nervous about not finding anything and then about finding The Dress that was out of my budget. I was trying so hard to not put unrealistic pressure on myself, but there was a whole lot of unknown looming in front of me when Saturday began.

Luckily (a happy spoiler!) I had worried for nothing, so rest assured that the remaining paragraphs don't echo the previous one. (Relief!)

My mom had booked 90-minute appointments at three stores around the Twin Cities, and by the way, she was amazing. She started the day by distributing carefully assembled and very humorous survival kits for each of us, containing tissues and snacks and chocolate! The whole purpose of this post is not to give feedback about specific stores but rather so I can remember the experience - so I won't name names, although I've given positive feedback offline in some cases. I'll take you chronologically through the day.

We got to Store 1, and there were a couple of other parties in there. Over the course of the day, we'd see brides with anywhere between one or two and ten women with them. I brought my mom, my sister, and my friend Sara, and that was a great group for me. We chatted with our contact at Store 1 for a few minutes, and then we all went around and grabbed dresses that might match my ideas. I tried on a bunch (13, I think) and found one that rose above the rest. I liked it a lot, even though it was different than what I expected I would choose. You learn quickly that you get surprised with how dresses look in real life and how they fit, including both dresses that didn't originally warrant a second glance and dresses you thought you would love. I had forgotten my high heels (oops) but it wasn't a problem because I could step onto a little platform that made me look way tall!

Our contact at Store 1 was great: patient and very helpful. She was right there next to me in the fitting room, getting me in and out of the dresses and giving good advice. She didn't give a lot of specific feedback, but she knew that it was our very first appointment and first time looking at dresses together, so I think she intentionally stepped back to let me process everything. I appreciated that.

At the end of our first appointment, I asked somewhat desperately if lunch or another appointment was next. I was tired from getting into the dresses - more intricate than anything I'd ever tried on before - and from making sure I hadn't missed the right dress among my choices. It was confusing at first because it wasn't like I had tried on wedding dresses before - heck, any kind of fancy dress! - so they all felt strange and not completely natural. I did get a much better idea of what I preferred from our first stop, and I had a dress I liked. I just wasn't sure if I was supposed to actually have that fabled  "OH MY, THIS IS THE ONE" moment, but I felt good.

After the ever-important lunch (fish and chips for me!), we went to Store 2. Right away, the energy and vibe were not matching our group's. People I love have found the right dress at this store (and had a great experience, too), so it's just an example of how visit quality can vary based on any number of reasons. But the bottom line was that I was neither comfortable nor relaxed, and I wanted to get out of there. I won't dwell on this part of the day too much, but our appointment was a short one. Besides the energy, my style (and my budget) also didn't seem to match well with the store's inventory, so I wasn't clicking with the dresses I was trying. Right at the end, though, I did try on a great dress that was on par with my favorite from Store 1.

I left the second store feeling depleted because of the lackluster visit but truly content with my top two choices. I didn't feel torn. I felt like I could pick either one and be happy about what I chose.

We went into Store 3, and there were literally dozens of women milling around in the main reception area, and all I could do was laugh and kind of nonsensically start talking about Little Women with my group. Luckily, we got called to a quieter room that we had all to ourselves (with my changing room across the hall), and we met our contact there. She wanted to hear about our whole day and what I was looking for, and she made us all feel comfortable right away. She gave me a heads-up that she expected some fatigue from us, given that it was our third stop. Man, she was right on. All of the dresses in the first group were blurring together, and nothing seemed quite right to me.

When she came back to our room, I surprised myself by launching into a weird, convoluted monologue about what I was looking for and why the other ones weren't quite working. It was totally vague and didn't contain what I perceived to be specific feedback but did include broad tangents about who I am and how I see myself in a wedding dress. When she and I returned to the changing room, I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know if that was helpful at all" and she said, "Wait, I have another idea for you." She brought back a couple of dresses, and I tried on one and said, "Oh!" I went into the room with my group, and then onto the little stage with mirrors all around me. I had found the right dress for me.

It's hard to express this without unabashedly embracing a tired cliche, but the feeling I got wearing this dress was entirely different than trying on all of the others. I wanted to keep wearing it! It made me realize that the other dresses were wonderful but also not quite right for me, in contrast to feeling natural and comfortable wearing this one. I felt like myself in it, instead of someone wearing a pretty costume. (Also, I think I had a seriously tell-tale perma-grin going on the whole time we were inspecting it.) I guess all I need to say is that I learned that it was possible for me to know when the right dress came around after all, and it was thrilling. (And yes, when our contact gave us privacy to "talk about the dress" amongst ourselves, we started taking pictures with each other and me in the dress instead, and I said dramatically, "I'm going to say yes to this dress!" and we all squealed. Ha!)

I was so happy - and yes, relieved - that after trying dozens of gowns, we had found a dress I loved and in our budget. I am so grateful for my group for offering great feedback and support all day - for making the day fun! - and so grateful for our contact at Store 3. Josh and I have met a lot of people through wedding planning so far, and some of them just go above and beyond their job description. She was one of them. She was so genuine and helpful and honest, and she really listened and responded to our feedback - but was also knowledgeable and creative enough to bring out a dress that I don't think I would have flagged on the hanger or in a picture, which of course ended up being the dress I ended up buying on the spot.

