Fat Tuesday and a Busy Month Ahead

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Lent, so today is Fat Tuesday. Terry was raised Catholic, and we both really believe in the idea of Lent, so now we both observe the 40 days of giving up something important or indulgent. Tonight we're going out to ice cream (well, frozen yogurt, at our favorite add-your-own-toppings shop, Twist) to indulge before we dive into Lent. Our sacrifices for the next 40 days: chocolate (for Terry, although I am cutting back also), cheese crackers (for me, because I love Cheez-Its and the like), and soda.

Tomorrow also marks the beginning of our 10-day real food challenge. Today I cleaned out our fridge and pantry to purge all the processed food and make room for the loads of groceries (from THREE stores, plus a bakery to buy real whole grain bread) that we bought today. I planned out all ten days to make sure we have plenty to eat, and the fun begins during breakfast tomorrow (on the menu: whole wheat toast and fruit). We love participating in these kinds of endeavors together to challenge ourselves, improve our health, and grow closer to each other. Terry has been very patient as I've explored the 100 days of real food blog and thrown out endless facts about the food industry, but he is on board for some healthy eating! Wish us luck!

Meanwhile, between the food challenge, work, and Terry studying for his final, real life must continue. We are planning to move to a new apartment at the end of the month, and we've (hopefully) found a place we really like - more to come if we actually decide to live there. So the packing process will begin soon, and my parents will venture down to LA to help us move (they owe Terry's parents big time for all the times they helped us!). We are so excited to find a lovely new apartment that will be our first married home! On a down note, I will be let go from my teaching job at the end of this school year (again) - the budget cuts are hitting us along with everyone else. While that puts a damper on things, we are grateful to have plenty of warning and the opportunity for me to apply for other jobs. While dealing with that, we're also shopping for a new (used) car, which we'll purchase after we make a decision on an apartment.

And finally, oh yes, that whole wedding thing. Last night I added stamps to all the reply envelopes and continued work on one of our DIY projects - the place card holders. Despite the minor battles with the glue gun and X-ACTO knife, we're well on our way to finishing one of our first big projects! Terry has promised me a wedding work day (well, a few hours) this Sunday after his finals to get our invitations underway and to finish up the designs on the response card and information card. It'll be nice to finally have something wedding-related to report on the blog! I'm trying to take pictures along the way so I can come back and document it all later, and I look forward to posting those in a few months.

So, tomorrow is March 9th - the first day of Lent and four months to the wedding! I'm looking forward to reporting our progress on the things we are giving up for Lent, the 10 day challenge, our new apartment, and the invitations!

Nutrition, Health, and all that Fun Stuff

While nutrition and diet aren't directly related to the wedding, the topics seem to appear in every issue of every bridal magazine I've received in the last 18+ months. And who doesn't want to look as fit, toned, and healthy as possible on their wedding day? Still, the little articles on "health" seem mediocre at best (titles such as "Get Slim and Sexy! The Two-Week Countdown" aren't exactly promising), and I always love to find genuinely educational articles about nutrition, healthy lifestyles, and exercise.

Today, I want to share an amazing blog that I recently discovered through one of my many food magazines. This family challenged themselves (successfully!) to 100 days of "real food" - meaning absolutely no processed food. The website includes how they did it, recipes with real food, and even how to buy real food on a budget. So if you have a minute to explore the idea behind real food, enjoy! http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/

If you click on the "10 Day Challenge" tab, you can read about the challenge that Terry and I are going to attempt. It is what it sounds like: We challenge ourselves to 10 days of real food, nothing processed. Essentially, we can eat vegetables, fruits, meat, pasta, dairy products, even sweets, but none of it can be processed food. You can check out the rules here. Wish us luck!

Speaking of health and nutrition, a lot of people have asked me if Terry and I are changing our diets or exercise routines for the wedding. While we've always aimed to be healthy, we are definitely more conscious of our health as we approach the wedding. We look at it as establishing routines for the rest of our lives, so we have focused on a big push to get and stay healthy. Here are some of the ways we stay healthy:

• exercise between four and six days per week (running, yoga, strength training, hiking, Pilates, or other cardio videos on OnDemand)
• eat small meals throughout the day (I do this more than Terry; I eat 50-300 calories about six times per day) and try to write down what I eat
  
• try to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, yogurt, milk, lean meats, and whole grains
• make food from scratch as much as possible (avoid frozen dinners, fast food, etc.)
• eat out only once per week
  
• eat dessert only once per week (this one's tough, and we cheat all the time)

Of course, we can only do our best. When things get busy, we eat out or skip a workout, but we really love the way we feel when we're exercising and eating healthy food. Terry is training for a 200-mile, 12-person relay race (www.ragnarrelay.com), so he runs 4-6 miles every few days, but we'll need a new motivational tool after he's done, and your ideas are welcome! We hope that by mixing up our workouts and continuing to try new recipes, we can stay motivated throughout our married life together. And here's hoping we'll feel healthy and confident on the big day!