I can't wait to try my dress on again later in 2013, and I really can't wait to get married in it.

The dress adventure (abridged)

Oh, Reader, I promise, promise a more detailed wedding planning update soon. Sometime soon!

For today, all I'll say is how happy and lucky I feel to finish a long day of dress-shopping by feeling over the moon about the result - we've got a wedding dress!! - and so grateful for the patient, funny, wise and wonderful women who accompanied me.

Marvelous Monday: Week 51

Guess what? I thought I had gone astray in my Monday calculations this year, because we're already here at Week 51 and there are still two Mondays left in the year. As it turns out, per my internet research, there are 53 Mondays in 2012, not 52. How about that? (I guess this is also the place where I shouldn't admit that I counted them myself on a calendar and somehow ended up with 55 Mondays.)

Here's today's list:

1) I scurried over to yoga class this morning before work, which I can't imagine ever not counting as a small victory.

2) I have finally made progress on the t-shirt quilt for which I've been saving old t-shirts for ages. I went through the shirts that have piled up, added some more to the pile and cut them roughly for size. This week, I'm hoping to make more progress by getting to the next step: preparing the squares for sewing.

The funny part was finding shirts that I forgot I had. In high school, my nordic ski team (the girls' team, anyway) was really into decorating t-shirts. (I was one of this effort's merry ringleaders.) I found one of my all-time favorite t-shirts, circa 1999, in the t-shirt quilt box:

That's Ski Happy on the front, with a skier with pigtails. I still don't know if I can cut this t-shirt up, although it is decidedly not in any condition to be worn around town, either.

3) I'm going to Washington, D.C. in the spring! Natty and her husband and I (and a bunch of his family, I think, and possibly some more of our friends?) entered the lottery for the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile, and our entries were accepted early this morning. I can't wait to run this wonderful race - and get to visit them for a weekend, and explore that city.

4) My family took our annual Christmas picture yesterday afternoon, which is kind of misleading because it means taking lots of pictures til we finally grab one where we all have our eyes open and are smiling. Sometime in the middle of our photo-taking, my dad said, "Wouldn't it be fun if we all waved?" We were all kind of uncertain about this, but we gave it a try, and by golly, it's my favorite picture of the whole bunch. And this is the only one in which Wish beamed, too.

5) I went to the dentist today and I am cavity-free!

Marvelous Monday: Week 49

Oh, my. I missed last week's Marvelous Monday! Let's get up to speed:

1) Josh and I wrangled a Christmas tree over the weekend and it's up! More on that later.

2) (Long) reading report: I finished 1Q84. I started reading it and told Josh about the first few sections, which had played out like a suspenseful thriller. "Why are you reading that?" he said and added that it sounded really good, and I realized how unlike my usual choices the book already was.

The book would go on to include even more new territory for me - science fiction, I dare say - and covering all three volumes in one fell swoop was a major project: two weeks' worth of pretty dedicated reading. I am so unfamiliar with most science fiction that, when I finished, I actually had the urge to re-read it to see the clues and connections to which I'm sure I was oblivious early on in the book.

I am really prone to considering other peoples' reviews in my own analysis of a book or movie, so I put the kibosh on reading reviews until after I'm done so I can fully form an opinion by myself. But then I really like to read reviews! This one from The Atlantic makes me laugh because, even though I finished the book and was drawn into it - and still think about it - I empathize:

It's hard to believe that some of the critics praising 1Q84 didn't really feel, at times, like throwing the book in the air and walking away. Trying to say anything definite about it is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. 

And then I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which was a return to my usual literature choices. But it still contained a tiny element of sci-fi (real sci-fi fans are guffawing, I'm sure) because the protagonist, in the food she ate, had the ability to taste the history of each ingredient and the person who made it. Who knows what's next on my reading list now!?  (That's rhetorical.)

3) Josh and I have been visiting wedding venues and learned all kinds of new wedding-related vocabulary in the last week. So many new words! We've met with a bunch of people connected to the venues, and by and large, they have been so helpful and kind. I know it's in their best interest to be friendly, but I've been really impressed by people sincerely taking the time to talk with us, even when they know that we're in the planning stage that involves checking out multiple places.

4) Wish had a successful stay at my mom and dad's house over Thanksgiving, and I am very grateful to them for helping out and taking such good care of him. He loves my parents, and it's really sweet to see.

I did get this photo texted to me, though:

My patient, darling pup.

5) I got to try a Google hangout with Ellie last night. I am way behind the times on this video chat thing, but now I know that it's wonderful. My phone and her phone are both a little bit wonky during actual conversations, and the connection on Google was clear as a bell - plus, we could see each other!

Also, we just got back from a walk with Wish - we're trying to extend his morning walks a little bit - and it's mild and foggy out there. I think I'm going to wear shorts on today's run! That's pretty marvelous, too.

What's marvelous about how your week is starting out, Reader? Do you like any of those video chat services? What are you reading? Do you put reindeer antlers on your dog? Do share!