Ceremony Details

This weekend, Terry and I drove through some fairly crazy weather to my parents' house for some minor wedding errands. On Saturday morning, we met with our amazing pastor, Frank. He is truly an incredible man and wonderful mentor to us as we prepare for our nuptials in just a few months. Pastor Frank gives us his undivided attention every time we meet with him, and we love talking with him about our concerns, his wishes and advice for us, our thoughts on marriage, and his ideas for the ceremony. We feel so lucky that serendipity led us to meet Frank, and we are so looking forward to his officiating our wedding. He has some incredible, unique ideas to make the ceremony personal while still traditional, religious while still respectful and inviting of other beliefs. We love that Frank has taken the time to get to know us so well as a couple, and he even made the effort to meet our parents to extend his understanding of who we are. Terry and I both love this part of wedding planning; the ceremony really matters the most. The rest is a big party and a great celebration, but the ceremony is where we take our vows and share our decision to marry with our closest friends and family. Frank is helping us make sure that the ceremony is about us and our parents, and I even teared up a little just imagining the big day. I keep reminding myself that after all this fun, lengthy, somewhat silly, somewhat tense wedding planning, we will ultimately get to the point where we finally be husband and wife. And that'll make it all worth it!

Saturday, we also spent some quality time with Terry's parents scoping out potential venues for the rehearsal dinner. Originally, we had intended for the rehearsal dinner to be at my parents' house, but Terry's parents pointed out that a dinner closer to the wedding venue would be much more practical and far less stressful for all involved. We are excited that they're willing to plan the dinner for us, and we know the night will be amazing! We're definitely keeping our dinner small; the rehearsal is traditionally just the bridal party and any involved in the wedding, along with the bride's and groom's parents. It'll be so nice to be able to spend time with each of these people that night before the chaos of the wedding day, and we're excited about the funny stories we'll all share! So to make some decisions on the rehearsal dinner location, we started with a list from the Palm Event Center, ate at two of the places, and then scouted out the others. We crossed off a few, and Terry's parents will be able to make a very informed decision. Thankfully, most of the options look great, and we should be able to enjoy an intimate, relaxed rehearsal dinner before the big day.

Tomorrow, I get the day off for President's Day (thank you, George and Abe!), so I'm dedicating a good chunk of my day to my DIY projects for the wedding, including invitations and place card holders. We're having a grand old time with the wedding planning, but part of me is ready to just be married already! :-) All in good time!

Under the Five-Month Mark

Since our engagement all those months ago, I imagined that this time - five months out - would be the beginning of wedding madness. Still, with fewer than 150 days to go, we still find the process fun and low stress. There's still a lot to do, yes, but the big stuff is done and we can just enjoy the rest.

Lately we've really focused on decisions for all the small stuff: ceremony and reception music, paper products for the wedding, attire, and the overall look that we want. I still love browsing through magazines and wedding blogs, and I love seeing how creatively other couples execute their ideas. Unfortunately, the most popular (and, therefore, most featured) weddings these days are in the vintage, eclectic, semi-casual style. Check out Style Me Pretty if you don't get what I mean. Popular items include buttons, teacups, mason jars, single sunflowers, birdcage veils, linen bridesmaids dresses, and it's all so dreamy and pretty. Sadly, our wedding doesn't work with any of those things, and formal, traditional weddings are rarely featured in current magazines and blogs. So I'm taking as much inspiration as I can from other sources and making up the rest as I go!

One aspect I've been exited about from the beginning is the invitations - truly a labor of love. We're just starting to print, assemble, and construct the invitations and envelopes, but it's fun seeing it all come together. Our goal for mailing is April 1st, and while two months seems like plenty, it's going fast. Just tracing and cutting the envelope liners took me three nights, so we have our work cut out for us (please pardon the pun)!

We're looking forward to some wine tasting together over Valentine's weekend, and on President's Day weekend we'll be headed up north again. Terry's parents will be looking over rehearsal dinner options, and Terry and I will get to taste more cake flavors from the amazing Bev Tenaka. A few fun errands ahead in the world of wedding planning! Hope you have an amazing Valentine's Day!

Honeymoon Hotels!

We reserved all of our hotels for our honeymoon! We researched a few hundred hotels, read eight thousand reviews, and finally booked. We have a travel agent who has always booked our cruises, and we have been able to use her advice to find the best locations for our stays in London and Italy.

In case you missed our other posts, here's the honeymoon agenda: Our wedding is on a Saturday, and we spend that night in Pleasanton at the gorgeous Rose Hotel. The following day is a brunch at my parents' house with the bridal party, and we'll hopefully be able to catch up on some sleep. We leave the next day, Monday, and land in London on Tuesday. For our week in London, we will stay at the Rubens Hotel, the closest hotel to Buckingham Palace. We'll spend the week exploring London's biggest attractions, including but not limited to the castles, cathedrals, shopping centers, restaurants, parks, pubs, and theatres. We'll also venture out to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, and Terry's letting me enjoy a full day of English major geekiness basking in the history of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare.


After London, we head to the Amalfi Coast. Our hotel for three nights is in Vietri sul Mare. Hotel Raito is nestled right on the coast overlooking the gorgeous coastal waters in Italy. We mentioned previously that we found a great deal for this hotel through Luxury Link, and we are so excited for the few days to truly relax on our big trip. We get massages as part of our package, but the rest of the stay here will include hikes, breakfast on the balcony, and checking out the small towns along the coast.


Finally, the last leg of our trip is four nights in Rome. We will stay at the popular Hotel Artemide, only a short walk to the Spanish Steps and the heart of Rome. Our focus in Rome is historical sight seeing and tons of food. We have several friends providing must-see tips, so we can't wait to pack it all into our last few days.

So that's the plan! We can't wait for the wedding, but the honeymoon will truly kick off what's sure to be an awesome lifetime of traveling together. I'm a pretty lucky girl to get such a great travel buddy!

Boun Appetito!

Terry here! It has been a long time since I've posted. Sorry to everyone about that; I know how much people have missed my blogging, and I apologize that you've had to suffer through Julie's continuous posts (love you, Jules!).

Anyway, between work, school (I'll be done in June!), running (taking part in a Ragnar relay - www.ragnarrelay.com), I haven't made time to get to the ol' blog. But now I get to talk about the really important part of the wedding: the food!

On January 19th, Jules and I had a whirlwind day that ended with us flying from LA to San Jose, and driving out to Pleasanton for our tasting. We would have much preferred to have gone up another day, but we would have sacrificed getting to try the whole menu. We arrived at the Palm Event Center a few minutes early and were greeted with glass of champagne. The tasting itself took place in the Estate Room, which is the room in which our ceremony will be. We were seated with three other couples, all of whom are getting married the holiday weekend before us. It was really nice getting to chat with these couples and we ended up walking away from the night with several new ideas and things to consider for our big day.

The tasting started with a sampling of the passed hors d'oeuvres. Laid before was a platter with an eggplant caponata on crostini, a crab salad with preserved lemon, a smoked sausage stuffed mushroom, a mini Reuben sandwich with sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing, and a chorizo and date wrapped in bacon. The eggplant crostini was very light, prepared in a vinaigrette without a heavy flavor of eggplant. Julie and I were big fans of this appetizer and thought that this would be quite nice on a hot summer day. The crab salad was prepared in a little wafer, so it's still a finger food treat. This, too, was light, but lemony and refreshing as well. I love seafood, so I was already gung-ho on this one, and thankfully Julie didn't need any convincing. We had one more appetizer to choose! The sausage stuffed mushroom did not make the list. It wasn't just the right flavor for our liking (I thought there was a little too much cumin). So it came down to the Reuben and bacon wrapped chorizo and date. The mini sandwich was very tasty, and I was actually surprised Julie liked it as she's not a fan of sauerkraut. But the chorizo and date in bacon? Wow! I was sold on it. It's spicy and sweet, with the right amount of bacon (and how can you go wrong with bacon?). Julie and I talked it over, and though the Reuben was good, it's a Reuben. Compared to the chorizo and date, it just didn't hold a candle. So our passed hors d'oeuvres will be the eggplant crostini, crab salad, and the bacon wrapped chorizo and date.

In addition to the passed appetizers, we will also have an appetizer table. We weren't served any of the food for this as it all comes with our booking of the venue. So our guests will all get to enjoy cheeses, salamis, peppers, artichoke dip, and Spanish meatballs! Yum yum!

Onto the sit down portion of the meal. We began with three salads: a caesar, a classic wedge, and mixed green and pear salad. All were great, but the one that stood out was the pear salad. In addition to the greens and pears, the salad was topped with candied walnuts, crumbled blue cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette. It was delightful!

The entrees were definitely a feat to finish as there were 9 and we'd already had plenty for starters. First came the fish and vegetarian choices: a basil and brown sugar salmon, a seasonal white fish with chili ponzu and scallions, and a red chard and sweet onion ravioli with carrot-nutmeg beurre blanc. The white fish was light and flaky, and the chili ponzu had a nice kick to it. The salmon was oh so buttery with a light crust of brown sugar. But the surprise of the night was the ravioli! The sauce was sweet and complemented the red chard and sweet onion perfectly. I think it may have been the only dish that Julie ate the entire thing of (I polished off her other dishes). The dish was also the talk of the table well past the other entrees.

The second course consisted of chicken and pork. We had a chicken saltimbocca with onion soubise, pan-seared chicken with wild mushroom and sweet wine butter sauce, and Carloina-style BBQ pork loin with crispy onions. Again, everything was delicious. We particularly liked the chicken with wild mushroom and sweet wine butter sauce. To give you a better picture, the chef referred to it as the butterscotch chicken. It was definitely sweet, but the taste was so unique! At the end of the course, that was the front runner.

The third, and final course had the red meat: a grilled New York with brandy and green peppercorn sauce with buttermilk shallots; braised beef short ribs with upland cress and fig demi; and marinated tri-tip with red wine demi, sauteed mushrooms, and crumbled blue cheese. Everything was good, but we felt the New York was a little over done. The short ribs were super tender, and the tri-tip was prepared to perfection. At the end of the meal we were torn between those two dishes.

Well, in the end, we had to choose two of the nine entrees. We absolutely loved the ravioli, so that was in. Now we had to choose between the butterscotch chicken, short ribs, and tri-tip. After talking it over on the way home, we agreed that the ravioli and the chicken would be too much sweetness for the night (and we hadn't even gotten to the cake). Between the short ribs and tri-tip, it came down to the fact that the tri-tip had that little something extra to push it ahead of the competition. So we will be enjoying the ravioli and tri-tip.

A few things. If you're concerned about what you're going to choose to eat because everything sounds good, don't worry! Julie and I have decided that we're going to serve a family style dinner, so the food will be brought out on platters to the table for all to share and enjoy! Second, if your mouth is already watering over the menu, just remember that the menu may change ever so slightly as things go in and out of season, but that really only applies to the small details of the dishes.

So that was our tasting. Phew, I'm out of shape when it comes to typing. I'm winded from writing this, and now I really need to eat something.

Until next time!

More Girly Stuff - Fitting and Footwear

I wasn't sure what to expect at my first fitting. Too many episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" have convinced me that there is bound to be something wrong with the dress. Either it will be the wrong color or the wrong size or an entirely different dress. Luckily, those nightmares only seem to happen to reality show participants, not little ol' me. So the dress is perfect. I could get away with no alterations if I wanted to, because the size was exactly right. I don't even need a hem, fairly rare in the wedding world. My mom is thrilled - alterations can be pricey - but we still have some adjustments to make. For one thing, dresses don't come with bustles, which I didn't know, so we have to get the ribbons for the bustle sewn in. Also, my dress has a corset, so if my waist size changes at all I may need an alteration closer to the wedding. But for now, it fits great!

I'm so grateful for J'aime Bridal, the salon where I purchased my gown. They will store my gown until I am ready to get it, and they'll steam the dress and veil before the wedding. I have received truly phenomenal service from them, and they are attentive, professional, and genuinely invested in their work. I know I'll continue to be impressed with them over the next few months.

One very important aspect of any fitting is to bring the shoes for the big day...and I bought mine! Last weekend, I headed to DSW and Macy's and successfully purchased my shoes for the big day. It's no secret that I've always wanted to wear tennis shoes at my wedding, a la Father of the Bride, and that's definitely happening. They won't look exactly the same, but my mom's working on decorating a pair for me.

Shoes similar to the ones worn in Father of the Bride,
from Wedding Tennies & Formal Shoes.

But for the ceremony, I wanted to class things up a bit with some sparkly heels. I have never been so excited (or excited at all, I think) about shoes, but I think they're going to look awesome!

The details are all coming together beautifully. We're really having a blast with all the planning!